Electric_Requiem

Yes, yes. We all know it's a long shot. But do you know what kind of shot we have if we do nothing? If you said NO SHOT AT ALL, ding ding ding, you win!

I emailed them because why the hell not? They can use some of that mind boggling wealth to take the company time to read my email.

My billing date is the last day of the month (September 30 in this case). Does that mean I will not receive my Paragon Point allotment until my October billing date? I am a VIP subscriber, but I have not, as of yet, received any Paragon Points for this month.

What I wanted to present with this arc was a rogue cell of a "good" faction, in this case Longbow, doing something extremely crappy. I like stories where the bad guys are forced to confront something so nasty they wind up playing hero, and where the good guys tumble over the edge of the moral event horizon. I can't really make the arc more "villainous" without a very substantial rewrite. I do find that villain-oriented players really hate Longbow, though. I've had some good feedback from villain players who enjoyed the scenario because their violence against Longbow was entirely justified.

Noted. I could bust the EB's down to plain old bosses and un-extreme them. I wouldn't want to reduce the final boss to less than EB, though; I mean, he IS the final boss. It would be nice to have an option where the final boss spawns as an AV for people who like fighting AV's, but an EB or even a regular boss for everyone else.

That's a valid point about their power level, and one I have considered. Random zombie types shouldn't necessarily present a challenge for top-tier characters, it's true. However, all of my earlier AE arcs were designed for low level toons, and people just ignored them. I'd have a lowbie arc up for months and months and get five or six plays. What feedback I did receive consisted of the occasional "I'd prefer an arc for my high level toons" comment. This arc is by far the most widely played of any I've published. I have, however, thought of replacing Malta with a 1 - 50 faction to render the arc playable at any level...but what other faction would a rogue Longbow cell hire to help do their dirty work?

Thanks for spotting that...corrected.

The Malta aren't customs...but Malta is a tough faction under any circumstances. That room is a problem that I'm not sure how to solve. I definitely want to use that map for mission two, but the mobs tend to spawn close in that final room, and people do report a lot of chain aggro in there.

I'm definitely never creating a mission where you have to escort a hostage, or where the mission can be failed because an NPC aggroed some huge mob and got killed. That's just never fun.

The end of mission three can also get rough, although I do find it a bit more manageable given the doors. If I remove Malta from the arc, though, I'll pick a new map for that mish.

Jennings is supposed to be a unique boss and was originally set as such...I didn't know he was spawning multiple times. Perhaps somewhere in one of the endless AE updates his status box got involuntarily unchecked. There should definitely only be one of him. Thanks for pointing it out...he should be fixed now. Also, his description should read something like, "This civilian is neither hapless nor in over his head." That part is just me trying to be cute.

Did Veluta's mission four text inadequately explain the Longbow involvement? The LB in the arc are a renegade faction trying to apply what is essentially an insane solution to the Rogue Isles "problem": Unleash a horrible mutagen and turn everyone in Etoile into zombies and boom, no more troubles with Arachnos. Perhaps the final boss could explain this more clearly as part of his battle text.

I should probably add a bit more in-mission expository dialogue shedding light on the plot. The rescued scientists could talk a lot more about it, stuff like this: "That Longbow commander is crazy! He wanted us to bioengineer a virus to destroy the Rogue Isles! He hired Malta (or whomever I replace them with, if I do) to help him spread it!"

Thanks again for your input, I found it very helpful. I'm going to try to downgrade the arc's difficulty a bit and add more exposition.

I fit that mold. The only other MMO I've ever tried was the 10 day WoW demo, with which I was deeply and sincerely unimpressed. Otherwise it's only CoX for me.

I'm not heavily into the in-game market -- messing with it intensively is just not fun to me -- but I don't see CO having a direct effect apart from drawing players away from CoX. From what I've seen so far the players who are leaving either want greater power customization options or they just want to play with a newer toy. I don't think the farmers will bother with it much until they're sure they can make a profit off of the thing.

From what I've seen so far CoX server population has been down lately...how much of that is the CO beta and how much is a natural lull I'm unsure.

The strip's not funny -- Backward Compatible never is -- but I see the point they're trying to make.