Emerald_Phase

(QR)
First of all, I've never liked the melee MM pets (although as much as my bots like to charge suicidally into melee I'm starting to wonder if I should let it go and give 'em another chance ), and I'm not a huge fan of thermal, HOWEVER for freaking flaming zombies, I would drop everything in a heartbeat for a Zombie/Thermal MM and probably never look back.
/drool

Secondly,
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all the heroes who "arrest" people by setting them on fire, bathing them in lethal radiation, or just hauling out an assault rifle and rocket launcher.

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This cracked me up. Reminded me of a conversation I had with a good friend a few years ago. We were both on our blasters, though I can't remember now if we were duoing or just shooting the breeze. Anyway we got on the subject of just how "heroic" some of our powers are.

I joked that my fire blaster could tone down her power to just cause minor burns or burn up all the oxygen causing temporary uncosnciousness, he laughed and said "Yeah, that's great, but I can't make my bullets kill people less "

Anyway, I have to agree here. Sometimes it takes some suspension of disbelief, especially in a comic book world where it's not unusual to see an angel and a demon at the same rave at Pocket D.

Oh, and I would kill for a Carnie set, but since that idea's already been shot down several times in the past, a general circus/clown set would be the next best thing, epsecially now that the second booster pack added a /em juggle emote... /plot

(QR)

CO and Co* are two very different games. For that I am extremely thankful. If Co* were anything like CO, I'd have never come back. I can't stand twitch-based action games where if you fail to block one time you're suddenly a greasy spot. You can have that Halo 3 crap. Give me a compelling MMORPG with interesting characters and enjoyable non-console gameplay, thanks

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If it's a Linksys BEFW11S4 throw it against the wall immediately and put it out of its misery.

Oh.

And ping 192.168.1.1 first (your router) and after that ping your DNS address (provider)

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Belkin, which is just as bad
Also, we have a winner. Request timed out about half the time over several attempts to ping DNS IP. Tracert shows packets dropping at hop 1 at the earliest, though my router pings are all coming up clean. Wired connection, if that counts for anything.

It's kind of hard to tell, since we've been having connection problems since Friday. On the one hand, my most recent (and extremely troubling) tracert shows packet loss from hop 1 onward, but on the other hand, the problems we were having over the weekend were caused by trouble along the phone lines themselves.

Here's the trace to google along with a comparison baseline (I use google.com as a baseline for my tracerts because it tends to be very stable and low on the pings when everything is working right)
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Tracing route to google.com [209.85.171.100]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 341 ms 347 ms 274 ms 75.121.18.2
2 361 ms 335 ms 279 ms 208.54.209.1
3 345 ms * 351 ms 66.211.51.85
4 134 ms 163 ms 183 ms 206.51.69.113
5 349 ms 361 ms 359 ms 206.51.69.29
6 164 ms 165 ms 207 ms 206.51.69.61
7 306 ms 286 ms 271 ms 206.51.69.33
8 354 ms 343 ms 308 ms 74.125.51.237
9 285 ms 239 ms 269 ms 66.249.94.94
10 355 ms 342 ms 368 ms 216.239.47.121
11 377 ms 292 ms 273 ms 209.85.242.21
12 401 ms 307 ms 268 ms 216.239.48.50
13 432 ms 425 ms 237 ms 209.85.241.211
14 314 ms 321 ms 327 ms 216.239.46.208
15 * 355 ms 420 ms 64.233.174.127
16 328 ms 233 ms 253 ms 209.85.251.149
17 272 ms 287 ms 297 ms 74.125.31.130
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 91 ms 90 ms 91 ms 209.85.171.100

Trace complete.
</pre><hr />
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Tracing route to google.com [209.85.171.100]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 13 ms 15 ms 15 ms 75.121.18.2
2 26 ms 16 ms 14 ms 208.54.209.1
3 17 ms 15 ms 17 ms 66.211.51.85
4 18 ms 17 ms 17 ms 206.51.69.113
5 24 ms 25 ms 59 ms 206.51.69.29
6 22 ms 23 ms 35 ms 206.51.69.61
7 32 ms 29 ms 29 ms 206.51.69.33
8 28 ms 29 ms 29 ms 74.125.51.237
9 28 ms 30 ms 29 ms 66.249.94.94
10 40 ms 38 ms 39 ms 216.239.47.121
11 38 ms 41 ms 61 ms 209.85.242.21
12 54 ms 55 ms 55 ms 216.239.48.50
13 82 ms 85 ms 85 ms 209.85.241.211
14 93 ms 89 ms 89 ms 216.239.46.200
15 88 ms 89 ms 89 ms 64.233.174.101
16 91 ms 97 ms 97 ms 209.85.251.145
17 94 ms 93 ms 103 ms 74.125.30.2
18 90 ms 91 ms 93 ms 209.85.171.100

Trace complete.
</pre><hr />
As you can see by the time it hit the last hop everything was working relatively normally again, which is how it basically goes. About every 15 to 45 minutes it starts going wonky, ruins my MSN conversations, boots me out of whatever online game I'm playing, then just as quickly it goes back to normal.

The other reason I suspect the modem is because my last modem started acting up like this a few months before it had a heart attack (Lightning got to that one, apparently. Not even a direct strike, but a minor power surge from a passing storm caused it to muck up).

Anyway, any thoughts on the matter would be great. I have a new modem/router combo on order because the router is a good 3-4 years old and due for a replacement anyway, but if this continues after I get the new modem/router in place I'll pester our DSL tech to come out and test the line.

(QR)
Favorited this bad boy for future perusing. I have a brand new Bots/Pain Mastermind who's going to be in need of a makeover as her story progresses, and the advice here is just too good not to apply

&lt;QR&gt;
This thread makes me feel *so* much better about my altitis.

My highest is 43, and I started her in Issue 2 &gt;_&gt; The only reason my second-two-highest got as far as they did was dedicated teaming with friends who've all quit (37 and 37 on my Ice/Dev Blaster and Dark/Dark corruptor)

I'm like Whango in the alt-slaughterhouse though. I'll get an idea in my head, play the alt to about level 10, get another idea, delete, start over. 30+ just feels so... blah on the ones I have gotten that high.

I really, really want to like the 35-50 game, but between the most insanely bad luck with PuGs and S/VGs, making hundreds of alts just ends up being infinitely more fun/less of an excercise in massochism and/or aggravation

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Guess NCsoft is related to the Telephone Companies, and got wise to SIR CHARGE.... Will nickle and dime you to death.... $10 charge... No Way.

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Uhh.. $10? You could go play a certain other MMO where they charge you $25

Just sayin'

&lt;QR&gt;
Silly question, but I want to be sure I'm understanding right before I spend 35 levels on a controller getting there (Although I *love* /TA. I've never zipped through the first ten levels on a controller so fast)

Does a lit OSA have a fear/terror component ala Burn? I'm playing around with a couple of concept characters (Ill/TA and Grav/TA), leaning toward Ill, but curious if Grav would tactically be more sound with the AoE immobilize and Wormhole both at their disposal ... Plus there's that pet fear bug to contend with with Phantom Army too.

It's just downright crazy how much control /TA brings. I used to think my Mind controller was the queen of ST control because of my 'busy' playstyle/approach to her, but these two leave her in the dust. I'm even considering Earth/TA at some point just to see if there's a point of redundancy on control options.

Anyway, excellent guide Luminara!

&lt;QR&gt;
All this nostalgia, I just have to ask. Does anyone else remember Dawn?

The MMO-killer that never was. At least Horizons *did* go live.. for awhile... *ducks and hides*

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In AC1 I was on Thistledown. Man it is so nice to see that someone else will know what I'm talking about

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Or having to Buy (and have enough room to carry) more Spell components because you could... *gasp* actually run out of herbs and other material... and start to *fizzle*!

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And the occasional utterly bored battlemage fizzle-breakdancing At least until they switched from the spell research system to the scroll system. I miss the *old* AC1, before they started updating the spell system and loot tables. Going back was like playing a zoneless, graphically unappealing generic MMO, sadly.

Oh, I was on Solclaim for four years off-and-on from '01. Never did pick up AC2.