Father Xmas

Depends on the powersets. For primaries I don't see a lot of difference between Katana and Broadsword but Dual Blades does play differently due to the combo system that power set has. Martial Arts is all about kicking and Super Strength is generally about punching. A few primary power sets have a short range attack or two.

As for secondaries they tend to be centered around one of the triad of damage mitigation, avoiding being hit, resisting damage if hit, healing damage faster than normal. Shield and Willpower combine two or more of those aspects at a lesser strength.

Well every character can solo although some slower than others. I really can't think of any that people wouldn't want to group with, each have their strong points.

For soloing nothing beats a scrapper or brute for raw in your face bashing. Tanks my not finish an enemy of as quick as a scrapper or blaster but if you enjoy surviving within a mob of bad guys they can be fun to play. Masterminds in CoV are a team all to themselves but managing all your pets effectively takes skill. I say the least solo friendly AT is the controller, with the exception of an Illusion controller, they can be quite fun to play.

The problem with defenders is that in most cases their primary powers tend to be more team oriented. Sonic and Force Field defenders are great on teams as they can provide a very nice damage resist or defense buff respectively to their teammates. Problem is their best buffs are teammate only and not usable on themselves. Kinetics can buff and heal teammates as well as eliminating their need to rest. Radiation and Dark can seriously debuff an enemy to mostly harmless status. Only one of the power sets could be considered for a classic "Healer" but be aware that defenders resent being thought of as a "healer class" and are better known for their team buffs and/or enemy debufs. If your teammates aren't getting hit as much or taking less damage when they do, it's as useful as healing.

Defender attacks are weaker than their blaster counterparts. It's to easy to think of a defender as a lightweight blaster with heals or a bit of mob control. Then do play very differently and if you play them like a blaster or scrapper then you are going to suck pavement/grass/carpet often.

Dark and Rad defenders are easier to solo due to their ability to debuf the enemy. Kinetic is nice as well for solo or team. Force field and sonic are tougher to solo with because their big buffs are teammate only are better in groups.

Well if you don't mind doing a total format and reinstall then it doesn't matter. There are conditions where Windows 7 won't need a format first but it's a mixture of what OS and license you currently have on your PC and what version and license of Windows 7 you purchased. As for Dx11, are there any major games that are even using Dx10.1? And the news of Dx11 GPUs ship dates are rather muddled. I wouldn't worry about Dx11 for a while.

SSDs aren't quite there yet. Perhaps in another two years or so they will have the idiosyncrasies worked out and size and price issues closer to conventional hard drives but as of right now we are comparing $0.10 per GB for conventional hard drives to $3.00 per GB for an SSD. SSDs are great for certain types of applications but their small capacity and immature flash drive controllers, they just aren't ready for the mainstream yet.

Yes, for nVidia SLi mode they need to be the same. You can't mix a 285 with a 295. For ATI Crossfire configurations, this isn't the case (but I'm unsure what the restrictions are, if any). However the window for buying your 2nd card in the case of nVidia can be problematic. For instance the GTX 280 lasted only 7 months before they replaced it with the GTX 285. The 9800GTX+ (out for only 8 months) can't be mixed with the GTS 250 even though they are identical. And while the previous model doesn't vanish immediately the ability to buy one drops off rather quickly over time as the remaining inventory is sold off.

As for buying a motherboard that can be expanded over the years, well future proofing a motherboard is getting tougher all the time. Don't expect any faster CPUs for the Socket 775 motherboards, Intel is going with their Core i5 and i7 series (note here, not all i7s will be socket 1366, thank you Intel marketing for obfuscating the issue) for their new mainstream CPUs which will be hitting the market shortly. USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 is right around the corner but PCIe V3.0 is now delayed. AMD's Socket AM3 should be stable for a few years but you still have the SATA and USB improvements coming soon. The only thing I can safely say is DDR3 isn't going anywhere in the foreseeable future. There will always be new motherboard technologies right around the corner, you just have to realize that whatever you buy today will be obsolete (well, not have all the latest and greatest technologies at least) within 6 months and suck it up.

It can be a overwhelming process if you haven't been keeping up with the constant stream of new models. Always feel free to ask.

Oh yes, the one you currently have, not the one you ordered. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

The Corsair 550VX is a nice PSU with 41amps at 12 volts and will easily meet your needs.

Sorry for the confusion.

ParagonWiki: Definition

Yep, currently connected at 45.2Kbps. There are some drawbacks living away from civilization.

Nice, start by insulting our Mac specialist but tack a disclaimer on the end so you don't appear to be a complete [self censored].

This assumes they are doing nothing with the spam reports. This assumes that they aren't closing down accounts as they discover illicit activity.

What we have is a QoL issue with the ignore system caused when loot was introduced and the mail system after /tell was disabled on trial accounts. We also have a support team that for one reason or another can't act fast enough when a spammer appears and is reported. Action against the account occurs well after the spam bot is done.

I suspect that 1) the automatic spam notification generates the most incident reports in a single day however would you rather see the limited GM help (which is shared by all NCSoft games) be spent helping players with actual problems or be utterly preoccupied in verifying spammers and shutting them down sooner? In a perfect world I would want both of course but when running a business you simply don't have the resources. And as for sold accounts, I wouldn't know where to begin on how to identify them. Couples split up, children "inherit" their parent's or sibling's account and credit cards are frequently changed.

The thing is every "society" has a certain level of, well tolerance isn't quite the right word, of illegality. You can't eliminate all illicit behavior but you try to keep much of it in check with the resources the rest of society is willing to grant you. What society doesn't see, they won't care about.

Once the devs implement some change to the mail system, rumored in I16, that would allow players to ignore spam, whether with whitelist options like some found in hide or by some other means, I believe most players would be satisfied. The inf peddlers will of course find another way to advertise. No system is perfect. As for now, learn to either ignore the red e-mail indicator or help by tagging spammers with the spam button so action can eventually be taken against them.

I'm afraid not. The head banging in Samuraiko-san's video Time to Start (55MB WMV file, near bottom of page) I believe was done by editing.