Father Xmas

Just like buying them with real money back when they were in origin super boosters or packs. Difference is you can choose only to get a few items for much less than buying an entire pack for just them.

For instance for me, only thing the animal pack had that I wanted was the wolf tail. It's like 25 cents.

In regards to Manoa's point, depending on when you left and how long you had played, returning players could have radically different opinions about the Premium tier.

For instance they left the game before the CoH/CoV merge and only had one of the games, then they get access to the other one now for free a potential plus, but not for those who had purchased both games or played after the merge.

If they left before IOs and the Market or AE, then not having them isn't a loss as it would be if they left after those systems were added but hadn't played enough to unlock them with the Paragon Rewards they have.

Same can also be said with Controller and Mastermind access or EATs which they don't get at all.

So returning players may or may not find an experience like they had before they left, but for free. But as Arcanaville says that's a good thing as the devs would prefer them to subscribe or buy access to those missing features because that leads to the devs getting paid rather than looking for work.

Well you can check which emotes you have by trying one from each pack, here's a list of the unlocked ones from each pack.

Now GvE and the Mac editions didn't have any unique emotes but GvE did have the Jump Pack and Pocket D VIP Pass while the Mac had the Mission Transporter.

Pretty sure that covers all the packs/goodies and boosters.

Edit: Oops, forgot the Origins Pack. Sadly that's only costumes and auras.

Might as well toss in the list of all packs.

You need to fix that link True.

I just hope it doesn't take six to seven hours to download this patch. Some people only have access to DSL level broadband speed of only 7-15MBpm.

I miss the days when we can prefetch a week or more before an issue launch.

We didn't have an end game for over six years so excuse me for not thinking that denying it to Freemies and Preemies as a problem.

Free players can play any of the 8 ATs all the way up to 50, using traditional enhancements. By denying them AE access means that they won't get sucked in and play the entire game there. By denying them the market and invention system is gives them the same gameplay we had for over three years before those things came into existence with Issue 9. They can't swap sides, just like we couldn't for over six years.

They'll have access to the same holiday and special events that we all do. They can be badge hunters. They can experience an enormous chunk of this game for NOTHING. If the lure of costume pieces they don't have or IOs or lots of character slots or even our grindy so called "end game" doesn't encourage them to pony up and pay at least something then the devs failed.

However if villains are running about the streets of Paragon, they should at least get periodic ambushes from Longbow or Paragon Police as they are spotted traveling to and from their missions.

The Devs really don't want to turn the blue side of the game into a version of GTO where you rob purses as the villain version of street sweeping so the current critter groups on blue side will also attack you on sight.

Unless of course the game adds some kind of critter group alignment system like what's in Praetoria so depending on the missions you took different, critter groups will react to you differently. Do missions for the Hellions, Skulls will attack you on sight and vice versa.

Don't forget they have brand spanking new Halloween content ready to go. So it'll have to be a week or three before Halloween, which puts it around Tuesday the 11th at the latest.

Assuming no screamingly obvious showstopper bugs with the Paragon Market, Paragon Rewards, Mac support or the new content.

Assuming you aren't already IOed, did you upgrade your enhancements to Lvl 40 SOs or are you still using Lvl 35 SOs while playing at Lvl 37? The difference is quite noticeable. 26.7% Vs 38.3% going from a -2 to a +3 with a single SO; 53.3% Vs 76.0% with two SOs (note ED is starting to kick in); and 79.0% Vs 97.3% with 3 SOs.

An occasional miss due to lower accuracy and reduced damage when you do hit could extend every encounter by several attacks, which then also reduces your remaining endurance forcing you to delay your next engagement by a few more seconds. All of that extra time does add up over the course of a mission.

Of course if you are IOed then that isn't an issue.

Probably cheaper to make than Eureka. Not all that bad ratings for one of their 10pm shows.

The problem stems from the word "limited". From marketing's perspective the mission architect, auction house and invention system is not "included", "not available" or just "purchasable". Since pre-existing vet rewards are being converted into Paragon Rewards, some returning players in the Premium tier may have those features permanently unlocked. And if you don't you can rent them.

It's a problem with dribbling information about this new tiered version of the game. Because they didn't explain what limited meant up front on the matrix page, it allowed various theories to be bandied about as what it does mean. Theories become preconceptions and when new information conflicts with them, some people believe that they've been mislead.

We had to wait until information about the Paragon Reward system went up, on the forum and not the Freedom website, to know when these unlocks occur permanently and some are unlocked in stages.

For returning players, these advantages in Premium are directly tied to how long they've previously played the game and therefore previously paid NCSoft. It's more of a thank you from the establishment for previously playing.

I think some players dislike Praetoria because they've become so accustom to blowing by the lower levels red and blue side, not to mention getting the temp travel powers, that Praetoria seems unbearably slow.

Toss in not being instinctively aware of what each critter can do, which can make the game seem harder as you "learn" through pain. I would imagine after going through Praetoria 10 times you'll grasp what tactics you need to hone here to make handling such encounters second nature.

Also asking the player to choose a path in the overall story can actually be a turn off to some ("don't want to think, want to SMASH"). Not to mention that PUGs don't really care about content normally if just leveling. Tip mission is as good as AE is as good as someone's story arc is as good as a standard TF or trial.

And the thing is in the eyes of the media, MMOs come in two flavors, subscription or free to play. I think it was Turbine that first introduced the hybrid tiered model and proved it successful enough that seemingly everybody is jumping on board.

At least our free to play tier isn't called "Scavenger" like the future FE tier system is called.

we boldly went where no man has gone before.

To boldly go: Ars explores 45 years of Star Trek

Can't blame them, I would imagine the original footage used for TV was initially recorded on 16mm film stock which would look very grainy on a movie screen. Once the first movie was successful they could spend the money to redo and streamline the original series story threads.

I had some friends catch a UC Gundam movie in Japan a few years back, I think it was the Zeta Gundam movie compilation, and they said you could really tell what was original and what was new.

Just have a sniper shot at a crucial point and when the camera cuts to the sniper have it be Helen Mirren and have her mutter something about boys being boys.

They did, it was much slower before. Personally I found that after 40 it went quicker or at least felt that way.

Well yea. The original series was 43 episodes. Even if you conservatively place new material per episode at 18 minutes (eliminating the opening, closing and recap) that nearly 13 hours of material. So they cut roughly half of what was there out to make it fit into those three movies.

Just imagine the number of movies they would need to do the same treatment to Bleach.

Here's I link I've kept over the years from Forbes about us.

I remember walking by The Stinking Rose after my boss, her husband and I had dinner in China Town on the way back to our hotel. San Francisco is a nice city to wander through at night, as long as you are in a group.

If we had walked past it on the way to dinner we probably would have eaten there. It's legendary if you love garlic.