Gaia

I will admit I'm curious as to what Brabam will do with it.

Frontier brought out Elite 2 on the PC in the late 80s.

CGA graphics - much lower res than the BBCs Mode 0 viewscreen/ Mode 7 console split screen
single channel sound unlike the multi channel sound on the BBC
required 512 k ram - the BBC only had 32k and that included the OS

PCs at that time were very poor for gaming but for those of us who had been introduced to great games with Elite on the BBC the PC implementation was an appalling example.

2002 Microsoft brought out Freelancer which was close to the original Elite in its feel.

you missed
Windows 3.1
Windows for workgroups 3.11


I understand that if you move your mouse to the extreme bottom left corner the start button reappears

personally I don't care for the interface on the latest versions of Microsoft's products

Windows 8 boxes
Visual studio 2012 grey edition
Office 2010 ribbon

They seem to be going out of their way to find the least intuitive downgrades possible.

He is.

His badge arc isn't.

you don't need a team even then - indeed even going through the tunnel from there into the raid area it is still possible to complete tasks solo with QL1-2 gear - expect to die *A LOT* though.

I'd have to agree though that I'm not seeing a lot of teaming there - not even all that many calls for Polaris runs this week - really need to do one at some point soon though - I just don't fancy starting one at Midnight.

You could always try the initial Snake mishes - those settings should be nasty at that low a level.

Alternatively try running the DA arcs - no enhancements, under a continual debuff, buffed enemies, no temps, no insps and unslot all your incarnate slots whilst you're at it. That should give you a bit of a challenge.

Solo a MoLRSF (you won't be the first to manage it though)

Next head to the Abyss and solo Hami. ( Actually just spawning the blob without the use of a desert spoon may well be a challenge in and of itself)


Other than that what will be a challenge will depend on your AT/Powersets - whats a challenge for one build may well be a pushover for another.

That would be because the biodegradable ammunition breaks when the seven year itch kicks in.

Exactly this.

I had seen some of the videos and wasn't clear as to whether they were supposed to be gameplay or promotional videos.
I downloaded the trial - 15Gb D/L and they really need more bandwidth for that.
Created my character - they could do with allowing spaces in the nickname though.
Base character model is very good but costume options are a long way short of CoH - you can purchase more with in game currency or points later though.
Default is only 3 character slots unfortunately, however you can have several "decks" i.e. sets of equipment on each character - similar to alternate builds in CoH but more flexible - these allow your character to have a DPS build, Tank build, Healer build, Buff/Debuff build so effectively if this was CoH this would be the equivalent of being able to Respec at will - even changing ATs. I understand a 4th slot is available with lifetime sub don't know if more can be purchased.

Ignore the PC spec test if you use an AMD video card - its pure NVidia marketeering. Apparently my HD6970 doesn't meet the recommended spec and needs to be "upgraded" to a 560.
It has no problems handling top end graphics settings in the game giving me 60-80 fps at 1600x1200.

As for the game think 28 days later - I hope you like fighting zombies. Power animations seem smooth so far.

For badgehunters - the equivalent is Lore.

After playing for a day I found I liked it enough to purchase the game - I missed the half price sale but found Amazon were selling it for about £8 less than the game's site - £32 comparable to other PC games.

The trial is 3 days but if you complete 30 missions you get a further 2 days and 1200 points to spend (£10 worth) added.

At £12 or $15 pm its about 50% higher than CoH with reductions for longer subscriptions - no idea on the prices for most of those although I believe lifetime for $200 is available still which looks a good deal.

Well you can't copyright a name. As far as a trademark is concerned if you could show prior rights as to the usage of the name the courts would be required to dismiss any claim of infringement. However unless you could show that RandomComicBookCo inc's use of the name adversely affected you you would have no claim against them.
If you were to register that name as a trademark in a directly related field and were actively trading or taking steps to set up trade using that name then in that field of business - yes you would have a claim against them.

hehe I've pretty much been doing the same but never switching to blueside - getting close to that 1250 badge.

that would be very high - I'd have thought $35-45k would be nearer the average - remember it includes junior support and admin staff as well as senior developers. However other salary costs add to this - pensions, insurance, agency fees etc - roughly assume the same again as the salaries so you 6-8 million is probably of the right order still.

This again looks to be a serious overestimate - this would be the equivalent of over 200k VIPs or others spending a similar amount monthly.

office space would likely be a few 100k a year but even if they do own the building there are still costs involved as that capital cannot then be used to earn income.

equipment needs to be regularly replaced - assume office equipment will be depreciated over 3-5 years, computer equipment over 1-2, buildings over 10-50. As such it definitely is a recurring expense.

You are also totally neglecting the two largest expenses - data centre charges and bandwidth charges - those are probably in the order of 7 digits sums.

Then there's taxes and duties - neglect those and you go bust when the government comes knocking.

its not about it being profitable - its about it being sufficiently profitable. If you earn more from putting your cash in a bank than running the business then thats the better place for it if you are making decisions based solely on profits.


I'd suspect CoH was earning a profit but whether it was hitting the ROI required was probably borderline. - That doesn't mean to say someone else with lower corporate overheads couldn't make it work.


Personally I was expecting to see another couple of years with the game and possibly an option to bring out a successor but that's clearly not going to happen with NCSoft.
I'm still holding out some hope that a buyer will be found eventually but tbh I can't see it being completed this year - I'd expect Summer next year would be the earliest now as anyone taking over will need to build the studio back up - probably with new staff - and that is going to take time.

If NCSoft had looked at selling the game before closing the studio it would have been far more desirable as the support and knowledge would still be in place and would have been worth a lot more.

or to start one.

Put the game hamster back - its needed to power the servers.

After Nov 30 the EULA won't matter - the contract will have been completed. Prior to that it still is in effect although for those with accounts which were paid beyond that date NCSoft is in breach. There are clauses present which will mitigate that to a certain extent and so the contract is unlikely to be void although it probably is voidable. If a player exercised their rights in such a case they would not be able to access the game but the contract would be classed as completed and as such the EULA would no longer apply.
Even at that point whilst reverse engineering the game would not be illegal (in most jurisdictions) - the use of any details discovered would need to consider whether any IP would be breached - particularly copyrites, trademarks or patents.
i.e. it would probably not be possible to use names of NPCs, Zones, Areas of Zones, Enemy groups, the game itself etc. You cannot copyrite a name but you can trademark it. You would not be able to use the zone maps, costume parts, powersets or animations because of copyrite and possibly patents. The mechanics of other actions such as how zone transitions are performed, how additional instances are spawned etc within the game may also be subject to patents.
In short there would be a *LOT* of work for lawyers.

08:00 Dec 1

somewhere yes - might have been on my old PC which had a disk failure - I'll try to hunt through the backups to see if I can find it.

It could also be the same NPC - iirc he cycled through a few animations.

iirc there was a special NPC contact added on beta to allow this - whether that code is on the Live server but disabled I don't know - if so that would probably be the best way to do it. If its not there then that point is moot as without dev support it won't get put there.
My second choice would be to back up the database and then globally set everyone to lvl 50 on the last day. With most database schemas this would be a very simple script - restricting it to specific characters is generally more complex (not usually hugely so though) - The backup incidentally is so that should the game be saved that it could be restarted with a proper character database.

You can also get there by logging off next to it - when you log back in you will be next to the door at the back which is the other side of the counter - use /stuck to get back out.

Surely disabling the autofire and letting Hasten's remaining duration expire then taking your screenshot and if you want it to autofire reset that again after would be easier.

As for the theme music - there was another thread recently asking about it - and saying where to find it. You will probably need to convert it to MP£ if that is your required format though.