Garielle

Another option would be to do something similar to what they have done in the past to lure back former players. A Post-Freedom version of the old "Reactivation" weekend. This would, of course, only be available to Premium members who had spent at least $15 in the past (the equivalent of a month subscription). Why? Because these people have already demonstrated they are not completely adverse to spending money. For the most part, those people who remain "free" players for an extended period of time (never spending any money at all) are far less likely to be tempted by a free trial period. They are much more likely to say, "More free stuff! Thank you!", and once the period is up say, "That was great! When are you gonna do another free trial period? You should do one of these every month or at least every time there is a new issue."

Think, for a moment, what the Free (as in never bought anything) players already put themselves through in order to avoid spending any money. They can't send tells, can't join Supergroups, can't start teams, have access to a limited number of archetypes, have only the most basic costume options, no access to side switching, no IOs, no market, no global email, and the list goes on. Given all of that, do you really think a free activation is going to suddenly make them say, "Wow! Maybe I should start spending money!" It's not likely.

Well now. I am not a Free or Premium player so I refuse to say "Hello". Instead I will just thumb my nose at Marcian for excluding VIPs.

Just kidding, of course. Hello to all the freems and preems and welcome to the forums.

I get this same thing sometimes. Basically, it seems that sometimes when the game crashes, there is a file left open. Because it is open the patcher can't update it, so the update fails. Easiest way to tell if this is happening on windows is to open your task manager and look at the processes tab (not programs). If there is a hung file, you will see "cityofheroes.exe" as a process even though the game isn't running. Unfortunately, Windows seems unable to kill the process. When this happens, the only way I have found to resolve it is to reboot the system.

Just about 11 hours left til the party. I thought I would come and post some details explaining how the "30 Songs in 30 Seconds" part of the event will work.

Early in the event, I will play a 30 second clip featuring one second each of 30 different songs. Participants will send a list of what they think the 30 songs are, in order to an email address being set up especially for this event. The clip will be repeated periodically throughout the event until either the end of the event or until someone correctly guesses all 30 songs.

None of the songs used are particularly obscure, but the songs do cover a variety of time periods including the 70s, 80s, 90s, and some more modern tracks. All of the tracks are songs you would likely have heard on radio stations focusing on the appropriate genre. For example, the classic rock songs are not songs by obscure bands of the era, but rather are songs you would likely hear on a classic rock radio station.

Quite frankly, after I put this together, I was a little concerned that it may be a little too easy. It is difficult to gauge since, obviously, I already knew what all the songs were. There are definitely several songs that will be immediately recognized by almost everyone, without a moment's hesitation. In order to better determine if I was on the right track, as far as difficulty, I had a few other folks listen to the track and tell me whether they felt it was too hard or too easy. Everyone who heard it said that it was just right, neither too hard nor too easy. Of course, as with anything like this, your mileage may vary.

Here is a general rundown of the rules:

• No artist or song is ever repeated. If, for example, one of the songs were Jumping Jack Flash by The Rolling Stones, then no other track would be by The Rolling Stones.
• All entries must be submitted via email to the appropriate addresses. (The email addresses of participants are NOT being saved for future use)
• All entries must include the entrant's global name to aid in identifying the winner and to ensure we are providing the prize to the actual winner.
• Multiple entries from the same email address WILL be accepted, but only the most recent email will count. For this reason, you can't send a request to add or change something from a previous entry. Instead you would need to resubmit the entire entry.
• The winner will be the person who correctly identifies the most artists and song titles in order.
• In the event of a tie, the person who submitted their entry first (based on the email timestamp) will be declared the winner.
• The winner will receive a crafted purple IO. (Doomie told me which one, but I apologize that it slips my mind at the moment. It is one of the more sought after ones.)
• If the winner correctly identifies ALL THIRTY artists and songs, they will ALSO receive ONE BILLION INFAMY.
• The winner's name will be announced on-air and they will have 5 minutes to confirm they are present (and tuned in) by sending an in-game global tell to me. If the winner is not confirmed within 5 minutes, a new winner will be selected.
• All email entries will be permanantly deleted immediately after the winner is confirmed and the prize has been awarded.

As will all of the contests for this event, all prizes are being provided courtesy of the Hero Dawn Supergroup.

Good luck to everyone and I hope to see you all there.

Have been vigorously testing the automated request system, with the help of Goat. The track for the 30 songs in 30 seconds is well polished and ready to roll. The "answer sheet" has been checked, double checked, triple checked, and quadruple checked and safely stored in two different locations, under lock, key, and heavily armed guard.

The streaming server is stable and operational.

So, it looks like everything is set to go. Need to give Doomie a poke so she'll come and put out some more details on prizes and such.

Wait... I know of one "good" alternate universe, or at least alternate dimension, that you can visit as much as you like... Pocket D. DJ Zero has that place so cleaned up, they don't even have bar brawls. Okay, there are the monkeys in the cages, but that's not really hostility, that's just harmless entertainment. Well... maybe it's not so harmless for the monkeys, but for everyone else it's fairly harmless... unless you're a member of PETA...then it might cause you to stress out, which could lead to heart attack, but for everyone else except the monkeys and the PETA members, it's all good.

There are a few reasons for the changes to the starting Atlas missions. First, after 7 years, a lot of the vets were tired of running the same missions and wanted something new.

Second, some datamining revealed that an astonishing large number of characters don't play past level 7..ever. Maybe someone is trying a power combo, doesn't like it, so they delete it and start over with a different AT or powerset selection.

They wanted to reduce the number of instanced maps generated for characters who were short term characters. Especially when throwing the F2P players into the mix, who may not stick around to play at all, they had concerns about the resource requirements for generating instanced maps for each and every character (or at least a vast majority of them). This is why almost none of the new content below level 7 is instanced. Most of it is all open world. Even some of the stuff that "looks" instanced isn't really instanced. There is one mission where you go into a Hellion warehouse, disguised as a Hellion. You won't see other players in there, but if you stand by the door, you can see it open and close as they come and go. You are not alone in there, you just can't see them.

As for the Twinshot arc, those are actually "ongoing training" missions. They are intended to teach new players about additional concepts of the game that weren't covered in the tutorial. At one point, they have you talk to trainer, to get more detailed information about trainers. They have you take a train, so that you get to see where the train stations are, and how they work. They have you run around Atlas Park to key locations that are good to know about, including City Hall, the Hospital, Wentworths, and the Architect Entertainment building. Later, in Steel Canyon, they add the University to that list. There's also a part that explains the benefits of using Enhancements in your powers. They teach new players all this without presenting them with long winded windows filled with text that new players are likely to find overwhelming if it is thrown at them all at once. I think that it meets that objective fairly well.

As someone else has already stated, if you don't want to run these missions, it's not a requirement. You can always go to Kings Row as soon as you hit level 5. Additionally, if you use the "Find Contact" button in your Contacts list, I believe the contact for The Hollows shows up around level 5 as well. The followup contacts after Hashaby should be more than sufficient to get you that far. If not, a single run through the DFB trial will definitely push above 5 if you run it after Hashaby.

As for the old contacts, they can be accessed through Ouroboros once you hit level 15, but you can't run their missions at low level. One reason for this, I suspect, is that a number of the missions direct you to go to Galaxy City, which no longer exists. If this is the case, it can be gotten around in the Ouroboros versions because, if you can access Ouroboros, you can go through the portal to the Echo of Galaxy City.

As you said yourself, when Issue 6 and CoV were released, the Villains had only a single contact path to use in Mercy Island. It wasn't until an issue or 2 later that they got a second contact, and they never got individual contacts based on origin. There's no reason to expect that a second choice won't be added in an issue or 2, just as it was done with City of Villains.

Right now is the first time in 7 years that the blue side and red side have a fairly equivalent starting experience. Both start with one mission chain, which splits off to two contacts, and then feeds back to a single contact. Both also have an "Ongoing Training Mission" chain they can follow, if they choose. Both have a version of the Death From Below Sewer Trial.

I admit that I was initially a little disappointed that Mercy Island didn't get some visual upgrade treatment, but in all fairness, Mercy Island is vastly larger than Atlas Park. Revamping it to the extent that Atlas Park was would likely have taken 3 or 4 times as long as the revamping of Atlas Park. It will come in time, I hope, but for now, at least the starting location is more convenient for accessing stuff like the market, the AE building, and the Ferry for moving on to other zones.

One thing you may consider (especially now that Ouroboros opens up at 15), is instead of shutting off XP, keep it going. If you outlevel something, you can always run it in Ouroboros. Well... MOST stuff anyway. There are few one-off missions that you can't, and of course, the often mentioned Safeguards.

I am rather surprised they went 30-40 again. I actually expected the last 4 to advance in 5 level increments. This one being 35-40, #5 being 40-50, 6 being 45-50, and the finale being level 50.

In talking with Agent Goat and Doom Therapy about this event, we realized we made a slight error in the prize amounts given. We regret this unfortunate miscalculation on our part and would like to clarify that the prize total of "Over 1 Billion Infamy in Cash and Prizes" is not entirely accurate. The actual prize amount is a minimum of 3 Billion, with one lucky winner possibly walking away with 1 Billion Infamy...in Infamy...you know..to spend however they choose...

Anyway, I apologize again for the miscommunication, and am glad I was able to clear this up. Hope to see everyone on Sunday, the 11th.

Oh wait. Doom Therapy has actually asked that I clarify that the possibility of one billion infamy does not, in fact, involve the removal of any clothing, the kicking of kittens, the torture of lower level players, or any other act which may be considered illegal, immoral, or even mildly dangerous. More details on how that prize will be awarded will be announced soon.

Thank you

I can't imagine the state the game would be in without IOs being introduced. Well, I can, I just don't think I really like the image it conjures. Without IOs, what are we left with? TOs, DOs, SOs, and HOs. So up until level 50, your pretty much looking at SO builds. With the introduction of ED way back when, the number of truly "viable" combinations for slotting using non-IOs is limited, to say the least. Once you have the HOs you want, what is there to spend inf on? Nothing...ever. Also remember, without IOs, there would not have been a market, so acquiring those HOs you would be looking for would mean taking the time to find players to trade/buy/sell with or running Hami raids repeatedly until you got what you were looking for.

That's precisely how this game was prior to the introduction of the invention system. You got to 50, you got your enhancements, and after that, you just started racking up cash until you hit the cap. By the time CoV came out, there were tons of people on the hero side, who were already at the inf cap. The release of Issue 6 and CoV didn't really do much to change that. The only thing introduced as a "money sink" was the ability to convert inf into prestige for building SG bases. So okay, you had several SGs immediately have fully stocked bases on the Blue Side, and there were STILL a ton of people who were at, or near, the infamy cap.

Truth be known, I think they should come out with new IO sets once or twice a year. By doing this, they would rotate what's "hot" in both recipes and salvage. Doing this would make it more of a "constant" sink instead of a situation where "okay, I finally got this guy purpled out, now I can just accumulate cash."