Jophiel

When GR launched, I made a few Praetoria versions of some characters. My old main, Polish Princess, was recreated as Polish Eagle who dreamed of bringing a New Poland to prominence. Her thought was that, upon the conquest of Primal Earth, she could be given Eastern Europe to oversee (as a Queen, Praetor, Administrator or whatever) under Cole's empire. Therefore, it was in her best interest to see Cole win since a free Earth wasn't likely to give her half of Europe.

Unfortunately, she has no option to work for Cole past level 20 so the whole concept was shelved.

I read the comics (although not the novels; as a general rule games turned novels aren't great literature) and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt about the limitations. Sadly, this doesn't change the fact that I find Statesman to be booooring. Works great as a hero who you know is running things and don't have to interact with a whole lot -- Statesman would make a great comptroller. As a focus, he's just dull and his attitude puts me off rather than draws me in.

I don't find it any great exploration to wonder "What is Statesman was an even bigger jerkbag than he is now?" because the answer is obvious: he'd make himself the boss and push people around and go around breaking stuff. So what's he do in Praetoria? He makes himself the boss, pushes people around and wants to go to Primal Earth and break stuff. Couldn't have seen that coming...

Off the cuff, I'm going to guess the "Invasion from Bizarro World" thing.

Personally, I just find Statesman to be one of the most uninspiring, uninteresting characters in the CoH canon and, by extension, "Big Jerk Statesman" isn't exactly pushing my thrill button.

Sure. And now it's time for them to go to the back of the line and wait their turn again

Does it have to be one or the other? They can't mix it up and have one issue be the scheme of Countess Crey and the next be the scheme of Nemesis and the next be the scheme of Lord Recluse and the next be the scheme of Reichsman and the next...

I always thought that's how the comics used to work -- beat up the bad guy and then he comes back a while later with a bigger plan. You don't need to make a new villain every month nor make the whole thing "The One Main Bad Guy Show".

If you have credible sub numbers I'd like to see them because I was playing LotRO and it was sure looking emptier month by month.

Who says they have to be "fantastic"? Obviously, the games who changed models to F2P weren't even racking up "modest" revenue numbers.
Again, it sort of matters if they've grown from where, doesn't it? Making up numbers for illustration, if the game has a million subscribers and two dozen servers at launch, loses all but 15,000 of them a year later and then manages to have 35,000 F2P users on two servers, is that "successful"? I suppose it's more successful than going out of business but I'm sure that's not what the accountants were praying for back at that million man launch.

Which is why, again, without real numbers all the "We've grown 14,500,000%!!!" stats are just press release garbage.

The other common thread of your games is that none of them (except Free Realms which was intended to have F2P from the start) were really cutting it before switching models. Pirates of the Burning Sea was a joke that no one was playing. EQ2 and CO shared the same thing: A failed launch where they immediately stumbled and lost momentum with one foot past the gate. They started losing people straight off when population should have been growing and couldn't reverse the momentum. DDO was going nowhere. LotRO was on a slow slide downward.

These were all games that were fully intended to succeed under a subscription model and failed to do so, causing their publishers to say "Oh crap" and start trying to find a way to keep them afloat. A F2P model has kept them alive, but I wouldn't raise it as a banner of overwhelming success. Numbers like "Three times as much revenue" and "1000% more accounts" are meaningless fluff without knowing real numbers regarding where the game started at, where it was at when they finally decided to go F2P and where they're at today. But none of these games had staff that said "We're sooooo successful as a subscription game, let's change models to F2P!"

That's why subscription games going F2P is still regarded as a bad thing.

Yes. 1000% sounds more impressive though.

I'm guessing you mean an in-game e-mail. Mail sent. Thank you!

Fascinating. But it seems as though there's already enough interest to hit his 1B cap and so I'll have to wait for (maybe) next time.

Thanks for the explanation. I was twisting my brain trying to figure it out and wouldn't have guessed "free money".

I don't care if you pay a bajillion inf for Masterwork Weapons to avoid waiting but, ya know, there is a message that pops up when you've bought something whether you're at WW/BM or in a mission.

Common salvage is 8 tickets per random roll in the AE. Except it's not really "Random" since you get to select type (tech or arcane) and which level tier you want. So make your one to ten rolls, get what you wanted and sell the rest for 200k each after the "market blockers" have bumped up the price. Or save it for next time. I'm swimming in things like Alchemical Silvers due to salvage rolls.