Judgement_Dave

I find it sad that an SG would have this as a basis.

It's common courtesy to other players not to quit as soon as a mild challenge presents itself.

I think you may have misread Bad Influence - I read it as meaning that they've run several of their own alts through the arc but won't be running any more through soon.

AFAIK It's usual to see this type of thing with competitions partly as there's a fair bit of variation geographicically regarding what counts as a skill-based competition vs luck-based lottery/gambling (with associated tax-implications and age-restrictions).

And this can be made more harder if physical prizes/goods are involved (e.g. delivery costs and differering power/safety/interference requirements).

It's complicated enough that it's far easier for a company to just state that entrants from outside it's home territory aren't eligible.

But here:
- there's no physical items/goods.
- there's no contest/competition/lottery.
- IIRC there was a 12-month offer last year and, AFAIK, we can still buy 12 month subs without the bonus time.
- the offer is only for players/accounts on the NA servers, not the EU servers. A player physically located in the EU playing with 2 accounts on both sets of servers can take advantage of the offer on one account but not the other. AFAIK, if it was EU legislation restricting the sale this would not be the case.

Wouldn't that be down to the upgraded hardware rather than geographical position of the server.

I can't remember - do incarnate abilities/effects only apply at level 50 or only apply whilst doing incarnate activities?

If it's the latter then we may never know as it's possible that they'll never be effective in Atlas Park.

Is the height the clue? The first two are dimensional counterparts and the last one is their steampowered mini-me offspring/minion..?

I'm sure that this will happen from time to time, although I'd still be pretty surprised if this was common (unless a servers community has a change of general atmosphere) as I'd guess players would soon identify the mood of a server before they've created a shedload of high level characters...

I think the biggest problem I'd expect with a transfer period immediately after any list merge is that the traffic would be overwhelmingly from EU servers to US servers.

Most NA players should have found at least one server in the 100 or so (ok - maybe slight hyperbole, but I can't remember the exact number offhand - c.12 iirc) in the NA list that has an atmosphere/population that they're quite happy with. With so many servers there's going to be some variation.

With the EU having 4 servers (and 2 of them being non-English speaking) there's just not the variety of moods/atmospheres. And as EU playing populations have (at times) dwindled there's often apeared to be a shift to a single English speaking server (Union) as it was seen to have a more active, but still small, population.

Now it's well known that some of the NA servers have much greater populations - okay, it's often mentioned that the quality may not be top notch, but just having a large population makes the NA servers seem like some sort of CoX utopia for many EU players.

So in the event of a list merge, I'd expect:
* some NA players to see the EU servers as some new space for cheap altitis, on a par to most of the NA server list (except the big 2);
* some NA players to see the EU servers as a place to team with some of the EU forumites they know;
* some EU players to see the NA servers as tons of space for cheap altitis;
* many EU players to see the NA servers as the promised land where players are everywhere and teaming is easy.

Given that NA and EU forumite/friend teaming would be able to occur on any server, I'd even imagine that more EU players would roll an alt or transfer to the NA servers to team rather than the reverse.

I might be wrong...

For reasons other than server performance issues with higher population?

I ask as I went on to mention perceived server performance issues as a reason for moving to a less populated server.

It's interesting news to me if people moved because they actively wanted to be on a server with lower population but not due to perceived performance issues. Is that what you're saying people have done, according to anecdotal evidence?

As foretold in the Book of Revelations of Dave the Deluded the loss of DOOOOOOM-saying amongst CoX forumites is a sure sign of impending DOOOOOOOOM.

End times are here.

Which I briefly considered then dismissed, as what sort of MMO player decides to knowingly move from a high population server to a low population server?

I guess that if SGs (including bases) could do a wholesale move then you might get them moving if the high population server is deemed to have performance issues, but otherwise I'd imagine that it appeals most to individuals and small groups who aren't well established/don't have ties to other players on the home server. Does attracting a lot of solo/duo players to an EU server help much?

Better IMO to list merge and have no extraordinary transfer period.

It surprised me as much as anyone that they went for a Dave Slot...

As you note, drop rates can be easily altered, but do they necessarily need to be?

IIRC this is the new CoX endgame - it's not meant to be something that's done in 5 minutes then players get back to the usual moaning about nothing to do/whens the next issue...

If rare can be gained within a couple of months of casual gameplay (doing whatever you'd be doing without the new system, not grinding TFs) is that too slow/too fast or about right?

I guess that geographic disparity may have been one of the hurdles to cross before a server-list merge could be implemented - and if so then this'll be one hurdle crossed.

If an eventual list merge is on the cards (*crosses fingers*) but required server relocation then they'd have been mad to try doing it all in one go. The more you change in one go the greater the chance that Mr Cockup comes to play.

So IMO the EU guys can be pretty happy as it suggests that an eventual list merge may have been reconsidered, and it makes sense from the IT perspective to do it in 2 (or more) stages rather than one massive set of changes that breaks the game for everyone...

Usually I don't run a reservation/booking system, but given that it's you...

But last I looked we can't injure ingame civillians anyway.

The point I was making was that if the powers existed in reality and would be lethal to you or I, they would still be fine for use by heroes ingame as no-one dies ingame (unless your imagination/RP deem otherwise).

I think that that still stands.

On a slightly different note: surely even lethal force leading to lasting death could be justified by true heroes if the cost of not using that force was a greater loss of innocent life. Ends justifying means and all that...

And if a super has powers that can be lethal, isn't it less heroic to just ignore evil deeds rather than to intervene in the only way they can? Of course, one imagines that the hero with lethal powers would do all that they can to minimise any unneccesary damage/suffering.

Wasn't there some sort of mention/rumour about spies a few years back?
Was it that old NA-side survey..? Or am I just half-remembering player speculation?

That almost seems ungrateful given that we get unlimited - yes unlimited - transfers between Union and Defiant...

Or take one of your 50s off to see if an IO'd build helps cope with French or German translation.

I can see it being darn useful for NA players, but, as per the Xmas transfers, the whelm-mark is about 6 feet above my head.