KidLazarus

I must be missing something.

I do this all the time. Hit the "Copy Current Colors Across the Entire Body" button; change the first color to the second, and the second to the first. It takes all of three seconds, and a total of three clicks.

I'm not opposed to such a button as suggested, but I don't understand the talk about this being a cumbersome process. Am I missing something?

I'd like to have mine in Quarters, please.

I have no opposition to a name sweep, but I'm often amazed at the names that are still available.

Some of the Steampunk costume pieces put me in mind to create a female gunslinger / bandit queen type character. And sure enough, "Bandit Queen" was available.

1,128 days. A character I will probably never play, but a name I just can't bring myself to give up.

Way back in '04, and my first MMO experience.

Shortly after logging into the game for the first time, I see a guy fighting a group of Hellions, so I run over and help him. A few minutes later, I see the same guy fighting another group, so I go over and help him. Repeat this maybe four more times, before he turns on me and calls me an "a**hat". "What the --- I'm being nice and helping this guy out, and he insults me??" I had no concept of kill stealing, and honestly thought I was assisting him.

Sometime after, I earned Hover for the first time. One of my frequent partners at the time asked me how I liked it. "This power is so dumb," I said, "It's slower than regular running and you can only move from side to side." I felt rather dumb after she explained I had to use the space bar to move vertically.

To me, this looks like the best conceived and executed Booster since Magic. I don't even have any Steam Punk characters, or even concepts for potential characters, but I seen numerous uses for individual pieces. I will be purchasing this one day one.

Golden Aegis, my Force Field/Energy defender. I love the name -- it sounds heroic, it describes his abilities as a "shielder", and it's a play on "Golden Age".

Sadly, I hate playing the character.

I just passed 75 months; while I obviously keep my account active, truth be told I hardly play the game. Maybe an hour a week; sometimes weeks go by without me so much as loading the game. And it's been that way for probably close to three years. So why do I stay?

1) Wishful thinking. I enjoyed the game so passionately for the first few years, I keep hoping something will rekindle that excitment. I have high hopes for every new issue that comes along, but they never quite hold my interest very long.
2) Attachment to my characters. After 6 years, it's not easy to walk away from them.
3) And, when all is said and done, $15 a month is pretty insignifcant to me. No matter how little I play, the thought of cancelling never really crosses my mind.

I had never been much of a gamer; I had played only a couple, but tended to stick with a game for a very long time when I found one I enjoyed. I saw an ad for CoH in a magazine or comic book, I believe, and as a lifelong superhero fan, the idea of being able to create my own superhero appealed to me immediately. I purchased the game shortly after launch, but then discovered that my PC wasn't really able to handle it. I suspended my account for a few months while I saved for a new computer, but I've been playing (off and on) ever since.

Yes please.

Big pass for me, the first in-game item sold for CoH that I will not purchase. I don't use emotes much in any case, but I may have been tempted if the cost-to-content ratio was better. $1 per emote is absurd.

To those who purchase this pack because they like it and consider it worth the cost, I hope you get great pleasure out of it.

To those who expressed displeasure in the pack but still plan to buy it -- due to "loyalty" or completism or (LOL) spite -- I think you're making a very poor decision. The old saying about a fool and his money springs to mind.

I do not regard this as a good precedent, testing the waters to see just how many of us are willing to shell out money for little bits of overpriced miscellany. I certainly will not enourage this direction with my financial support.

My oldest existing (second created) character is a Mind/Storm Controller named the Blood Countess; love the character and her costumes and her concept. Playing her is about as much fun as having my toe nails pulled out slowly. After 6+ years, I have slowly and painfully gotten her up to level 33 but haven't enjoyed a single second of it.

Golden Aegis is another very old character of mine; a FF/NRG Defender. I love the name and concept, but after 6 years he's still languishing at level 14. (My very first toon was also a FFer; I hated him too, and deleted him long ago.)

I always have fun creating homage or pastiche characters, but find that I rarely actually play them. With one exception, none of these characters have made it past level 20 -- perhaps because I'm less connected to them, since they involved less creativity.

Dr. Arcanum: Doctor Occult and Doctor Strange
Commander Quantum: Captain Atom
Mister Gruesome: Solomon Grundy
La Bruja Verde: a mixture of Poison Ivy and Scarlet Witch
Graf von Eisenfaust: Count Dooku / Darth Tyranus

Thanks for the replies so far. I guess I should point out that improved performance in CoH is of fairly minor concern to me; even with my current specs, and the in-game settings set fairly high, I have no complaints about performance.

The only upgrade I was making with an eye towards CoH is the graphics card, since my 9800GT is on the low end. Any recommendations on a card and power supply?

My desire to switch to SDD has little to do with increased performance and more to do with them being, to my understanding, more reliable than traditional hard drives -- I've had terrible experience recently with data loss due to hard drive failure.

I suppose I could just save up and buy a new system, but I find it easier to replace things piece by piece. So I'm wondering how far I can push this current system (even if it means eventually replacing the CPU.)

I'm planning on doing some upgrades to my PC gradually, over a two month (or so) period. Since I'm spreading it out, I figure I can spend between $1000 to $1500. This is my gameplan:

1) Double the memory
2) Replace the hard drive with SDD
3) Install Windows 7
4) Upgrade the graphics card

This is what I currently have:

System: Gateway DX4200-09
OS Name: Windows Vista™ Home Premium 64-bit
Motherboard: Gateway RS780
CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) 9100e Quad-Core Processor
Memory: 4 GB DDR2 800
Network Adapter: Marvell Yukon 88E8071 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Hard Drive: Western Digital WDC WD6400AAKS-22A7B2 640.1 GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 1024 MBytes
Power Supply: 300 Watt

The only upgrade I've done to date is adding the NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT a while back.

So onto the questions ...

Debating between installing one 256 GB SDD drive, or two 128 GB. If I go the later route, I would install the OS on the main drive, and all secondary programs on the other. (I keep all personal files on external drives.) Would either option be better than the other, or would the result be the same?

I plan to do a fresh install of Windows 7 64-bit, rather than installing on top of Vista. Since I have a licensed copy of Vista, can I buy the Win7 Upgrade or will that only work if I install it on top of Vista?

What's would be the best graphics card to get in the $300 to 500 range (preferably staying under 400, unless there will be a very noticable performance boost by spending more)?

Is there anything else I should expect to have to upgrade (power supply, etc)?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Flickering in open zones, no crashes.

Windows Vista 64-bit
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT

I *love* the new costume sets, particularly Alpha and Sport.

For years, I have had vague concepts for two characters but, despite spending countless hours in the costume creator, I have never been able to fulfill my idea. With Alpha and Sport, both characters immediately sprang to life.

Haven't played in forever and a day, but logged on yesterday for a bit. The lag and rubberbanding was so bad on Champion, I only lasted 10 minutes before I logged off.

I bought the pack, but it's the least satisfying Booster to date.

Random thoughts:

Both costumes are well done as a whole, but feel very limited in their usage. Too many of these recent outfits do not mix and match well with others (at least not without ending up with a character that looks like they dress in the dark.)

Both sets feel woefully incomplete. The lack of a "with skin" option for Organic Armor is unforgivable.

The scales renders the Bioluminescent set even more limited.

The Female Organic Armor Face is beautiful; I would love to have it without the Organic Armor aspects.

The emotes are nice.

The Secondary Mutation power is something I doubt I'll ever use; the inconvenience of being turned into a Ritki monkey at an inopportune time, even for such a short duration, is too much of a deterrrent.

This is, by far, the most unsatisfying Booster. If future packs are this incomplete and limited, I will be far less likely to part with my money.

Thanks, Tenzhi.

I'm probably missing the obvious ... the announcement on Twitter states, "You like the look of our upcoming Mutant Booster Pack?" So where do I see it?

So your argument that good names are still readily available is that you managed to get a name based on a word so obscure that neither Google nor Wikipedia were able to identify it?

There seems to be a huge disconnect between those who argue all the good names are taken, and those who counter that is not the case. When these threads pop up, those who argue that good names are not hard to get are often people who seem to favor offbeat or obscure names, and that's great for them if that's what works for them. But this is a superhero game, and many people would like a character name that sounds like a superhero -- something you could conceivably see on the cover of a comic book. These kinds of names are much more challenging to get.

I'm almost afraid to do this math ...

Let's see, the cost of the game: $50
plus COV: $50
60 months of subscription: $900
a second account I kept active for a few months: $100
all Booster packs: $70

So that's $1175 spent directly on the game.

During my 5 years of playing, I have also purchased two new computers driven almost entirely by a desire to improve the game's performance: approximately $1700
plus two new graphics cards: $700

Total expense: approximately $3600

EDIT: Forgot about Transfers, Renames and Extra Slots: approximately another $200.

Total: $3800, give or take

Both times I've signed into the game over the last two days I've been told my account was already logged on; a second attempt at signing in was successful both times. I dismissed it as an odd fluke the first time, but now I'm a bit concerned.

I've never shared my account or password with another person, so no one else has access to it. I don't see any indication of mischief (no characters deleted, no inventory missing) and none of my characters give any indication of being played (most of them haven't been logged into for more than 1 day; my currently played character was in the same location I left him).

I've changed my password as a precaution, but should I report this? Is this possibly just a technical issue?