LemmingOfEvil

I'm reasonably impressed by the support this game has garnered from its community. During its initial crowd-funding period it broke the record for highest crowd-funded game (to date) at around 98,000 pledgers and $6.8ish million pledged (original goal to get the game off the ground was $2 million)

I've been bouncing back and forth between some of my old MMOs since CoH announced it would be closing its doors, and have been disappointed, even with the one game I thought still had a community to almost rival CoH's. However, when panda-land was released for WoW, many migrated away from that to the other game, leading to an influx of new players. While initially that seemed like a good thing, apparently many of them brought WoW's acidic communal mentality with them....

I think Star Citizen will be my last try at the whole MMO experience (which started back ~1994 with Air Warrior). Even if the community fails to live up to CoH's high standard in the persistant-universe server, at least it gives me the option of legitimately starting up and running my own server, something other large-scale games lacked.

It's too bad though that alpha testing doesn't start until Nov/Dec of '13. Good thing is with all the funding stretch goals met, its looking to be a BAMF of a game so the wait should be worth it. (stretch goals hit can be found at http://www.robertsspaceindustries.co...stretch-goals/ )

Odd, the order in which they worked switched on me too. When your 404'd on me, i just googled the article name till I found something MSNBC related that worked (and it did when I found it). But now yours works..... I'm sitting here hitting the refresh button on each, and it seems to flip occasionally between the two possibilities.

I dunno, maybe the article itself is stored on a server that is having its bandwidth throttled for access and it is capped on occasion when people try to access it.

Anyhow, interesting read.

404'd

Edit:
Looking around, did you mean this article?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31005664/#.UFDgdI1lQ3g

Ahhhhh, Wild Cards. Funny enough, I just started reading the first collection about a month and a half ago.

I've been tossing around the idea in my head lately about what it would take to have a periodical publication that would combine the ideas of a periodical magazine like Asimov's Science Fiction (which publishes the works of selected material mailed into them), Wild Cards, and comic books. This would kind of be like a family friendly version of Heavy Metal (sans any four letter words or nudity)... but with the TC's idea of common threads linking the stories (mainly the setting and a shared mythos in this case).

What had really stimulated these lines of thinking for me (prior to the announcement of CoH's shutdown), was a recent burst of creativity I had where I began fleshing out notes for a couple pieces of fiction. Mostly short stories. One that was a lot longer... and even a start on something that would fit within the superhero/comic book genre.

Understand I'm not a professional writer. I've always been a jack-of-all-trades kind of person. That being said, I would still like to think I have a strong enough grasp of the English language to tell a story. ON the flip side of that, I don't have a good enough hand to render the visual artistic side of comic books. I own most of the tools to do the inking (an old set bequeathed to me by a friend who had wanted to become a mangaka), albeit I can hardly draw a straight line. Damn you, Life. You can be a cruel mistress.


TL;DR: I like the idea, and have given some thought to it before. Would contribute as able to.

I feel kind of lonely, being the only one in central Virginia..... but not as lonely as Mort, whose basking on the balmy beaches of the Arctic Ocean :P

1) I was considering Red Eagle Game's Wheel of Time MMO that is in the works, but I just found out they signed with EA as their publisher.... suppose it could be worse, they could have gone to NCSoft.....

2) I'll probably give Pandaland a whirl, but while I've never really minded WoW as a game, I have found the community there to be generally abrasive (read as: causing me to lose all faith in humanity), outside of a few minor exceptions.

3) I'm also eyeballing The Elder Scrolls Online as a possibility.

I lost all the cool names/concept characters I had in DCUO in the server merge a while back. Still miffed about that so I'm stand-offish.

I have a copy of GW2 I purchased prior to this fiasco, but while ArenaNet != NCSoft, I'm still wary to support anything they have any amount of control over.

If all else fails, there is always the steadfast LotRO. I haven't checked out the recent updates, so there should be new stuff to explore.

Thanks for the suggestion, I've now dropped a couple lines to them as well, but figured I should update this anyhow with the results of some of my experimentation with this issue.

1 - The first two character slots on the screen are unaffected by this problem and those alts will load fine into the game.

2 - If I wait out the couple minutes of client hang, I eventually get shunted back to the login screen with the error "No mapServer connection. Try again."

3 - I cannot create new characters. As soon as I'm done customizing them and try to enter the game from the name selection screen, it hangs.

4 - While I cannot create characters, I can apparently delete them.

Started having problems with Virtue today.

On any other server, as soon as I select the option to enter the game with a character, it goes ahead and starts to load. Not the case on Virtue. I can get to the character select screen fine for the server, but as soon as I try to load in a specific character from there and into the game, the game just hangs at the select screen, when normally it should be going to the load screen.

This only began happening tonight, but the server load indicator is not peaking into the red (which I thought might have been causing some lag between client and server), and it is relatively late at night.

Anyhow, here is the dump from the CoH Helper program to give you an idea of what I'm working with:


---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.2.0.2---

DxDiag gathered at September 11, 2011 02:32 (-04:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.110622-1506)
System Manufacturer: NVIDIA
System Model: 132-CK-NF78
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Central Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6700 @ 2.66GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.7GHz
Memory: 8192MB
.Net Memory Report: 4823MB out of 8190MB available
Page File: 12557MB (3822MB currently in use)
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7601.17514 (64-bit version)

Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.

No problems found.

No problems found.

No problems found.
Input Notes:
Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Manufacturer / Chip: NVIDIA / GeForce GTX 460
Video Memory: 4065 MB
Driver Version: 8.17.12.8026
Driver Date: 8/3/2011 7:50:00 AM
Driver Language: English

Sound Device Description: Headset (Playback) (Creative USB Headset)
Driver File: USBAUDIO.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514
Driver Date: 11/20/2010 6:43:52 AM

Sound Device Description: SPDIF Out (Creative SB X-Fi)
Driver File: ctaud2k.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.1375
Driver Date: 5/5/2010 9:30:10 PM

Sound Device Description: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)
Driver File: ctaud2k.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.1375
Driver Date: 5/5/2010 9:30:10 PM

Sound Device Description: Speakers (3- Plantronics Wireless Audio)
Driver File: USBAUDIO.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7601.17514
Driver Date: 11/20/2010 6:43:52 AM


WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: EVGA
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: 132-CK-NF78
Motherboard Version: 2
BIOS Manufacturer: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
BIOS Name: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
BIOS Version: Nvidia - 42302e31
BIOS Release: 20080324000000.000000+000


Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1920x1080
3D Resolution: 1920x1080 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes


Physics Quality: Medium
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No


Anti-aliasing: 8x
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: Ultra quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned off)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: High


World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: No
Shadow Mode: Unknown (5)
Shadow Map Shader: High quality
Environmental Reflections: Ultra quality
Advanced Occlusion Settings: No
Ambient Occlusion: Balanced
Occlusion Strength: Medium
Blur: Bilateral
Ambient Resolution: Performance


Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes

Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 0.105
Music Sound Volume: 0.012

Show Advanced Graphics Options: Yes
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.500
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 102492 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 2060.201107262317.0
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes

Mod files in the Data directory
.\texture_library\MAPS\city has 1 file
.\texture_library\MAPS\Midnight_Squad has 1 file
.\texture_library\MAPS\Safeguard has 9 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\sewers has 44 files
.\texture_library\MAPS\static has 38 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\City has 1 file
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Outdoor_Missions has 9 files
.\texture_library\V_MAPS\Static has 16 files

Well, I had sent an email describing the problem to NCSoft support...

They said the purchase I was trying to make triggered their risk management feature (despite the fact that I'm not making any purchases, just trying to update the credit card they have on file).

Part of their advice to me:
"Please confirm that all of your contact and billing information is correct and up-to-date."

I came close to blowing a gasket, reading that.

Although I want to keep playing, I have no inclination to track down time cards each month just to do so, so I'm hoping this gets resolved. :\

[EDIT]
Ok, I found a solution that just worked for me.

While it is strange that you can't use the system they have in place for changing the information, I just went through and deleted all my credit card info they had stored and then went to the "purchase more game time" option (or whatever it is called). From there I no longer got the error for processing my request.

Sigh. Just started having this problem too. Just got a new card as my old was nearing its expiration. Activated the new one, made some purchases around town to make sure it worked, then went to my account to update.

BOOM
"Error processing transaction"

Redid it a couple of times from different browsers on different pc's to no avail.

Sometimes I hate technology.

...

On second thought, I hate technology on a frequent basis. :P

While playing in Mid's today, I noticed something about the healing radii of different powers, as shared by different archetypes.

Transfusion
Defender - 20
Controller - 20
Corrupter - 20

Healing Aura
Defender - 25
Controller - 25

Warmth
Controller - 25
Corrupter - 25
Mastermind -25

Nullify Pain
Corrupter - 25
Mastermind - 25

Radiant Aura
Defender - 20
Controller - 20
Corrupter - 20

Twilight Grasp
Defender - 20
Corrupter - 20
Mastermind - 10

Take note of the radius on the MM's Twilight Grasp, reduced to half of that of the others. Now, this might have been done because the MM gets pets and is a mini-team unto themselves, and the dev's wanted to give them a challenge. However, I found this not to be the case. With TG's "windup" time, I can usually just hit my pet's passive mode key-bind, and they all come rushing in to get the heal by the time it hits. I then immediately put them back into guard mode or set them back to attacking whatever.

The only real problem I find with this is healing other team members, as the MM usually has to be standing almost on top of the person for it to work.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is this: In order to fix this the dev's should give Masterminds powers to control the rest of our teammates like our pets.

Did a quick search on these two questions, but did not lead to any answers that stood out (but I may have scanned too quickly for my own good).

1) In the info for Dark Miasma/Shadowall, it has it as adding defense bonuses for melee, ranged, and then listing bonuses for the different damage types as well. Are the two types of defense bonuses added together (i.e. a lethal melee attack, where shadow fall grants +3.75 melee defense and +3.75 lethal, for a total of +7.5%) to that attack? Or does the game simply choose one or the other?

2) Does Hasten effect its own recharge time?

.. if a person keeps saying "sk plz" even after repeatedly being told no one is capable of doing it, throughout the entire mission. Said person then charges multiple times into the middle of a pack, each time almost, and sometimes, dying (the person in question was a blaster).

***
[Tell] Cont : r u healr?
[Tell] Me : I can heal to a certain extent, but if you pay attention to what I say, we wont even need much healing.
[Tell] Cont : wwwwwwwwssssssssssssdd
[Tell] Cont : lol, ok
[Team] Me : Hey, wait up. You guys know about anchors?
[Team] Me : Ok, its the enemy I hook my power on to. Since it takes a while for the power to recycle, its best save that enemy till last. With that power up, they'll barely hit us, and if they do, for less. You got me?
[Team] Cont : k, I know, just didnt know the name for it
[Team] Scrap : ok
[Team] Blast : sure
The first fight begins.
[Team] Me : Stop hitting the Anchor!
Minion is killed. We barely survive.
[Team] Scrap/Blast : sorry, didnt know which it was
[Team] Cont : lolz
[Team] Me : Its the one with the large cloud at its feet.
[Team] All : Ok

We head up to the next group and the exact same thing occurs, plus some deaths.

Me has quit the team.

You can't really defend those who don't want to be defended.

Ok, that was my pickup team gripe. (Yes I know I am a long winded arrogant person )