Lothic

Well I guess that answers the question of whether the old launcher still works or not. *shrugs*

Still the Devs did tell us that eventually they are going to stop supporting the old launcher in favor of the NCSoft one. I'm obviously not going to tell you what to do but I've been using the new one for several months and have had zero problems with it. Once the Devs pull the trigger and drop the old launcher I'll be "ready" for it regardless.

As for "using up space" you can easily set the NCSoft launcher to close after it starts the game so it really takes up no memory "space" at all. If you're actually worried about DISK space then you've got more troubles than just this new launcher to worry about.

Yeah but am I going to lose any sleep over this kind of thing? Hardly...

They are a company trying to sell "their" games, not someone else. Is it really that hard to understand? Besides the "workaround" for this kind of thing is beyond trivial. If this kind of thing is really upsetting you then you don't really have enough to worry about in your life.

Yeah I guess on some level it's a bit shameless for a company to "remind" us that they have other games that we could play. But as you say many other company's are already doing that so objecting to that on "principle" is definitely splitting hairs that are barely worth splitting at this point. YMMV of course.

I've read where apparently earlier versions of the NCSoft Launcher was a hunk of junk. That may be true, but I've had absolutely no trouble with the current version and actually consider it an overall improvment to the old CoH launcher.

Actually it probably does matter because a few months ago when the Devs introduced the new launcher they told us that eventually we'd all have to use the new one as a replacement for the old one. Sounds like today's patch finally made it mandatory to use the new one.

The new one really is better than the old one anyway. It updates the game quicker and it eliminates the need to have multiple shortcuts on the Desktop for Test and Beta. *shrugs*

When the Passport badge was first added to the game it was supposed to be awarded whenever a character transferred from one server to another. It never had any specific connection to the "NA to EU" server migration.

But apparently the Devs quickly decided against that because they didn't want to encourage the idea that all you had to do was pay for a server transfer to get a badge, or in simpler terms they didn't want us to effectively "pay money for a badge". Positron famously ridiculed the idea and joked in a closed beta forum that he would just have to rename such a badge the "I paid real money for this badge" Badge. They came up with the "NA to EU" deal as an alternative to this.

So it will be interesting to see what the fate of the Passport badge will be after the server list merge is settled. If the Devs decide to go back to the original "awarded upon any server transfer" idea then this will go back to the exact situation Positron wanted to avoid. But if the Passport badge isn't modified to work that way then in what way will it work?

For what it's worth the Devs have said they are planning to give us more Incarnate trials on a very regular basis, like a new one every Issue type basis. Don't be blinded by the idea of "only" having two to do right now - the Devs have always planned for much more content in this area.

Also it ought to be amazingly obvious to everyone how much of the game would have to be reworked to actually allow for a "general level cap" increase. For starters all of the critters, powers and enhancements would have to scaled up to account for levels beyond 54. At this point it'd probably be easier for our Devs to give us CoH2 than it would be to re-engineer this game for a level cap increase.

Besides the whole idea of an "increase in a level number equating to more content to do" is a completely old-fashioned way for MMOs to operate anyway. I'm actually glad the Devs of this game came up with an alternative to that tired old trick games have been using for decades.

Yeah I don't think your idea is strictly a bad one. But given the fact that we will eventually have many different Incarnate trials to run I think your suggestion will become less "needed" in the future.

Like Adeon Hawkwood was saying the Devs have told use that they want to give us a new Incarnate trial every Issue from now on. They've even strongly hinted that the next Incarnate trial might get to us even before Issue 21 arrives. We are just in a weird transition period right now where we only have two Incarnate trials to run. Eventually the system will become more flexible once there are more options available.

I think it's going to be interesting to see how closely this series follows its source books or not.

I know that the HBO True Blood TV series followed the first two Sookie Stackhouse books pretty closely during the first two seasons. But by the time the third season came around the TV show started grasping for material that didn't appear until like the 4th, 5th and 6th books. By the end of the third season the show was still interesting but the gap between "what happened in the books" versus "what was happening in the TV show" was starting to get pretty wide.

I guess time will tell if Game of Thrones starts to diverge like that or not.

I have no problem with the idea that the Stark children's relationship with their respective wolves is somehow "linked" to their innate personalities.

But it was already pretty clear from the first TV episode that Arya was going to become more of a strong-willed "tomboy-ish" fighter and Sansa was going to be more of a vain, courtly, self-centered yet subservient princess-type before they even got their wolves as pets. I think the wolves' fates are mirroring the paths of the characters but I'm not sure the wolves directly -caused- them to be the people they were going to become anyway.

I'm not saying your interesting theory is completely wrong because clearly there is meant to be some connection between the children and the wolves. I'm just thinking the wolves are more of a literary reflection of the type of people the children were to begin with instead of being a factor in making them become something they might otherwise not have become. Case in point I think Sansa lost her wolf because she willingly turned against her sister in favor of the Lannisters. She didn't become less "Stark-y" because her wolf died - her wolf died because she turned her back on being a Stark.

Well you have to keep in mind that the current respec system was designed long before things like set IOs even existed. Basically in a world without IOs, markets or in-game mail there was barely any need to worry about striping one character of enhancements and moving them to another. Being able to do "10 at a time" was probably far beyond what they expected anyone would ever need originally.

I agree it would be nice if respecs were updated to reflect the realities of the evolved game we are now playing. But for the time being I'm going to be assuming that's not going to happen.

I remember the good old days when I thought 20 million was a huge horde of Influence.
Ah, to be young again...

It's good for you that they resolved your account status and it was good that you were able to use the fact that you have the Passport badge as part of the evidence for your case. But since I know of a handful of NA players who got Passport "by accident" without ever transferring to the EU servers it's kind of a minor miracle you got away with using your Passport badge as "proof" of anything.

With as often as people have been suggesting backpack costume items for this game for the last SEVEN YEARS I'd have to agree that one stylized backpack offered in an upcoming booster pack hardly equates to "accomplishing" that goal. It's a good start, but until there are at least 8-10 backpack options to choose from I would hardly call it a done deal.

Yeah the arm is a too "stylized". I think it's the hand/wrist that looks a little too unrealistic. On the other hand (no pun intended) the "lines" you're talking about are obviously meant to be bullets being deflected by the shield. I don't really have a problem with that.

Yeah "almost a template for" is hardly the phrase I'd used to describe the relationship between Trelane and the Q. The concept of Q was so obviously based on the William Campbell character Trelane that Peter David even retroactively defined Trelane as a memeber of the Q in his novel Q-Squared. There's really nothing "almost" about it.

I got 2 VRs within the first couple of days of I20 going live.
I haven't gotten any since.

It really does appear that random is in fact random. *shrugs*

Well keep in mind when I say "worst Harry Potter movie" I say that in relation to the rest of the franchise, not to every other movie ever made. HP7.1 wasn't the best movie ever made, but it was better than a lot of other movies I've seen. Being the "worst installment of a series of generally good movies" is not really as bad a thing to be as it sounds.

Again I felt it left a lot to be desired. But as BrandX pointed out it might have been the best movie they could have made given the source material. In a series this long there's bound to be a "weak" point to it somewhere.

And yes I agree calling HP7.2 the "last" Harry Potter movie is likely going to sound pretty funny 10 or 20 years from now.

I just hope for your sake you aren't holding your breath for these things. *shrugs*

Why bother dragging this necro-topic back up again?
Isn't it obvious which way this game has evolved by now?

I'd have to think the fact that SG bases have been changed to allow item placement without concern for "clear pathways" anymore and the re-release of the CoP trial as 100% PvE content pretty much put the final nails in the base raid/IoP coffin. IoPs are no longer "things" to have in the game - they are temp powers that last a week.

Like the Devs I more or less gave up on these things years ago. *shrugs*

Sadly I think this is pretty much going to be the case for any unique Vet Award from now on. If a new player today is unlikely to see the 84th month Vet Award how likely are they going to see the 90th, 102nd or any others after that?

I almost think the current Vet Award system has outlived the idea of just being open-ended forever. I don't know what alternative there is for this at this point, I just the think something different should be done to avoid this ever worsening situation.