PerfectStorm

That sort of thing happens all the time - somehow they get hold of your email address and you just get mass-mailed for stuff you don't necessarily have - it works really well for WoW, since they have such a huge subscriber base ... chances are they will get enought clicks on their phish to make the time spent profitable.

You'd be surprised at how many people think that something like THIS is a grammatically correct message sent by the game publisher:

---
This email warns you that <insert game publisher name here> investigating your for possible attempt sell account. Go to link below and enter required info to prevent you account to be banned for permanent ensure to enter all required info to keep account active.
---

Sad, but true ...

Getting back to your initial difficulty... I'll try to help by explaining my own email address situation: I have DSL and my email account through my phone company, which at one time was a small, local, family owned business. Let's call the company Alpine Telephone (not the real name, of course). My email address was "myname@alpine.com" (not my real email address, of course). The small, local, family owned Telco was bought out soon after I got the DSL service by a (I will be polite and politically correct here, even though I despise the company) larger, not local and not in the least bit family-oriented company that apparently "collects" small, local, family owned Telcos to add to its conglomeration. Let's call them HairJoint.com They gave me a new email address, "myname@hairjoint.net"... but they made my old email address an alias for the new one so that people could still use the "myname@alpine.com" address.

I use the "alpine.com" address as my official email address, simply because I really don't want to go through the hassle of changing my email address everywhere in the known universe (ok, small exaggeration - sorry ). However, I discovered that when I used their webmail application to send email to people, it put the "hairjoint.net" address into the from and reply-to fields in the emails. Now, I never used the webmail application to send email to NCSoft or any other place where the email address in the headers of my email would have to precisely match the email address they had on file for me, but if I had, likely they would have sent me the same "doesn't match" message that they've sent to you.

Is it at all possible, even though you are using the same email account you've always used, that the email address in the headers is different than the one you believe you are using? Given the type of scenario above?

Just one possibility.

Sorry to be so long-winded.

Storm

Suggestion (in case anyone needs to do this again): If you have to post formulas or code of any kind, just wrap them in the code tag (left square bracket, the word code, right square bracket, the code or formula you need to post, then left square bracket, forward slash, the word code and right square bracket ... or choose the number symbol from the menu just above the message box), like this:

That way the forum doesn't try to process your characters ... like the smiley faces

Storm

I presume you /bugged it in game?

Storm

Thanks all for the posts.

Unfortunately, for some reason, he cannot find his Aion serial code, either, and because he is something of a neat freak, he had already deleted the confirmation email from creating the Aion account.

I am also finding it very difficult to understand how they cannot match who he is to the owner of the account. He has been on the phone with them, and is getting this kind of answer after spending time on the phone. While I am glad that they are careful about giving someone access to the account, there are lots of things they could look at to help support his account ownership. I do understand that IP addresses can be "faked" - but if the IP address of the email is the same or from the same company and region as the IP addresses that he logged into the game with and posted here on the forums with for the past several years, I would think that should help some.

He doesn't use a credit card, but generally does use a debit card for paying his subscription - I have no idea why they aren't using that to verify his ownership of the account. They should have access to or be able to verify billing information for a significant period of time previous to the account being stolen.

Oddly (or not, considering the profitability of stealing an Aion account ), they had stolen the Aion account and his NCSoft master account - but he had been able to log into his CoH account right up to the time he reported the account as stolen.

I hate gold farmers. I know it's "only a game" - but having an account stolen really makes you feel vulnerable and violated. As I said, it happened to my WoW account in January - so I've some recent experience with the issue.

Thanks again!

Storm

My Asus laptop has a 120M graphics card - I can play with UM on medium settings. Unless there is a severe disconnect in the nvidia gpu numbering system for laptops, it would seem like the 360M gpu should be significantly better than my 120M, and should be able to play with UM a bit higher... I can't be 100% sure of that, not knowing how nvidia has gone about numbering their gpu models ...

Of course, I don't freak out until my fps gets below 15, so YMMV ...

Storm

Yikes ... I never thought of that - log in to your NCSoft Master account and be sure that you still have sole access to it. Friends of mine have recently had their accounts hacked and stolen (we play Aion together sometimes)...

Storm

What? Do you want help with this?

Storm

I remember getting a tell from one of my global friends on the first Double XP weekend congratulating me on being the top Empathy Defender on my server... I didn't even know about the terminals until that day - and it was SO COOL for me to be the top something in an MMO... me, the geek who was generally the last one chosen to be on a team in gym class in high school... I was GOOD at something! Yay! (ok, I know that's seriously geeky)

Very cool that you've recruited a young lady into the game - we need more young ladies in the game... more people of all genders and ages, really!

I do hope they get the terminals back up and running... I miss them.

Storm

No disrespect, but - Unless you can produce a developer of the game that acknowledges that they deliberately introduced this directly in at the launch of I17, I really don't see how someone in game can "confirm" it.

I'm not saying it DIDN'T get introduced in I17, and, quite frankly, I really don't care. I'm really just saying that I don't think it is a bug. And I like it.

LOL.

Storm

This IS a discussion thread. It's a forum. This particular forum is to DISCUSS technical issues and bugs. If you want to REPORT a bug, there is a mechanism in the game to do that. If you don't want people to disagree with you... I'm afraid the only solution for that is to not post anything on the internetz...

You have no idea if it was something added to the game intentionally or not - just because you didn't see it listed in the patch notes doesn't mean it wasn't added on purpose. There are MANY little additions that don't make it to patch notes - sometimes there are oversights.

You may have only noticed it in I17, but others disagree. You may think it's a bug, but others think it is a feature. This is the place to talk about what you perceive as a bug - but you really can't expect that people aren't going to discuss it if they disagree with you.

I think it's a FEATURE ... while you believe that it's silly to talk of realism when we can fly and have super powers - I believe that there are elements of realism necessary even in "fantasy" games. In WoW, mobs run off and get two or three friends - in Champions Online, they do the same. Sometimes you wipe because you attacked a solitary target that, at 1/3 health, runs away and gets his buddies and you wind up fighting 4 or 5 other mobs that come running in at full health. That is realistic - and a huge pain in the butt, but that's the way those games are set up. In my opinion making an instanced map a little more challenging by not always putting mobs in the exact same places and adding some "wandering" keeps us from becoming complacent and makes us utilize our skills and experience and maybe even stretches our usage of all our characters' powers.

You say tomato ... I say ... yummy!

Storm

He's not saying it's nvidias fault that CoH crashes... he's saying it is the fault of the manufacturer of your laptop. He's saying that even though they sold the laptop saying it was nvidia, the manufacturer of the laptop likely made some proprietary changes to it. He's also saying it is very OLD technology.

You have no way to know that it is all one BUG. Based on what je_saist is saying above, I'm gathering that it was pretty much a bug that some of the old graphic tech was still working with the game at all. At the very least it was sort of like the way I used to in the old days fix a hole in my muffler with a tin can to cover the hole and some muffler tape to hide the tin can. It worked... but it was not even close to safe or legal. If I then beefed up my engine, that taped up muffler might have caused a big problem for me... or caused my car not to run at all.

I understand that you don't really have any idea what goes into programming a massively multiplayer online role playing game - very few of us really know. However, I do some programming - and what you say above is just impossible. There is no way to put the game back to pre-I17 conditions for just some people. It WILL affect - and make more than the slightest bit of difference to probably the majority of other players.

I17 doesn't make my computer crash. And, while I certainly understand your frustration - most of the bugs you are having trouble with really didn't show up on test as far as I know. And I highly doubt that the issues were being ignored.

So ... what financial figures do you have access to that others do not?

Also - I don't remember if you've contacted tech support yet. Have you? If you have, then be patient and work with them. If you haven't, then you really should ask for help from tech support before claiming that there is no help.

I also don't remember if you were in closed or open beta. I participated in closed beta and read the forums and don't recall seeing the issue that you are having described there. I'm not so sure it is as prevalent as you think it is.

Seriously - I do understand how frustrated you are. And I do understand that buying a new computer is often not an option for many of us. But the devs are trying to fix what problems they can, and tech support is there for anyone having problems. In order to improve the game, there have to be changes. It's impossible for them to know exactly what might break for those with older video hardware.

Storm

OK ... First you say that crashing seems to happen a lot when you are on full teams, then you say that your computer doesn't normally bat an eyelash at playing on maxed-out ultra. Seems to me if your computer wasn't batting an eyelash, it wouldn't crash a lot when you were on full teams... Not trying to be snarky - this just confuses me.

Also, system specs, please... cpu, ram, video card...

Updated drivers?

Storm

Robo, are you able to run other programs on your home computer? For example, can you open Internet Explorer?

If he can do that, then it's not that he can't open .exe files, which makes it more complicated...

However, we've seen malware removal mess with the registry key that defines how the OS handles .exe files - because the malware had modified the key to force its own executable to load first every time any other program was accessed. When the malware executable is removed without restoring the registry key, the OS can't open any .exe files because it can't find the malware executable to load first.

What Robo is describing is definitely not normal behavior, and it sounds suspiciously like malware-related behavior.

Storm

Exactly.

The size of the screen does not matter unless you are using a lower resolution on that larger screen. Generally, the larger the screen, the higher the (native) resolution... you might see more stuff, but everything is actually going to be smaller.

The drawback of using a lower resolution on a larger screen is that it looks like doggy doo.

Whatever their reasoning, it's still very bad if the average person actually wants to be able to read their enhancement levels without a magnifying glass.

[Edited to add...] To be quite honest, I don't give a hoot if my enhancements are ugly in my enhancement management screen - I just want to be able to look at them and tell what level they are. I don't spend a lot of time there, and the only things I need to do when I'm there are made more difficult by this supposed improvement. I'd much prefer ugly and readable, thanks.

Storm

While I empathize with your limited play time ... I'm another person who is kind of glad they've done this. It IS far more realistic to have mobs that wander greater distances and go in unpredictable directions and new places. It's less predictable and requires more skill, attention and patience - and, for me, it's more fun. Being defeated is not the agonizing issue that it can be in some games... debt is halved inside of instanced missions and works off quickly, multiple options for travel powers even pre-level 14 make returning to the mission map a fairly short trip ... And there have always been the one or two mobs that hide out on top of shelves or behind boxes - just be glad they aren't inside the ceiling with only their feet showing ... takes most aoe's a LONG time to kill those ...

Storm

Wow. This is a little over the top, isn't it? Just because you "can't figure out how" you might use 150 emails a day doesn't mean it should necessarily be against the rules. I can't imagine how people eat beets - I'm not freaking out that they are still grown and sold at the supermarket ...

And - where do you get the idea that people emailing things to their own alts is running up the prices in the market? Sheesh ... it's people like you who get stuff nerfed in the game! (Makes as much sense as what you said)

Storm

The Intel graphics adapters have really been only marginally supported by the game for a very long time. As a matter of fact, the statement on the forums recently by a redname that the Intel adapters continue to be actively supported by the game was a big surprise to me. A friend of mine was told several years ago by NCSoft/CoH support that the Intel adapters were not really supported due to the manner in which they processed the graphics ... he contacted support because he had an issue (which was sometimes helpful in missions, LOL!) where if he moused over something that caused the mouse cursor to change, it would redraw the entire area - and it would often not redraw walls and such (which meant he could see the bad guys behind the undrawn walls, but they couldn't see him).

While obviously something has changed, it is likely that the problems truly are the fault of Intel and the updates have simply exposed them much more harshly to the light of day. It's unfortunate that Intel hasn't really updated it's graphics hardware and drivers to efficiently and attractively handle online games, but there you have it. From a quick glance at the system requirements of some of the mmo's I play, very few, if any, games specify that they support Intel graphics - most only specifically mention nvidia and ATI Radeon. As frustrating as it may be, there's only just so much that developers can do when the manufacturer doesn't improve their product.

Also, while the devs statement of backwards compatibility may now appear to be incorrect, I highly doubt that they deliberately deceived anyone or that the crappy graphics that Intel adapter users are getting is in any way purposeful or deliberate. It pains me to read some of the angry posts which are basically accusing the development team of lying to them and cheating them out of something. They are aware of the issues with the Intel graphics and are working on alleviating what they can - but some of these problems do rest squarely on the shoulders of Intel.

Storm

And this is helpful ... how, exactly? If you are having problems and would like help, calling the Devs names isn't going to endear you to them. Post your system specs and exactly what happens at exactly what points. Use the tools described in this and many other tech threads so that we can constructively assist you to be able to play the game even with whatever problems may have accompanied the 5/4 patch.

Storm

(rant trimmed out of quote)

Name calling and disguised foul language are never good ways to get a point across. All it does is make you look bad. Perhaps you should contact Tech Support?

Storm