SilverAgeFan

Can't say I have. But my global list has been lit up, two pages full at times. The interest from returning players is a bit astounding to be honest.

And it's resolved as of the emergency maintenance tonight.

Store is back up. Slots are back. And free server transfer tokens are in effect!

Enjoy all the new alts!

ah--guess I never really went in and reset all my chat settings there. so I missed it. thanks. and yeah, noticed the Praetorian Zone Event announcement channel as well.

Anyone else notice that there is now a Looking For Group chat channel nested in with all the other defaults, i.e. Coalition, Local, Arena, etc. This one is turquoise and listed like all the others alphabetically. It is not a channel you need to or even can join via channel search.

I can't seem to chat to it but can add it and remove it from tabs.

Was this a QoL that was in Beta? Did I just miss it then? And any sense whether or not we'll be able to get this channel used by enough of the player base to make it useful to keep in a tab? And is this a global channel like arena that broadcasts across all three factions?

It's rather pointless IMO--except for RP as pointed out above.

Three of the four stances struck me as rather meh as well. Villain stance 2 is nice and unique though.

The Alpha and Omega sets, particularly the auras, have proven quite useful to me though.

confused. is the complete edition offered as a digital download as well? was waiting for that in particular. the green nerd in me has little interest in purchasing another disc/jewelcase/box combo.

On and off this year, but more and more lately, I've started becoming a "bracket completionist." I turn of xp towards the end of each level bracket (1-4, 5-9, 10-14, etc.) and do every bit of content that is available to that character. Not really a problem in the first three or four brackets. But higher up it takes more patience.

The 30-34 bracket blueside is honestly downright painful. I think it is the poorest crafted batch of legacy arcs and single missions. To add injury to insult, a lot of those original hunts and mini arcs repeat themselves once (and in a couple cases twice) over different contacts (renegade robots for example, but there are nearly a half dozen other multi-mission mini arcs that do this). IIRC this was a stopgap introduced in a patch between issues 1 and 2 to make certain there was enough "content" available to carry characters through the steepest part of the irregular leveling curve before Positron introduced xp smoothing.

I don't know why I do this at this point to be honest. I think its a sign of larger mental problems. It originally grew out of a desire to thoroughly see and do what was available in game (as not every mini arc or one off becomes available via flashback). But now that I've done it on one character or another for every single range blueside and over half now redside, I think it has just become some sort of perverse OCD habit. Maybe I need to just go out and ask for someone to "PL meh" till I feel dirty, take a shower, and get over myself...

- Always in full screen mode.
- Don't play music. Some of my work is from home at the same desktop. Music = work. I need that division to maintain discipline. Plus it interrupts my immersion a bit.
- In fact, I don't multi task at all when playing. I like immersion. And my mind gets a bit off if I try too much at once. That feels like work. Not time to wind down.
- I used to RP a lot more when there were more pockets of good RPers scattered about all the servers. I still pickup RP now and then with my redside stable on Virtue. Never scripted or planned RP, but just run and gun contextual in character quips mixed with the occasional RP conversation when waiting for someone to zone, shop, train, etc.
- I solo a bunch these days. Or on Triumph will jump on the occasional TF or raid via TW 2.0.
- I badge. For better or worse, don't have a main badger. I sometimes like badging earlier in each characters career and getting things like power and bonus based accolades prior to hitting 50.
- I sometimes level deliberately slowly. I'll turn off XP and see if I have the stamina to complete ALL the content available at that level range. Based on this, must say that the legacy blueside content in the 30-34 range is as tedious as laboring through a poor Dostoevsky translation. Upon finishing all this content, I'll then turn XP back on and it feels like I slingshot ahead a few levels. I'll also burn all those merits on recipe rolls in the mid level range.
- Speaking of which, since I do level slowly, I tend to do some invention work on mid level characters. It's a different face of the game than working to IO out a 50. At least I think so.
- I do concept builds and try to realize characters not uniform power houses. I don't care what level of difficulty I can run any given character at... I just want to see if I can make various characters work (these are often loosely inspired by classic characters or more often hybrids of classic characters).
- And lastly, of course, the look. Costumes, emotes, flyposes, the right travel power, costume change emotes. Getting these properly bound. Getting my HUD and chat channels to all work colorwise in sync with each individual character... all these things are key to making unique characters that each feel different. (IF they make CoX2, I hope they consider coming up with about a half dozen HUD skins to allow further customization beyond colors. But I may be in an extreme minority in terms of tweaking my HUD colors on each and every character...)

...all that said, I am playing less and less these days. Even when I have time. Just have other things in life I'm warming up to. Sometimes it's other games (I'll probably be AWOL from CoX for a few months once Civ V comes out... *sigh*), but lately it's other activities, mostly work related, that are flowing over into leisure time. I don't mind though. I'm enjoying my job a lot more again lately and find I have energy to put in extra time doing this other stuff.

-Edit to add: I also exemp with various 50's to do some PUG teaming now and then. Sometimes in the hopes of meeting some new players. Sometimes for lowbie salvage and badges. Sometimes just 'cuz.

Between $49 and $59. That sounds about right for the pre-order of CoX2, right?

I personally feel this phasing contact feature, though just right for the context of GR, represents the talents at Paragon beginning to push the envelop to explore how can you convey consequence in an MMO. This is something that really hasn't been achieved outside of large sandbox economies (and in such cases, the casual and even 20+ hour a week player rarely see impacting consequences of their actions--it's really only the large clans/guilds of hardcore players that seem to impact the game world).

It's brilliant, "simple," and elegant. And I'm hoping for either CoX proper or looking forward to the heretofore unannounced CoX Beyond, this represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of innovations of game world consequence. It's so lacking in MMOs when compared to single player fare like Oblivion or Fallout 3 where villages and cities actually change based upon your actions and completions of story lines.

I hope someday (prior to CoX Beyond ) they actually move to non static contacts all together. Introduce in game means for contacts to arrange meetings, some clandestine and in alleyways or on rooftops, others in diners and lunch counters with your secret identity and some overt and in official locations like the police headquarters or in city hall. But something that makes it feel like your contacts have lives when they aren't giving you missions.

So the new video gives us three different examples of pronunciation of Praetoria, with Noble Savage pronouncing it Pry-toria, Positron opting for Pray-toria, and War Witch offering Prey-toria.

What's been your preferred pronunciation?

(For what it's worth, I've always heard it closest to Positron's "Pray-toria" in my head.)

So not to sound toooooo picky, but as a six year player with over twice that amount of time experience in post production of all sorts: your editor REALLY really needs a lesson in riding the levels. The talking heads are really difficult to understand at moments. Key words, such as Noble Savages first mention of Emperor Cole is garbled beyond comprehension because of his soft spoken nature and a simultaneous music hit. Get that editor a good pair of headphones and instructions to "fix."

Other than that, the visuals and pacing are nice. I like that you guys are working with a pro shooter now for all these videos.

A bit of Meta sentiment related to our zones and architecture:

Was just browsing through some screenshots and verbal descriptions of the forthcoming WoW expansion over at IGN today. The degree to which they are revamping their own legacy zones really stirs hopes in me that someday this is what Paragon will decide to do over simply adding new zones.

Similar to WoW, our game overall, the development team, the narrative and mythology and how each of us individually and communally play the game has evolved quite a bit since release. Most of these zones were conceived and crafted between 6 and 7 years ago when MMOs were at a different stage of their evolution. I think CoX could continue to lead the way as a great, maturing MMO. But the old zones really need both functional and aesthetic makeovers.

There are so many great seeds of stories and zone concepts already in game--Crey's Folly, Eden and The Shard being three examples--that just hang there in space as great ambiguous far from fully realized ideas that currently serve nominal purpose and function in game. I really hope the development team dares to repaint these canvases someday.

And yeah, I realize when you're talking the production budget Blizzard has versus Paragon, it's like comparing Waterworld to community theatre... (or maybe an old Hal Hartley film at least). Just the same, the more I sit with the idea of a majority of energy going into new zones and further diluting the player base, the more leery I get of future updates. (Even though I too was supportive of some sort of outerspace or lunar zone but a year ago!)

Briefly, back when closed beta was structured so that the CC creator was always "open", there was a bug that introduced many of the hidden dev only costume items.

This included a wide range of back items including the dynamite rucksack, money grabbing rucksack and huge back-slung daemon axe. Again, because it cannot be reiterated enough times until it becomes an option, even if it means waiting till CoH2: persistent. back. items.

I remember getting really excited when I saw both those rucksacks out of context and thinking, "Geeze, have I got some fun concepts for THAT costume piece."

Bug that sort of falls into this category: Wings + Bolero or Cape + Bolero or Cape + Coat with Tails combos. These were in briefly. Removed for performance issues I think? Anyways, a few folks out there were able to secure their costumes before this bug was smashed, disallowing all future combos. In some cases, these combos lead to some really great costumes.

Related but more of the inverse, ever since i17 and the release of Ultra Mode, edited costumes with shields no longer shows their patterns. This comes close to killing a couple of my costumes. Luckily I have two I've not yet modified and can still keep my patterned and logo'd shield.