The Grim Heaper

Doesn't strike me. I worked for a large multinational offsite records/data storage company whos reputation could be considered ironclad considering their mountainous scale. Escorting employees off the premises immediately after they have been served their termination papers was SOP - because the risk to the company was too great should an employee decide to do something... untoward, in their final days. Laws, however, state that unless certain conditions are met, those employees must be given X amount of notice - so the work-around is that you are still technically on their payroll for that time, you are just not authorized to be on-site.

As much as I, as a player and (up until the announcement) loyal subscriber for the entire run of CoH's life, would love if the devs could continue to do their job and release content-

Allowing them to continue working with the knowledge that their days are numbered entails some risk for the employer. If one of the employees was disgruntled - they may be tempted to sabotage the company - in this case leak the server data.

EDIT: I just want to be clear that I am in no way defending NCsoft's decision to close the game, their handling of numerous things during this process, or their refusal to work with people to work with people to keep the game alive. Just that continuing to pay Matt for 60 days while not letting the devs develop makes sense to me.

I'm all for refunds on unused paragon points, or subsciptions that renewed before billing was shut off, but this is crazy talk. Yes, noone wants to spend money on a ship that's going to sink, but you are no more entitles to a refund for past used money than those crazy people that wanted a refund for all the money they spent on the game when it went free to play.

NOTHING lasts forever, someday even WoW may die (although not likely from any game that claims to be a WoW killer). Your subscription payed for a month of gameplay, and before this month, each and every single month you payed for, the service was provided. You payed for CoH? you GOT CoH. you paid for GR? you GOT GR. And you've had them for years. There was no warranty or guaranty that claimed that the service would be available until the end of time.

You are not entitled to a refund on a DVD box set of a season of a TV show because the network cancelled production on any further filming of the show. If you pre-ordered the next season that will never be delivered, sure, you get a refund on THAT. You are however entitled to be upset with the network, and let your voice be head that you, and many others would happily keep watching the show and buying the DVDs if they would just greenlight its continuation. Beyond that, the best you can do is look back fondly on what was.

Any alignment can use the patron power pools (small exception being kheldians who don't get any APPs/PPPs). The thing is, to unlock them, you need to do the patron mission arc. To do villain side mission arcs (which the patron arc is) you must be either a villain or a rogue.

I believe this is in reference to Blizzard getting hacked very recently, and the message is recommending that users SHOULD be utilizing some basic precautionary measures in password security (a futile attempt, I'm afraid), and that in light of the recent hacking of Blizzard, if you use the same password there as you do everywhere else, you should SERIOUSLY consider changing your password here and everywhere else.

-=-Relevant link-=-

I agree that he MOTD could have been a little more informative about what "recent events" it is talking about however... almost makes it sound like our dev team or NCsoft were hacked.

Oh good, I wasn't the only one staring at it for a minute or two going "wha- bu-- how?.... oh. OH!"

Random offtopic question - if posting Arcanaville's name multiple times in a thread summons Arcanaville, does Arcanaville's own forum name + title + avatar create an infinite loop of summoning?

I think the disconnect here lies in the section I bolded. Many of us may question the usefulness of a dedicated healer in a game where buffs multiply survivability exponentially and heals, while situationally useful, amount to little more than placing a band-aid over a crack in the wall. But that is another discussion for another thread.

And the reason that discussion is bleeding through is because despite your frequent assertions, [EMP DEF] is an entirely different creature than a [Healer]. An EMP DEF can be the platform on which a healer is built, but it is so much more - it has blasts that have ways to mitigate damage on top of its primary abilities. If you had to change your playstyle to "blaster" then you've gone too far in the other direction. You're looking at this in In black and white, while the majority of posters on this thead (with varying degrees of snark and derision) are telling you to look at all the lovely shades of grey! Change your playstyle to that of a defender.

And it started because you (yes, you) claimed that the participation metric means "Empaths always seem to get the short end of the deal." which is patently false. Sure a healer gets the short end of the stick, but only because they've chopped off half of their own end. And if you want to fight crime with that half-a-stick, and are otherwise happy doing so, by all means, go right ahead. But when it comes time to measure everyone's sticks, do not - DO NOT - claim your half-stick is the same length as everyone else's and proceed to kvetch when the measuring tape says it isn't.

Nope. Just that if you only took one attack power, it is not anything the devs have designed and implemented that is causing your Empath to be "shortchanged". In fact, any "shortchanging" would occur on any support type character if you ignored everything but their buff/debuff abilities. A forcefield/? character that ignored their secondary would have even less to do - toggles on, buff team mate - stay in range of ally, wait for shields to drop.

If you WANT to be a buffbot who may occasionally heal when the team lacks a Tank/buff/debuff/troller that can soak/eliminate any noteworthy incoming damage, more power to ya.

But don't be the /SuperReflexes scrapper that only takes the mandatory secondary power, and then complains about his survivability. Especially don't be that scrapper when I'm on my /SR and am tanking an agro-cap's worth of enemies. (I face-palmed so hard that day )

I'd argue more along the lines of "just another way Empaths keep short-changing themselves".

I think this may be a large contributing factor; I have no hard data to back me up, but I have a strong suspicion that powers set on auto do not contribute much, if anything, to the participation matrix.

I've taken my alt account (a pocket emp) through the protest event a few times; every time I set him to follow, attack my target and have some blast on auto, he gets the minimum reward. But if I manually have him blast by either hitting the number keys or mouse clicking, getting one of the better reward tables is more likely.

Ok... yes, you posted in the tech issues board, but you missed the second link under the word "this" (now increased to size 7 for increased visibility). following that link to the "[Guide] Asking for technical help on the forums." thread, you should post the resulting "cohhelper" and "hijackthis" logs either as a reply to the thread you started in the tech forums, or as a new thread in its own right... ideally one where you start from the position of not appearing actively hostile, example;
-title: "experiencing excessive crashes, please help."
-opening post: "Over the past [timeframe] I've crashed [#] times, and the problem persists here's the cohhelper and hijackthis logs, any help would be greatly appreciated. {insert cohhelper log here}"
-reply to opening post: "{insert hijackthis log here}"

Also briefly describing the crashes could help a great deal. A crash to desktop (program closes with or without an error message) would have different likely causes than, say, crashing the entire system, causing a reboot.

EDIT: I continue to try to help you help yourself because I realized that the link in the word "this" might simply appear to be a bolded word, and not a link (as links n quoted text seem to lose their tell-tale underline).

Graystar, if you actually want this problem solved, the first reply in this thread told you exactly how to proceed.

Fair enough, and I should also mention that I do tend to give new players (those with fewer veteran/paragon rewards badges) a bit more leeway, opting to warn them about the genericing process the game has adopted since the lawsuit way-back-when. I can hardly blame them for not knowing the policy if they haven't been around that long (Yes, I know it's in the EULA, but let's not kid ourselves, most people just hit "I agree" without ever reading).