Thunder Knight

There's also always Dofus. There's several Pet-specific classes (including one that specializes in it, with 16 out of 20 spells either summoning a monster or buffing summons); twelve out of fifteen classes get at least one Pet before level 100 (only the swordsman, the archer, and the shielder don't), all classes get a summon that mimics their class attacks at level 200 (the level cap), and every character can gain two special Pet-summoning spells via quests and/or drops. So at max level characters can have anywhere between three and ten summon spells available to them, depending on class.

And while there's limits on the number of summons you can have on the field at once (1 by default, but there's plenty of common gear - and for two of the classes, self-buffs - to increase that number), there's no limits on the number of each summon you can have. So you're not restricted to certain combinations of summons.

In fact, the summon system (and the sheer number of such spells available to players) has always been one of my favorite things about the game.

And Dofus runs on Mac and takes up only about 4.6 GB of drive space (around the same as CoH), so there's also that.

The downside is that players tend to hate summons in teams and prefer the summoner class just use their buffs and attacks, so... that part will be exactly like playing a Mastermind.

If you check it out, note that none of the names I used are the actual class names (which tend to be puns, backwards words, backwards puns, or backwards puns in French), but if I started throwing around the real class names, nobody would know what I was talking about. ("Osamodas? Sadida? What are you smoking there, Thunder?")

Well, given that there's no coders left at what's left of Paragon Studios right now (The studio is already dissolved, and I gather there's just a skeleton crew there, getting things ready for the physical closing of the offices), so unless something changes with the closure, don't worry about it too much.

Here's a question for people: excluding WoW, what is the "next-best" if you're on a Mac? Yes, yes, I know about things like Bootcamp, Crossover, and Wine, but I mean games that run natively in MacOS.

Would it be annoying if I had to start entirely over? Yeah. I remember how painful some of the low levels for my characters were. (Particularly my Stone/Stone Tanker, who had severe Endurance issues up until, oh, getting his Alpha Slot opened and slotted)

But would I do it? Yes. In a heartbeat.

I'd probably recreate some of my "main" characters with slightly different powersets (my Stone/Stone/Energy Tanker would probably become a WP/Stone/Earth to help with those Endurance issues and to make him more maneuverable, and my Elec/Invuln Brute might become Elec/Elec because I like Electric Armor but never got an EA character to 50) to make the playthrough a little different, but I'd definitely still be playing.

Let me put it this way: I was playing semi-regularly when I was out of work and the only way I could play was to create an entirely new trial account every two weeks. That's how much I like this game. (I'm probably the reason they dropped the trial time to one week after Going Rogue)

I'd miss the Vet attack powers, but I didn't have them the first time I leveled Thunder Glove, Dr. Bodog, or Sgt. Greenstone up, so I wouldn't miss them that much.

Four level 50s (three 50+3, one 50+2) and one level 47 Dominator who is darn well going to get to 50 (and hopefully at least 50+1) before this is all over - heck, before this WEEK is over. Also have a level 33 Blaster (my first-ever character, in fact) I was holding off on leveling until I24, but now I'm going to try to powerlevel him to 50 once I'm done with the 47.

I've said this before - it's not just about closing the game, it's the way they closed it. They did it in the way that would be sure to garner the most ill-will from everyone.

If that was really part of a complicated plan to get the gaming world to take CoH off their hands, then... bravo, well played, NCSoft. David Xanatos would be proud of you.

If not... then, well, it wouldn't hurt if they extended some sort of olive branch.

It's not like Paragon Studios has a static staff. People have come and gone over the course of its existence (even just in the two years I've been following the game), including major players like BAB and Castle.

So if a few don't come back, it'll still work out. (If it works out at all, of course. My optimism is still very very cautious)

I had the healing patch. I used the healing patch. I needed a lot more healing patches.

I don't know when the last time you did the tutorial was (especially since, from what Gemini just said, he's been made harder), but that guy just tore through me on two different characters.

As an aside, I don't like CO's "inspiration" system at all (where it activates right when you pick it up). I found that whenever I had the time to actually pick it up, it meant I didn't actually need the boost right then and there, and by the time I got to the next enemy group it had already worn off. Glancing at the Wiki, CO's buffs are also painfully short compared to CoH's. (The duration of Build Up in CoH would be considered one of the longer self-buffs in CO, it appears)

Basically, the problem I have with the game is that it doesn't make me feel super. Telling me, essentially, that I'm too incompetent for the tutorial doesn't actually make me feel super, strangely enough.

While I of course like all of my characters to some extent, my two favorites are my very first Brute, Thunder Glove, and my very first Mastermind, Dr. Bodog.

I created both of them when I this account was just a Trial Account. I didn't think I'd seriously be sticking with the game, I just wanted to try it out. So Dr. Bodog is a Bots/Storm/Mace MM who is very much in the mold of Golden Age mad scientists. I'm actually surprised he never got Generic'd, because he originally looked very much like Captain Marvel's nemesis Dr. Sivana (I have since changed his costume to black and red, given him lab goggles instead of specs, a goatee, and cybernetic gloves). I generally play him like a "real" Mastermind, too. The robots do the real work, he stands back and entangles enemies with his webs, or slows them with his winds.

Thunder Glove was also going to be a Captain Marvel villain - in this case, Black Adam. I was originally going to make him straight-up SS/Inv, with tights for his costume (but with blonde hair and no lightning bolt emblem), and a Magic origin, but then I saw the Robot Arm category, and .. I had to have it. I instead went with the Tech Wired pieces and a giant oversized right fist, and Elec/Inv powerset. I had a vague "intergalactic conquerer depowerd and exiled to Earth" backstory for him in the back of my mind, but when I realized I'd forgotten to change his origin (still Magic!), a backstory of him being a former hero named Thunder Knight who had nearly been killed in a rescue attempt, resulting in the loss of his right arm and needing to be on constant life support, but who still kept his powers (granted by gods of lightning and the sky). The name change came from the hospital tech who weakly joked that his new prosthetic arm "fit like a glove", which was the last straw before his mind snapped and he broke out of the hospital and went on a rampage, and subsequently looks out only for himself. He still has lines he won't cross, even now, so I made him a Rogue once I got the ability to change alignments.

Though I have other Brutes, he's my favorite, the only one I've written such an elaborate backstory for. (As of the announcement of the shutdown, I have made one of his alternate costumes Black Adam)

I'm currently having a lot of fun with my Grav/Elec/Mu Dominator, too. He's 47, and I want to try to get him some Incarnate slottiness before this is all over. I don't have any sort of backstory for him at all, I just wanted to try a Dominator. He was loooosely inspired by Sinestro.

My favorite Tank is my Stone/Stone/Energy guy, Sgt. Greenstone. I wrote a joke background for him (he was originally part of the rock that Buddha imprisoned Sun Wukong in, but then he came to life and joined the army). He originally looked like a cross between the Thing and the Hulk (despite being based on neither, oddly enough for me) but with a soldier helmet, camo pants, and bandoliers, but then I slimmed him down and used Organic Armor pieces to give him a more military but still inhuman look. (And then when I got Omega, I brought back the Rock Guy With A Helmet look, but more elaborate. Still camoflage pants, though). One of my only "main" characters who has no lightning related powers whatsoever.

And BluePulse. Poor BluePulse. My very first character, an Elec/Elec Blaster. I was so very looking forward to I24 to get him up to 50 for reals. He's 33 now (he was 20 before the double XP weekend a short while back), so I can probably get him up to 50 before the game shuts down, once Gravity Hold is 50, but ... well, we'll see. There was supposed to be more time.

Regardless of how little money CoH was bringing in, it was still bringing in money. It was not a loss to the company. If NCSoft had cut some staff or stopped the "Secret project", something to cut expenditures to make CoH even more profitable, that would make sense.

But they didn't. They killed the whole shebang, profit and all.

If John Doe is making $100,000 a year, and he finds himself getting into debt due to outside problems, he would not go to his boss and say "Hey, I'm in debt, so could you lower my salary to $98,000 a year? I think that'll help me pay off the debt more quickly." Sure, it's only a 2% decrease, but it's still less money coming in.

Because that's exactly what NCSoft did. They said "We're $6 million in the hole, so let's kill the stable project that's bringing in around $1 million a year net. That'll make us more money."

I'll say this again:

Regardless of the reasons for the closing, NCSoft handled this wrong. CoH was still making money, so it literally would not have hurt to call in the Dev team and say "Okay, guys, we have some bad news. We're closing the studio in six months. Start wrapping things up."

That would have been sad, yes. But at least the devs could have spent the next six months knocking out a few last in-development powersets (dropping the ones in the planning stages) and, more importantly, bringing closure to the gameworld. They could have ended things gracefully. And NCSoft would have gotten another six months of profit out of the game.

Instead, this whole "Game's closing. You're all laid off. Clean out your desks." approach has instead left the dev team high and dry (though I'm sure with their talent they'll find themselves new jobs quickly); it's left the game world in a state of limbo, where anticipated features will never come to pass and storylines were left painfully unfinished; and, worst of all (even for NCSoft), it's made the playerbase - and the gaming community at large - angry. NCSoft has gotten nothing out of it but a lot of bad press and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of players who won't buy anything from them ever again.

It's not a case of "nothing is forever". Of course the game was going to close (or at best go into Eternal Maintenance Mode) someday. But not like this.

You know... I don't even care if minor things were lost. It was like when the game switched to Freedom while I was unemployed and couldn't subscribe. I was slightly disappointed in the things I couldn't do, but it was nothing compared with being able to play again.

So if a move loses my stuff in the auction house or my Paragon Rewards, I won't mind as long as the game is playable.

I'm on a Mac. Once the tool is available, I'll try making a Wineskin wrapper for it and seeing whether that works. (Admittedly, not my forte, but if I can get it working for me, I can certainly give that wrapper to the community)

I'll try with Crossover, too, if Wine doesn't work.

And I was never planning on deleting my characters. When I'm actually logged in and playing the game, I play as if nothing has changed. If the game can't be saved, I don't want my last memories to be getting rid of the characters I enjoyed so much.

I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess. I gave it one more chance, and .. okay, the tutorial boss still killed me a half-dozen times (I created a new account instead of using a character slot on my wife's account, so I had to go through the Tutorial again), but I wasn't dying to random enemies as much. I'd just gotten Invulnerability when I signed out to give the wife her computer back.

It's still a solid Meh for me, but I guess that's an improvement. The system requirements probably make it not really an option more than anything else. If they had a Mac version....

(Also I really wrote that ranty post in the middle of the night here, when I'd been awakened from my sleep by troubled dreams, and was tired and grumpy. I do actually like Dofus, even though I get frustrated with it at times)

The petition never "fills", technically. Once it hits 10,000 signatures it'll raise the limit again.

Not that that's not a reason to try for 10,000. That's a nice round number. (I already signed it myself)

Not to put a damper on this, but I mentioned this topic to my wife, and she brought up a very dismal possibility. SOE may want the CoH IP just to bury it, to ensure nobody else revives it as a competitor to DCUO. I hope that's not the case (seems like a drastic step for a game that's essentially dead anyway), but it's a possibility we might have to face.

But I'll just hope that the game survives as-is, just under a new publisher's wing (hopefully one that's relatively hands-off*), with the majority (if not the entirety) of the Paragon team intact, and the game relaunching with I24 (which would make the name Resurgence more appropriate than ever).

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*Yes, the publisher's wings should have no hands. I STINK AT METAPHORS, OKAY?

After my post in Positron's thread, it occurs to me that I'll probably just go back to console gaming after all, with visits into Kingdom of Loathing (which is essentially a single-player game with a chat room and inter-player trading. There's no multi-player content at all). Other MMOs aren't going to fill the space that CoH occupied.

CO doesn't make me feel awesome. I died five times in the tutorial alone, and in the "real" game fighting more than two minions at a time is instant death. It talks a good game, but, in the end, you're not a superhero, just a punching bag in an ugly costume who can be taken out by a couple of goons.

Dofus doesn't make me feel awesome. I'm underleveled (not a single character at the level cap after more than seven years of playing), undergeared (I'm wearing other people's hand-me-downs), broke (things costs tens of millions of kamas, and I have about 100,000), and all the people I know on that game are so many levels higher that if I get to group at all, it's out of pity, not because I'm an important member of the team. And most bosses at my level range are nearly impossible to beat even for full teams of min-maxed level-capped characters with perfect gear, so what chance do I have alone?

You'll find me on Kingdom of Loathing.

Okay, between this story and that Breakaway video, you've finally pushed me over the edge from vague sadness to outright tears.