UberGuy

I'll admit, I only knew because Quatermain figured it out and told me. I don't recall the specifics of how he pieced it together, exactly, but I think he knew Tic's real name and found out BaB's real name too, and, well, "duh". This was quite some time back - probably circa I10 to I12.

I don't know if he mentioned it to anyone else, but I assumed he was trusting me not to spread it around*, so I didn't. There were other people in various globals I was in who seemed to know, though.

* I've written about it on the forums a few places in the last few days, but I figure it's worth mentioning that I've known Quat a long time. Probably since at least 2001, well before CoH was live. We've never met in person, though, sadly.

That was cool. Thanks for sharing it.

I like that the relationship between the two of them was progressing. That seemed a "realistic" expression of two people who work together growing closer. Also, I think it's neat that they planned to resurrect War Witch, though I think it could have benefited from a tiny bit more explanation about why they wanted to rez her in particular. (She's not the only ghost around.)

Basically, it sounds like Posi got a Ultra Mode upgrade.

I think Recluse knows how Blasters feel about not getting I24.

Wow, Torment. That's seriously epic.

I have 11. Had 10 for a long time. I spent quite a while playing them at 50 while I IO'd (and re-IO'd) and Incarnated them. I think the two most recent ones dinged 50 circa I11-I12 or so. I went back and took an old Mind/Rad of mine from 24 to 50 not very long ago, and just recently finished tricking her out.

My only regret is that there wasn't more time for getting a few more of the promising lowbies to 50. I have a lot of old alts who haven't made it to 50. Some I always knew might never make it, but a few I think would have been really fun.

I have a Blaster who's been level 47 for ages. He may well get to 50, but I had been kinda looking forward to I24 for his buffs. It seems kind of hollow to get to 50 if he'll never see them.

I have a couple of melees - a Tanker and a Scrapper, who are level 43. They're in striking distance.

I may yet get one more true lowbie to 50, my one and only Kheldian who is a WarShade. I sort of doubt she'll get the incarnate lovin' my current 50s did, just because I'm not sure the server population will be around to enable it via iTrials.

On-topic, I never finished the Praetorian arcs - a situation I am rectifying. (So much stuff I need to do at least once, still.) What I have seen, I really liked.

I think I do get why a lot of folks seemed to dislike the morally "gray" nature of Praetoria (or seemed to prefer to believe it was actually some obfuscated black-and white). There's something comforting and maybe a bit escapist in the idea of unambiguously good people fighting unambiguously evil people.

Personally, I enjoy stories that show there's a wide band of gray between good and evil immensely. Some of my favorite television, movie and even comic entertainment through the years has been the stuff where good and evil were ... let's say less than clear-cut.

So, thank you!

And I will see the rest before I go.

I, too, have to nominate the Gauntlet AoE bug as the most memorable of the bugs I ever encountered. I can't tell you how many times I killed my Inv/EM Tanker in the back of Crey's Folly, herding Freakshow into cargo containers or around corners and blasting all of us into oblivion.

Anyone remember how often stuff like Spectral Daemon Lords and things like that used to get stuck in the map geometry and you'd have to petition to get them unstuck? God, so many Positron (original) TFs were hosed up by that. Whoever all finally (a) made mobs do that far less and (b) gave them AI that usually works its way free when they do get stuck deserves a medal.

I commented the other day in one of my "home" global channels that it was testament to the scope of I24's changes, fixes and improvements that I felt like everything I talked about in CoH made me think of how I wouldn't see it get better in I24.

If there was any issue to date that I wish had the chance to see the light of day (with some added run time to let us actually experience it), I'm pretty sure this one tops the list just by sheer volume of desirable stuff. I personally think the Blaster changes were amazing.

What Comes Next

Clearly, I have characters I dearly enjoy playing, and I don’t plan to give up on playing them until I’m forced to. I'm not alone - I have many in-game friends who plan to be here till the lights go out. I think the reasons for all of us combine those two things – we all want to stay so we can wrap up the stories of our characters as best as possible, so we can squeeze the last bit of enjoyment out of playing them, and so we can be there with and for each other as we all do so.

I always claimed on the game's forums that I would be there in CoH when the lights went off on the servers. I wasn't just saying that – it was a sincere claim, though it's one thing to say it when it’s not happening and another to actually be faced with it. Now, finally faced with it, that's what I plan to do. But damn if doing so isn’t bittersweet. I don't blame anyone for walking away just to avoid the sad part of the experience. However, I’m stubborn, and more importantly, if I walked away now, I think I would look back on it as “giving up”, and I would regret having done so.

Even among folks who plan to play to the end, I see a lot of talk of the game's sunset being a kind of Armageddon, an end of the world scenario, where everything ends and all the characters die. That actually surprised me when I first read it, because that's not how I envision it at all. For me, this is going to be like the end of a movie that leaves open the potential of a sequel, and makes you actually want there to be a sequel. I don't mean a CoH 2.0 sequel. I'm talking about the story of my characters. That story I get to see played out on a screen in front of me is going to end, and I wish it wasn’t so. But just because the movie fades to black doesn't mean the world ends. It just means I have to imagine the story after that point. I have to imagine the further adventures. It’s not as satisfying as getting to play, but it’s much better than imagining that they all die.

I look at it like this. CoH has given me eight years to use a wonderful set of tools in a great setting, which combined to let me create characters uniquely my own. CoH’s tools and setting clearly strongly influenced the form of those characters, but their core sprang from my imagination. CoH going away will take certain things away from me that I will always miss, and I will miss some quite terribly, but in the end, it can't take my imagination or my dreams away. My characters will not die. They will live on as long as I do, and maybe even as long as some of my gaming friends do.

As much as it hurts to have to look forward to losing the CoH community (as such), the entertainment of playing the game interactively and the hobbies of posting on the forums and creating new character builds, life does go on. CoH has touched and shaped all of our lives and we'll still be here when it's gone. We shouldn't plan to purge from ourselves the good things we got from CoH that don't shut down with the servers. I plan to take all of it with me when I go, wherever I go, and that includes my dreams of my characters' further adventures. For that, I have to imagine that they live on, even if I can’t see them anymore.

And maybe, someday, I'll get that sequel after all.

I long struggled to find a concept that really worked for me. I finally did so sometime circa I9-11. I sadly don't remember exactly. I created a Warshade who was someone forcibly bonded with a "blank" Nictus essence as part of one of Crey's many experiments into creating metahuman assets.

I had left the character at around level 12 for some time, but planned to work on her after latest round of buffs to human form damage scales. For whatever reason, I instead chose to level a Mind/Rad Controller I'd created a bit earlier. That Controller is now completely outfitted and Incarnate, so a new project made sense for me.

With I24's tweaks, I was finally going to do something that had always bugged me - I wanted my Warshade to be able to fly in human form. I had pretty firmly decided that was going to be my next project.

Now, I won't get to experience the mutha lovin' Warshade personally. Well, I suppose I could, but I'd really have to push her to 50, and that's not really how I like to play. I don't bond with characters I level like that.

Oh, well.

For what it's worth, while I may never have posted in here due to my lack of experience with the AT, I did come here to read up on info, build inspiration, and things like binds. I thank all of you. Your passion for the AT kept that character in my queue, even if she did end up waiting too long.

Best of luck wherever the winds take you. You may not be able to play your characters, but that doesn't mean they're dead. If nothing else, they can live on in your imagination and memories.

The closest I think I ever got was a commitment from Castle, sometime around I7, to look into why Patron Pool mezzes for Corruptors had 32-second base recharge times. I pointed out that this was inconsistent with similar Epic Pool powers for Blasters and Defenders - only Tankers and Scrappers had 32-second base recharge times on mezzes included in their Epic Pools.

I believe this was back when he was the assistant powers guy, presumably still reporting to Geko.

Castle agreed that this sounded like an oversight (I think he specifically said he thought it was a "bug"). Unfortunately, nothing ever actually came of it. I don't know if he never got around to it, or he did, and the team decided it should stay as it was.

I sent a new query about it a couple of years back, when Castle was lead Powers guy, but never got a response.

It was a very small thing in the scope of the game, but it always seemed ... asymmetric to me.

I had been meaning to ping the new powers team about it for a while now. I really imagine they would have been open to such a change. Oh, well. "Never do tomorrow...", eh?

I was just going to say the same thing. I have saved this thread off-line up to this point, but if the folks involved can't continue the discovery/exploration discussion, a huge potential would be lost.

Currently, I am a VIP subscriber who has paying quarterly. While I get a discount for that, I honestly don't do it for the discount - I switched to quarterly it to try to make it less likely that some issue with my credit card blocked my renew. So I would have currently been paying $15 per month without giving it much thought.

I love the game, but I don't think I could realistically justify fully paying double that for it on a monthly basis. It's not that I can't afford it. I can. But I have to compare what else that monthly spend could buy me, and there comes a point where, though I love the game dearly, the outlay just doesn't make enough sense.

You see, I already maintain two VIP accounts, so whatever I propose, I'm paying double already.

So if pressed to pay more to save something I really, really don't want to lose, I would say I could see up to +$10 per month, per account.

Bear in mind that I do spend money on points these days. Not that much more, but I do pay more than my ~$30/mo., in spurts.

It might. There is no question in my mind that a lot of why I still play is my attachment to my original characters. At least two of these characters are basically as old as the game, and one is only a couple of months older than that. Losing them completely, with all their various forms of accumulated progress (being 50, badges, Incarnates, various merit hoards, and Inf) would be a huge, huge barrier to me.

I would be insanely happy if CoH survived in some form, but it is entirely possible that losing my main characters would represent a loss of inertia that would mean I never really got back into it. The game definitely means more to me than just playing those characters, but playing them is a huge part of why I've stayed so long.