UberGuy

If anyone even let the first argument into court on its own merits, they should be run off the bench on a pole. You could use the precedent that would set to sue makes of other games entirely. It'd be the most pro-monopoly stance imaginable. "Don't let other people create something that might steal my customers!"

Now, I could see claiming that the copyright and (if applicable) trademark infringement damage was exacerbated by the lost customers, basically playing on the heartstrings of a judge or jury to increase damages since it had this additional aggravating factor. But claiming lost customers as a primary grievance? That seems awfully tenuous.

You do know people have a history of doing this sort of thing, right? People in general, not specifically our community. These same concerns existed and people did it with other games. Some have had more success than others, both in implementing something functional and in either not being sued or working around attempts by others to sue them. But it's been done.

There's a distinction between "I'm going to use this service you provide without paying for it" and "well, I'd keep paying you for this service, but you're demising it, so I'd like a way to keep playing it without you."

If emulator makers start charging for access (not just accepting donations) that gets into significantly muddier waters. Even donations are iffy unless there's a very strong message that they explicitly help keep the emulator going. (Some proof would be better than just a message, but at some point you make the burden of proof such that the people would just be better off being a proper business, and then they would really be a nice fat target for litigation.)

You seem to have this strange idea that all heroes adhere to the letter of the law.

In this game's context, I think Manticore would be amused by your Statesman-like ramrod ethics.

I played CoH for the game first and the community grew on me later. I would miss the community aspect of a resurrected CoH if it lacked one, but I would be perfectly happy playing the game itself.

Yep.

Ah, that makes sense.

I never have enjoyed characters with a strong dependence on pets, so I don't play Masterminds. That means I tend to forget how big a deal stuff like this can be to someone like a MM. Now that you mention it, I recall those patches messing with my Lore and/or Dark Servants, but that's generally not a major issue for my characters.

You're a freak.

4 Shards is one of the options, along with the HO and 53 Reward Merits.

Also, it's common to get 3-7 Shards as drops from Mitos. It works best if you're on a team, which usually isn't a problem, at least on Justice.

Either shard reward is a pittance for what you need for high-tier rewards beyond Alpha, but I found them pretty convenvient for actually building Alpha slot powers. I think I took the Shard reward entry once or twice because the characters I was at the raid with often had thousands of Reward Merits, but mostly I took the Merits and got plenty of shards as Mito drops.

(At this point, most of my 50s have many dozens of Shards on hand, and most of them are from Hami, but I play my 50s a lot, and take them all to raids.)

This.

Look at the AT subforums. Most of them haven't had any posts for weeks.

Hm. What do they do that's especially nasty?

Minions never had it. LTs did, and still do, however.

Ooh, freaking awesome!

Trust me, getting the yellow Mitos to not pick on the other teams is probably one of the strongest contributions any single player can provide to the raid, because their attacks are so disruptive - they not only deal a butt-ton of damage in an AoE, they stun, too.

I do agree, though, the yellow damage team in particular really rages through them these days. Between cheap jet packs (which has of course been around a long time now), IOs and AT Enhancements, AT and powerset buffs (hello, Fiery Aura and Stalkers!) and of course, Incarnates, the firepower the melee team can pump out is pretty intense.

The damage others can pump out is pretty intense, too, but since there's no dedicated "ranged" team, per se at Justice Hami raids, melee is the only category we see in isolation.

I remember when yellow and green teams used to actually be competitive in clearing speed, but that's incredibly rare these days. I don't pay a lot of attention to the composition of the green team these days, but I kind of doubt we're stacking that much less mez, so I'm assuming most of the difference is in increased damage by the yellow team.

The first time I met one was on a Dark/Dark Defender, solo. He took me by surprise mostly by having the ability to chain some rather fast activating, really damaging powers. That was actually fairly rare back in those days. Plus, yeah, he mezzed me, which detoggled me, which was all bad.

I went back and was a little better prepared. I think he might have whooped me one more time before I really stopped trying to zerg him. After that, I definitely gave the Magi in that arc proper care on future characters.

I must say, while it makes very little lore sense, having EB versions them in the RWZ ship raids was fairly ingenious. I recall reading or being told that players were walking all over ship raids in beta until someone had the idea to add Magi to the spawns. To this day they can still cause wipes if there aren't a lot of FF bubbles, Cold shields, or Incarnates popping Barrier, and very occasionally, even then.

No x8 spawn in normal content has 5-10 LTs in it. The most I think ever saw was like 5, maybe six. Which is still a ton, but significantly less than 10 and definitely not a minimum of five.

You don't seem to understand something fundamental. People refer to you as a troll no matter what your intentions, if they perceive you to act like a troll. While I might have wondered, depending on where you went from the OP, I don't think you started this with the intent to troll. However, your behavior is trollish for the reasons I stated. You can act like a troll without trying to be one.

I don't need a hint. I don't need to be corrected. What you intended is largely irrelevant - if you impress on people behavior that makes them think of actual trolls, they'll call you a troll, or at least claim you're acting like one (which is not the same thing).

Maybe, just maybe, you should consider why people might think that other than just that they disagree with your OP thesis.

Or not.

I happen to disagree with the thesis of this thread, but that's not why I consider the OP trollish (and I do). I think he's trollish for his adherence to the claim that the AE single-handedly "killed" CoH despite significant evidence presented in the thread to the contrary.

I also think it's notable that some people who often vehemently disagree with one another on this forum collectively disagree with the OP.

Also, very few people responding in the thread have claimed the AE was in no way harmful, yet many of the OP's replies have tried to make it look like everyone who disagrees that it "killed CoH" is saying it was utterly harmless. Again, that sort of argument style, applied repeatedly and aggressively, feels "trollish".

I agree that some folks like to throw out the "troll" moniker any time anyone disagrees with them, and that it might have even happened in this thread. I think applying it in a blanket way to everyone who disagrees with the OP would actually qualify.

For a while not to long back we were irregularly doing three a week, with someone forming a midnight Eastern one on Friday nights for west coast folks to attend. (Our regular ones are at 8 Eastern.)

We're still doing a pretty good job of filling the Hive. We used to max out at around 30-35 unhidden, with the rest of the folks in the Hive being hidden. I know some of the folks who haven't been around recently happen to also be among the usually hidden folks, but we're still hitting right around 30 unhidden.

Fortunately, having lots of the raiders be heavily incarnate-empowered makes it easier to manage small raids. We usually do "three round", no retreat raids, meaning we don't back out of the goo once we go in, and we ignore the last wave of Mitos. So far, we've still been able to keep that up.