WeaponOmegaX

It looks like the log-in servers are working, but the map servers are down. I've made it through the queue a few times now, but if I try to enter Virtue it says "Can't find map" and sends me to the log-in page. As near as I can tell this has hit all the servers, but hopefully it gets fixed soon.

I was in a team about to do a Terra Volta, I guess the Rikti got there first and took out the power >.<

I was a bit disappointed as well to see that this bundle included a lot of content from packs that I've purchased previously. That being said, I decided to math out what it would cost to buy just the new costume pieces that I could use (in my case, that would be those available on M/H models). I picked up all the new stuff for those models and it cost me 280 points (though I didn't buy the belt as I wasn't 100% sure it was new). The new stuff does look good, but I agree it's a bit of a let down that there was so much old content in this pack. I suppose if I were new to the game, of course, I would be looking at these bundles differently, perhaps, and picking the one with the most stuff in it I liked. I can live with it, at any rate.

Not a huge savings, and a bit painstaking to do because of how the shop navigation takes you from your cart to the first screen of whatever menu you were in, but it was enough of a savings to be worth my while.

On a side note, it'd be nice if in the individual sections of the store the new stuff was at the front, rather than at the back - it'd make life easier for us veteran shoppers who have most of the older stuff that we want!

I agree, on all points. I just got my TF Commander and some other things done on a few of my toons, I would hate to have to redo the work. I suspected something had gone awry when I came back at lunch and couldn't access the game or any info from the launcher or the website.

I would agree as well with _Zep_ on the constructive critique about the launcher and getting info. I have noticed a few times that when the game servers are down, I also can't access the main web site and the launcher has no info, presumably because they all are attached and go down together. It can be frustrating, however, since often I have been unable to access the game but also unable to find out why or when the situation might be fixed.

Having said that, I gladly credit NCSoft with the time and effort they put into making sure this stuff gets resolved properly and that things are well-tested and working as they should. On some MMOs I've played in the past, the companies involved were less diligent. As frustrating as things like extended maintenance can be, it's much less frustrating than "maintenance didn't go well, players are finding issues, we are taking things back down... ok, servers are back up now... nope, we didn't fix everything, back down... ok, we think it's fixed now, servers back up".

I've tried getting in through the regular updater and the NCSoft launcher but I get the same issue, "No response from this server" yada yada. I submitted a support question on it, but it's frustrating. I was looking forward to playing today, and I already missed some game time this weekend while they did server maintenance yesterday.

I also had this issue with the Rapid Response Member accolade, but thus far the only response to my petition was the same as others have gotten: a referral to the Black Scorpion post (which does not seem to pertain directly to this particular badge issue) and a "wait for the patch". Hopefully something shakes down quickly to get this resolved, though - I, too, would like my just rewards for loitering around the base portal for all that time

I seem to be having the reverse problem, today's patch won't work for me and now I can't get into the game. I keep getting an error about how it can't change an cityofheroes.exe file to cityofheroes.old and then when you click "OK"... bye bye launcher. So far no response on my support ticket, anyone ever encounter this before or know of a fix?

In my experience, nearly every MMO has this going on somewhere, and typically this demographic of people gravitate to whatever area or channel gives their comments and general rudeness the broadest audience. Option a) avoid that area/leave that chat channel, option b) use the universal super power: ignore. Eventually you will have the majority of people you find offensive on your ignore list and can continue on your merry way

In the words of my Canadian Virtueverse toon... "That's it... time for a Canuckle sandwich!"

It was up when I went on earlier this evening, but now it seems to have gone boom again Guess they are still working on it.

To rip off a phrase from Plucky Duck... "VirtueVerse go down da hoooole..."

I have to say, loved Joan of Arkansas and Lawn of the Dead... awesome

Welcome to Virtue - I'm new here as well, though I was a CoH-er a couple years back. It's proven to be a great server with a really friendly, fun community (to whom I apologize up front if my RP, playing and social skills are all a bit rusty in the beginning here :P)

I'll try to send a Steampunkish howdy your way if I see you, Mandy!

Atlas Park has hosted several in my short time playing on Virtue, including a "worst costume" contest that was held today. I didn't attend, but I believe I heard the winner declared as a Mr. Snikter

I'd kicked around various steampunk themed characters ideas, finally ending up with this character, who incorporates a number of homages to the classic steampunk comics and genre while also trying to make him fit the CoH setting as well. Of the various characters I've tested out, he's becoming one of my favorites.

The Iron Blaquesmith
Nicodemus Price (aka The Iron Blaquesmith) was an 18th century blacksmith in a parallel version of Earth, a world where history was rewritten by a madman named Mortimer Faust who used a time travel device to steal technology from the future so that he could usher in what was known as the Era of Steam, with himself as its iron-fisted ruler. Nicodemus himself is kept alive by steam tech, having lost both arms and his heart in one of his early battles with Faust. In the last battle between the two men, the time device exploded and Price awoke to find himself in 21st century of a world that is to him an alternate reality of the one he knew. Price is uncertain if there is any way for him to return to his own time and his own reality. He is also hesitant to leave too soon, fearing that the tear in time and space that brought him to Paragon City may have also brought Faust here as well...


I'm thinking I will use a costume slot at some point to create an alternate look that incorporates a bit more of an Old West look to the character. I also plan to flesh out the history behind Blaquesmith, Faust and his steamtech modified body in more depth, since 1024 characters is a bit limitting.

Any MMORPG (or for that matter, any RPG period) can run afoul of the "my RP style vs. your RP style" issue, in my experience. One reason I never used to bother with RP servers when I played WoW was that my suspension of disbelief didn't extend to "okay, let's go back through [dungeon X] and kill [boss Y] again, he wasn't wearing the helmet I wanted".

In response to Scooby Don't PoV, it is valid in the sense that he (as much as the rest of us) is paying to play a game, and is free to enjoy it in his own way (within the parameters of "playing nice", as dictated by the moderators and so forth, of course). That being said, presumably we each RP with like-minded fellow gamers within the game environment, so that within our respective RP experiences there is a certain degree of common understanding (so as to avoid the childhood cops and robbers exchange of "you're dead", "am not", "are too", in some more mature but essentially equivalent form). To each their own, and the beauty of virtual gaming is we can each "edit/abridge" events in our own minds to best suit our personal enjoyment of the game, and if two players have a conflict of RP perspective's, they can hash out OOC how to address in IC.

That being said, here's my 2 cents on the specific points that have come up here:

Killing machines/Anti-heroes in a group of Heroes: There are various RP ways to address this. Hulk, Wolverine, and assorted such "ragers", even the Punisher and the original Ghost Rider, managed to exist in the context of their respective teams despite their behavior. The group can RP trying to restrain the character's impulses, verbally or physically, or they can turn a blind eye ("we don't like his methods, but sometimes you just let him off his leash and let him go nuts"). If your player group is particularly strong on the RP and feels up to it, they can even RP the character's "removal" from the group (kicking the character "in story" without actually kicking him out of the SG literally, and playing out the relationships accordingly).

If the *player* is the issue and simply not co-existing well with the group, that's a different story, and if no mutual understanding can be achieved, a parting of the ways might be necessary, hopefully amicably if possible.

Healers/Mediports
On healers, if a character's powers allow him to heal people (or himself), then from my point of view, that's a valid in game "reality". Let's be honest, if one superbeing can generate blasts of cosmic radiation or rip a hole in reality, is it so far-fetched that another one can repair catastrophic injuries or even bring back the dead? If your SG's play style is "grittier" than this (which can be a bit tough to do, since in a MMORPG environment the core setting and themes are established by the game itself, not the game group), you might put limitations on what powers/origins, etc. are suitable to the group. I think that's perfectly valid, myself, just be polite about it - after all, who says a super group can't be all mutants, all boys/all girls, or some other common theme or exclusion?

On mediports, these don't bother me personally because they've been rather plausibly incorporated into the setting and the technology has been explained to some degree. I tend to view it that since the player has to "release" to teleport to the hospital, there is at least a mental component to activating the device, but that's just my own way of envisioning it to suit my own RP sensibilities. As for coming back from the dead (i.e. one player feels he killed so and so, but they come back either right away or at a later time)... why not? Let's face it, the reality of super hero comic books in general is that death is not necessarily permanent. Nearly every hero and villain in comic book history has died, come back, or at least recovered from a crippling/debilitating injury (most have done all of the above repeatedly).

That's one thing I love about CoX - the genre of comic book super heroes and villains allows a considerable degree of plausible dismissal of some of the standard aspects of MMORPGs (returning from the dead, repetitive content/"repeater" villains) because the genre itself by nature supports them to some degree.

Personally, I think as long as everyone plays nice there's always a way to satisfy everyone's RP and gaming needs/wants, even if it's by turning a blind eye to certain things that don't fit our personal "vision". Again, falling back on the comic book genre for support, if Peter Parker can have a crossover with the Spectacular Spider-Ham and the Demon and Lobo can take comical turns trying to kill "the thing that cannot die"... anything can be explained, dismissed or allowed.

I use the same rationale to forgive Die Hard 2... the fact that John McClane acknowledges in character that it's ridiculous that he's stuck fighting terrorists two Christmas holidays in a row lets me forgive the implausibility factor.

It was completely down yesterday when I tried to get on, and appears to still be today... hopefully the pestilent doom that seems to afflict the Virtue server hasn't now spread to the VirtueVerse site, too

I have to say that Bacterium is a very cool looking character... and Spam Elemental is just too funny not to be awesome

I don't know that I would consider someone asking to join a team "rude" per se; I don't generally do it myself (but then, I'm anti-social and there are usually lots of groups around looking for people ). After all, if you don't ask, you won't find much, and to my mind it's really a very minimal difference between "any teams out there looking for more?" and "hey, can I join your team?". Who knows, maybe the person is asking to join your team specifically because they've heard good things about you from others.

I take a different view of the "blind invite", and I have had a few (including one where I was asking in a tell if I wanted to join a team, which was immediately followed by an invite before I even had time to reply). As a personal rule of thumb, I always turn down blind invites - anyone willing to invite me without even talking to me first needs higher standards for their team membership I also find blind invites more rude than asking to join someone's team because a tell shows up in the chat window... an invite plunks itself smack in the middle of the screen, which is very distracting if you are in the middle of a throwdown with a group of angry Tsoo.

I think the base production deal tends to be for trilogies (or at least, a maximum of three films) - if memory serves Brosnan and Craig were each signed to a three Bond film deal, and no one really expects that franchise to go trilogy format. It's probably a "standard contract" sort of arrangement, so many film-makers pitch trilogies to the companies, but as mentioned if the money is there, they will make more afterwards. X-Men is now also rumoured to be going into a fourth film, the Origins films not withstanding.

I don't know that where something is filmed necessarily is that big of an issue; television and film have been showing us places that aren't what they appeared to be for decades, after all, and they will always go where it makes the most financial sense to go - which I approve of, really, because I'd rather see the bulk of the money going into the film itself (casting, effects, etc.) rather than to taxation, etc. that won't really do anything to improve the quality of the viewing experience.

It shifts back and forth, too, I think - X-Files moved *from* Vancouver to California midway through the series, I think, and back in the days of M*A*S*H*, "Korea" was in back of the Hollywood sign, if memory serves. As costs and economies wax and wane, the film-makers will travel to wherever best suits their needs, be they financial or aesthetic (usually the former, but some moviemakers will pay the extra costs just to suit their own personal inclinations).

Hopefully tomorrow's maintenance can remedy the problems with stability. I've repeated this one mission four times now just do to poor timing in relation to crashes and I'm beginning to thing letting the Trolls keep the stolen guns wouldn't be all THAT bad lol

While not American myself, I'd have to concur that patriotism is generally defined as love or devotion to one's country, and a government does not necessarily represent the ideals upon which a country is built (though perhaps in an ideal world, it would do so).

One article I read that summed it up rather nicely in my mind cited that J. Peter Euben (paraphrasing Socrates, I believe) once wrote "patriotism does not require one to agree with everything that his country does and would actually promote analytical questioning in a quest to make the country the best it possibly can be."

I'd say that sums up Captain America rather well, actually - not necessarily always agreeing with the government or its policies, but rather promoting and attempting to inspire the ideals that he felt represented what he sees as being the best qualities of America, and questioning or even defying any actions or policies that he felt were not in alignment with those ideals.

I think the sad, sorry and rather cynical truth of the modern world is that under that definition of patriotism, being a patriot often means believing in what can be, not necessarily what is, no matter what country you live in.