theHaunt

Well, there's a few more facts to mention when I'm telling people what a ****** corporation NCSoft is to every MMO player and gamer in general who will listen. And really, they already made the devs sign NDAs as part of their severance agreement. They couldn't have added a clause that said that engaging in any sort of vandalism would also breach their contracts and let the devs stay on to work if they wanted? I mean, hell. The worst they might do is leak the server code, and it's not exactly like that's going to be hurting NCSoft considering how dedicated they are to making sure this game does not live on in any official capacity. =/

Strange events are no strangers to Paragon City; Zombies, alien invasions, giant monsters and snow beasts are regular occurrences, part of the background noise and flavor of the town. However, in recent days, an anomaly has cropped up that is much more serious than these familiar foes.

Time and space themselves seem to be under strain. Heroes, villains, and citizens alike find themselves moving sluggishly, or suddenly appearing a few seconds ahead or behind where they should have been with no recollection of the lost moments. Stranger still, there are reports of events from out of time flashing into being: sightings of Statesman fighting monsters in Atlas Park, and then both mysteriously vanishing, among others. Even moreso than usual, chaos reigns in the streets.

Many of earth’s brightest minds have begun investigating the issue, and while the exact cause is still unknown, the prognosis is grim. These instabilities are expected to become more frequent, and violent, in the coming months. The inevitable conclusion is that any impacted locations will likely become inhospitable to life as we know it.

In brief; reality is breaking down, and no one is sure how to stop it.

Suspicions and conspiracies are already running rampant; some place the blame on Portal Corp, that their constant fiddling with the fabric of the multiverse has triggered some kind of feedback loop of instability. Others are looking toward Crey, believing that in their typical amoral pursuit of profits at all costs, they finally dealt irrevocable damage to the entire world. Some in the know presume the culprit to be the Battalion, or some other mysterious external force bent on destruction of the world. Many have taken comfort in the safe assumption that this is all just another Nemesis plot.

Thus far, none of these hypotheses have born out. There is no evidence for them, and worse, the damage seems more universal than anything any villain has ever managed to accomplish in the past. It is both meta-temporal and pan-dimensional; Cimerora, Recluse’s Victory, even Ouroboros are feeling the effects, as are Praetoria and the dozens of near-Primal worlds Portal Corp has surveyed.

Although the situation is dire, the meta-humans of Earth remain undaunted. Heroes and villains alike are working tirelessly to find the source of this damage and put a stop to it (or, of course, use it for their own ends). Just because the world seems to be ending does not mean an end to more mundane villainy, however, and just as many heroes have committed themselves to tirelessly fighting the good fight for all of Earth until the bitter end; the signature Heroes of the City, the living paragons of Paragon, are of course taking lead on this. Across the City, they continue to recruit willing heroes to fight the more typical threats that remain; even if some lack the means to save the greater reality, at the very least, they can keep on saving the Overbrook Dam. The fight for the City continues at the street level, even as the end of all things approaches.

Meanwhile, preparations for the worst are already being made. The evacuation efforts from Praetoria are already realigning themselves to this new existential threat, while magical and mundane dimensional travelers alike scour the multiverse, tracking down far-flung worlds that are unaffected by the damage. Most of these ‘safe’ dimensions are so far removed from Primal Earth that Paragon City does not even exist; on many more, the Earth itself does not exist. Instead, strange, exotic worlds of impossible technology or incredible magic lie across these exploratory portals. Anyone capable of dimensional travel is currently being tapped to transport refugees to these new dimensions, in case the damage cannot be stopped or reversed in time.

Others are taking a more long-term approach. Extra-dimensional strongholds are being established - bunkers in the gaps between universes - where scientists, researchers, and mystics can address the problem from a safe distance. Among these strongholds are the Halls of Titan, an open forum that has thus far been attempting to spearhead efforts to restore the stability of the multiverse. They are gathering like-minded supporters in their safe haven beyond the world, pooling resources and information in the hopes of saving Paragon, and with it the world at large. The chances of success seem slim, the challenges apparently insurmountable; but the heroes of Primal Earth are well-acquainted with situations such as these. Even at a time of hopelessness, hope remains.

(( Personally, what I find most upsetting about this whole surprise shutdown of the game is the way it's going to leave my roster of over a dozen greatly-loved characters in the lurch. They still had - have - ample story potential, and I can't stand the thought of leaving them stranded on a dead world. So I wrote this, to explain what's happening in my vision of the next three months IC - with some obvious outs in case the worst case scenario of the game closing down is actually avoided.

I thought I'd share it, just in case anyone else is in a similar situation of wondering what to do about all of their characters in the light of Friday's announcement. Use it, ignore it, print out a copy and set it on fire as a symbol of your rejection of it; it's all fine by me. ))

I'm really not a fan of SoE, but it's worth noting that several of the bigwigs who were in charge of the game during the launch and NGE of SWG actually went on to be lead designers at Bioware Austin, and are currently busy running SWTOR into the ground. So they won't be around to mess with CoH. :P

I'm just going to quietly hope that whoever buys the game, if anyone does, will recognize that Paragon had a good thing going in spite of the utterly nonsensical shutdown, and will let the devs continue business pretty much as usual.

Yes, thanks so much. It was a bit too late for me to get a lot of mileage out of it, but the every change to kheldians made my 50 PB and 50 WS infinitely more entertaining to play. The thought that these strange, wonderfully unique classes were so close to being just perfect in my book after all these years, and now they're going away is just... crushing. But I'm glad for all the changes we DID get to see.

Thank you. And if you guys at Paragon decide to take action, get back on the horse and make the NEXT definitive superhero MMORPG packed with ideas a decade ahead of its time, please let us know as soon as possible. I'd really be interested in supporting the hell out of it.

I have played this game since launch, and always came back to it in between stints of other, more typical fantasy MMOs. I was very much looking forward to having it and GW2 be my two games of choice for a long time running.

This news is a total punch in the gut, like finding out your pet was killed in a hit-and-run. No warning, no mitigating factors, just... finality.

I can't say how shocked and hurt I am that NCSoft would do this.

This is a travesty.

I'm really looking forward to being able to actually use Solar Flare as a damage power when teaming with the Scrapper my PB runs with.

I really, really dislike the way they're implementing this change that has been badly needed for a long, long time. The rest of the thread has expressed all of the benefits this proc has for a bunch of powersets. The fact that you can only get it from farming a limited-time event in hopes for a random drop leaves a bunch of bad tastes in my mouth, and given the nature of Freedom, is not the sort of thing you want all those Fire Doms and PBs reading about when they check up on the game for the first time in months come August.

"Oh, you COULD have gotten an enhancement to greatly improve the playability of your AT, but sorry! You missed the window to play the loot lottery for it. Guess you're just going to have to try your luck on the market with this random, uncommon drop that was only available for a month, or wait until next year."

My one hope is the devs will see how much people want this proc and take it as a sign that we should get a real solution for turning KB into KD for players who want to do so, and my one fear is that they'll take this really bass ackwards band-aid fix as enough of a solution to ignore the issue for another seven years.

My Warshade has been soloing at x8 since level 39.

My Fire/Fire brute is a similarly disgusting wall of firey doom.

My Mace/WP tank can solo at x8/+3, it's just a little bit slow and feels non-super, so I usually stick to x8 or x7.

Largely without IOs, my Stone/Dark Brute was duoing at x7 with an Earth/Rad Controller, from around level 26 on. Same for my FF/AR Defender with a DP/Kinetics Corr.

By the time my leveling buddy and I hit the mid 30s and get some basic IOs slotted (and I rarely bother to slot for sets until I'm 40+), I consider duos that can't handle x7 or better "on the weaker side" of my character roster.

This list is largely useless because there is a huge variance on what works and what doesn't on a team between and even within ATs, especially considering the force multipliers that most classes bring in one form or another (AoEs, buffs, debuffs, etc). Saying the only things that are highly desired on a typical team are the "Tank class" and the "low damage, high support" class and all the others are low or medium because "everyone else can do DPS" smacks of looking at the game through a Holy Trinity lens, which is really unnecessary.

And also handily ignores the fact that a well-built, well-played character can solo the hardest mission content in the game already, making more of anything largely superfluous.

Chalking the gunslinger pack up as yet another instance of the devs going off the rails lately. I'm really disappointed in the course they've been plotting for a while now, which is really sad. Freedom started off so well and the next few months is a really awful time to keep doing stuff like this.

It doesn't seem likely that they'll bother to do anything at this point, but the initial releases of stuff and only haphazardly responding to player outcry is really not a good way to retain VIPs through the MMO release storm of the next few months. I mean, obviously they seem to realize this, considering we've gotten two gimmicks to try and keep us subbed through the spring in the past couple of weeks... Just too bad they don't feel like addressing some pretty longstanding, common complaints.