good god, the thread had been defeated, but the sould still burns!
No way is this guide obsolite.
Epics are not a horse and carrot kind of thing any more than the epic powers are in CoH. Just that in CoV they are tied to a few missions. Odds are you get some kind of special mission each level and the completion of which will get you your power... or something like that.
Rest assured that in PvP epic pools will neither be necesscary nor hard to acquire. As far as a "lot" of PvP... the autolevel feature will allow your level 50 toon to fight in bloody bay, siren's call, warburg and recluse's victory will all play differently.
If there is a more specific concern regarding post 50 pvp please ask, and i'll answer as best I can. 
Threads in the Player Guides section DO tend to linger....
CoH/CoV isn't a big PvP destination... I'd consider an 8-on-8 fight in Siren's Call or Warburg to be a pretty big melee on a typical night (on Justice anyway). As a long-time DAoC player, I can safely say that the "farming + grinding = PvP power" model is really not present in CoH/CoV. CoH used to have uber-loot in the form of Hami-O's that were literally godlike, but that problem has been largely corrected and now the power difference between the casual gamer and the hard-core are not that great anymore. My level 50 Controller and my 40-something Warshade are pretty evenly matched against Villains in PvP who have far fewer enhancement slots and wimpier enhancements.
Some of the best PvP in the game can be found in Siren's Call, where nobody operates at higher than Level 30. Many of the most powerful abilities in the game are simply not present there, and villains who can barely afford SO's can still be very effective against 50 heroes there. After Issue 7 comes out, there will still be just one PvP zone where epic pools or patron powers even work.
Great guide. I hope people read this. CoH is my first MMO ever, but i have been playing games since before the Atari 2600 came out and this simply is the best game ive ever played, period! In life all things must be accepted as they are. Everything is what it is, that doesn't omit room for change. I've read lots of whining and complaints, and of course there are certain things i would love to see in this game, but for me anyway, thanks are in order to the devs for making one of the best 2 games i've eve played! 50 is not a goal, it's a journey. One that for me has been all about stopping playing one toon and powerset, only to make a different one, because this game allows full flexing of my Imagination muscles, and thats where its at. Thanks again for the great guide Adam, thats all for now
-Sincerely, Mohlverine
Actual Location: Inside the system itself.
"When the most exciting thing about Mace is AceMace's avatar, then it's time to get realistic."
Shield Guide
The only thing anyone in this game is "supposed to be doing" is having fun. Everything else is negotiable. -Jet Boy
Excellent guide. 
thank you for the support.
of interest: I have Updated My Guide to make it i7 & ED compliant.
It just so happens that the guide to guides has not been changed to refect that... yet.
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thank you for the support.
of interest: I have Updated My Guide to make it i7 & ED compliant.
It just so happens that the guide to guides has not been changed to refect that... yet.
[/ QUOTE ]
that was GREAT ! haha
even after my main hit 50, there were quite a few storyarcs i didn't get...missed most of the 40+ arcs cuz i was teaming with my SG mates and friends so much...so i rolled some alts to pick up the slack.
did the WoW trial and just didn't click with me for some reason, which sucked a bit cuz i loved the Warcraft games...ah well.
Raiyna - 50 MA/Reg/Body (Liberty)
Ravyn Starr - 50 DM/EA (Liberty)
Kalathys - 6 DkCn/DkAf (Liberty)
Global Handle: @DrewBysh
Great post mate, very well thought out, and very true to the game.
This should be the little cardboard cutout that should come in every box of CoV/CoH. Basically because im tired of people who join the game and totally get out of control because they join SG's with misconceptions about the game. its not about getting to 50 the fastest, because frankly there is no point(unless there is a "get you PB/WS as fast as you can" race i dont know about). i like taking my time and lvling getting to know the people i work with and ultimately finding out that they are pretty cool people. I dont think you can do that jumping from 1-50 in a instant like you said Adam its about the journey, from gutter to Glam sometimes to gutter again thats the life of a hero
good guide, one thing you may want to consider adding.
You get a travel power at 14. I quit WoW because of those annoying flight paths. I think I wasted about 30 minutes per sitting on them not including run time to missions. Don't get me started on getting a mount in WoW either.
Just started with CoH a few weeks ago. Quite an interesting read.
Wow. After reading this entire thread I HAD to make a forum account, and post here. You guys are incredible at exaggerating things. Especially WoW.
First of all, I have played many many MMOs, except EQ1, I have played pretty much all of them created. Starting out from AC1, AC2 (sucked, no economy), AQ (got boring, although they have very similar mission design to COH/V), Planetside (nice change from the typical MMO, got tedious though). DAoC an interesting game, (can't say I gave it a chance though, didn't play long enough). EQ2 was horrid. And finally, WoW.
Mostly the reason I'm posting here is to give WoW some credit. I couldnt stand and watch you guys hack up the game as much as you are, when really, although it has flaws, is a pretty good game. There really isnt as much of a rush to 60 as you may believe. All the fun of WoW is not all at 60, leveling to 60 is also just as much fun. Currently I have 3 60s, 2 55+, 3 30+ characters. So you can see I have played WoW for quite a while (since release) minus the summer of 2005. Leveling characters is pretty fun, and its possible your theory that leveling 1-10 is the most fun, and 11-20 slightly less fun and so on is accurate, but still leveling in WoW is not as bad as your express strongly here. I can't believe some poster stated it took them an hour to travel to a quest location on horse, are you crazy? You could probably ride from the north to the south of a whole continent in WoW in an hour. Maybe someone should enlighten you on the use of flightpaths, maybe you missed that in the tutorial section. And please, the longest flightpath is probably 5-10 minutes, but seriously why would sit there and watch yourself fly through the sky to your destination for 10 minutes, go get a drink or talk to someone on msn. You can play WoW in windowed mode, anytime your waiting for something, or crafting a crap load of potions on your alchemy bot, why dont you just minimize WoW, and search the web for a bit.
Also, let's talk about end game. Currently I am an officer in a guild that clears BWL (Black Wing Lair), the second big end game dungeon in WoW, and we are working on AQ40. What everybody else has been talking about here is Molten Core (MC, the orange dungeon someone described). A little bit of information for people who don't know anything about WoW, there are two 20 man dungeons, ZG and AQ that easily a pug group can run. Next there is MC, 40 man dungeon which requires a decent guild to clear. After mastering all of MC (possibly the last boss, Rag), you can move on to BWL (40man). After clearing that, next is AQ40, and then finally Naxx (40). All these dungeons require a lot of cooperation, strategy and skill to beat (all guilds make use of Ventrilo to organize these raids). Another thing, there is a progression factor here. I would say currently about 10% of the guilds in WoW have the skill/equipment to run Naxx right now. About 35% of the guilds in WoW can run AQ40. About 50-60% of guilds can do BWL, and about 80% can do MC. I don't mean they can clear the dungeon fully, just that they are working on it.
Also I'd like to talk about loot in WoW in endgame. I'll use MC for an example since thats the farthest some of you have got in WoW. Molten Core can be cleared by a decent guild in about 3 hours. There is 10 bosses in MC, each dropping approx 2,3 or 4 items each. So each MC run you get about 30 equipment pieces. There's 40 of you in the raid, so comon people, don't complain/whine about loot in your exaggered view of WoW. Its very possible that what your looking for doesn't drop in a night, but comon, thats the purpose of epics in the first place. Not everyone can get them. Also, unless your in a noob guild you never ever ROLL on drops from bosses. Thats insane. There is a DKP system, which means whenever you attend a raid, down bosses, stay the whole raid, and possible bring certain materials (like potions), you get DKP. You use DKP to bid on items that drop off bosses. No rolls, thats rediculous.
Also some of you that complain you get to 60 and have nothing to do, well thats because 60 requires you to cooperate with your fellow WoW populace, and get into a guild that runs 40 mans. If you are an immature 14 yr old kid, or just a plain jerk, your likelyhood of getting into these guilds is small, and you will quit WoW. Im glad, we don't want you here. It's a lot of fun being in a guild, talking on vent, and enjoying the encounters of bosses in WoW in 40 mans. Not every attempt on a boss is the same, sometimes things go wrong, things can be resisted, different stuff happens.
I landed myself here on these forums mostly to figure out what endgame was like in COH/V. I am currently trying the 14 day trial, because I heard good things about this game and wondered what it was like. I find a lot of similarities here with the leveling grind like WoW, even though most of you here complain about WoW's grind, when really this game isnt much different. And the badges, wow. Seriously, what an easy, brainless way to increase content in this game. So I get to lvl 30, and decent for some reason I want to collect these badges like some of kind of Pokemon kid. I have to kill 200 of some certain mob to get a badge, for what? What do I get? Bragging rights? Comon, what a waste of time. I was also a little discouraged after reading this thread that there is no serious endgame in COH/V. It boggles my mind then why people stay here. All there is to do is to keep making alts? I guess thats one way to keep people's monthly billing. Its either endgame content, or rinse and repeat of the leveling of different characters. Its actually easier for the game company to have what keeps people here just to be reusing the content over and over for different characters, rather than bringing out endgame content every couple months or so. That is probably why that your "issues" dont come out very often, all you guys are just happy doing all those quests, over and over again, with different toons, because somehow they seem different. And also each quest somehow seems different even though its just the killing of a different monster. In this quest I have to clear out a cargo ship of the Lost, monsters with tv heads and green lasterguns. And then the next part, I have to rid a research lab of the evil red hovering geenie guys, and Wolf Spider soliders. Not sure why this is very appealing, or how it keeps interest.
In summary, my intent of this post is to give WoW some credibility. I think most of you whine and complain about WoW because you can't make it to 60 (its not that bad of a grind, unless you make it that way). Like I said, at 60 if you want to continue enjoying the game, you need to get into a guild where you run raids a few nights a week and cooperate with others. A lot of why people stick with WoW has to do with the people, the friends they make, the people they talk to on vent. Some of you continue to push the notion of taking leveling slow and relax throughout the leveling process. Perhaps you should try the same strategy with WoW and maybe you will enjoy it.
You should go back to WoW. Seriously. Go run your 40 man raids so you can do the same with the next dungeon, and the next, then the burning crusade, with more raids.
That's just as much of a grind as leveling up another hero to 50, if you choose to see it that way.
Some of us had enough of that with EQ.
Edited to add: I once timed the flight from the night elf lands to Theramore - came in at 12 or 13 minutes, if I recall. And that's not even including the fact that a lot of travel will need more than one flight. As for browsing the web while you fly... to use your own words, "brainless content". How easy for the WoW devs to make you spend your time doing something other than playing the game. Genius!
I'll freely admit that I was dissatisfied with the content and the character creation process in WoW and didn't stay very long, so I'm not going to address any of the WoW stuff since you clearly have more experience in that area.
However, you've made a long, aggressive post defending WoW and then attacked CoH/V content as boring and repetitive and basically said that it's boring/unappealing/whatever. You have no better idea how this game plays than I do how WoW does, and I find your conclusions about the game to be premature and fallacious.
This is not WoW. It was never meant to be WoW. It sounds as if you're heavily invested in that game, which means that you (presumably) enjoy the way it is designed. This game is not designed that way. "Guilds", called Supergroups here, are not mandatory for players to reach the highest levels of the game's content or to get the items/equipment they need to maximize their potential. I personally find this game's system a vast improvment over WoW's, but that's my preference. You do not have enough experience with this game to really make any well-supported statements: you just took a quick look and made some snap judgments.
I'd suggest you abandon your expecatations from WoW and really try to engage this game on its merits rather than looking for WoW-analogues here. That, or if that's asking too much, then by all means go back to WoW.
Iscariot's Guide to the Tri-Form Warshade, version 2.1
I'm sorry that math > your paranoid delusions, but them's the breaks -- Nethergoat
P.E.R.C. Rep for Liberty server
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Wow. After reading this entire thread I HAD to make a forum account, and post here. You guys are incredible at exaggerating things. Especially WoW... etc
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sorry I'm late to the party... I usually only check the UPDATED VERSION OF THIS GUIDE (thats a plug, by the way) for replies...
Please keep in mind, I made generalizations, and I also merged many "traditional" MMO conventions into that post. Rolling for loot was the common practice in DAoC and EQ. I understand the DKP system for Wow... and I think it's a good system given the heavy handed importance of loot in the game.
...in the end, I just hate the idea of loot in MMOs. Beyond the effort required to obtain said loot, and disregarding that your top end loot with always eventually become obsolete, I dislike loot because it takes away from your character. Some people like the stories of the average man who stumbles upon Utimia, the ultimate sword of awesomeness. And that he is powerful because of that. I don't. I like my heroes, and conversely the characters I play, to be powerful in their own right.
Is it safe to say this "guide" is obsolete with I7 right around the corner? I'm brand new and came to COV in hopes of a MPOG with PVP content not requring horse and carrots( epics ) chasing to compete. Please tell me there is alot of PVP left once you level a toon.