City of Heroes Legacy Updater no longer in use from August 4

I absolutely never have experience anything that is in alignment with this statement. The launcher for me is small and fast, an never uses more than around 35M of resident memory (though it uses around 100MB of swap). This is after an extensive download and patch, too. It runs at less than 10% of one CPU.

In contrast, CoH consumes between 1 and 2 GB of resident memory, about as much swap, and consumes 80-100% of a 2.66 GHz Core2 Duo CPU unless it's in the background.

I do have the launcher exit after launching CoH. My ISP does not block any ports I have ever needed, so I can't comment about problems that such blocking might create for the new launcher as compared to the old.

Edit: the new launcher "uses" IE because it embeds IE rendering components for the display we see on it. It's generally not practical to use HTML rendering to display (parts of) your interface with an arbitrary browser as the rendering engine. I'm not a fan of IE, but I do understand why they're using parts of it for this, and used in this way, I am not especially concerned about security problems because of it. It's not a generic browser that users can readily redirect to anything but the NCSoft-controlled site it retrieves its interface from. Most ways it could go awry would involve someone hijacking or compromising the NCSoft site it visits, which would probably represent vastly more avenues for attack besides just the updater.

I think the problem in this case is that even if the old CoX launcher is imperfect, it
still worked, and was an acceptable alternative for people that for whatever reason,
can't get the new one to work or behave. Now that alternative is being removed.

A lot of companies leave in "legacy" stuff as unsupported but "there" options for users
who used and/or liked them for whatever reason. In this case, I suppose I can
understand, since if the stuff about updating your game on the fly while you're still
playing it is true, there are undoubtedly backend changes going on that the old
launcher might not play nice with.

Whether or not you could tweak things a little bit to still allow the old launcher to
work, without really going out of their way(And thus "supporting" it,) I don't know.
I'd hope they at least made the attempt, but communication being the way it is
these days, I doubt we'll ever know one way or the other.

Sure... there is nothing printed anywhere describing any support for Linux. They are going to take care of the customers they designed this game for instead.

Yep, it is.

I was worried initially that it was just a way for them to advertise their other games, but it is superior in every way to the old one as far as functionality, options, and speed - and only people who are insistent on keeping the 'hating M$ is cool' and 'Macs are for snobs' fad alive are going to have issues on Linux, a platform that has no official support anyway.

I'm in Phoenix and use Cox Internet, never had a problem with the new launcher.

1. No it isn't, it is far faster. It's not even close to the slow speed of the old version. Not. Even. Close.

2 & 3. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the security features in IE9, even though it is not my browser of choice, but your comment sounds like it came from the 90s.

4. Ehhh depends, it does one quick check prior to the Loading splash - I barely notice it, I think it takes about 1.5 seconds, so if 1.5 seconds is much slower for you, then you would be correct.

5. Gotta be an error.

6. So do tons of other programs.

http://us.ncsoft.com/en/launcher/ncsoft-launcher.html
Game requirements:
Edit:
Not on my machine. And I have CoH (Live, Test, and Beta) on a SSD with 35 GB free. Given some comments above, I suspect that they are using a temp files for the pigg updating on my slower hard drive (around 65-70 GB free).

Outside of a few websites (that I've made myself) needing to be tested, I don't run Internet Explorer. I've have had too many security problems with IE compared with every other browser I've used.

Nope, with the old launcher, it took 30 seconds to get to the loading City of heroes. With the launcher, it is about a minute.

No, see above.

Yes, and most tend to be unstable.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Yes, it looks like they've updated the NCsoft store from the last time I checked. Earlier this year, the store had lower requirements for the game.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

If you're that worried about the security of embedded IE, best stop using Windows altogether then. The OS uses it for quite a number of UI elements, no easy way to escape it.

Using it to render elements that they have complete control of is relatively low-risk. You're only exposed if their web site is compromised, which is Bad News anyway as far as what an attacker could do.

CityOfHeroes.exe -project coh -launcher -auth 64.25.36.4

Then only run the launcher when you need to update. People who want a quick startup have been doing this for years to bypass the old, slow updater.

Scratch using Mids then.

Hmmmm.

My guess would be that it is the same way that they are comfortable ignoring complaints by X-Box and PS3 users that can't get the game to run.

Its comments like this that make me wonder.

What do you think the .net framework is? Its the foundation that nearly almost all windows programs are using now. Its not a separate app that runs in the background. Its what probably any major program uses as a framework for the basics of windows functions. Its pretty much become the backbone of modern windows programming, and any web programming that uses ASP or Silverlight now.

This is an exaggeration. Then again, I don't drink the Microsoft juice.

I do all my web development in PHP, MySQL, Javascript (I use Mootools framework), HTML, CSS, and Flash (Actionscript 2 & 3). I can also program in C, C++, and Java. I avoid Microsoft frameworks like the plague they are.

Thanks for the tip.

I've had it crash on me, and the only time I use it is to check out builds people send me.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Lol... haha you win the internets.

Because you weren't supported in the first place.

As they are with... oh.... most other games.

I don't see the surprise in this. Disappointment, as Linux users have moved from "Usually/sometimes works after various amounts of voodoo" to "Not working," but really, Linux just isn't seen as a major gaming (or, really, much of anything mass-market on PC) platform. Most development, if anything, is by small indie game houses. Off the shelf games? I'd be surprised to find ten in the last five years whose attitude toward Linux support was anything other than "If you can get it to work, hey, great - we still don't support it."

Would I like to see that change? Sure.

Do I expect it to? Not in the next five years.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Just for kicks, I started a dedicated update of the beta server. Now I've had it updated in case I was invited.

At any rate, the update is 432.7 MB. It is going to take 8 minutes to download. I'm on a 10 Mbps cable broadband. I'm getting around 730KBs/sec-760KBs/sec according to the updater. I'd already be patched in that time with the old updater. It hasn't even started updating the files.

Edit:
After it finished downloading it took 4 minutes and 5 seconds to apply all the patches, almost stalling on the stage1.pigg file.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

I find it amusing that you're up in .NET's grille and you list Flash as one of your core programming competencies. Until HTML5 gets vastly more steam behind it, essentially no one is writing serious desktop applications in HTML/CSS/JavaScript. In fact, I consider it more likely that no one will, and it will instead be the language of choice for interfacing to applications that run somewhere else entirely (i.e. the buzzword-overloaded "cloud"). If you're writing your Windows applications in C/C++, well, hope they really benefit from the speed, because you surely are taking a lot more time to develop and test them than you would be using a managed language like .NET or Java. Well, that, or your apps are probably a lot less stable.

Oh, and Java is no panacea of application security. Desktop Java is one of the largest attack surfaces out there after the various MS OSes and Adobe products like Acrobat and Flash. It's actually frequently recommended that people who don't have a good use for a JVM on their home machine uninstall it.

I'm a fluent (and professional) programmer in C/C++, Python, Java, and Perl, and much of that professional experience is not from a Windows environment. I have only hobby-level exposure to .NET, but I really don't grok the hate I see people have for it. It makes development of Windows-based, fat client applications faster, easier and usually more stable, just like Java does on multiple OSes. Java, however, is burdened with "write once, run-anywhere", which makes it poorly suited to things an installer needs to do with a native OS, such as making registry updates.

Nope, CanYouSeeMe did not in fact, see me. I have a Netgear 300N, though I guess it doesn't matter at this point.

Isn't this usually where we jump in with a wall of text and a lot of bold print, and a timeline, showing exactly how small of a community Linux users were over time, and that this change in no way affects a community of a meaningful size?

We can even throw in quotes and links for further proof of just how marginal this community has always been, and was never worth the developer time spent on it from the beginning.

But we would need to end with something snazzy, like italics and colored text. Or one word sentences.

Aha! Examples! I am now prepared!

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...01#post3726301
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ve#post3002018
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...88#post3705788
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...88#post3586788
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...77#post3406577

Really? I totally don't understand this. Why would only one or certain people in the same city using the same ISP provider be affected like this?

AM I going to have to find a new service provider? Damnit NCsoft.

It definitely sounds freaky. Freaky enough that you might be able to ask them what's up with that. Consider giving them a call and making sure there's nothing they can do, and point out that you have it from other users in the same city have no problem.

If they're like most ISPs, asking for help on such a relatively low-level detail as access on a blocked port might not be the most painless experience, but if there's a chance it will help keep you able to play, it might be worthwhile.

If they have on-line forums, that might also be a decent place to ask, to see if there are more folks who do and don't have this issue. You might not find many CoH players there, but you might find out if port 80 is really blocked, and thus really the issue.

The NCLauncher works just fine on both of my machines running OS X.

What issues are you having? What type mac are you running? How old, what hardware, OS Version, etc? Where/how have you been working on trying to get this working? I'm not seeing any posts in your history about this, so I've got no clue what you've tried.

Actually, even if the port was open by his ISP and open on his router to allow incoming traffic CanYouSeeMe still wouldn't see him unless he has an active web server running on his system which I boubt he does.

Also for the record most off the shelf routers have all incoming ports set to not allow traffic. and I know that my router is set to not allow incoming traffic plus anything that does manage to get through the firewall get's forwarded off to some IP that no PC is on.

So I highly doubt the ISP blocking incoming traffic on port 80 is the cause of his issue