Reflecting on the Winter Event and the ghosts of Winter Lord's Past

Since we're coming onto the outset of the Winter Holiday Event, I figured that I'd give a short foray for my nice audience of anthropologists with a video about it and thought I'd share it with you:

City of Heroes Winter Event Impressions 2011 [VIDEO]

The essay I wrote on the subject featured, if a little bit, how when the Winter Lord boss-monsters were introduced they had a huge experience bonus when defeated and how that created quite a stir in the community. It's a long winded thing but it only crosses the scrim of how the event affects the players "City of Heroes Winter Holiday Event: Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and the Winter 'Level' Lord" so I'm wondering how everyone has enjoyed the event themselves.

The event has looked relatively the same for the past few years, with the exception of additional aesthetic items.

Have you taken part in the mission against the Red Caps to save Baby New Year this year? Using candy canes or shop tokens to buy Christmasy winter gear? Let me know how you've spent the winter holiday in game this year.

I'm curious.

I rescued baby new year a time or two and defeated the winter lady a few times. Those are fun and easy to get into. I bought a few things with candy canes, and opened a few presents.

I haven't defeated the Winter Lord yet. I spent some time in the team-up teleporter queue one evening, but despite a listed wait time of 5 minutes no event ever started. I gave up after an hour or so, once I was done with the ski slopes and other non-instanced activities.

I suppose I could try harder, using global channels and so on, but it's not like I've never defeated him before. I was hoping the team-up teleporter would be a quick and easy way to get into the event, and that turned out not to be the case.

I played everything - again

It just an re hash of the last few years with a few little thing to buy with candy canes. Oh yeah and the use of LFG tool for attacking Lord Winter..which work as well as some folks point out. Not well.
The focus of the content team seems to be on more paid content and the Itrials now. Not updating fun special events to keep them updated.
Just not a fun holiday this year in Paragon. *sigh*

Not holding my breath GG.

Got to fight Lord of Winter once on Victory, was in the league right after the queue popped, did not get badge credit. After a few 45 minute waits in queue (with 5 minute waits listed) with nothing popping gave up on getting that badge this year. I made the mistake last year of not doing it the first night it was available. Between finding people for a present team and having enough people to take down the LoW it would have been more productive to ask people if they wanted their teeth pulled without Novocain.

Found someone to do the new presents with, they had no clue what they were or how they worked until I explained what I knew of the new badges.

In summary, yay for preformed closed leagues, bestest idea ever for holiday events.

Trying to get all the event badges and goodies on all my alts would drive me crazy, but I find that if I just pick one character to run through it, I enjoy it. I'll open a few presents on my way to wherever I'm going, or run a Baby New Year rescue in between other missions. I managed to solo Lady Winter, and was lucky enough to get on a couple of Lord Winter / Winter Lord teams. In the end I was able to get all the badges and costume pieces I was interested in, and by pacing myself, I didn't get too burned out.

ran the bny and lady winter quite a lot, great for lower level chars to get a solid hit of exp. no wl's but that had more to do with so much to do now that it didnt have one up when i was free. hit a good number of presents as well. tried to get my lowbies badged up, rian and the elders are pretty solid at what they are.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Being a new player all of the winter content was pretty fresh and interesting, for a bit.

I will say, compared to the Halloween event, the Winter event seems a little lackluster. Most of it is entertaining for only a short time or a 'just once' experience.

The presents are kinda fun, but I can't help but feel they could be rebalanced a little. With trick or treating it only works in the zones appropriate to your level and if enemies spawn, they also con to your difficulty settings. With the winter horde, they will spawn appropriate to the zone, so a level 50 can just farm around in Atlas. I took a 44 around Peregrine because there were so few players to 'take' presents, but there were several times I had to take off quickly because the things spawned at 47+.

There was also a minor problem with Winter Lords spawning in low level zones and kicking out Frostlings at way way too high a level. This is basically an attack of the Winter Lord, throwing out minions at an even level with whatever hero they're attacking. Problem is, a number of high level folks were spawning things in Atlas or King's Row and no lowbie could take it down without finding another 50 to team with (as several just spawned the WL and took off).

The ski chalet is pretty entertaining, but the ski slopes are just a mild amusement. Father Time's missions are fun, I liked doing them with a few different characters to get the different pieces and powers or just farming out candy canes. Snaptooth is a pretty good mission for solo folks, but the Lady Winter event you really wanted either a team or specific ATs. My ill/rad didn't have a problem. My dominator couldn't get her down past half health. I didn't even attempt it with my squishier toons. Not that that's a problem per se, it's good to have a challenge. I was a lil disappointed they didn't add any other missions though, I had fun with Halloween doing a lot of the different events and the exclusive Tip (we need more of those!). In fact the Father Time missions were probably my favorite events to do for the characters I felt it was worthwhile to run them (Which sadly wasn't -too- many?)

The Winter Lord itself, aside from the above problem, wasn't bad, though like any Giant Monster it was a problem most of the time to pull together a team to take them down if people didn't swarm on it the moment it came around.

Now as for the Trial Lord Winter. I honestly have to say I was pretty nonplussed. I jumped into it the first day with my main toon and for one, it was just kind of frustrating because people were taking it a little -too- seriously and treating it like an incarnate trial, trying to get 'max people for the best run' and talking all this non-sense strategy. After the 40 minute wait when the league leader finally got his act together and we had everything sorted we jumped into it and literally steam rolled it in about 8 minutes. It's such a simple trial, just tank and spank with the occasional pulling off to take down the extra spawned GMs.

Sadly afterward, pretty much any effort I saw to pull together a team just didn't come to fruition. Either no one was that interested or the leader did a repeat of the above, refusing to do anything til they had 30+ people for the event. And frankly it just wasn't all that fun or rewarding. I didn't mind it, but I think compared to the trial they busted out for Halloween, the Haunted House trial wins hands down because it was fun, interesting, even a bit challenging and worth repeating a couple times. Lord Winter was worth doing exactly once for the badge, and the 20 canes were nice, but I didn't have any desire to do it again.

As for rewards. Eh, I loaded up one character with pretty much all the badges and costumes and the Winter's Gift Proc. After that I very selectively picked out here and there between all my alts what I wanted for each, mostly just whether I wanted the Santa gloves/boots for specific ones, everyone else has pretty much sat out or ignored the winter events, completely unlike Halloween.

So, I dunno. It was funnish? But the entertainment value wore pretty thin pretty fast after about a day or two. I liked it, but I thought Halloween was more worthwhile and felt like it had more entertaining things that I'd want to do on a lot of different characters.

I still can't get the hang of controlling my character on the ski slopes and gave up pretty quickly. Again. I try every year. Too much work for too little payout. If it was at least fun I'd do it anyway. But, it's not. It's frustrating. The only character I have that cared about any of the badge titles or costume options is Frosty Femme and she already has the stuff she cares about. The rest of it remains...meh.

Probably the best thing about this winter event wasn't in the game, it was in the store. Sorta bahumbug but being able to unlock halos for every current and future character was a win.

Not "needing" (come on people, just freaking queue) a mega-league for the two new badges is nice now that I've completely given up on the Lord of Winter badge after another 45 minutes in the queue (with a 5 min wait time).

I finally got the skiing badges (all fricking 6 of them) on my Blaster, and I'm never doing it again.

I had a couple of characters who were created since last year that thematically "needed" Cold Warrior, so I gathered presents until I got that badge for them.

I also gathered enough candy canes to pick up a couple of Winter's Gift Slow Resistence recipes (at lower levels) to fund a couple of lowbie characters.

You must have been on a high population server. People did form LW events on Justice, but it was rare. Frankly, I felt like more people ran it when it was through the WL spawns + present portal. There were things wrong with that method (people often missed the timer), but there seemed to be more willingness to dive in when it had that exclusive window element about it.

I might like it to be behind the LFG queue more if I didn't think the queue's functionality was extremely limited. You can't tell if anyone is waiting in it, who they are or what AT they're on, you can't tell what's already running, you can't be in mission instances while you wait (supposedly coming later), and the wait times displayed are utter tripe. If you actually believe the number it was showing, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell.

Oh, and as an aside, the league size minimum was crap, but that was covered in a much earlier thread.