Spammers get your name from chat participation so going anon doesn't always work. If they had your name before you went anon that's also a factor. No one thing is going to fix this problem. It'll take actions from gamers and NCSoft to really get this under control. This weekend's spam bots will probably give NCSoft some legal avenues they can look into as well.

1) Stop buying gold you lazy asses.

2) NCSoft should look at what Blizzard has done to combat gold spammers and use what will work from their actions for Aion game.

3) Report any bots you see. Stupid names like Gffggqq are a dead give away. There's a function under Actions (I forget the actual name) that lets you target the character and auto report them. The problem is as far as I can tell it only gives you 9 or 10 reports. This should reset after a certain time, so they really need to change that.

4) Sending a list of spammer names to help.ncsoft.com really isn't affective since the spammers get to 5 spam to hell then delete that character. Rightclick <name>: Report Spam and having it send the spam text associated with the name plus the account name is needed.

5) Newbies should have their own channel until level 10. Harsh but ya gotta do what you gotta do for the greater good. This limits the number of players affected by spam and makes it easier for a GM to monitor that channel.

6) Filter chat looking for certain keywords known to be common to gold spammers. It won't catch it all but like I said no one thing is going to fix this.

7) Stop enabling these assholes by just thinking it doesn't affect you. Gold spam/selling/buying/powerleveling affects everyone in an MMO in one way or another, so stop being an enabler and report them.

8) NCSoft needs a group of GMs who's only job is to track down spammers/botters/buyers/sellers.

And I'm sure there's more that can be done as well.

I quit playing WoW a good while ago, but hasn't WoW been on it's supposed last leg for sometime now?   :D

My server has a queue.  Sometimes it's up to 2 hours, but so far I've been lucky and haven't had to wait that long.

And if they want to cut the queues, there shouldn't be a need to reroll. Do what Blizzard did and offer a couple full transfer servers from high queue servers and a couple of fresh start servers. That means the full transfer servers would be only for transfers for the first 2 weeks or whatever, then open it up to the public. Let guillds transfer also and any transfers would be full EQ with bank and mail (not sure if they can do AH).

I think overall you'd see a huge improvement if they did that, but right now I think they want to see things stabilize to see what they have while new players get their keys and login.

Thanks!  I'm laggin a tad but still trying to keep things updated :)

Updated with a link to a compiled thread with PAX links.

Dragon here also!  :)

Take the Initiation Test on the main TSW site.

Initiation Test

Originally posted by chriswsm

Yep Champs is getting better day by day and was pretty damn good to begin with.

 

As far as the Zombies and werewolves are concerned one of my main chars is a robot.  How do they infect a robot with Lycanthropy?   Nevertheless they are going down  DOWN DOWN

 

 

Zombies are just ebil like that so they can do anything.

Ok thanks

Has Fileplanet released any keys yet? 

Thanks.  I really wanted that Grond  :(

Has anyone pre-ordered from Best Buy? I want the Grond vanity pet but the link www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp for ordering the game doesn't give any info on if this is the one with the early access and the Grond pet.

Originally posted by Nessilya

The XP nerf isn't a nerf. It was a special accellerated rate of exp gain for the open beta in order to allow players to see more of the game. This isn't a new concept, and getting angry or worried about what is, in truth, exp returning to normal gains is just foolish.

However, that doesn't address some of the larger issues with CO.

Flat out wrong.  The XP rate before the change was what we were getting in CB.  Show me exactly where they said they were putting this excelerated rate of XP gain in for OB please?

Also, in order to keep misinformation down, this is what Antiproton said about the change:

"People seem to be trying to spin things into doom and gloom, I'm not sure how the misinterpretations are occurring, but hopefully this can clear things up a bit:

1) The Tutorial is close to where we want it, folks are mostly level 4 at the end, they need to be hitting level 5, so we need to adjust it up to hit that target. If everybody was level 2 instead of 5 I would have said it was way off, but instead it is close but tweakable. Note that close to where we want it is NOT the same as where we want it.
2) we were happy with the rate in the Tutorial and fine with the rate in the tutorial, it was the later part of the game where things went off track from what we wanted. One can make guesses as to some likely changes in our xp behaviour between now and launch based on that info and the explicit statements I've made today.
3) We're datamining today's play, checking to see what effect the changes have, that will allow us to get the rate correct, we have 2 numbers currently: Our expected rate of progress through content and the actual rate. Tomorrow we will have 2 more sets of numbers: Our expected rate of progress with the change, and the actual rate. That will enable us to fine tune every single level to the place we want it to be since we know in a statistically meaningful sense what effect our % adjustment had.

This is how you tune a system like this, this is what large scale betas are for. The goal is to make the game fun to play for the long term, not to make it a 3 day blast to maxlevel and then burnout, and not to make it a 2 year grind. Progression needs to happen at a carefully balanced rate. Yes we are concerned about making sure the content matches the xp curve. Yes we are concerned about making the xp rate right. Yes we want the tutorial to play out in a particular pattern.

We're not trying to ruin the game for anybody, we're trying to make sure it is fun."

forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php

And what Awen said:

Originally Posted by Awen
"As you may have noticed, we've been using this period of Open Beta to test out our balancing, levelling and overall combat systems. There was a change last night to do one last set of testing and unfortunately we were not able to get the proper messaging up in time to warn you of these changes. You are reasonably upset and we understand.

Antiproton, one of our combat designers has been on the message boards this afternoon trying to let everyone know what is going on. The truth is that this was a test. This is most likely not going to be the end result. However we needed these large scale numbers to determine what the best metric would be. Please be patient with us during this time. We don't want you to spend your time grinding rather than having fun and in order to make sure that doesn't happen, a few tweaks need to be made before we open the servers to our paying customers.

I want to ensure you that in the future, any changes happening in the game will be messaged to you. We are striving toward more development transparency and open communication so that we can ensure that your playing experience in our games is more enjoyable."

No link

Make of it what you will.

No it won't be a WoW killer.  It's a decent game but no WoW killer.

And if people would stop looking for MMOs to kill WoW then perhaps we'd get some better quality MMOs on the market.

Originally posted by NovaKayne

Originally posted by thexrated

Universal heathcare is a preventive method in most cases. Meaning that people will actually go to see doctor before they get serious symptons or are dying. It works very well in Scandinavia, I do not think there are many people in my country who would advocate against it. Benefits far outweight the negatives.

Much of the opposition to healthcare reform (or universal healthcare) in the US is down to cultural differences. You have been "hardwired" to detest anything that includes words like "social" etc. It is pretty unique factor in your country and it is understandable, but looking from outside it often does look ridiculous/weird.

You do know that cutting down a fraction of your defense budget would allow universal healthcare in your country and could even extend it to immigrants as well :)

I think 2003 (might have been 2007) you spend like ~$160 billion to fight terrorism, which that year killed only 63 Americans world-wide. Just check how many Americans die a year due to a lack of  healthcare or medicines.  

However, I would personally support it  in the following way in the US.

- A federal law that requires STATES to provide universal healthcare.

- States can decide themselves how to handle, organise and pay for it.

 

True, they did cut back on the defence budget in the 90's and someone started... oh, flying planes into buidlings.

 

When you are the big kid on the block there is always someone trying to take you down for whatever reason or purpose. 

 

I am not going to say they did not have a reason for it...  Not going to get into that since the government was prolly the one who stepped on a toe some time in the last 1000 years for the hardline extreme types that did it.

 

This country was founded on people wanting to get out from under opression of governemnt, religion, or some idealism.  You bet it is ingraned in the very fabric of our being.  I take great pride in being able to have this conversation with people ( tho this might not be the place to do it ) and yet probably play side by side in games with those very self same people.

 

Just because I do not agree with you does not mean I hate you or feel hatred toward you.  The perspectives of those outside of the US are interesting to say the least.  Social does strike fear in our hearts.  Becaue of that Social aspect there were people who left your country and came to mine.  We have a basic distrust of government and its potential for corruption and abuse. 

 

That goes for Democrat or Republican.  Both parties in the US have not done much to impress me over the last 20 years.  Which is probably longer than most people in this debate have even lived.

 

Follow the money trail and you will find the issue.  Doctors are not making money hand over fist.  Most I know are having a hard time paying back the student loans because of all of the INSURANCE THEY have to carry as well.  Insurance needs to be regulated, mal-practivce lawyers need to be regulated.  And this should be controlled at the state level.  This allows various systems to be implemented for competition and to see who has a better plan.

 

The states are already supposed to be providing it, some just do it better than others. 

 

(1) The federal 1 size fits all does not allow for competition.  Lack of competition leads to mediocrity.  Why is California bankrupt and Texas not?  What is the difference?  What is California doing that Texas does not do?  See, where this goes?  You have differeing ideas, differing systems and you can compare and contrast.  Rather than institue a Federal Health Care system that may/may not meet the demands of the local populace.  Why not look at the states that seem to have a successfull solution and try working those policies into your constituantts?  Why are California Representatives not coming to Texas and saying how do you do it?  Why are they going to Jamaica for a political retreat or Erupope to look at their system?  CORRUPTION.

Where are you getting your info for (what I marked as) #1?  From what I've read and heard there indeed will be competition because no one will be forced into one type of coverage or another.  If you like what you have keep it.  If what you have doesn't stack up to what the reform puts in place then your current insurer either comes up with a better plan or loses customers.  That = competition.

#2.  They are going(have gone) to different clinics like the Mayo clinic and the one in Cleveland (the name escapes me) to look over how they do business as well as looking at plans from different countries, so they indeed are looking at best practices from places that are doing their jobs and doing them very well.

Nothing is perfect, and nothing will ever be perfect.  Our current system is far far from perfect and has been in place so long that it's outdated as well as a joke.  Changes NEED to be made.  There also needs to be a stop to all the misinformation people are being swamped with and the petty political rhetoric.

@ Abrahmm:  One way or the other you're going to pay.  Right now you pay through higher hospital costs, medicine costs, ambulance service costs, insurance premium costs, unnecessary tests, and the like.

As for the why, that was already answered.  If you prefer to not pay then I'll say good luck with that one... There are certain things required of citizens living in countries.  Otherwise you're not free to live there or are penalized by law.  Ours has taxes as a requirement that are handed out for certain perks and programs deemed necessary by our government. 

If you don't like how our government manages your tax money then you're free to express your disapproval mainly with your vote.  There are many countries that are taxed and their people can't say a word about how much or how it's used.  If you'd like to find a more suitable country for your beliefs concerning how your taxes are used and for whom, goodluck.

The issue is also that many Americans are denied healthcare because of pre-existing conditions.  Along with the problems that poses to getting adequate treatment and cures it also forces many families into financial and personal ruin.

And thank you to those Americans who chimed in here with real knowledge and a clear point of view showing we're not all just blind baffoons swallowing the nonsense the GOP and others are tossing out.  Mazin you should be ashamed of yourself.

I haven't been following this game very closely but it does look interesting.  :)

Character customization.  How indepth is it?  Or are they going the way of pre-made models with limited customization (gender, hair, some colors, and a choice between a few face models) like some other games?

And thanks for taking the time to answer questions about the game.

Originally posted by StrixMaxima

It's a pretty good sum, albeit very subjective at times and containing the usual fallacies of the MMO world, present in words such as "themepark", "haters", "handholding", etc. If you manage to let these go, your summary would benefit from it. Not all people criticizing the game want it to burn down in flames, you know? Good criticism helps the game much more than blind faith. Any smart person should be able to know one from the other.

Outstanding post.

3) If a microtransaction does have any sort of in game effect, then it can be also be earned in game.

That one bothers me the most about this.  What I get from this is players may be able to buy items that can enchance their character or play that it takes others time (maybe a lot?) in game to earn.  That's one of the problems with RMT so why put it in as a feature?  MT in a subscription based MMO should be cosmetic in nature only.