If you have any left, please send one to displaced_hero@yahoo.com Thanks

Typical Blizzard ass-backward thinking. They'll pour more money into marketing and gimmicks than they do in game design and content.

Originally posted by Vaden

They still doing "if you dont play for 3 months they'll delete ur character" ? That shyt was low..

Hell, they delete your whole account and you have to buy another box. This policy and the hoops PlayOnline makes you go through are the reasons I didn't play this past the first month.

Jack Emmert, as Lead Designer has a "It's my game and you'll play it my way" mentality. He can be very flippant and arrogant with the player base. For instance, when players were complaining about missions that could not be completed (mind you, at this time you could not drop missions), solo, Jack's response was "working as intended" and "find some friends". Since City has a fantastic scalable missions system, there is no reason why anything in the game shouldn't be able to be accomplished solo, if that's how a paying customer wants to play.

After months of player attrition, Jack finally allowed the development team to make most missions more solo-friendly and, though it's not perfect, implemented a system where missions can be dropped.

Longtime players of the franchise can recount numerous instances where Jack's imput had a detrimental effect on the game. He let the initial success go to his head and lost players to the point where they had to make the decision to release what was supposed to be a true expansion to CoH as free content to placate the playerbase. Now that NCSoft owns the franchise, they're having to clean up the mess that Jack Emmert left behind when, all starry-eyed, he abandoned "his game" to chase rainbows with Microsoft and Marvel. City of Heroes is all the better for it.

The scramble to pad Supergroups has already started. The CoH/CoV communities on LiveJournal are heating up with it. What will be interesting is to see how many players will get punted from SGs once the Influence/Infamy is in the bank.

Regarding Cryptic's Marvel MMO, keep watching. Rumors are circulating that Microsoft is getting ready to pull the plug on another major project. They have a recent history of experimenting with MMORPG development until the reality of the costs involved set in and then dumping the project and the developers working on it. Jack may be singing the blues pretty soon now that he's abandoned City of Heroes. I just hope that NCSoft is smart enough not to hire him back.

So Bill's throwing a hissy fit because people are saying bad things about his blatant money grab game. Whoopee. Maybe he should have thought about that before he and his buddies decided to try to use their "former Blizzard devs" status and tap into some of that good ol' MMO cash flow they walked away from when they walked out on Blizzard right in the middle of WoW's development. I've watched this game transform from a single-player game with multiplayer options to a lopsided mockery of a MMORPG. Bait and Switch. It's time for him to learn that there are only so many times you can fling the name "Diablo" around and get people's attention.

They've dug themselves into a big hole and are surprised that people aren't wanting to fill it with cash. If they had put out a polished, quality single-player product with a decent mutliplayer/LAN options and with at least a whisper of a proposed expansion, people would have flocked to it. And don't blame EA. If you look at all the crazy marketing gimmicks and employee perks they spent money on, you'll reach the conclusion that the well of cash for development was rapidly running dry and they need to start recouping money fast. Hence, the Founder's offer. They needed to release or lose it all.

As long as you've been at this, Bill, you should have known better. Instead, you tried to be Blizzard overnight. Good luck with your creditors.

Removing the game from Jack Emmert's influence could be a real boon for City of Heroes. Jack (aka: Statesman) always insisted that the game was going to be played his way, which alienated a lot of players. Anyone paying attention could figure that the thing with Microsoft and Marvel was going to monopolize time and resources from Cryptic since working with the big boys would be too much for Emmert's swollen ego to handle responsibly. Remember, Jack, Microsoft has a track record of pulling the plug on developing MMOs when they start to cost too much.

In any case, this is the best thing for NCSoft and City of Heroes. Now, maybe, we'll start to seem some real development.

Well, the problem could be that the beta ended last night.

Uh huh. Blizzard's compounding their past mistakes by giving preferential treatment to big guilds. It only shows that their creative pool is drying up, so they'll tap into the players that can't function without some kind of heirarchy to answer to for ideas. The beauty of the plan is that they don't have to pay these people! Big guilds live for internet fame and love lording over other paying customers.

With their current crop of Everquest ex's as developers, Blizzard will continue to churn out more Guild-centric content and further alienate other customers who are silly enough to keep paying for development of content that they will never see.

Regarding the magic "Patch 0" due to hit on release day, my experience in the HG:L Alpha and Beta has been that Flagship has been completely unable to patch their game with out causing major interruptions to their servers. Maybe that's why their elite subscription fees won't start for a month.

It is also worth mentioning that Bill Roper is a PR man. Apart from doing voice work on the Diablo series, Bill's job at Blizzard was to be a cheerleader for upcoming releases. His early interviews on WoW were inspiring. That said, apply that to  Bill's assurance that HG:L is a true MMORPG. It boggles my mind that people use his quotes as proof. Bill Roper is also just as likely to say that the HG:L launch is the countdown to the Second Coming. Doesn't make it so.

The finished version of HG:L is nothing more than a half-baked attempt to coerce purchasers into subscribing so that Flagship can recoup some of the money they've squandered in gimmicks and marketing. Hey, it's your money.

I'm tossing in a short 2 shekels on this. I've been playing since the last couple weeks of Alpha. Where Flagship went wrong was the point where they got greedy and tried to siphon off some of the WoW playerbase. Unfortunately for them, the game is a single-player game with a multiplayer feature set. You only see other players in the hubs and, at most, no more than 15 or 20 at a time and I quickly learned to hate even that because the other people are more of a nuisance than an inducement to socialize. Chat is a direct mutation of the now-legendary WoW Barrens chat. The difference is, unless you turn it off completely, the idiocy follows you everywhere.

Flagship has bet the farm on players shelling out $150 a pop for Lifetime access to features that may be very short-lived unless they can sustain enough people willing to shell out 10 bucks a month to play a game with no soul. They could have made a great LAN or limited online game, but instead, they chose to squander resources developing online systems which will be denied to all but their Premium tier players. The result is a gutted single-player game with limited replayability unless you buy into their extortion and pay them more money.

If you're looking for a MMORPG, you'll be disappointed, but hey, it's your money. Me, I'm finding Elder Scrolls: Oblivion much more engaging.

I hate crowds. Never raided, never will. This is what happens when a company replaces much of its creative staff with Everquest addicts. These people have a deficit when it comes to creativity. All they know how to do is create more Raid content that most of their player base (if the stats are correct) will never experience. Honestly, what good is an artistically-crafted dungeon if all anyone is going to do is run through it as part of a swarm of devouring locusts?

I was in WoW from Day 1, but we parted company when I the realization hit me that I was paying Blizzard to develop new content that I would never see. WoW = Much Potential Wasted.

Don't fix what doesn't need fixing. The community formed of Blizzard groupies is notoriously bad. They move like a plague of locusts from one game to the next, gradually sucking the games dry of anything resembling fun.  In any case, we'll all know how "visionary" Flagship is by the end of the month.

Happy trails.

Single-player game with multiplayer option. I guess since they are charging a subscription rate for their Premium service, it must be an MMORPG , right? The game had promise until it became clear that it would draw all the Blizzwits who are "bored with WOW".  If post-apocalyptic 24/7 Barrens chat is your can of Red Bull, then you'll feel right at home.

No need for proof, but wasn't that the "Try The Burning Crusade" lure? I was still financing them then, so I wouldn't have received the offer.

After all the free trials, they're finally trying to reel in the ones that got away. I guess 9 million isn't enough. Vivendi must have seen a dip in the profits and they're afraid it's the beginning of a trend. But why not contact former players directly? It's not like they don't have email addresses. Oh, right. Blizzard's first instinct is to find someone else to do the menial things (like downloading patches) for free, That way their staff can work on more "important" things like more raid dungeons and stupid pop culture references.

Before you get all console-happy on this, you might want to remember that Mythic has said repeatedly that the game will release only on PC. Here is a direct quote from their FAQ (Grab Bag Questions #1):

Q: Will there be a Mac/other platform version?

A: I never say never - but we will only launch WAR on the PC

Much of the misunderstanding and anticipation from the console crowd is the result of the Mythic developers deciding to run what was then the current WAR client on a 360 "just to see if they could". I believe this was during a demonstration at E3 last year. Despite the media hubbub over the demo, Mythic was quick to say that the game would only be on PCs at release. To date, I have not seen where Mythic or EA has said otherwise and one would think there would be more coverage if they were to change their minds.

The links you have referred are nearly identical and nothing more than contingency placeholders "just in case". If WAR was headed to consoles they'd be talking about it. If you'd like to provide something more definitive, I'll admit my error.

I cancelled my pre-order for this when they activated the X-Trap anti-botting software when the game released. A lot of posters on their forums are having trouble with it doing weird things to their systems. I think it was kind of sneaky on K2's part since X-Trap was not activated during beta. I know this because my Panda Antivirus flagged and isolated it when it downloaded and I was able to play the beta fine. Once the game was released, they turned it on and the problems began.

Players of Knight Online (another K2 game, I believe) have apparently been having problems with X-Trap for some time. At it's most benign, it simply won't update so you can play the game. Others have reported hardware not working properly and random PC restarts. It's your gamble. For me, I'm not screwing around with 3rd-party software that I didn't intentionally install.

Good luck.

What most people are missing is that this event was a month ago and was very low-key. It was announced on the Player Events forum and received almost no notice at all from the detractors. So it wasn't a "Look At Me" type of thing. The event came and went without incident. It took place in the Pocket D instance, which is designed for such thing and anyone was welcome, I was there and it was no different than any other player event. Hell, I even won in the Costume Contest. It should also be noted that this is not the first event sponsored by one of the GLBT Super Groups. 

Somehow Gay.com took notice of it and Cryptic, as they do anytime City of Heroes is mentioned in any non-gaming specific media made note of it in their News section.

Now that's Star Warsy!

....just not the Star Wars I remember.