A little background, I bought the original CoH box and pre-ordered CoV, and played from time to time over the last seven or so years, so I have enough paragon reward badges to unlock Masterminds, so those are not an issue. However, as I level up a new villain character I keep getting tips that drop that are part of the alignment system, enough for eight out of the ten pips, yet I do not have Going Rogue. I would also like to try a Soldier of Arachanos epic power set. From what I can tell to unlock those epic power sets, I either pay about ten dollars/set individually, or pay 15/month to unlock them all. Seems a bit expensive for a power set, but perhaps champions online has spoiled me a bit price wise.

So here's the question: should I just buy the VIP starter pack that offers the alignment system and access to the epic power sets for a month, or just buy what I want individually, especialy as it is not clear if buying the VIP pack and then going free would allow me to keep things like the Going Rogue alignment system?

The tips dropping is especially confusing, do players like myself who do not have the Going Rogue expansion just get a teaser for tips (like I said I now have 8 of 10 tips), is the mechanic perhaps broken somehow?

Thanks in advance for any helpful information and assistance. Been enjoing CoH Freedom quite a bit as a free player with access to a bit of the higher end stuff due to my 14 paragon rewards, but before I dive in and start buying stuff I would like to figure out the best, and honestly cheapest means to unlock some of Going Rogue content and epic power sets, especially if I want to avoid the monthly fee.

Thanks!

Well I am a bit puzzled. Read through the FAQs and the forums and got the impression that if I logged back onto my old Sony account, and then installed the new Extended "free" version of EQII I would have access to content that I had already paid for, namely Echoes of Faydwer. Instead I log onto the game and find I can create a human barbarian, wizard or priest. I cannot even ask anyone for help and the Sony help database is of little use.

I tried asking in game, but all I see is a sea of identical human barbarians and discover that even "ooc (out of character)" chat is disabled unless I pay for it.

Oy. So. Here I am hoping that someone here might have an answer. Even though I own a physical copy of Echoes of Faydwer for example and it shows up on my Sony account, would I have to buy it again to have access to play it on a "Free" version of the game?

Thanks for your time and help.

Peace now.

Then please do not buy the game.

It's really just that simple, vote with your wallets.

Is the game perfect? Far from it. My klingon bridge view still has Federation skins which at this point is just silly. But it has been clear for months now that the Klingon content was unfinished and not ready for live. Let me just say that again for those who might have missed it. Klingon content is  *no where* near done, it's all pvp with effectively no pve content. This is obvious to anyone who rolls a klingon. Even so, for a brief diversion from Federation grinding, it can be fun.

I played open beta with a focus on the more complete and ready for live Federation side. Got a character to lt commander 7 or so. Explored most of the maps, fought species 8742 on the sacred grounds of Pjem first mentioned in Enterprise, fought a Doomsday machine from the Original series, rescued a dying world with medical supplies right out of an episode of the Next Generation, confronted the potential of a Klingon messiah raised years ago in the stories of Voyager ... even fought across time after visiting the Guardian of Forever.

Where is the "real Star Trek content"? Honestly. Did you play the same game, read through the quest texts?

Is the game polished? Certainly not, is it a WoW killer? Hardly. It an an entertaining exploration of the Trek multi-verse? Sure.

And all that constant instancing? Yes it gets a bit silly, but you know how I think of it?

Commercial breaks ;-)

Anyways, nothing I say is really going to have any impact on your views, and that's okay. Your views are valid and many of your points ring quite true. My simple suggestion, do not pay them a dime, play Mass Effect 2 or Eve. But meanwhile, some of us with equally valid perspectives, who have come to rather enjoy this flawed, still in process little game will pay to play it.

After all, the Next Generation did not really hit it's stride until the second season, a lot of those early episodes have not aged well at all, but in time TNG evolved into something rather wonderful. I think STO will too.

Peace now.

Just curious, I had to take a leave from the game for awhile but would be able to return to WoW this week. If I returned today, for example, would I still get a 5 year anniversary pet or is it too late?

Thanks you for taking the time to read this and thank you for anyone who might know the answer.

Originally posted by Koroshiya

I downloaded the hi rez client again, installed and tried to log in my account and said I had to pay for it.

 

I have a good standing on my credit card, I wasn't banned, nor was my credit card ever declined.  I sent them a message and hope to hear back from them, as I want to try the game again I just don't want to pay to see if I like it and then waste 10 bucks if I don't.  Hopefully they get back to me and let me know what the problem is.

I am in the same situation. I bought the collector's edition back in 2007, played for awhile. Quit in good standing. Spent some time last night downloading and updating the files. It's now nearly 10am and when I try to log on, it says my account has expired. There are no official Turbine posts anywhere as to when this event officially begins.

A somewhat odd way to get people to want to spend their money to "return" ;-) Hope I can try it again, otherwise I will just take a pass and keep playing the games that communicate a little bit more effectively than this.

Peace now.

Honestly, whats a bit sadder, is that, if Blizzard had given a vanity pet to those who paid the fee just to watch this at home for fourty hours, I can only imagine the # of people who would have done it.

Just a thought ;-)

Hm, I just re-read the email I got today and sure enough, if you sign up for this thing, you get the Polar Bear mount...go figure.

I have rather mixed feelings about this game. Given how closely it mirrors WoW (from the log in screen on it just screams WoW, graphics and sounds) I am honestly surprised Blizzard has not hit them with a lawsuit, but I am not lawyer and will leave that debate to people who know the field.

The game is "pre-beta" which I think translates into an alpha test. Like most free to plays from asia (and I assume this one is Korean) the translations are a bit wonky and honestly can be kind of funny to read. Shame they didnt take a dungeon runners spin on them, though there is a point where a npc apologizes to you along the lines of "developers always say this dont they?" which was a nice touch.

Character customization as the OP has stated is very limited. I liked the looks of the werebeasts, they have a drenai/tauren feel to their models. But I found a warrior to be very dull to play even though the armours do look good from the get go. I then rolled a fairy summoner -- think gnome warlock and you won't be far off. With that combo I was killing mobs several levels higher than my toon and doing well.

You have points that let you get better spells but they seem to go from lvl 1 to 4 and then 12 or so and upgrading them cost more than i could make in a day or so's playing. So I found myself spamming the same two spells over and over as my pet "thing" held aggro. I felt just like a warlock.

Quests seemed fine till I was sent to the next city at which point I got quite lost. The map is quite large and it was very unclear where I needed to go (clearly I have gotten quite spoiled on years of throttbot and wowhead...)

Xp is slow. I made it upto lvl 5 and as I had no idea where I had to go I tried grinding but the lag and the rather amazing ammount of kill-stealing going on made it very hard to level up that way.

At that point I logged and decided to try again after tha game enters a real open beta as any progress is going to be wiped in a week anyways, I just didnt feel like racing through the content just to start over again next week ;-)

All in all, it's a wow clone, with a micro-buy to be added. Crafting as such seemed to entail enchantments via scrolls which I am going to guess you get via micro-transactions. Mounts appear to be the 30 day variety which I also am going to assume are gained via micro transactions buy if I am wrong on any of these accounts I humbly bow to those who lasted longer and know better.

Honestly I would rather pay for a more polished project and stick to the original; but I can see people having fun which this once it gets more polished assuming it isnt shut down for copyrights.

Peace now.

I was able to dl and play the closed beta. It was interesting, and certainly better than most f2p mmorpgs  I have tried. But this "open beta" ... my goodness. I downloaded it using the official torrent download and then the Gameshell client. Neither worked. Kept getting Error:6 failed internet connection issues. I am not techie by any means, but I gave the program permission to bypass my firewall, etc. no joy.

So I have no idea if the Open Beta is an improvement, seeing as I cannot get past the thing installing and looking for its first update.

From reading the official forums I am not alone. I hope they figure out what is causing these issues. Likely something to do with vista (go figure), but I have four other mmorpgs installed on my pc and all of them work fine, no patch errors, no connection issues, etc. so Im going to guess it's a Requiem error.

Hope those of you who are able to get the client to work are having fun.

Peace now.

I really wanted to like this game. I have been waiting for a solid sci-fi mmorpg since Earth & Beyond failed. But this feels like Anarchy Online to me with updated graphics. Well, AO without the fantasy elements. The character cloning tree is a clever idea but I cannot imagine going through the same content over and over again with each toon. I did not get a sense of immersion from playing the game, the quests were dull. I would have liked more of a sense of alieness from the non human species. This is a game Ill be taking a pass on, perhaps one day Ill find a true replacement for E&B, which for all its limitations, was still the best sci-fi mmorpg Ive played. Yes EVE is beautiful and can be fun if you love to pvp, but I dont and until I can leave my spaceship and walk around, it will feel like a lovely excel busines spreadsheet.

Peace now.

Ive long been puzzled by people commenting on Vista not working with various mmorpgs. I get the sense that some of the issues might stem from people who upgraded existing systems to vista which might not have been ideal for the new OS. Vista is a bit of a reasource hog and especially once you want to start using things like directx 10, well (and I could be wrong) I thought you needed a whole new video card specially made for it. Personally I simply bought a new pc a few months ago that came with Vista pre-installed and had two nvidia 8800 video cards. Ive had little or no issues with Vista on any of the games I play. Ive also found that there are usually updates, especially in regards to video card drivers within a few days, or less that solve most compatability issues. Problems with Bioshock were solved in less than a day or so.

In regards to Archlord. Well the game is very laggy and prone to latency that can result in loss of connection at the worst possible times; but (again not being an expert here) I get the sense that that is from issues regarding AL's servers, peak populations in specific zones and whathave you and likely not from Vista. I used to have the same issues of lag and latency with WoW on my old pc, not much if at all with my new pc and vista. Honestly AL is "free to play" and latency and lag causing character death and xp loss is another reason I have no desire to spend real dolllars for orbs to eliminate xp loss and whatnot. I do not see any point rewarding codemasters for their server issues. But I also do not see myself getting characters past lvl 30 or so where it really becomes an issue. AL for me is a quick break from other mmorpgs, and for that it's fun.

Peace now.

For a free to play mmorpg, Ive rather enjoyed AL. I have characters on both servers, one all orcs, the other a human knight and the two elf classes and Ive lvled up toons to the point where they are almost ready for pvp. I am not a big pvp fan though honestly, but the pve content remains a bit quirky as the text is translated from Korean and consists of mostly "go kill 10 of x mob and return to me." Then again, show me a mmorpg that does not do that kind of quest ;-)

I really like the idea of a bank vault sharable by all toons on the same server. Though limited, the character avatars are nicely rendered and the armour sets look quite good. The sense that this is a Korean mmorpg is clearly evident and gives the game a lot of character; but past a certain point it clearly becomes a rather intense grind, more so that I think most American gamers are going to want to invest their time in, especially since to truly achieve higher levels you are going to need to spend a great deal of real dollars.

Because honestly, AL isnt really free to play. My lvl 1 toon of all things got a plat treasure chest to drop, but if I had wanted to open it, I would have had to spend real dollars for a key. Ick. Each character has a very small ammount of inventory and the only way to expand it is to spend real dollars for more spaces. If you want to avoid perma xp loss you need to spend real dollars for special orbs. Etc. over and over the only real way to succeed past a certain point is to spend real dollars.

Now I understand CM needs to make money somehow, this game is not a charity drive. But I also understand why many players who try AL and quit do so because they sense a kind of bait and switch going on. AL is one of those games I will keep on my pc and play from time to time, but I never see myself paying dollars for a key, or for orbs. It might be fun to get to lvl 35 and get a mount, they look rather cool; but honestly if I am going to have to pay to play a game to it's fullest realization, then I am going to play a game like WoW or EQ2.

Peace now.

SWG never felt like Star Wars to me. Having my lvl one character shooting rat like creatures for hours in a semi empty field did not feel very heroic. It felt like every other mmorpg start, but did not feel like Star Wars. The ads were a warning sign -- remember those? The Ones where they had a picture of some bit character stormtrooper with the question "what was their story?" Honestly? who cares. Instances that were a kind of amusement park where you can visit major characters...ick, again just did not feel right to me.

A good example of how SWG could have worked were the X-wing books. Yes there are new characters and yes you meet the original characters; but the new characters are heroes in their own right. The Dark Horse comics were also a good example of an expanded SW universe done right.

The time setting of SWG was also a major flaw... set between eps 4 and 5 and suddenly there are thousands of jedi knights? It would have been better if they had set the game in the time of the New Jedi Order and introduced the Vong as foes. Then you could have had a cast of thousands of jedi knights with the chance of true perma death and it would have fit official continuity. Would have been unique if player actions might have been reflected in the novels in a small way as well.

Oh well, just some thoughts. SWG was one of those games that just did not work for me. KOTOR did, which if why I still play those games that for me at least, capture some of the joy of the original movies.

Peace now.

It's odd, I regularly play WoW, Guild Wars, City of Heroes with no problems whatsoever videowise. But I can barely get LOTR to run even in Low mode.

Intel Pent 4, 2.8GHz, 2gig of ram,  256meg geforce 5200. Certainly not a cutting edge system by anymeans; but most games look quite lovely running on it and I usually experience little to no problems from lag/latency. But I can barely move around in LOTR, if my vid settings are above low, videos stutter or I get no sound. My characters look like something from 1997. Its sad.

I really have no desire to spend several hundred dollars on a new video card, let alone buy a new pc just to play this one game. Or is it my system? I realize this is beta (trust me Ive beta tested about a dozen games), and Vanguard gave me similar problems, which is why I did not buy that game.

If you have a bleeding edge pc with duo 8800s, please do not tell me how nice the game is running on your pc, okay? ;-)  But Im curious about people with pc's similiar to mine and if they are experiencing problems like mine. Or not.

My pc is virus and spyware free, it gets scanned daily. Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this matter.

Peace now.

Recently got an issue of a computer gaming magazine that had the code for the Asura pet. Was about to use the code when I kept reading on the bottom left of the ad, where it noted that you get to use the code once, for one character/account. Whew. Glad I waited so I can decide which character gets the new pet, as at first I thought perhaps all the characters would get it.

Just thought this might be helpful to some of you, who either have the pet or are trying to get a code.

Peace now ;-)

My question about the combo pack is that it listed two bonuses: a jetpack and an item (?) that allows you to transport your hero (and villain?) to the Pocket D club. I have the clients for both COH and COV already, but I have not played for awhile. Im curious how useful the two items are, especially the Pocket D one. Is it similiar to the "hearthstones" of WoW, that simply teleport you back to the club, or is it different?

Im curious as it would only be an extra 5 dollars to buy the combo pack and get a "free" month of both games. Thanks in advance for any information you all can shed on this for me ;-)

There isnt a mmorpg really. Though Im sure it's evolved a bit since I tried it in beta, its really just a chat room with avatars. Think of it as a rather basic version of 2nd Life (which I have not played). What turned me off was that it felt like I was a virtual shopper in a virtual mall. I have no desire to play make believe shopper, try on clothes, and whatnot; but clearly I was not the target demographic for this "game." Once I realized that, I left and can only hope that those who continue to play There enjoy themselves.

Peace now.

I gave it a try, really. The graphics are rather nice, esp for a free mmorpg. But the lack of avatar customization was a bit of a turnoff. Seeing exact clones of my character everywhere I looked was dull. Ive seen a lot of people complain about the gender specific classes; but as this is an Asian mmorpg so that did not surprise me. The lag was an issue for me. Logging in and then being stuck for upto a minute or more was frustrating. Often in combat I was dead from a lag spike before I realize what had happened.

The map needs a lot of improvement. Perhaps WoW spoiled me, but a map the size of a 50cent piece did not work for me. I had no idea where I was, where I was headed or where npcs were. Npcs especially need work. Perhaps not the giant yellow ! that WoW has but it can be rather hard to figure out who a npc is in a sea of player clones.

I found my character irregardless of class dying a lot, and mobs get deadly very fast as there is little in terms of geographical clues as to when you have entered a zone that is likely doing to kill you. Which in LC can be just over the hill from the starter zone when you meet your 1st red mob.

The heavy farmer spam was also a turnoff.

Ultimately after a few days of exploring, dying and lag freezes I del'd the game and moved on; but for a free game; well you get what you paid for it. Certainly I have experienced worse games. But LC just wasnt what I was looking for.

Peace now.

Another spoiler...

 (highlight below to see)

Okies, when you do get the 5/5 gems, you will get a little message to the left that talks about socketing the gems. Click on a gem and drag them up to the boxes just above the gems. When you drag them all up, you unlock the secret content -- some nice free screensavers and a silvermoon city mp3.