Dr. Gemini

Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't be more than one person.

It's only ironic if you deliberately misconstrue the intent (and ignore or "reinterpret" most of the actual words) of his posts.

While this is a great way for you to justify picking and choosing which illegal activities it is moral for you to be an active participant in, it also invalidates your entire position, both on the morality of copying characters and on trying overly hard to generate fear over server shutdown on this issue. "If Disney wanted these servers sued, they would have been. Months ago. Their decision not to do so, represents a state of tacit permission for players to copy characters." That would be just as valid as your own statement. So do stop trying to pretend you're on some kind of moral high ground. Bottom line is very simple, you don't like something and believe everyone else should fall in line with what you want. Sorry, but my world does not revolve around you so I have to say...no. On to something else... One thing people need to remember about when the Marvel suit against CoH happened. Back in the late 90's and early 00's, companies didn't really know what to do about the internet. CoH wasn't the only thing Marvel was going after, nor was Marvel the only company that was targeting anything online that used its IP in any way, whether it was for-profit or not. For example, there was a time when even putting a home-made D&D module online would get a C&D from the game's makers. Marvel's suit was at the tail end of that period, which is when those IP holders finally began to realize that fansites using their IP generated interest in their product rather than took away from it. So, if we could make a Mickey Mouse clone that beat up bad guys with his male genitalia, THAT would likely get Disney's interest, as it denigrates the image of their IP. Someone playing "Iron Dude" in a copy of Iron Mans costume? One should be more worried about the Zombie Apocalypse, as that has better odds judging by the last almost decade.

Farming Hero/Reward merits. Now I can just play, not have to balance my play with making money for my character.

Yeah I bought about 50 converters for 1 million each last weekend as I trying to buy 100 in lots of 10 for 100k each and hit the post button 5 times before I realized my error.

FYI, as far as merits of the King's Row and Laura Lockhart arcs you mentioned earlier, I've been tracking the new merit rewards of all arcs as I do them, and they're not much. Shauna Stockwell's Superadine Ring gives 6 merits Eagle Eye's Lords of Death gives 6 merits Laura Lockhart's Collateral Damage gives 4 merits. Can't tell you how long they take as I tend to take my time and read everything, but I think SSA 1.1 still grants far more merits per minute than any of those.

There is no fun in not having to worry about prestige for those who enjoy the art of base-building, because earning prestige is NOT part of the fun of designing and building bases. If I want to level quickly to 50 there are numerous avenues open to me to earn XP quickly. If I want to IO out my builds from level 10 to 50 with the sets that I want, regardless of cost, there are ways that I can actively earn influence quickly. If I want to build a kick-ass base with tons of space and have anything I want in it, if you got your way, I can......have no choices whatsoever to actively gain prestige, aside from inviting players to join and treating them like prestige-monkeys. Not something I'd be ok with. So, working for prestige might be fun to you, however, it would be a step backward for what the actual fun of base-building is about. Not to mention that back when the game was live you could buy prestige for influence, and it was dirt simple to become a billionaire. That was done, no doubt, so that base builders could actually apply their creativity.

Can we move on to some new ideas? I think this thread graduated to beating a dead horse about 5 pages ago. Every post is just repeating what that person, or someone else, has already said. Come on guys! Entertain me!

Your dislike of the way they chose to do marketing here does not make it absurd, horrible to use, or any of the other pejoratives you use to try to bolster your arguments against it, because you have no arguments to make your view right (least of all trying to make it about new players). You only have opinion, just as the rest of us also only have opinion of what we prefer. So, you might be better off not assuming your opinion = indisputable facts of the universe. Having played games with both styles, IMO this one is far better to BOTH buyers and sellers than what you are advocating. The reasons for this have already been stated by others in this thread, so I am also in the like it as it is now camp.

"You now have the power to run your own server!" ignores the massive necessity of the "massively multiplayer" bit of "MMORPG" which at the moment homecoming is monopolizing. So yes, we're allowed to criticize them for running their servers poorly. Yes you are, if they wish to allow you do so on their own forums, and IF they are indeed doing as you claim. However, doing a poor job is not equal to not doing what you want. That's just being a self-entitled *****.

The person who does this already knows the game. I very much doubt there will be "LFG to PL" from level 50's all over the server to make brand new people believe that is how the game is played in the manner that the DFB spam does. It appears that the devs and GMs are not looking to have a server that freezes a moment in time for nostalgic people to just come and play on until their nostalgia is sated and they go away. They appear to want to continue to develop and expand the game as best they can. This means, even if they don't have to worry about the game having an income, they do have to try to attract new players. As we already saw when AE was first introduced, if a newbie's first exposure to the game is leveling to 50 in a few hours, they'll be gone in even less time after that. That's why its bad for the game for DFB to be taking up 90% of LFG chat. Making it still viable for getting through the first 20 levels (which it is, even nerfed), but not as attractive to exclusively do, is a good compromise between what's good for the game as a whole and what the players want. That's the problem. Players always want what they want without concern over the consequences. People running a game have to think about those consequences, and that means making decisions that people won't like, without having to give reasons those same people will like or accept.

Given the wildly different experiences of people on full teams, this is likely more observational bias than fact. You got to 8 in 1 run, another got to 10 in 1 run, another got to 10 in 2 runs, another got to 20 in 3 runs....and soon. Maybe they did break something....maybe...but it makes no sense that everyone who thinks that reports different results in the levels they made before the change.

Those people that were sued by record labels were participating in file sharing. So the uploading of the content is what got them sued for copyright infringement, not the downloading. It's just that in file sharing they happen to be one in the same. Not to mention that they quit going after people 10 years ago. They lost as many of the suits as they won, and most of the "wins" were actually people who settled rather than going to trial. Not likely that any entity is going to go that route because the expense far outweighs the gain.

They're moving so slowly, in fact, that they've yet to actually remove even one farming tool. It is a slow burn your right, I'm going to need more popcorn. This is going kinda like gas prices, slowly rising (or in this case removing effectiveness), while letting everyone get adjusted to the new status quo until suddenly, look everyone $20/gallon it's our lucky day! You remind me of those people who, after every patch, would loudly proclaim that the game would end because of (fill in the blank) change. And then went on about how they were right when the game finally shuttered, years later. So, when your prediction fails to come true, are you going to fess up to being wrong, or just continue to stress that its "just around the corner"?

See, now you're just really showing your age. Don't you know these days everything is "its all about me!"