Bleak Sun

That did it. Thanks lemming! First time in almost two decades my main has her "correct" name!

Thank you for the FANTASTICALLY quick response. I will try that and post what happens.

Out of perverse curiosity, I clicked "Create Character" on the character select screen and tested the original, intended name for my main, waaaay back in the original NCSOFT version (it wasn't available then, on any server, and when I recreated the character in Champions Online and DCUO, I had to settle for something else as well). The server response was "Available and reserved". ASTONISHED!!! It absolutely was not available when I recreated the character for Homecoming. I backed out of character creation and tried to rename my main to that name, only to be told that "name is assigned to another character". Thinking I had just "reserved" the name by doing that, I quit the client, waited a few minutes, and relaunched. Tried again to rename my character, but still no go, "assigned to another character". Clicked "Create Character" and tested the name again, and AGAIN the response was "available and reserved". Quit, rebooted, tried again. "assigned to another character", until I tested it for a new character and was again told "available and reserved". What the H is going on? It's either available for use or it isn't. In every other attempt over the many years I have been involved with any version of CoX, if it's not available it's not available either way, and if it is available it's available both ways. Is this bugged now?

I frankly don't understand it in Homecoming. In the original game, all of my characters were level 25 to 30 before they had their first million (even if playing the market), and by 40something had around 20 million. In Homecoming everything is so ridiculously inflated that I have no idea what is considered "rich" because with three characters near the cap, none of them can afford to buy anything on the AH. 20 million is apparently dirt poor. Twinking is not an option here because my highest level toons can't afford it. Even the unresolved bugs in the costume editor cost tens of thousands to correct, and nothing cost that in the original game.

In contrast to some of the respondents, I generally come up with a concept first (based on a general understanding of all the powersets) with specific powersets in mind, then compose the look and bio. I rarely enter the game without a firm concept in mind, and if I do so without a bio, it's only because I haven't worked out all the details yet. But they'll be there before they reach level 10. I'm frankly surprised by the OP, I've been playing since this version went public (actually since 2006, and was online when they pulled the plug) and have yet to see any players in Homecoming on any shard who have bothered to create descriptions for their characters, except for one who (in ungrammatical English) apologized for not having "ideas" and instead left a bulleted list of possible origins for the character. I see characters with the "Roleplaying" title above their heads, but in my experience none of them are doing anything remotely related to RP and they don't have bios. I'm happy to discover that somebody is actually interested. Kudos to you. I don't think you need "roleplaying hooks" in your bio, I think you just need an engaging character story (not just "angry guy from Hell looking for revenge" but more like "Jane Smith had a normal childhood, but then the Rikti invaded and she discovered abilities she never knew she had...", or "Mary Jones was an investment banker with a growing family when terrorists changed her life forever..."). Anyone willing to actually RP will pick up on that and play along. Good luck finding them. (Bear in mind that I had some unsavory experiences in the original game with adolescent boys apparently acting on crushes on my characters, some [but not all] of whom were scantily clad, seemingly unaware that these are cartoons, and they had no idea that I was [at the time] in my late 20s with children and a completely unflattering body type. I did a lot of server jumping in those days.) Taking a cue from UltraAlt, I had a few "homage" characters in the original and only recreated one of them here. All my bios are third person, but for homages I try to explain how and why they are different from the character they copy (they only look like clones). If the costume is the only thing resembling a published character (completely different backstory and abilities), I don't bother explaining why they look like a published character because the concept is completely unrelated. If I get "genericized", I'll just change the costume.

It also means that Port Oakes will never see a successful zombie invasion simply because the zone is low level. So why bother having them there? The level 25 restriction, as Erydanus said, makes no sense. Temporary scalable content should scale. If you want an event to proc only above a certain zone population level, then fine, but that's not the way it used to be done in CoX either. "Back in the day" before NCSOFT execs turned en masse to the dark side, my main was one of only a handful of toons trapped in Brickstown during a zombie invasion. The event began anyway, and my character held off dozens solo, unable to get to the others to team. The event failed (no event rewards) because there weren't enough of us to make a dent in the zombie numbers before the timer ran out. It didn't fail to begin, however. A desperate struggle against an opponent that outnumbers you by hundreds is one of the things that being a hero is all about. If you think such a struggle has no place in this game, then you aren't in tune with the theme. Zombie invasions and Rikti raids should be implemented as significant threats, not something that suffers ED just because a small number of lowbies happened to be the only ones in the area to resist it.