DoctorHugh

Congratulations, and nice pic! The bride is beautiful! May you share many more such moments. :)

Personally I have only played on Indomitable and Reunion (so far). I've seen nothing but polite requests, thank yous, 'that was great!', "Can someone please summon an Ouro port at Ms. Liberty for me?" and various polite responses when I toss a buff on people. Even when a couple people are crowding out the University worktables with hordes of clanking bots and howling demons, I haven't seen any impolite responses. That said, I'm also only looking at the standard default channels so maybe there are global chat channels where I'm missing all the stuff. There was one guy being provocative in the help channel one day, basically saying that certain questions were silly to ask... that's the most rudeness I've seen.

An excellent time to tie weekly allowance to number of bombs disabled, threats countered, dishes washed, garbage taken out, and similar heroic actions.

From what I have seen there are a couple things that lead to these discussions: - A fair number of people have plenty of inf from high level mains, farming or marketeering that they can slot whatever they feel like (within reason) on new alts. - Many people are taking advantage of the fact that you can buy 'attuned' enhancements that level with you from the same pool as regular crafted sets. Thus you can start slotting sets as low as level 10, know that they will always level up (or down, if you exemplar) with you; and if at some point you no longer want that set, you buy an enhancement unslotter and toss it back on the market or pass it to your next alt. - People can raise Inf even on new accounts/alts simply by selling the early Merits they earn - earn merit, cash merit for 3 Enhancement Converters, sell Converters for 100,000 Inf each. Poof, easy money. Then you toss some affordable bids on the market for the IOs you'll be using in the next week and wait for them to fill. Poof, easy IO sets! Attuned ones, even. - There are sets that go for 3 million and up, and sets that often sell for <200,000. People who are using them early on are most likely shopping around on the cheap sets.

THAT I did not know... I must have missed that part of the lore somehow... Miss Liberty is Lord Recluse's niece; Maiden Justice was Lord Recluse's sister. Wait... so all of CoX is just a setting for another episode of Family Feud?

I picked 'atmosphere' for the poll, but it's really a variety of reasons: - Population is an issue. I mostly solo, so it's not about teaming... it's just nice to see other people running around, being able to toss a buff on people as you run by, etc. - Atmosphere for sure... even though parts of Hero side are trashed, it's not as grim a view as Redside. - Attitude: as a friend of mine said back when we played the original game, "If I wanted to deal with selfish, egocentric smart-alecky backtalkers every day, I'd have become a school teacher". - As others have mentioned, the storylines (while still interesting) just seem a little less developed than the Hero side. I've also noted that in most games with a 'good side' and a 'bad side', that the good side tends to get about 60-70% of the population. That said, back when you had to go Red to play Villain ATs, I happily split my time red and blue side. Now that I can take any AT anywhere, they are more 'origin story oriented'. That is, I think up a character concept, then think up some backstory, then decide whether that backstory applies to someone who started in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles. Then create them on the appropriate side, and leave it til later to decide if they are going to change alignment through game play. What that amounts to in practice is about 3/4 of new characters start blue side, 1/4 red.

I have a Logitech mouse. It flashes red sometimes, so it is probably either a laser mouse, or possessed by spirits from the Underworld. It has two special buttons on it, one of them makes a 'left click' happen, the other makes a 'right click' thing. There is also a round wheel between the two buttons, which I assume is where the miniature hamsters that make it work live.

Newspaper missions would be the 'zone' missions that you get from talking to your police Detective contact in each zone. You do 3 'newspaper' missions to unlock a Safeguard mission (usually a bank robbery?) that you talk to the Detective for. Happens in each zone beyond the starter Atlas/Mercy zone. Villain side you pick those up from contacts like Mikey the Ear and Drea the Hook in Port Oakes. (Edit: to clarify, you get a Newspaper 'contact' on zones in Villain side, and a Police Radio contact on hero zones, after you talk to the detective/fence in that zone) I'm not sure about boss/IO mission you refer to, but it sounds like you are talking about the Merit Reward vendor. You earn Merit Rewards for completing many story/Hero arcs, and use the Merit rewards to buy various things, among them things like recipes, IOs, Enhancement Converters etc.

A lot of it is a matter of taste, and taste is often most strongly influenced by what you get used to. I've played both games, as well STO and Neverwinter and EVE and LotRO and pretty much every decent MMO that's been out there. CoH wasn't my first MMO by a long shot, so that wasn't where my tastes were created. Many comments in the thread are bang on. But discussions of 'how powers are selected' and 'combat animations' etc. tend to fixate on mechanics, and mechanics aren't why we play games, for the most part. We play games because of the way they make us feel. For me, the difference comes down to this, at a high level: - CoX feels like a not-very-well rendered vision of an extensive 'real place and time', what is often called 'world-building' in fiction. - CO feels like a fairly well rendered version of a very limited, fake place. A minimalist caricature of a snapshot of a reality. In a novel, that would make the difference between a well-envisioned world, that you get immersed in despite some noticeable flaws; vs. a technically well-written book that you just can't get in to because the characters are all 2-dimensional and lack real depth and motivation.

Heh, like you OP, once I decided that I had heard enough about 'rogue servers' (I'm generally pretty skeptical of things) and figured I would give this a shot, 2 hours later I was grinning like a kid on Christmas as the CoH screens were loading up. An hour after that I was grinning like a kid on Christmas who just found out Santa was real! I was aware of most of the new primary/secondaries but hadn't gotten to play many of them on original - I just had too many heroes made already before they were added. I was a bit sad that I couldn't resurrect my old characters, but on the whole, new chars are the most fun anyway and I get to try out all the new stuff! Some 'new' things to be aware of: - The 'P2W Vendor' is available in the starting zone, even in the tutorial areas. The Prestige enhancements, powers, pets and travel/utility powers are really handy and free! - You can access the Auction House from anywhere by typing '/ah' in chat (not the quotes). Handy for dumping those excess Insps, picking up new ones, etc. - If you are looking to bang out a few levels fast, people seem to run the 'DFB' (Death From Below) trial a lot shortly after creation. - Many contacts who weren't accessible to you before (due to Origin type or whatever) are available now. You can start with all the Atlas City Hall contacts and work up from there. So... welcome home, bring the family, it's good to see everyone again! 8) Edit: Forgot an important one - using the Galaxy City tutorial, you get to 'choose sides' for any AT. So your Defender can start as a villain or your Brute as a hero. And talking to Null the Gull in Pocket D allows you to take older characters and change alignment.

Very soloable. Some classes have a slower start than others, although the P2W vendor bonus powers (Sands/Axe, Nemesis Staff, Blackwand) help a lot in filling out your early attacks for any archetype. The Prestige Enhancements help a lot too. Typically a lot of people who solo games, do so because it's just not efficient for them to spend the time looking to team up with someone, deciding what they are going to do, getting everyone there, waiting for everyone to be ready, etc. etc. One of the 'magic' things about CoH, IMO, was always the way that you could just jump on, type a quick 'Lvl 6 Blaster LFG' or even just say 'DFB forming pst for invite' and boom, 2 minutes later you have a group, people are teleporting/superspeeding to the entrance, the group slams in, starts to roll the content. Doesn't matter whether you have blasters or tanks or defenders or whatever, except in rare cases any team composition tends to work. Team not working out? Thank them for the run, drop team, pop out another LFG. Boom 3 minutes later you're on another team. I often felt that CoH was the game where you could say "we're soloing fast, together". :) As others have mentioned, I often solo because I want to knock of some contacts and missions, and teaming just levels too fast. So just start a character that amuses you, give it a few levels, if it isn't working out try another. I generally find that in CoH, it is more important to decide how I enjoy playing, than to plan for solo/team play. - Sometimes I just want to hammer whole groups. AoE and Control and AoE debuffs - Blasters, Sentinels, Controllers/Doms, Defenders can do this (with the correct power set choices) - Maybe I want to just slamhammer single targets, BOOM you're down! Brutes, Scrappers, again Blasters though trickier. - Sometimes I feel like just neutralizing entire groups of foes while I decide what to do with them. Controllers/Doms again, some Defenders (Dark/Dark), some Sentinels maybe. - Other times I just want that earthshaking KABOOM of my powers. Superstrength, most Earth sets, maybe some of the newer melee sets (I haven't tried them all). Find the style that entertains you just to be doing it, and you will soon find that solo, team, simply running around and helping other people without even teaming... it's all fun.

Dear Homecoming Team: City of Heroes has stayed on my PCs, even been ported forward to two new ones since The Day That Shall Not Be Named, lurking quietly in the shadows. Because I knew that somewhere, somehow, there was a medi-porter chugging away, trying to revive The City in all its' glory. Patience is a virtue, they say, because... Who Put the Bomp? ( ) YOU DID! * And Guess Who's Back? ( ) I AM! And I cannot thank you enough! GOOO TEAM! * (with additional thanks to all the Cryptic/Paragon CoX developers, past, not-so-past, and present!)

Well, I'm a bit late to the party, but ever since I found I could fire up my old CoH folder (never deleted!), this is the song that's been going through my head: Guess Who's Back Change a few names and words and the lyrics become quite appropriate. Also, apparently Shady is an altoholic and has been spending a lot of time in the character creator...