Apparition

There are two issues with this. 1. Homecoming uses OVH data centers to host their servers. They currently use an OVH data center in Germany for the Reunion shard, and an OVH data center in Montreal, Quebec for everything else. For... obvious reasons, nothing is hosted in an OVH data center in the United States. There are no OVH data centers in western Canada. So that leaves out the west coast. Now there is an OVH data center in Singapore, and one in Australia, but: 2. Homecoming has too many shards now as is. Right now, Homecoming only has the population to support two shards, not five. A sixth shard would be too much. I suppose that the Homecoming staff could move Torchbearer or Indomitable to the data center in Singapore or Australia, but that would pretty much force everyone currently playing on that shard to move, and at this point they're playing on that shard because they don't want to move. Not a staff member, just two cents for whatever they're worth.

Guild Wars 2 didn't kill CoH. There were a lot of things combined that killed CoH. 1. DC Universe Online launched in January 2011. I know a lot of people here poo-poo the game for various reasons (some of which I agree with), but the fact is that it took a chunk of subscribers away from CoH. 2. Star Wars: The Old Republic launched in December 2011. That took a significantly bigger chunk of subscribers away from CoH. 3. Paragon Studios developers were developing another game outside of City of Heroes, against NCSoft's wishes. In other words, they were using money meant solely for the development of CoH, on CoH and on another game entirely. NCSoft executives really didn't like this when they got wind of it. 4. Between the losses incurred from DCUO and SWTOR, CoH was barely profitable. Then in late 2012, Gazillion and Marvel announced Marvel Heroes. NCSoft executives figured, "That's that. CoH is barely in the black as it is, Marvel Heroes will surely see it go in the red. And we've been disrespected by Paragon Studios anyhoo. Close Paragon Studios and CoH, posthaste."

I kind of wish that NC approved Paragon Studios' pitch for a City of Heroes 2 using the Unreal Engine 3 back in 2008. It would have released around 2013. However, it would have also been designed for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, so would have played quite a bit differently and would have more than likely been an action combat game like every other MMOG released in the past several years.

Oh, so it's Excelsior screwing up e-mail, superpack opening, and server transfers for everyone.

Right now, Targeting Drone is slotted with two level 53 Cytoskeletons and a Gaussian's chance for Build-Up proc for a 75.93% endurance discount. Voltaic Sentinel is heavily frankenslotted with every enhancement boosted +5 to give me a 78.55% endurance discount. Even with that, the endurance usage is nuts. Granted, I keep on and use Super Speed while in missions, but I do that with every other character I've ever played. Even with Sonic Manipulation Blasters, I've just never experienced this kind of endurance usage on a Blaster before on Homecoming, so it threw me for a loop. Yeah, I've seen a bunch of others say that they don't use Voltaic Sentinel, but then there goes the majority of your single target damage. Hrm...

Issue 2, last I recall. Which is... well, yeah. About a year after sunset IIRC. Like City of Titans, I don't expect it to ever see the light of day, but I commend the effort. On the other hand, I do fully expect to see Ship of Heroes. But they're counting on a minimum of ten thousand monthly subscribers, and ehhhhh....

There’s a rumor that a Star Wars: The Old Republic 2 MMOG is in the works, but it’s only a rumor, will take at least a few years if true, and will very likely have action combat like every other MMOG released in the past eight years.

There aren’t any. Anything newer than about 2012 is going to lean into action combat as tab targeting is dead. Tab targeting made sense in the days of dial-up modems and even DSL. Now, not so much.

Things are a lot more freeform on Excelsior, unfortunately. Here's what's planned: Zone mothership raid at 3 P.M. ET/12 P.M. PT. Hamidon raids in The Hive at 10 P.M. ET/7 P.M. PT. Friday nights, there's also another round of Hamidon raids in The Hive at 12 A.M. ET/9 P.M. PT. That's it. Now, if the leaders are available, there may be Hamidon raids in The Abyss anywhere between 5:30 P.M. ET - 6:30 P.M. ET/2:30 P.M. PT - 3:30 P.M. PT. There are also a bunch of other zone mothership raids, but they're unscheduled, and you don't know if they're going to happen nor when. It's just the way Excelsior has always been. Things are not nearly as scheduled on Excelsior as they are on the other four shards, for better or for worse.

I've been toying with a level 50 Electric Blast/Devices Blaster build on the beta server. I've never played Electric Blast before, and I haven't played Devices since Issue 5. Is it just me, or is holy heck this combination an endurance hog? Between Targeting Drone, Voltaic Sentinel, and Gun Drone, I run out of endurance more quickly than I do on Sonic Resonance Corruptors, and that's with the Agility Radial Paragon Alpha. The small amount of endurance drain doesn't seem to help much. Is Electric Blast better with another secondary? Any tips or tricks? Just curious. I'd like to play both power sets, but now I'm leaning towards that they're not a great match.

Homecoming currently is at Issue 27, based on the Issue 24 beta prior to sunset. Issue 5 was a long, long time ago, even long prior to sunset.

There is one caveat in regards to the tutorial. Should you play gold side, you do not want to skip the tutorial under any circumstances or you will not be able to do the undercover options while playing the first 20 levels.

Second time in six days that Excelsior crashed. This is a plot by the Homecoming staff to get people to check out the other shards.

You have to understand some things. 1. The City of Heroes player base is largely split into two age groups. The first is 40+, and you'll see a lot of them in their 50s and 60s. I'm in that age group myself. The second is in their 20s and 30s, those who played CoH back when it was live as pre-teens and teenagers. 2. The first group that is 40+, is largely set in its ways. It happens to most people as they get older, sooner or later. They extremely dislike change, even if that change is objectively better. Discord didn't exist until after CoH had been sunset for a few years. Discord = change. Change = bad. Discord = new. New = scary. 3. Because of #2, many CoH players have no idea what Discord is, as you've seen. They think that it's a voice chat program or at least primarily used for voice chat, and don't realize that it can be used in other ways. 4. The vast, vast majority of City of Heroes' content is very easy. Now the vast majority of the CoH player base either mostly plays blue side, or plays blue side exclusively. Blue side content is face rolling on keyboard easy. Most of them won't even bother playing red side at all. God help you should you try to get them to play gold side. The vast majority of the player base just is not interested in content that is more difficult than your standard blue side mission. Look at how many Task Force Commander TFs are ran at +0. 5. Because of #4, Discord isn't needed at all. Just use LFG and a couple of global channels, and you're good to go. 6. The only remaining actually difficult content in the game are the Classic LRSF, the Worthy Opponent Classic LRSF, Ruthless and higher ASF, the Relentless ASF with the Vanguard AVs, and Really Hard Way Magisterium iTrial. For those, you're far, far, far better off looking for a supergroup to help you. The extreme majority of the CoH player base just isn't interested in that kind of challenge. Trying to use LFG for that will just end in failure as you've experienced, and the CoH community at large outside of specific supergroups has no use for Discord.

Haven't you ever noticed that zombie invasions are much more prevalent when either Katie Hannon TF or Virgil Tarikoss SF is a WST? :D

Blue side zombie invasions are triggered by completing the Katie Hannon TF. Red side zombie invasions are triggered by completing the Virgil Tarikoss SF.

To be fair, the current population on Rebirth is 52 players. I've seen Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Reunion each have smaller numbers than that in the American Eastern time mornings and early afternoons.

Brute. Always Brute for Electric Armor, IMO. Going Scrapper would intentionally handicap your armor's biggest advantage, its resists.

One warning about Radiation Melee. While the attacks hit like a truck, they're also incredibly slow. I can't count how many times on an Apex Task Force or on an iTrial, I was hit by a death patch or a Nova Fist because I had just started firing off an attack and couldn't move. I've deleted both of my Radiation Melee Brutes as a result. Although that isn't saying much since I've deleted every Brute I've ever made on Homecoming.

Yep. If Rebirth had a 64 bit client and server with a modernized backend like Homecoming, I'd go check it out since quite a few people here tell me that I should play on Rebirth anyhoo.

IMO, I don't want AE removed. I would, however, like to see it curbed. Either by cutting XP to 25%, and/or somehow requiring having two level 50 characters on an account before acquiring XP in AE, and/or removing it from the starter zones. Maybe a little, but IIRC the Homecoming developers will not make nor maintain separate code for the various shards, so this is a non-starter anyhoo.

A lot of people don't want to deal with Excelsior's heavily prevalent farming culture (not only the absolutely obnoxious LFG farm spam, but also that a large part of the Excelsior player base treats absolutely all content in the game as a farm - which is why I left Excelsior fourteen months ago), and don't want to deal with RPers on Everlasting because of the various horror stories (including some posted on these forums). So they play on the smaller shards. At least for Torchbearer, the problem is that two of the largest SGs on Torchbearer simultaneously up and decided to move to Excelsior back in November. What was a small shard back in October immediately lost about a third of its population. Since then, it's been steadily draining to Excelsior to the point that we've now lost about half the population we had several months ago. And on top of that, some of the Torchbearer population are tired of not finding teams, but find the idea of moving to Excelsior so horrid that they've either mostly stopped playing altogether, or are now playing on non-Homecoming CoH servers, (which I don't understand at all, but c'est la vie).

Dual Pistols is a very good power set and just fine as is. Fight me.