Sadsquatch

Ha, I was feeling like the big man on campus with the six veteran levels on my main.

That sounds delightful! May I ask which server this happens on?

Thanks so much for the thoughtful answer, @UltraAlt. The historical background is fascinating. We'd drifted away long before free-to-play and probably before Architect Entertainment was a thing—at least, I wasn't really aware of Architect until my husband and I dove into Homecoming last year. (And FWIW I never engage in AE "farming," I don't think; I just really like trying out various player-written missions and have a lot of fun with those.) So I guess we missed all the f2p hullaballoo and yeah, while I don't want to trash anyone else's method of enjoying the game, the situation as you described on Freedom during that era sounds like it would have driven me away if I hadn't already wandered off. I don't have any complaints about Excelsior at this point (as I emerge from my mostly-soloing/duoing cocoon) but you've made some interesting observations about high population servers and this thread has piqued my curiosity about the self-proclaimed RP server. Maybe I need an alt over yonder just to see what it's like.

Thanks, @Abraxus!

A little off topic but I, uh, um. @UltraAlt, what does that mean? I play on Excelsior (and I think I played a little on Freedom way back in the day) and now I'm concerned lol! (Are we the bad kids?! I never know what's going on. 😄) Granted, I've always kept a fairly low profile so things like server reputations tend to fly over my head. When my spouse and I were playing circa 2006/07 I was too intimidated and socially weird to team up regularly and missed a lot of content because of that. Since we've started playing Homecoming, I'm just now getting really interested in checking out Task/Strike Forces and other cooperative challenges. (When we can, we team up with some real-life friends—but those guys play less than I want to so I am, at long last, actually proactively joining pickup groups. Only took...fifteen years or so?) I want to see and do everything, and in CoX there's just so much of everything—I love it. What I really appreciate about CoX is that there's some kind of game activity available for pretty much any mood: joining an eight-person PUG and steamrolling a Task Force can be a jolt of giddy fun or it can be an exercise in feeling kind of useless. Soloing is rewarding, duoing with my spouse is still fun as heck, getting RL friends together to tackle a Strike Force as a four- or five-person team is a peak gaming experience, etc. Like, I have to be in an extremely specific (and frankly mildly masochistic) mood to enjoy World of Warcraft, but I feel like City of Heroes/Villains has something for me whenever, if that makes sense. Sometimes, especially if real life is dragging me down, being part of an unstoppable killing machine is just what I need. But other times I do want strategy and teamwork and I want to feel like victory is earned. This game offers both, and that's why I keep coming back. I do feel for @RogueWolf; a steady diet of silent steamrollers would get boring quickly. I fully concur with everyone who suggests deliberately seeking out teams of three-to-five people and recruiting like-minded folks who enjoy a particular challenge. That's my general preference anyway so I'd love to see more of it in LFG. Heck, if I ever get to a point where I feel comfortable putting groups together myself I'll probably do that. Love the suggestion of making "star configuration" a thing, so that term has my (coveted, of course) endorsement as well. If anyone sees some villainous or roguish types from the Excelsior redside Super Group "Intensive Purposes" knocking about, that's probably me, my husband, or one of our friends. If we're not otherwise engaged, I'd be delighted to join in on some "star config" challenges. There's so much of the game I still haven't seen, and would love to tackle it with folks who don't expect me to already know how to do everything. 😉

Hello! I've been playing for a little while now but just now getting around to the forums and finally finally figuring out how to support the game financially. When the next donation window rolls around (April 24 if I understand correctly), will it be possible to set up a recurring monthly donation? Or is it one-time only each time the window opens? Thanks!