Lunar Ronin

This has been an issue since live, when the patron power pools were lowered from level 40 to 35.

I played Star Wars: The Old Republic at launch. I made a serious mistake of both playing on the wrong server and with the wrong crowd, so after about a year I left. I gave it another go around 2016, but I was completely on my own and had no friends with me. I found the leveling satisfying and made it to the level cap, but I made no friends during my leveling and I'm not one for joining a big guild/clan/supergroup/what have you, so I left. I tried it again around 2019... and the leveling has been so watered down. Leveling was both ridiculously easy and ridiculously quick compared to both 2012 and 2016. It's obvious you're being funneled to the maximum level. I got so bored while leveling that I left. I tried it again last year. Leveling felt even more ridiculously easy and ridiculously quick. I got bored again and left.

Former World of Warcraft developer Greg 'Ghostcrawler' Street stated in a X/Twitter thread recently that quick leveling in MMORPGs was a mistake, one he won't repeat in his new MMORPG in development. Good on him. I happen to concur. Raph Koster (lead developer of Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and the upcoming Stars Reach), said recently that the concept of endgame is a relatively new phenomenon. It simply didn't exist in the MUDs and MUSHes of the 1990s, nor even the MMORPGs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Before, it took you a few to several months to level your character and experience the game, and that was it. When you reached maximum level, you either started a new character, or in some of the MUDs and MUSHes of old players would become developers. The concept of endgame didn't really take hold until the 2000s, and didn't become the focus until the late 2000s/early 2010s. As someone who played MUDs and MUSHes back in the 1990s, and played MMORPGs starting in 2002, Raph Koster is correct. Endgame didn't become the focus of an online game until sometime after World of Warcraft became mainstream. Perhaps with Raph Koster's Stars Reach and Greg Street's Ghost, the trend will start reversing.

No, and to be blunt calling anything fictional the "9/11 of" anything is a bit crass.

Yeah, agreed. The extra bump in Indomitable's population at this point is mostly AE farmers that actually play on Excelsior and/or Everlasting.

One of the other rogue City of Heroes servers tried halving XP globally to 0.5, and it crashed the server as a result. So I'm not sure setting XP below 1.0 is possible. However, if it is, I'm all for having those options at the START vendor. If not though, please, remove it. It's (beyond) time.

If being able to halve XP via the START vendor isn't possible, then I must concur. The seemingly permanent double XP on Indomitable has long outstayed its welcome, IMO. It makes leveling normally a major pain in the rear.

I've been playing City of Heroes off and on for 19 years. Blue side City of Heroes is about as difficult as opening a box of Cheerios. Red side is slightly more difficult. Gold side can actually be a bit challenging, depending on AT and power sets. Soloing gold side on a Mastermind isn't exactly a walk in the park. Advanced mode isn't difficult either. Not even 4*. You just need to have a decent build (note: decent, not meta), and the ability to pay attention. That's it. I don't have much to compare it to other MMORPG wise as I don't play many, (most are medieval fantasy and I just find the genre dull as dirt). Here's the thing: Most people don't play City of Heroes for challenge. I think you know that, and I think that most others know that. I'm a loner, so I realize that this is a bit of a parodox: I play City of Heroes for both the super-powered fantasy, and for the social aspect. If I want a challenge in City of Heroes, I play gold side. One of the main reasons that I don't play blue side is because, yeah, it's too easy. This is just IMO, but as someone who has done and led advanced modes but no longer does so: It doesn't help that people have turned advanced modes into a meta build e-peen competition. It makes more casual players think that the advanced modes are more difficult than they actually are. Heck, some of those meta build e-peen competitors think that advanced modes are really difficult, which is just amusing. But I digress.

I know that this is easier said than done, but the trick is to form your own Labyrinth run and run it as a kill most/steamroll if other Labyrinth leaders are all running it as a speed run. I lead a group on the Indomitable shard. I actually had a couple of people tell me that they did a speedy Dr. Aeon SF with someone else, and hated it because they felt rushed and felt like everything was skipped. So I formed and led a kill most/steamroll Dr. Aeon SF. It took us about two hours and 20 minutes, about a hour and 50 minutes longer than the speed run they did... but they enjoyed it. They found it much more fun, because they got to actually see the content, and smell the roses. There are different ways to run content. Be the change you want to see.

My condolences on your loss.

This is the way. One star in player notes, and then /kick.

Triple XP.

Yes. When the NC agreement announcement happened in January, many new players flocked to Homecoming. A lot of people have this crazy notion that they absolutely simply must play on the most crowded server/shard of a MMOG. As a result, Excelsior became completely overwhelmed with people, heavily overloading the shard. Queues and shard crashes ensued. Homecoming decided to enable double XP on the three lowest populated shards to entice people to move the heck off of Excelsior and play on other shards. It isn't needed now. The flood of people that came in January through March all left and Homecoming's player population is back to where it was a year ago. However, much to my chagrin, the double XP remains on Indomitable and Reunion, with Torchbearer getting a 50% XP bonus.

The host OuroDev uses was hit by Hurricane Beryl in early July. Since then, their host has been down more than up. Just have to periodically check.

When your biggest competitor (in this case, Overwatch 2), is free-to-play, buy-to-play is just not going to work at all in this day and age.

Brute will be fine. Thank you! Steady Indomitable's second campaign is full with Glacier Peak and Midnyte.

Howdy! Steady Indomitable is about to start its second campaign next Saturday, September 7th, at 3 P.M. ET/12 P.M. PT. The plan is to run every Saturday for approximately two hours. We will all start villain side, with Matthew Burke's story arc. Once we reach level 20, we'll start making our way to the Vigilante alignment, and then run Vigilante story arcs and Vigilante tip and alignment missions until level 50. All missions will be kill most/steamroll, there will be no speed running. We currently have six players including myself, and we're looking for two more. Currently we have an Electrical Armor/Radiation Melee Tanker, Assault Rifle/Radiation Emission Corruptor, Dual Pistols/Marine Affinity Corruptor, Earth Control/Earth Assault Dominator, Psi Blast/Time Manipulation Blaster, and either a Mind Control/Marine Affinity Controller, Plant Control/Marine Affinity Controller, or Staff Reflexes/Super Reflexes Scrapper. The only three rules are: no XP boosters, no speed running, and have fun! If this sounds like fun, feel free to join our Discord server here.

It's a jail, some place for the GMs to send naughty people to if they do naughty things during an official costume contest in Echo Plaza or something. Not being able to get in (or out) other than by GM intervention is quite intentional.

I can't believe that Invision doesn't have an add-on that automatically locks threads after no one has posted in it for a year, like most other forums software have.

You said before that the ZIP archive works for you. What happens when you try to update that? If Mids closes, acts like it is updating, and then tries to update again, make sure Mids is closed and go to the folder Mids is in. Run cleanup.exe in the folder.

No problem. When I have a lot of time on my hands, I like to occasionally peruse the archive for a stroll down memory lane. It hurts when I occasionally come across a post made by friends who have gone beyond the rim. Some of my old posts make me wince as well. So many things have changed over the past 20 years, ourselves included. Then again (looks at the OP), some things remain the same.

Disable cel shading.

Ding, ding, ding. When I was going through the old blue boards digging for Ultimo's old threads, I saw a lot of posted builds in 2009 and 2010. Every single one was SOs only, and this was years after IO enhancements came out. Granted, it was live, enhancements were a lot more expensive back then, but still. But then what do we have here? All SOs. In 2021 and 2023, on Homecoming, where IO enhancements are much less expensive. That's fine. You can still play on SOs outside of Incarnate content and advanced modes. But you're not going to solo AVs (with certain exceptions), and you're not going to last long against them solo either.

Don't forget classic old blue board threads like these: Defenders balance The State of Invulnerability Damage output? This game is tedious

The Mender Lazarus Task Force used to reward ten reward merits back on live, but it looks like the reward merits were removed when SCoRE/Resurgence/the old secret server converted the Ouroboros Task Forces and Strike Forces into story arcs.