Charistoph

Yeah, one of the best examples of Vanilla WoW's problems were the so-called "hybrids". Druids and Paladins were supposed to be able to Tank, even Shamans could a little, theoretically. However, they often lacked the tools the Warriors had to be effective at it, especially as the content you were facing was more difficult than your equipment or level could address. They were often left to healing, especially when their damage couldn't keep up any more than their tanking could. Even the raiding gear pushed them in to those pigeon holes as well. Oddly enough, I tried to talk to someone about this a few months back, and they asked if I thought that I could trust the programmers to make the changes without destroying the game. My own thoughts are, you're already expecting them to make the game as original, and it won't be.

I like the principle of it, but I find the methods to meet the rep grinds with obnoxious pain. Warlords was the worst, and Legion was rough, with BfA actually managing to be a LITTLE helpful instead of targeted obnoxiousness. I found that running a Human as my first character through made it just enough faster for looking so boring. I probably should have pushed my Hunter to be first, but my Death Knight can tank, so he gets dungeon queues faster to finish certain decent quest rewards.

I played WoW, CoH, and SW:tOR all around the same time. I like each for different things. I've played FFXI, and as someone who doesn't know how to win friends, much less influence people, it wasn't the game for me. I played Vanguard, Saga of Heroes, and I found it more enjoyable than Everquest 2. I even tried EQ 2 for free, and never got much farther than the first few levels with a character. Vanguard was a little to group-centric for me to be able to get far, but I still enjoyed it. I still play WoW, and just finished the latest Pathfinder and have basically played it for in-game currency since right after BfA launched. I have a Vanilla and Wrath server I like to put some time on, too. I haven't played SW:tOR too much because they are soo pay-to-play without inconveniences these days. CoH is still the best superhero MMORPG on (or off now) the market, though.

Still confusing caution and intelligent forethought as FUD. No one has presenting anything in a way that represents fear, so that leaves out the first part. It has been presented in a reasoned manner. Uncertainty will definitely be in play, because until another company actually comes out and says something, we don't know what they will do. The fact that nothing has happened (so far) is an indication that tacit (meaning silent, unvoiced, or unspoken) permission has been granted by virtue of apathy. But until a statement has been made or these systems have been around for some time, that uncertainty will still be quite proper. Doubt? I don't see anyone presenting anything to doubt the system as yet. If they had, they wouldn't be here in the first place. If anything, the doubt is that any major business is even going to bother doing anything about it. So, the only one pushing any FUD here is you by continuing to call it that.

There was a Cartoon Network show that involved a sheep avoiding the military. The whole unit was populated by contradictory names like General Specific, Major Minor, Private Public, etc. The show was rather stupid, but I remember the names. Edit: Since I'm waxing historical and this is a thread of punny names, a webcomic of yore for your pleasure.

Kind of my point: Fantasy isn't a dead end, it's just poorly produced more often than not. Heck, for every sci-fi video game out there, you're going to find about 3-4 times as many fantasy games, especially in the MMORPG environment. Interestingly enough, my first MMORPG was a sci-fi game made by Westwood Studios (long may EA burn) called Earth & Beyond. The closest to it nowadays would be Eve and Star Trek Online (it's more of a mix of the two). Much like CoH here, it has had a group or two working to allow people to play it again. EA shut it down because it wasn't matching Everquest's numbers. This was announced before CoH went live, much less WoW.

Ironically, two of the most popular "future" franchises involve a mix of swords and guns: Star Wars and Warhammer 40K. And a lot of the Fantasy movies were just simply not picked up by big money, so that's why they fall flat.

I haven't wanted to do something so... extreme. However, I did want to tie a character who used their super-buff to do a costume change for its duration, and when it reached its timer, either change back or go to a more loose or tattered version. Think Super Saiyan on a timer.

That's assuming, of course, that everyone is in agreement that the latest chapters in the saga are just universally bad. There are some of us who enjoy them, while also acknowledging that they are not quite the same as the Star Wars I grew up with. Doesn't make them inherently bad, just different. :) I would second this for the most part. If nothing else, I've enjoyed the first 2 of the new ones more than I remember liking the first 2 of the Prequel Trilogy, though it's kind of a wash. Phantom Menace was just... bad. Attack of the clones I barely remember. I did rather like Revenge of the Sith, so that was a positive. In the Sequel Trilogy the first movie was similar to Attack of the Clones for me, imminently forgettable. In what is probably a super unpopular opinion, I rather liked the second movie. TBH, I liked it about as well as any Star Wars I've seen. It was basically a movie about imperfect mentors/parental figures who had experienced colossal failure & then having them try to change & be better. Eventually Luke accepts his failures & resolves to press on in spite of them, and he gets a nice little conclusion to his arc. Now, ole Ben Swolo is a character I really dislike in large part because his arc has been pretty aweful, since it feels (like many things from the 1st to the 2nd movie) they decided to abandon the arc they originally intended for him & as such his actions in the 2nd film feel disjointed &... silly. It also feels like they really bungled the arc for the super-secret Leaderguy, at least for now... But there's at least 1 more movie & that could let them end on a strong note. I'm not burying my opinion on this set of movies just yet. Anyway, there's a lot of poorly thought out plot points & bad acting throughout the whole series. At the very least Hayden Christiansen was worse in the Prequels IMO than anything in the Sequel Trilogy to date. Honestly compared to the Prequels I'm not sure why the Sequel Trilogy gets so much crap. Of course, this is all opinion. 8) I won't disagree on the acting, but the basic plot points of the Last Jedi were so absolutely horrible that I found them to be untenable. When you start getting in to the details of everything, it made it ten times worse. There were so few things done right in that movie that I would have thought the Three Stooges were trying to right a dramatic war piece. I could go off on a huge post of details, but there are other who have presented those views better than I can.

That's not actually true. Once upon a time, it was actually all the little people saving their nickels and dimes that gave most banks the majority of the assets they could issue loans against. But nowadays, there's this little thing called quantitative easing. Banks no longer have to have assets in 1:1 ratio to the loans they give out - they are allowed to, in essence, create money out of thin air. And that's why savings accounts pay sh_t interest nowadays. It used to be, the bank would offer 2% , 3%, sometimes even 4% for a passbook savings account, with maybe fifty dollars in it. Because they needed hundreds of thousands of people to save a few hundred apiece, so that they could loan Moneybacgs McCEO two million for his latest capital venture. They don't need the small depositors anymore. So they stopped offering those interest rates as enticements to deposit your savings with THEM instead of the bank down the block. You should probably review what Quantitative Easing is. Even then 1:1 ratio can be exploited rather significantly. Either way, the Big Corps have the Big Cash, and it isn't stored under mattresses. With everything going to digital transactions, banks need less incentive for people to store their money with them. Best example of mismanagement is Star Wars. Don't always expect the big chairs to know what is best and who to have in charge of a project.

Oh, it's much more than that. Big Corps provide the basic funds the banks use to create loans. No big corps, no money bags to get loans from, no loans for start ups to work with. Not to mention, Big Corps advocate for specific regulations, usually ones that they can diversify around and smaller businesses cannot. Big Corps are fine so long as there is somewhat of a leash on them. The biggest economic travesties in the past involved big businesses with government interference.

I do NOT!!! How dare you say such a thing! You should close your account and give your computer to Goodwill for saying such a thing! Now that the sarcastic hyperbole has been said, that is soo true.

Honestly, I think expansion of Bruising to other powers, an extension of the AOE size of the auras (fixing Willpower's ticking while we're there), and providing debuffs to control powers would probably be the abilities I'd look in to first. Aside from that, a little minor splash damage would be nice as a side benefit. We're hitting effectively enough so that their friends feel it. There are two roles to the Tank. One is to be a shield of the group. The other is tied to that by being a control element and controlling where groups of goes and directs their attention. I think improving the control aspects of the Tanker versions of the powers would also be one way to help address what the Tankers are doing there.

On the other hand, you have companies like EA which do little more than use their Madden money to buy out a company, fire the old staff after a year, and put on new staff who have less investment in the IP and make some pretty abysmal doorware then let the IPs wallow. Ah, Westwood Studios, how I miss thee. Many of the problems of WoW, and other poor decisions, have been noted as coming from the Activision side, not the Blizzard studio. And those mega publishers have yet to really feel the bite of their remoteness. It would take all of the sports games crashing to kill EA with any effectiveness. Depending on how it happens, the death of WoW could put Activision in to the hairs of EA or find itself breaking apart.

This is pretty much what I am assuming. If they crunch Vanilla down to 1-30 for example, you'd level to 1-30 in roughly the same amount of time has it used to take to level 1-60, or w/e vanilla caps out at now. Getting to 1-60 (if 60 is the new cap) would take as long as 1 - 120 It doesn't have to take quite that long, but maybe a good middle ground. One reasons for the level squish is to make hitting the final content less intimidating, and not everyone will have access to heirlooms and xp potions to run through the equivalent of 110 levels in 3 hours.

Sounds like they want to cut things in half, and probably do it with the next expansion. Which suggests, assuming each area keeps at least a 5-level spread: Vanilla: was 1-40, will be 1-20 The Burning Crusade: was 41-60, will be 21-30 Wrath of the Lich King: was 61-80, will be 31-40 Cataclysm: was 81-85, will be 41-45 Mists of Pandaria: was 86-90, will be 46-50 Warlords of Draenor: was 91-100, will be 51-55 Legion: was 101-110, will be 56-60 Battle for Azeroth: was 111-120, will be 61-65 (whatever the next expansion winds up being called): would have been 121-130, will instead be 66-70 ... and I honestly don't see how they can pull that off, and not torpedo the game entirely. Either they will have to basically remove (or otherwise invalidate) the vast majority of content from Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath (and large chunks of Warlords, Legion, and BFA too), or else, they will have to make that "get a new level" experience happen half as often. Either way, they're going to have to rebalance EVERYTHING, from the Newb Zones right on up. That is an enormous amount of work, for a dubious-at-best payoff. ... It seems they didn't learn their lesson with what they tried to do with Flight in Warlords and Legion: they are trying to put the genie back in the bottle, while the genie scowls and says "to hell with THAT noise". It's not going to work. It will be one more stake in the heart of a successful game .... and one more roadside sign on the way to the end of said road. Not as hard as you think, partly because your level ranges are currently off as of Legion, and partly because of one 'new' mechanic that actually makes a lot of this more interesting. Currently it is: Vanilla: 1-60, but beyond the initial zones, they level up with you from their base level up to 60 (the initial zones like Durotar or Teldrassil max out at 20). So, Westfall will match your level from 10-60, while Silithus mobs start at around level 45-50 and will match your level up to 60. BC and Wrath: covers from about 58-80, and it's not hard to level through all of one expansion, not finish all the content, and never have touched a dungeon. Cataclysm and Mists: will cover the 80-90 ranges, and they still require the introductory quests to access them properly. Went to My Hyjal? The portal to Pandaria won't open for you till you go through airship assault questlines. Oddly enough, two zones of content will usually get you through that entire range with a dungeon or two. Sadly from there, you are correct. However, the same mechanic of the mobs in the zones leveling with you will still apply. Each zone will have a minimum level for the mobs you will face here (up through WoD, as Legion and BfA allow you to choose which zones you attack first). It is this last mechanic which will actually make things a lot easier to do level crunching with. In addition to the level crunch, one thing they can do is make it take longer to reach each level, and once you start getting in to Legion content, your progression tends to be based more on your equipment then yourself (i.e. Artifact Weapons and Heart of Azeroth) any way.

I think someone mentioned that... That is an amazing sword and one of my favorite mogs to use for my Death Knight (there are not a lot of green swords, and that is one of the most amazing 2h swords in the game).

In many other avenues, such as print magazines and online review sites, WoW did get more access, but then, if you talked about Diablo 2, Starcraft, or Warcraft 2/3 during that time, than that would lead to introductions of WoW. As I said earlier, being big enough and strong enough to basically self-publish goes a long way, and those three game series allowed Blizzard to write their ticket. Paragon Studios just didn't get a good deal with their publisher, which lead to the Sunset.

Two things that WoW did better than CoX: 1) Work off of a popular and well established universe. Warcraft was incredibly popular, and I enjoyed all 3 games and both expansions before WoW came out. 2) Basically self-published. Blizzard retained all its rights when it published WoW instead of selling its soul to a foreign investor that wasn't directly invested in the labor (instead, they later sold its soul to a LOCAL investor that wasn't directly invested in the labor).

Loyal Flush is good. Sewernaut would be another. To extend PVC, Power Valve Cali? How much femininity do you want in the name?

Having a dedicated redside server may not be so useful. I like having all my characters on one server, and I'd hate to have to move everybody just so my Villains have some friend time.

If you are a punny type, go dark and make them all armored up. Corruptors were the first to have a Dark and Stormy Knight, after all. Controllers only just gained the capability before Sunset. (Defenders would be a Stormy and Dark Knight, sadly).

Howabout, "With a bit of PTSD". It's one I've managed with a bit thanks to the changes and exposure therapy. Keep in mind, I am not one who went around begging for teams to help me accomplish my goals, and my first characters tended to be Defenders and Tankers. I had a few missions like the ones described in the early days in both Hollows and Perez Park which had me inventing alternative epithets. One of the things I remember was facing Frostfire on my Stone/Energy Tanker after the change, and absolutely gobsmacked when I was frozen in to a pillar of ice WITH ROOTED ON! It shocked me so much, it's a good thing I couldn't do anything otherwise it would have hurt much more to my ego far more if I could have. Took the jerk out on my next attempt because I came back with a good bunch of Break Frees to make SURE that he couldn't do that to me again.

Things like XP and invasion events are one thing. The methods for this stuff have existed since Live. Removal of AE requires actual art assets, etc Sorry, read your post a little too quick. I thought you were saying that setting the AE Xp to nothing would be a challenge. I think adjusting the maps (like turning the doors "off" or removing the NPCs) would be easier than trying to remove all the AE code whole hog.

With all due respect, in general with spaghetti code things get hardcoded that shouldn't have been. So in all likelihood it's far more work than just setting AE_XP=False somewhere. Never assume something is "easy, just change a variable!" especially in a dated MMO with years of bug-fixes and add-ons tacked into it, which tend to complicate the "if I change X, what unintended consequences happen?" factor. And how much actual demand is there for a non-AE server? The only way I could see it being justified if there were enough people wanting and willing to play on such a server, modding code and running a server just for "that one guy" is a bit disproportionate. I don't do AE, but it gives the people who would otherwise be spamming tells of "PL MEH" some content to rush through instead, so I'm perfectly fine with it staying. Considering they can (and have) set the xp to half (and rather quickly, I might point out), setting it to zero would follow the same path of difficulty. It's one thing to make a request that has no correlation to what they have already done in the code (say, a completely new powerset like Gravity Melee) and dismiss it for the spaghetti code argument, but quite another when they have already made a similar change already.