Vanden

I always thought Blapper was a silly thing. We needed a special name for Blasters who actually used their melee attacks? That's just a proper Blaster! Blasters are damage-dealers. What we should've had was a special name for wimpy Blasters who only ever used ranged attacks.

I never made much use of the merit reward system in the old days, because everything was way too expensive. I had a chance to look at the prices in the merit vendors on Torchbearer, however, and they're way more reasonable. For example: Uncommon IO recipes were 50-75 merits on the Live servers. On Torchbearer, I can't find any over 20. PVP IOs were unavailable for Merits on Live. On Torchbearer, they can be had for 100 merits. Archetype enhancements were 400 merits on Live, plus 25 million inf. On Torchbearer they're just 100 merits. These are prices I can see myself working towards. I haven't gotten a chance to see the alignment merit prices yet, but I hope they're similarly reduced. I have very UN-fond memories of doing five alignment missions almost every day for two months to get my hands on a Gladiator's Armor +3% Defense IO, and I'm not eager to repeat that.

If there's a cost to change your costume I doubt it's different here than it was on the official Live servers.

ED actually worked out pretty well for me. Before ED, I had all my attacks six-slotted for damage, but I had terrible Endurance issues. After ED, I suddenly had three extra slots in all my attacks. I filled them with two recharges and one end cost reduction. Even though I no longer had perma-Hasten, my powers recharged as fast as before (faster, even, since I still had Hasten up whenever I could), but now they cost less endurance, to the point that I basically never ran out any more. It was a revelation.

Yeah, but it also made it so your name always had your global handle appended to it, so instead of "Justice Guy" I'd always be "Justice Guy@Vanden" or something like that.

Unfortunately I don't think any animation or FX work was done on those sets before the shutdown, or if it was it didn't make it to the i24 files.

How many of the powersets that weren't in the official game at shutdown were made by Paragon Studios, and how many have been cobbled together by the fans for these servers? For example, Psionic Melee looks like the real deal, but Radiation Melee and Tactical Arrow looks like it was pulled together from existing FX.

Yup, Vanden here, maybe better known by my main Powerthrust, whose terrible name I will never, ever change.

Seeing those old forums is just as emotional for me as getting back the game itself. Edit: OMG! I found a post I made! I got my old avatar back!