Aug 26, a classic mmorpg releases. How will

[Crysis]

On 8/1/2019 at 12:23 PM, GM Widower said:

He means WoW Classic, I imagine. Since the core CoH population has always been rather disdainful of WoW, I'd guess "not much, if at all".

Not sure I agree, although this being a re-release of sorts may play out that way.  Back when this game was Live, WOW new issue releases had HUGE impact on player populations in COH.  It was in part what drove the original game to move to F2P model I think?

 

Given COH is now effectively perma-F2P, and all MMO’s today pretty much pull from overlapping shared player population, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a drop in server pops later this month.  May not stay this way but clearly we’ve seen player pops already drop since Homecoming launched.

[Blackbird71]

On 8/2/2019 at 9:23 PM, VanCorp said:

If I'm going to be honest, it isn't Classic WoW in August that will severely cut down any play time I dedicate to City of Heroes, but rather Borderlands 3 in September.

Are you sure you want to do that?  I can't verify that any of this is true, but if it is then there are certainly some shady dealings going on at 2K Games:

 

 

I'm not a Borderlands fan, but if I were, I would be looking into this further before supporting this company.  Engaging in bullying and intimidation tactics to cover their own mistake is despicable.

[PaxArcana]

2 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

Engaging in bullying and intimidation tactics to cover their own mistake is despicable.

Not buying that.  There's always at least three sides to any story.

When he is described as one of "2L's" youtubers, I'm assuming he has a long-term, standing NDA that lets him get access to things a little early ... with certain conditions as to what he can and cannot reveal before the all-clear notice is sent out.

When the guy says two "goons" were sent to his house, what I hear is, they sent two employees of a law firm to his house, when he either failed to respond to other means of contact (e.g. email, snail-mail, phone, etc), or perhaps, explicitly rebuffed those arms-length contacts.

When he says they "intimidated" him, what I hear is, they probably explained the legal, court-room consequences of his breach of that NDA.

...

 

Maybe I'm wrong.  But maybe I'm not, and I have had a fairly good relation with 2K games myself in the past (Hell, just today I used my limited-edition, $200 MSRP 2K branded Timbuktu messenger bag, that they gifted to me, out of the blue, just for being a fan (with a prolific level of participation on their forums).

So I am absolutely not going to jump on the "2K is sending thungs to intimidate people into not telling us about bugs/flaws/etc" bandwagon, without a whole LOT more information than that video - the majority of which, by the by, amounts to neither more nor less than hearsay.

 

[Thramack]

16 hours ago, Primantis said:

 

 

Very nice!

 

That reminds me.. On launch day my brother picked up a standard edition of WoW from Wal-Mart. Came home, installed it.. and low-and-behold the CD Key was buggered and it registered as a Collectors Edition! So he got the little in game perks for that while only buying a standard edition. XD

That is awesome for him. Those pets are the best.

 

When I bought the original WoW Collector’s Ed I thought I was buying a solo player game I could play via LAN with others like Warcraft 3 and Diablo.

[Necate]

Even the population decreases with classic release, we will don't see the difference.

Population is splitted on différents shards. I Guess the homecoming team will merge all shards if the population decrease too much...

[miaasma]

having played both, CoH was able to keep me coming back, whereas i lasted less than a month in WoW

 

both games are so different that i doubt it'll affect the population of this game

[pro24]

I have had many a discussion on what the main problem with WoW is and to this day the game carries the same major flaw. Blizzard changes the mechanics of WoW every expansion. Of course each expansion needs new content and fresh life but WoW throws everything that worked well into the dumpster to start a new. From Artifact weapons, to Garrisons, from different stats that were far more in depth to simplicity. Socketing was a thing..Everything WAS a thing until the next expansion.

 

What I'm saying is simply Blizzard failed to build the game up like it could have been and instead tried to reinvent it with some new system, good or bad each expansion. The Azerite system is just another example of the build and tear down mentality which will be discarded in the next expansion. Blizzard completely has the wrong ideology for WoW and it can never reach its potential by discarding all the hard work the developers did each expansion. It's almost unbelievable to me the road map Blizzard chose for WoW. It's antithesis to their own hard work and I figured at some point the suits at Blizzard would figure this out but since Wrath of the Lich King it's truly been been make it then break it. Sad.

[Blackbird71]

On 8/7/2019 at 1:44 PM, PaxArcana said:

Not buying that.  There's always at least three sides to any story.

When he is described as one of "2L's" youtubers, I'm assuming he has a long-term, standing NDA that lets him get access to things a little early ... with certain conditions as to what he can and cannot reveal before the all-clear notice is sent out.

When the guy says two "goons" were sent to his house, what I hear is, they sent two employees of a law firm to his house, when he either failed to respond to other means of contact (e.g. email, snail-mail, phone, etc), or perhaps, explicitly rebuffed those arms-length contacts.

When he says they "intimidated" him, what I hear is, they probably explained the legal, court-room consequences of his breach of that NDA.

I'm not disagreeing that there may be another side to the story, but I see no indications that there was any breach of NDA.  The information of the twitch stream that the Youtubber used as as source became publicly available (due to an error on the part of 2K Games).  Once they put the info into public, whether intentional or not, an NDA cannot be enforced on anything coming from that public source.  And given 2K's practice of intentionally including hidden codes, etc., in their videos for fans to find, there was reason to believe that the information was given intentionally. 

 

These two men were not identified as lawyers, but as private investigators.  According to the account, their questioning seemed to indicate that 2K was unaware that they themselves had let the info slip, but rather suspected the information had been obtained through illicit means (i.e. hacking, etc.).  Once it had been established that 2K themselves leaked the stream info, they really had no further business going after this guy.  Getting his channel shut down (assuming that was 2K behind this move, based on the timing) was definitely an abuse of power and position. 

 

Update:  2K (or rather, the parent company Take Two) has since admitted to sending the private investigators, and it has been revealed that the Youtubber in question was not under any NDA or other agreement with 2K.  Take Two/2K claims he had engaged in illegal activity, but also has stated they are not pursuing legal action (that doesn't add up to me).  Instead, they've issued 63 copyright strikes against his YouTube channel, which will cause his channel to be terminated.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Blackbird71

[PaxArcana]

4 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

Take Two/2K claims he had engaged in illegal activity, but also has stated they are not pursuing legal action (that doesn't add up to me).

Let me help it add up:

2K, even if they expect they would prevail in any civil litigation, does not expect the guy to be able to pay any significant judgement.  2K, in the end, would lose more money than the victory would be worth.  (This is almost always why any civil suit ever comes to a settlement before the final ruling by a judge: an expectation that even victory would cost more than it was worth, on one or both parties' part.)

 

4 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

Once they put the info into public, whether intentional or not, an NDA cannot be enforced on anything coming from that public source. 

Well, since an NDA wasn't involved, it's mostly a moot point .... but for future reference: NDAs don't always just restrict what information you can reveal.  Theyc an also simply preclude any discussion of the subject at all.  I've been in a few closed betas, where the first and primary rule was "do not discuss this game at all - not the closed beta, not things you read elsewhere, NOTHING - outside the closed beta forum."

 

4 hours ago, Blackbird71 said:

Instead, they've issued 63 copyright strikes against his YouTube channel, which will cause his channel to be terminated.

I'll admit, absent any further information (like what those infringements supposedly are), that does seem excessive.  But again, I don't know the whole story, so ... :shrug: ...

[DR_Mechano]

On 8/8/2019 at 3:21 PM, pro24 said:

I have had many a discussion on what the main problem with WoW is and to this day the game carries the same major flaw. Blizzard changes the mechanics of WoW every expansion. Of course each expansion needs new content and fresh life but WoW throws everything that worked well into the dumpster to start a new. From Artifact weapons, to Garrisons, from different stats that were far more in depth to simplicity. Socketing was a thing..Everything WAS a thing until the next expansion.

 

What I'm saying is simply Blizzard failed to build the game up like it could have been and instead tried to reinvent it with some new system, good or bad each expansion. The Azerite system is just another example of the build and tear down mentality which will be discarded in the next expansion. Blizzard completely has the wrong ideology for WoW and it can never reach its potential by discarding all the hard work the developers did each expansion. It's almost unbelievable to me the road map Blizzard chose for WoW. It's antithesis to their own hard work and I figured at some point the suits at Blizzard would figure this out but since Wrath of the Lich King it's truly been been make it then break it. Sad.

To be fair BfA did cause people to start calling them on this. The loss of the actually quite beloved Legion Artifact weapons combined with the Global Cooldown Changes (or GDC for short) led to classes being...well...very sluggish in WoW terms and people STILL say the BfA class design and class feel is by far one of the worst places it's been in a long time. Not to mention that the Azerite armor was an incredibly lackluster replacement for it. There was also the whole problem of you actually got progressively WEAKER as you leveled up because you lost access to your Legion Legendaries meaning you lost more and more abilities/powers. Leveling up actually felt pointless, especially when you learned that due to level scaling, you could twink out a level 101 and proceed to SOLO normal mode dungeons.

 

Of course the cry of "we've heard you and we're going to make sure this doesn't happen.....next expansion...." There is also the rather large delay on patch releases for one very big reason...they had to COMPLETELY rework the 'thing' for this expansion. The whole Heart of Azeroth and Azerite armor was met with such hostility from the playerbase with numerous problems that were bought up IN CLOSED BETA but they refused to fix that they had to completely overhaul how it worked. Several people pointed out that if they hadn't done the "Whole new expansion, whole new gimmick!" but built on the Legion Artifact weapons, they wouldn't have had this problem but of course Blizzard loves to toss out the baby with the bath water every expansion in order to keep their 'time played metrics' up (since apparently THAT is how they measure things now instead of subscriber numbers....after Warlords nearly killed WoW with its truly massive 5 million subscriber loss, cutting the sub numbers in half, of which it has never truly recovered from).

[PaxArcana]

1 hour ago, DR_Mechano said:

Several people pointed out that if they hadn't done the "Whole new expansion, whole new gimmick!" but built on the Legion Artifact weapons,

.... for one thing, they could have done something similar for the whole "azerite armor" thing.  They could have let Legion's artifact weapons continue to scale, while then using that system as the basis for azerite-enhanced armor.  As sets, so getting a new piece is how you unlocked new options to spend azerite on.

But, yeah, the "new expansion, new systems, and get rid of the old stuff" trend is a big problem.  People invest themselves into how the game works, only to have all that investment thrown out the window with the next big expansion.  I think that mostly started after Wrath, though IIRC in Mists and Pandaria it was more "tweaks" than wholesale revisionism.  It was with Warlords that they really went whole-hog with that, IIRC.  Maybe during Mists, but, I think not near the beginning of it.

...

Yet one more sin to lay at the feet of whats-his-name, the anti-flight lead dev that took over starting with Warlords, I think.

[PaxArcana]

1 hour ago, DR_Mechano said:

after Warlords nearly killed WoW with its truly massive 5 million subscriber loss, cutting the sub numbers in half, of which it has never truly recovered from).

.... was it really that big of a hit?  BWA HA HA HA HA HA ....!!!

<--- one of those 5M ex-subscribers ...

[Blackbird71]

12 hours ago, PaxArcana said:

Let me help it add up:

2K, even if they expect they would prevail in any civil litigation, does not expect the guy to be able to pay any significant judgement.  2K, in the end, would lose more money than the victory would be worth.  (This is almost always why any civil suit ever comes to a settlement before the final ruling by a judge: an expectation that even victory would cost more than it was worth, on one or both parties' part.)

 

 

Sorry, it still doesn't add up.  If you accuse someone of illegal activity, and have the evidence of a 10-month investigation to back it up, you don't send private investigators.  You either send lawyers or law enforcement.  The only reasons to send PIs are 1) to try to find evidence you don't have, 2) to dig up dirt on someone to attempt to blackmail or smear them, or 3) to try to intimidate them.  Yes, PIs can definitely qualify as "goons"; if you haven't had any dealings with PIs, you probably have this Hollywood image in your mind of a guy desperately trying to get to the truth when the system is against them.  That's crap.  PIs routinely engage in intimidation tactics to get people to talk to them and to get the information they are after, and their methods are often shady and borderline if not outright illegal.  This may not be true of all PIs, but a significant number operate this way, and having two show up at someone's house reeks of intimidation.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Blackbird71

[PaxArcana]

1 hour ago, Blackbird71 said:

The only reasons to send PIs are [...]

... because they're cheaper, by far, than actual lawyers.

 

Also, because if you send an actual lawyer, that is a tremendous escalation of matters that becomes hard to back down from.

By the by, your own prejudice towards private investigators is almost certainly informing your willingness (perhaps eagerness) to leap to the conclusion that they were sent there to intimidate anyone.  Maybe they were ... but, equally, maybe they weren't.  Regardless, I think your own biases are inclining you to assume the worst (just as mine, admittedly, are inclining me towards the other direction).

 

The truth, as is so often the case, is likely to be found somewhere in between those two extremes.

 

A truism I love to quote:  Never ascribe to malicious intent, that which can be adequately explained by simple human stupidity.

[Blackbird71]

15 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

By the by, your own prejudice towards private investigators is almost certainly informing your willingness (perhaps eagerness) to leap to the conclusion that they were sent there to intimidate anyone.

No prejudice against PIs; just a healthy respect for and a realistic view of the role they fill and the types of jobs they do.  They've never been used against myself or individuals I know personally, so I don't bear them any animosity.  But I've had enough interactions working with them, law enforcement, lawyers, and the rest of the system that I understand what they do and why.  I appreciate their role in the process, but I also have no illusions about what they do and how they do it.

 

If a PI wants to play "good cop" and put someone at ease so they will talk with them comfortably and open up, they'll call the person or otherwise make contact in a manner that doesn't bring them face to face immediately.  They may hold a conversation over the phone, or arrange to meet in person at another time.  Showing up at someone's home unannounced is a tactic to put someone off their guard; a PI doing this is hoping to catch someone unaware, and it's an antagonistic approach.  Showing up in force (two PIs where one would do) is doubling down on this; trying to intimidate with numbers to convince someone they're in trouble and they should talk to them when they have absolutely zero legal obligation to do so; (these are not police officers with warrants or lawyers with subpoenas, they are just private citizens who are most likely armed).

 

Again, I'm not saying this to be negative towards PIs, I just understand their methods and the reason for them.  Their need to gather information coupled with their position as being neither law enforcement nor officers of the court means that they have to use persuasion, intimidation, subterfuge, or bribery to get people to talk to them; it's just the nature of the job.

[Destlin]

after gearing about 12 50's I am probably ready to play some vanilla WoW.

[Shockacon]

Considering I have some exes that I am positive are members of a real life Burning Legion, I have no interest in joining such a game

[DR_Mechano]

6 hours ago, PaxArcana said:

.... for one thing, they could have done something similar for the whole "azerite armor" thing.  They could have let Legion's artifact weapons continue to scale, while then using that system as the basis for azerite-enhanced armor.  As sets, so getting a new piece is how you unlocked new options to spend azerite on.

But, yeah, the "new expansion, new systems, and get rid of the old stuff" trend is a big problem.  People invest themselves into how the game works, only to have all that investment thrown out the window with the next big expansion.  I think that mostly started after Wrath, though IIRC in Mists and Pandaria it was more "tweaks" than wholesale revisionism.  It was with Warlords that they really went whole-hog with that, IIRC.  Maybe during Mists, but, I think not near the beginning of it.

...

Yet one more sin to lay at the feet of whats-his-name, the anti-flight lead dev that took over starting with Warlords, I think.

Keep in mind, Activision is probably more to blame for this than Blizzard. I reeks of higher up suits pushing to "keep up those time played metrics, we can't have people ebbing and flowing from an expansion like they use to, coming in, doing all the patch content and then quitting, we've got to keep them constantly engaged." Since WoD was when it felt like Activision really took over at pushing I'd say MoP was the last real regular expansion that wasn't designed around this need to constantly engage the player all the time, to keep them grinding, all the time, for something. Sure you had the legendary cloak quest but that came out in parts as well.

 

I feel like the Anti-flight thing isn't just from Ion, flying means people reduce travel times, which reduces time played. Unlike in say Wrath of the Lich King which was completely designed around players having flying at max level, instead they introduced the whole Pathfinder thing as a sort of "well if we've GOT to have flying in the game...since when we tried to remove it in WoD and it was one of the many issues that led to a massive subscriber loss...then we'll not let you fly until the expansion is at least halfway done..."

 

Its is funny that, at the time, players HATED MoP, like despised it, now they look back on it and herald it as one of the best expansion along with WotLK. I don't see the same thing happening to WoD or BfA however. WoD especially was a half baked expansion, rushed out the door and then killed off when they realized they'd made a mistake and booted 70% of the Dev team over to Legion, hence why WoD had so little content AND an entire missing story arc/raid tier.

 

From what I can tell Legion basically saved WoW. WoD had lost them a lot of subscribers with its huge content droughts and story that nobody really cared about with characters that nobody really cared about (the only time people cared about Yrel was in NSFW fan art/animations because Draenei...). People were fine with the gear treadmill resetting every expansion because, by now, it's just part of WoW. They are not fine with their CHARACTER progress resetting every expansion because, well, it's their character. With the gear reset your character still becomes progressively stronger because they get new gear, with losing things like the Artifact weapons, the Legion Legendaries, the Heart of Azeroth and Azerite armour, it all becomes a question of "Why bother? This is all going to go away next expansion anyway...so why bother engaging with it out if I'm not a top end mythic raider?" At least that is how I felt when it came to the Azerite grind. This along with all the time gating and catchup mechanics they introduce in the X.3 patch they do (which they did for WoD AND Legion, so I suspect they'll do it for BfA as well), why bother playing before the X.3 patch when I could play it all during the final patch of the expansion no waiting around, my Heart of Azerite will get powered up stupidly quickly and I'll have many months of content available as and when I want to do it, instead of staying subscribed.  

 

The problem is the game has become too bloated. 120 levels to a newcomer just looks like too much, so they're squishing them down to 60 again with 70 being the new cap. The trouble is, like when they introduced the item level squish, this doesn't stop the problem, it just resets it. It just means 3 expansions down the road we'll be back up to level 100 again. If the WoW team weren't so focused on gear and per expansion character progression but instead worked on their idea for Path of the Titans that they once head, allowing post max level progression in a variety of ways ala Guild Wars 2 style Mastery system then they wouldn't be in this problem.

[PaxArcana]

25 minutes ago, DR_Mechano said:

I'd say MoP was the last real regular expansion that wasn't designed around this need to constantly engage the player all the time, to keep them grinding, all the time, for something. Sure you had the legendary cloak quest but that came out in parts as well.

Well, you did have the Farming bit.  Anyone who wanted to grind that out - and all the Cooking stuff that it would feed (pun intended) - would stay subscribed for a longer time, simply because it was a daily thing.  But at least that was unintrusive, and could be ignored.

 

26 minutes ago, DR_Mechano said:

Its is funny that, at the time, players HATED MoP, like despised it, now they look back on it and herald it as one of the best expansion along with WotLK.

The most recent expansion has always been fashionable to hate.

 

27 minutes ago, DR_Mechano said:

WoD had lost them a lot of subscribers with its

Don't forget the Draenor Flight debacle.  That's what drove me away.

 

28 minutes ago, DR_Mechano said:

The problem is the game has become too bloated. 120 levels to a newcomer just looks like too much, so they're squishing them down to 60 again with 70 being the new cap. The trouble is, like when they introduced the item level squish, this doesn't stop the problem, it just resets it. It just means 3 expansions down the road we'll be back up to level 100 again.

Here's the thing, though: no MMO can keep the progression treadmill going on forever, without eventually having the same problems crop up.

[DR_Mechano]

GW2 solved the problem by having their max level stuff aka masteries tied to each individual expansion without invalidating all the previous expansions work and the Exotic gear is STILL near top end gear with ease of acquirement for most players. Sure there is one new level above Exotic but it isn't that much of an upgrade.

[PaxArcana]

The problem in this case, is "power creep".

Someone who is at max level, and has done all the Masteries for every expansion, is going to be just as far past a starting player, as if all those Masteries had just been additional levels, a la WoW.

[reconfigureyourface]

On 8/1/2019 at 12:23 PM, GM Widower said:

He means WoW Classic, I imagine. Since the core CoH population has always been rather disdainful of WoW, I'd guess "not much, if at all".

The nostalgic hardcore WoW players baffle me. I was DYING for Burning Crusade when it released, why the F would I go back? I'd take servers that capped at Lich King maybe, since after WOTLK the game got.... bad. But just Vanilla? The lack of content after a month is.... ugh! Those will be so underpopulated inside of a year it'll be worthless. Classic WoW was literally PR fan service. 

 

10 hours ago, DR_Mechano said:

 

The problem is the game has become too bloated. 120 levels to a newcomer just looks like too much, so they're squishing them down to 60 again with 70 being the new cap. The trouble is, like when they introduced the item level squish, this doesn't stop the problem, it just resets it. It just means 3 expansions down the road we'll be back up to level 100 again. If the WoW team weren't so focused on gear and per expansion character progression but instead worked on their idea for Path of the Titans that they once head, allowing post max level progression in a variety of ways ala Guild Wars 2 style Mastery system then they wouldn't be in this problem.

But they have level boosts when you buy the most recent game... so that isn't exactly true. They boost you to the current xpac starting level (typically 10 below level cap) so you can get right to the current content.

 

Edited August 10, 2019 by reconfigureyourface
Addition

[Primantis]

On 8/7/2019 at 4:10 PM, Thramack said:

 

When I bought the original WoW Collector’s Ed I thought I was buying a solo player game I could play via LAN with others like Warcraft 3 and Diablo.

 

 

Don't feel too bad, I initially did that with Everquest xD

 

To make things worse, I didn't even have an internet connection at the time!

 

Tis' what I get for randomly buying cheapo games at Wal-Mart.

Edited August 10, 2019 by Primantis

[PaxArcana]

5 hours ago, reconfigureyourface said:

But just Vanilla? The lack of content after a month is.... ugh!

Presumably, levelling (and talent trees, for that matter) will work the same on the Classic servers, as WoW actually did at the time.  So, three months, maybe.  🙂

[Charistoph]

4 hours ago, Primantis said:

 

 

Don't feel too bad, I initially did that with Everquest xD

 

To make things worse, I didn't even have an internet connection at the time!

 

Tis' what I get for randomly buying cheapo games at Wal-Mart.

To be fair, compared to Everquest, Vanilla WoW was a solo player game.  It wouldn't be compared to WoW as of Wrath, at least.