Gangrel_EU

One thing about MMOGChart though, is that the person who organises themselves has stated that the figures could be wildly inaccurate.

About the "Cloak and Dagger" stuff there are several other things that can happen.

Do you remember when I13 was announced and it said that the Mission Architect was going to be in there? And then it got pulled (for one reason or another?)

The outburst from the general community (both sides of the pond) was horrendous. Who needed the internet or phones, you could hear the americans easily

There are several ways of doing announcements for future releases.

1) Post up EVERYTHING that you have planned (even if some of the features would be cutting it fine in terms of being completed by the time of "issue completion").

The downside to this (as I am sure NCNC have discovered as a result of I13), is that if something turns out to be more of a problem then you expected, you will get flack in return for having announced it and then cutting it. And most of the time, all you can do is delay the release of the patch (especially if you want to stick to word of "we always release what we announce")

2) Announce what you KNOW will be in the package (and leave the minor stuff alone).

This can be a problem especially if you have several things on the run at the same time, and only a small percentage of them are actually on track to finishing in time. You will HAVE to put most of the work behind those features, and chances are you will have minimal extra's (typical expansion to be honest from most games companies). BUT in those cases, they typically DONT have a rule of "two expansions a year" in play, and just release things when they are ready and leave the customer waiting.

3) Have a list of "want to do's" for the year, and work your way through them, releasing them as and when they are all ready (chances are the expansion wont necessarily have a "theme" though, and will just be a mish mash of idea's)

Problem with this though is that in terms of development you dont have a time line for *when* the stuff gets announced, or at least, not much of a lead time. It will just get released as soon as its finished. You could end up waiting a LONG time for the stuff.

I personally am under the impression that a lot of the "under the hood" work that is being done will actually help CoX expand in the future, and it has to be done at some point (preferably sooner rather than later) and it *shouldn't* necessarily have to be announced.

If you look at Eve Online, when they "upgrade" their server tech/back end system, they have a huge announcement over it, telling players how it will affect them. For Eve Online this is particularly important because of how the game is designed where some systems can easily have 1000 players in the same place (Jita for example).

But CCP also dont say "it will be released in X expansion" either, not unless it is CONFIRMED to be released in that one (ie typically it has been ready for around a few weeks to a month just to check stability on the test server)

Now, reworking the underlying code (ie server infrastructure/graphics engine) is NOT a quick and easy job... it can easily take just as long as developing it from scratch (ie typically a couple of years), but i have faith in NCNC for getting something like that to be resolved

(note OpenGL3.0 is out, and just upgrading CoX up to that standard *could* be the edge that COX needs for improving their gfx engine.)

In terms of getting bugs fixed etc, depending on the number of developers who are available to fix that bug it could be a long hard slog to getting it resolved. Sure i would *love* to have just a bug fix patch, a total QoL "issue"... but i think that this would happen when they say "right, we have done everything for this issue and the next issue lets get cracking on this list"

But what about the developers who have no relevant skills to fixing bugs? You have to keep them busy as well, so they could well be working on "fluff" items that could be used at a later date. Chances are Jay could well be working on upgraded avatar models for most of the NPC's etc when he isnt working on clothing items (or at least completed the items on his current list). We just dont know... so that is something that they wont be announcing just yet, as releasing "bits and pieces" of a model is pretty lousy to be honest.

But then again, some of the developers are the only ones who can resolve a bug WHILST also be the only ones who can work on a required feature. Bug fixing can take a variable amount of time (ie it could well be a quick fix, it could take several weeks to fix... it all just depends on what is causing it and what needs to be done to fix it). Not to mention that cleaning up "redundant" code is also especially interesting, as that by itself can also introduce bugs that you thought wouldnt appear

I have seen this happen in Tabula Rasa ... all they did was clean up a piece of animation code. NPC's were unaffected by the change, but players actually got "hit with the nerf stick"... thing was, the code they removed *was* broken, it shouldnt have worked, but it did... and it had to be removed to actually allow another piece of "expansion code" to work.... sometimes they just cant win.

tl;dr version

So whilst the "cloak and dagger" act annoys players, it is more of a case of "we dont want you to get your hopes up". It has already stung NCNC once, and i am sure that they dont want to do it again...Not to mention that NCNC like the idea of theming Issues as well

Did they say it was for being a trademarked/copyrighted name? Does the word have a meaning in any other languages? (ie possibly an offensive meaning?)

The one other thing to remember, is that it could have been doen via a petition from another player and not just the GM randomly choosing who/what to rename

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Exactly. Thank you Bluedarky. It's nice to see there are SOME people here who can see subtle!

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But sadly mostly only when it's been chromed, polished and then they are beaten about the head repeatedly with it

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DOes the shiney thing have coffee or alcohol in it?

merci beaucoup

je suis desole maid je ne parle pas beaucoup francaise

Yep... my weak attempt at butchering the french language...

Hell if you want a laugh, Avatea could comment on my attempt to translate TR beta patch notes into french (she was being a bit slow that day)

I have the "no blind invites" option up purely because i *am* annoyed of invites just coming out of the blue. Most of the time when i get them i am in the middle of a mission OR spending time at wentworths/ the black market, and having the "you have been invited to team" pop up in the middle of the screen is annoying.

Now, saying that, if i get a warning (in this case a tell) that it will be incoming, then that means i can take the time and at least anticipate it and get stuff sorted out myself. Also you *know* that at that point in time when they reply to your tell that THEY are NOT super busy at that point in time (ie break in combat, stopped selling at wentworths etc)

Call it arrogant/rude for having "no blinds" up in the search window? Well to be honest, i find it more rude to just get an invite with no warning... especially *if* i was in the middle of combat and the invite window is hovering over a mob that i have to click on (has happened to me more than once)

1st level 50 took me 732 hours (i think most of that was wasted doing soemthing else though)

2nd level 50 took me about 38 months (created in head start of CoV, hit 50 in december 2008)

Granted I *did* have an inactive account for a while, but even so, it still counts

Hmm, i think i should be spending more time playing the game

Aye... many a person paid to sober me up before the event started.

Now i know who wants to sign up for the job next time?

*edit* This is only because many a person will try and fail to get me enough coffee to make me hyperactive.

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if you also include the fact that NCSoft licenced the latest Unreal Engine for three titles I think it was. I'd guess Guild Wars 2, Lineage 3 and, erm, ahh, er, take a wild stab in the dark?

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I believe it was "Blade and Soul" which is currently in development

*edit* According to the Wikipedia page for Lineage 3... it isnt using the Unreal 3 engine anymore, and instead they are developing their own.

Aye, tried it out last night... seems to run just fine, although on a dual screen setup, i was getting pretty low FPS compared to my XP boot.

Was fun, Windows 7 lasted 2 hours, cos i am not doing a full reinstall on a system that will be expiring in august

The pops and clicks though in the audio setup though bothered me, and also 5.1 videos sounded a bit off as well. :S

If you are in XP/Vista and want to use SLI, i *dont* know if this has been reported, as i just picked it up in the driver notes for the most recent NVidia Driver release (181.20)

SLI mode does not appear capable of being enabled with City of Villains.
This issue occurs because City of Heroes and City of Villains share the same executable
name.
You can work around this issue by either
• modifying the City of Heroes application profile (this will create a second City of Heroes
profile) to enable SLI AFR mode, or
• set AFR as the rendering mode in Global Profile.
For more information on customizing SLI profiles, visit www.slizone.com and navigate to Learn More -> How-to Guides.

TBH, i runt he game fine on a 7900GS 256MB version, so 2 x 8800 in SLI would be a bit of overkill IMHO.

But yeah, the Nvidia 260 is a good card, although then again so is the ATI 4870 (that is a VERY nice card i reckon)...

I am thinking of upgrading my card as some point in the near future so i am thinking of what to get (hey its my birthday soon so i am allowed to dream )

Well....

Here are a couple of interesting "news" articles that i have found recently...

Lum the Mad's opinion (Scott Jennings who USED to work for Ncsoft Austin
Habitat Chronicles (a link from the previous linkage)

Hmmm, me thinks that they *could* possibly use some of the previous information there as methods of cancelling this one out.

Fortunately, this looks like it would end up being settled OoC (Out of Court) just due to how effing stupid the claim is...

*edit* Best defence there... Scott Jennings lists quite a few...

*edit adn rewrite*

Hell Aerosmith and David Bowie are clients as well...

All that shows is that Sony paid them to create their own 3D world... and [u]unless[u] Sony licensed it for use inside "Home".... i think that Sony (as well as SOE) will be on the hunting list as well....

Seriously, if they wanted to go for Linden Labs then why didnt they? Why NCsoft?

As i said, this could have more serious implications than just MMO's.... and IF Worlds.com win ANY part of this, then i think we *could* probably see more Gaming Companies suing each other for "games that looks the same"...

I place my bet on David Brabham suing CCP saying that Elite is "prior" art (although granted Elite doesnt have online play.... yet)

Strangely enough though (and i would hate to point this out), but in theory this doesnt just include MMO's...

It *could* be applied to all games with the facility to play online (ie FPS shooters, RTS games), due to the same basic structure.

Which, strangely enough, means that i think that the whole gaming industry would *love* to join in on...

And if Worlds.com ARENT smart enough to have picked up on that one... well then to be honest, i dont think they have the brains to win this one

Happy Cake Day

Damn, i might have to give this one a miss due to it being my Birthday that weekend, and quite possibly being nowhere near a computer (more than likely propping up a bar with old friends)

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That may not be a good idea here - Castle would probably melt the profanity filter

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True he would... but he would be within his realms to do so (IMHO)

Is it me, or has FFM double posted twice in the same thread?

THE BOARDS ARE DYING!

Onion server here, with a couple of level 1s for when i am feeling a little bit deviant....

try uninstalling and then reinstalling your gfx drivers.

Try rolling back your drivers a version or 2

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Squishies can now solo on invincible (and believe me, I have)

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This is new how?

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Aye, have to agree with Extremus on this part.... ok granted it *wasnt* fast, but i could solo from level 32+ on my fire/emp controller.... granted, there were *certain* mobs that i hated (psi damage anyone?), but it was indeed possible in 2005 to do (even post ED)

Other powersets indeed had a harder time of it, and indeed the game has become "easier"...

I personally preferred the 3rd respec (hero side) as a debt removal option compared to exemping, as the earlier levels were HELL for my character.. 1 run through to clear out all the nice and lovely 10 bar debt at level 45+ (before debt got nerfed)

/signed for increasing difficulty of game/more difficulty levels.