Hyperstrike

Okay guys.

You're peeved at NCSoft. And on many levels, this feeling is fully justified.

But, can we PLEASE keep the angry "not buying XYZ" and "Don't buy ABC" and "I can't believe they replaced CoH with *FNORD!* man!" rhetoric down?

Right now there are really REALLY delicate negotiations going on over the future of CoH. And a bunch of angry "I'm gonna sabotage you!" talk is NOT going to help these people.

Please guys. This has been mostly civil for the past couple weeks now.
Please don't let every little dribble of NCSoft news that isn't "CoH is saved" become a call to jihad here.

Is this me telling anyone to sit down and shut up? No.

This is me asking, if needs be, begging for you to remember that people are right now working VERY hard to try and save this game. And a lot of angry rhetoric is simply a disincentive for NCSoft to be cooperative and amiable about the whole thing.

This is me asking you to keep a lid on your tempers so that these people's job is made as easy as possible. So that we have the absolute BEST chance of rescuing the game and community from oblivion.

If, on December 1st, the game is gone forever, and you still feel the need to go up in a ball of nuclear fire BE MY GUEST!

Until then, please remain civil!

Thanks to Leando's excellent tutorial on how to use the demo editing tools he's put together, I finally manned up and did it myself.

http://youtu.be/u1f0iU-NjLg

This is a "who's who" of all my various aliases on Protector.

Okay! Have a video put together, rendering and uploading to YouTube now!

My camera work sucks. I'm not really sure how to get nice smooth camera moves with my shaky hands (maybe lay off the caffiene...NEVAH! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!), but I did my best for a short vid.

Note that the script is placing avatars randomly in the painted space. So if you don't like how a certain shot came out (like your Huge guy is standing dead in front of another toon that's min-height and blotting it from the shot), rerun fillmap.pl and try running the demo again.

Here's my vid. Should be done post-processing soon.

http://youtu.be/u1f0iU-NjLg

Nice tutorial Leandro!

Yeah. I already "broke" it somehow.

http://slashdot.org/submission/22552...es-save-itself

Hopefully we can get something accepted by them.

Head on over and leave your comments! If you've got metamod, vote it up!

I, also, had a stockpile of about half a trillion inf. Mostly spread across multiple servers on toons specifically dedicated to marketing while parked. Simply so that I could play my mains without worrying about going over on Inf anyplace.

That said, after the announcement, with Protector (my home) being my least cash-rich server, I still liquidated over 14 billion into prestige. Transferring the rest to push myself higher on the server "top 100" could be done. But that'd be a lot of busywork, moving only about 20 billion at a pop.

Too, if we're able to save the game, I don't necessarily want to start over COMPLETELY from scratch.

Okay,

As cool as this sounds, the business guy in me says this wouldn't work.

Quite simply, the overhead of running the studio and all its assets is going to eat through the profits.

For office-work type service businesses, those without a lot of hard assets, it can make sense. For CoH, which has to be able to maintain servers on the economy (or in-house), continue development, control community outreach, etc. Basically it would likely not produce all that much in the way of donations. Even if they were SOMEHOW to restructure as charitable organization.

I don't know if they could restructure as an NFP either. Acquiring the CoH IP (or a license to use it) could be costly. And investors would be looking for dividends.

Still, if they were able to manage it, an NFP setup would PROBABLY be most beneficial for them. They'd simply bank any and all profits after bills and salaries are paid. This could, eventually, give them a sizable nest egg to fund future projects.

My main, Hyperstrike (Inv/SS/Energy) has given me an absolute ***load of fun.

My Fire/Rad, Vortex Core (and her level-locked-for-marketing predecessor "Flamin' Trolla") have been freaking great, ESPECIALLY for the friends my Fire/Rad events have introduced me to.

My first villain 50 was actually NOT my first villain. I decided to try a Stalker out after laughing at a person running around on a stalker named "Stabby Poke". DB/Will/Soul and Stabbitha was born. To this day, she's been an absolute BREEZE to play on Hami raids. She scraps out with the yellow damage team. Then she goes hold-crazy with Soul Storm on the greens. Then she snipes out the blues with Moonbeam. I'd been planning a rebuild on her to toughen her up a bit (min-maxer me!). But, honestly, she was so damn tough ALREADY, FRANKENSLOTTED, that I just never got around to it.

My Ice/Ice tank, Brownian Cessation, was one I started, then left alone for a long time. I finally moved him to another server to have something there for Tanker Tuesdays. I put a couple more levels on him and he became a completely different tank. I got him up to 50 a while back and he's been just an absolute durability monster. ITF? Energy attacks? How...quaint...

I have JUST gotten an Ill/Rad (Morrigon) up to 50 and, once I'd started ramping up the recharge, started to absolutely LOVE it.

A couple of my toons took some major rebuilds to love. My PB (Eclipse Phase) and Warshade (Inion Iomlain Gealai) among them.

Also, my Fire/Fire blaster (Blastion), which I rebuilt a few months back because he was doing so much damage he was ripping aggro off pairs of tanks. I rebuilt him as a defense-capped hover-blaster. His overall damage came down, but it started to become tough to find situations that could actually kill him before he killed them. And I was EAGERLY anticipating i24 after transferring him to beta and watching what a monster he became.

Hell, I even had fun with my Demons/Dark MM (Indiana Lovecraft), once I had the binds down to shut the damn demons up...

Well, I know we got a pair of ITFs knocked out. I started a first team and, because I'm just a dumb tanker, almost split a husband-wife team.

Now I shall NOT be responsible for the breakup of a marriage!

As such, I passed the star to a second player who'd also, initially, offered to lead and gave him the name of the other player. I then dropped and was picked up by the second team.

Did a bit of hunting on the wall after the event to get a teammate that last smidgeon of XP to get him to the next level.

See you guys next week!

• How long is a piece of string?
• What is the sound of one hand clapping?
• Is the angle of a dangle truly inversely proportional to the heat of the beat?
• How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?
• Why is the CoH community truly the best?

There are some questions that simply defy answer.

Okay, this is probably going to make some people look at me funny. But hey. Screw 'em.

I haven't actually looked at my bank statements, so I can only factor my sub fees for the last 4-1/2 years and my point purchases for the last 180 days.

Between primary account in the middle of its 5th year of subscription, and a second coming to the end of its first year, plus purchases, I've spent at LEAST $1300 on CoH in the last 5 years.

Not to mention the money spent on acquiring the collectors' sets.
Not to mention the cash spent to fly me out to the Spring Player's Summit this year.

Sure, when measured against MILLIONS of dollars, it's a fart in a hurricane. And not everyone can, or would, spend that kind of cash on the game.

Yeah. I was doing "rent to pwn". So the **** what?

It works out to something slightly less than a buck a day.

I've spent more in movie tickets during that period.
I've spent more going to conventions during that period.
I've spent more than that on DVDs and Blu-Ray disks during that period.

And I've gotten an absolutely HUGE amount of entertainment out of it.

And one other thing.

The social interactions and the friends I've made during that time are absolutely beyond price.

So don't worry about these guys yakking about something they know little about. Continue to work to save the game. Continue to play the game as long as we can keep it here.

Let them wonder at what a bunch of people who spend a good chunk of their time being heroes in a game can do when they decide to cut loose in real life...

Gah! I've been caught on film! Or...whatever.
They've stolen my soul!

Cool! Now I can go into sales!

Okay, a Facebooker by the name of Kellan Pine actually posted this one up. And it's really on point.

Hey guys.

You've already seen some of them. Articles essentially belittling the community for not just letting CoH go. Calling us immature, etc, etc. Telling us to "suck it up an drive on" and the like.

I understand how this can get your blood boiling. It's irritating as hell for me too, and I find myself reliving flashbacks of the violent old days of the Usenet wars.

Do yourself a favor. Fight the urge to strangle these guys with their own entrails. Yes, it'd probably make you feel better. But you'll feel even better if we're able to rescue the game.

As you find, or are notified about such articles, record them. If you want, respond. But just do it in a civil fashion.

Calling these guys out, calling them names, flaming them, etc accomplishes two things:

1. It proves them "right" about members of the community being immature
2. It provides them fodder to generate more page views.

One of the articles I read got enough responses that the site's author immediately followed up with another troll-screed, hoping for more.


We have many, MANY better things to do with our time than feed such trolls.

1. Save the game!
2. Stay active in evangelizing our cause and the game.
3. Play the game.
4. Have a life.
5. Study up on the joys of self-trepanation.

Again, it's all right to be irritated with such callous behavior. You wouldn't be human otherwise.


Just try to focus on the positive aspects of what we're trying to accomplish and let all this useless chaff fall where it may. If we do this right, we'll be laughing at them on December 1st. A far more satisfactory social interaction from our POV!