Kitsune Knight

People were talking about you choosing Windows XP 64 bit edition. The horrible bastardization of a Windows Server variant, that was largely DoA because it wasn't shipped by virtually anyone (certainly not on a consumer system), and had horrible driver support. According to Valve's Steam Hardware Survey, Windows XP 64bit has less than half the number of users of OS X Snow Leopard... That's not even the current version of OS X! Mind you, to upgrade to the latest version is a grand total of $20, and can be done with just a few clicks of the mouse (it can be bought in the Mac App Store, downloaded, and installed very quickly).

That is what people were talking about as a bad idea. And, personally, I'd still recommend against installing Windows 7 into a second partition. I've done that in the past (with prior versions of Windows), and there's a lot of software that does not expect that and will freak out (because virtually no one does that). Swapping the HDs, IMO, is a far better testing solution, as it'll let you avoid any incompatibilities.

Where 'game' is 'game by company that has paid $MANUFACTURER (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) a huge amount of money, gone through a very lengthy/arbitrary approval process, and then laced the game with absurd amounts of DRM'. You can't run any game unless explicitly approved by $MANUFACTURER, or any other software. You might not realize it, but all modern consoles are just general purpose computers (the PS3 was even advertised as such!), laced with huge amounts of DRM. Actually, scratch 'modern', consoles were general purpose computers since their birth, just laced with DRM a few generations after their birth.

From the rest of your description, it doesn't sound like you have any problems with DRM itself, just poorly functioning functionality. You'll get DRM either way, except consoles just ensure you can't avoid it.

If you had been VIP for more than a year (seeing as you first registered for the forums in '06, that seems likely) you'd have more than just 2 slots. I had about 14 slots on my home server, and several 'global' slots while I was Preem.

As has been said countless times, IOs weren't added to the game till many years after it came out. None of the content in the game is balanced around you having them, they aren't necessary at all. Plus, every character over, IIRC, 10, can simply swap to a second build, which you could use as your 'SO' build.

FYI, IOs can be used by Premiums, if you're far enough along in the Paragon Rewards. When I drop to Preem, there's not too many things I lose access to (the base 12 slots per server, incarnates, and a couple powersets basically).

Freedom has been a major boost to Subscribers/VIPs, by giving them far more stuff for the same cost (along with the flexibility of deciding what they want).

Freedom has also been a major boost to those unsubscribed. You know, being able to play the game at all

SC still has activity on Freedom (and maybe Virtue), but PVP has only been in decline since the revamp in, what, 2008?

Redside has pretty much always been quite sparse, especially now that you can make villain ATs on blue side from the start. Blueside got a whole new starting content with Freedom, while the revamp on red wasn't quite as large.

They can group on either side, so they have a lot more flexibility. They can join TF/Trials for either side. The trade off is they can't get 'Alignment Merits' (only Heroes and Villains can), which is an excellent way to easily get rare recipes at any level you want.

He's a Praetorian Clockwork. Not exactly a fair fight...

Praetoria (gold side) has some really good story arcs, unfortunately it makes red side look like blue during double XP weekend. It's basically 1-20 (you can't leave until 20), although First Ward (20-30) is open to all and takes place in Praetoria. Night Ward (30-35) is coming with Issue 23, and will also take place in Praetoria, and is open to all as well.

All the Incarnate Trials so far take place in Praetoria as well. Issue 23 is supposed to be largely the conclusion to the Praetorian Invasion storyline... which should mean The Coming Storm will be arriving not too far after.

I'm pretty sure talking about people "farming" your "cave" isn't an appropriate subject matter for these forums.

Windows XP has the exact same restricts. Vista/7 is less anal in this regard. I didn't see any of the reviews you were talking about, just a bunch of positive reviews and the usual occasional nut job.

Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all have a long history of actively doing that with their consoles. Every one of all their consoles has been incredibly locked down, with DRM out the wazoo (this Google Tech Talk was quite a fascinating presentation on the topic, although it's 4 years old now). Personally, I find it more detestable to lock hardware down in such a way than it is to try to restrict software.

Hell, Sony deserves an extra special insult here, with marketing the PS3 as being able to run Linux, then retroactively striping out support (from the pre-slim models) just weeks after they made an official statement that they weren't going to remove the support! Hard to top that.

It really isn't. Home Premium is actually quite a good option, having pretty much all the features most everyone (for values of 'everyone' that isn't equal to 'enterprise') would want.

Marvel didn't need a case to do serious harm to Cryptic/NC. They could have tied them up in court for years, wrapping them up in red tape out the wazoo, draining them dry from the massive legal fees. And I wouldn't really call it frivolous, there was quite a reasonable chance Marvel would have won. Trademark law also requires paranoia on the part of the holder, so it's also partly required behavior.

If Cryptic had tried to fight it, CoH likely wouldn't exist anymore.

That's how it came off to me as well. There's pretty much only one possible result of making a comment like that to someone... and apparently that's not the first time he's made a comment like that.

If you're trying to warn new players, you need to make sure it doesn't contain snark.

I think what the GMs do currently is working well enough. The obvious copyright infringements get genericed quickly enough, and that's pretty much all that's necessary to keep themselves protected. Mind you, I've never had a character genericed in all my years playing and rolling alts, so I'm not trying to protect myself or anything.

Eh, yeah, you're right now that I think about it. I just remember playing for so many years with the scroll wheel only scrolling things by one pixel at a time (IIRC, pohsyb added the ability to adjust the scroll rate... but mine didn't get set to the new default of 20 automagically) that I instinctively think it doesn't work at all.

The capes should always show up if you don't have that checkbox clicked to hide purchasable items. Do they still have the paragon market button on them? If not, then you've got them unlocked. If they don't show up at all, something else might be going on (or you've got the checkbox checked, which doesn't always work wonderfully well).