Leandro

Put me in, illusion/empathy controller with 3 level boosts.

I'm planning an attempt for a master lambda next weekend with all +3 characters and lots of debuffs. I want lots of rad, cold, and other -res -regen debuffs, plus a few bubblers/sonic for +def/+res against the ambushes. We'll see how that goes.

Was that followed by the new people in the queue refusing to hand over the grenades because "he knows when to use them", then wasting them while the team is fighting the ambushes, leading to the league running out of grenades when Marauder is at 2% health and then failing the trial?

Because that's why I haven't logged into the game since Friday.

Dear NCsoft Login Verification,

I appreciate what you're trying to do. Really. You want to make sure I'm logging in from the same computer each time. Fine. But, see, 186.56.29.210, 186.56.29.159, 201.251.19.223, 200.117.14.62, 186.56.16.24 and about twenty other IP addresses are all the same computer. You might have those confused with MAC addresses, that are tied to the network card used to connect to the network and don't change; IP addresses change every time my ISP feels like it.

Answering your security questions every single dang time I have to log in is quite annoying, because I actually made my answers very secure; I have to think a lot and look them up every time. If the question is "what if your favorite color", the answer might be the first twenty digits of e after the third decimal location (28182845904523536028); "what is your mother's maiden name" could be the md5sum of the name of the capital of Nicaragua (d98bf2a51283482a9283735e2324a1f2). You get the idea. If they were a lot simpler, it would be less annoying; but then they would also be less secure, defeating the purpose.

Also, since I keep telling NCsoft to remember my preference, even though I know it won't, you basically have a nice whitelist of about 30 IP addresses that have access to my account with just the password, skipping your security checks. I am not worried about this because it's highly unlikely that someone who wants to gain access to my account is in the same IP range, and my password is very secure regardless. But I can't help to point out that you're opening a (tiny) hole in your own security measures.

Also, while adding computers to your whitelist is easy, there is no way that I can see to remove computers from said whitelist. If we are to truly assume that IP addresses are a reliable way to identify someone's computer (not a chance, but let's assume) then there should be a way to remove an IP address once it's no longer "trusted" or "current".

But, if you're going to whitelist random IP addresses, then I humbly request that you let me whitelist address ranges; my ISP has four IP ranges, so all of 186.56.29.*, 186.56.16.*, 201.251.19.* and 200.117.14.* doesn't have to answer my security questions every time I need to check my account details or send a referral code to someone. Ignoring the last number in the IPv4 address when performing your check would probably be more than enough, while ensuring that I am always connecting from the same ISP.

Once enough people have IPv6 addresses at home, IP addresses will match your ideal of one address per computer. But I'm afraid you're getting a bit ahead of the technology with your strict implementation.

Best wishes,
Leandro.

PS. I also hate your captcha, but I can live with it.

Looks like I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on USTREAM from now on.

I'm trying to find out if it will send me email notifications when a channel starts streaming, but I couldn't find anything so far.

What server are you on, Gale?

I feel your pain.

There will be a patch on April 7th to fix this issue. No need to mess with your system files if you can wait that long.

TL;DR: copying kernel32.dll from the SP3 install package into the SP2 system32 and dllcache folders allows you to play COH and does not cause any issues in the system.

I used to work IT, so I have a ton of VMs from these days. I decided to boot XP SP2 see what happens when I tried to launch I20 in it. Sure enough, I got the same error message others are getting:



Sorry about the Spanish, but I live in Latin America. The screenshots are illustrative anyway, so it doesn't matter; just note the displayed version both in the desktop and in the kernel32.dll properties.

Now, here's the trick: if you download the Windows XP SP3 installer and run it, it'll expand a lot of files to a temporary folder. Among these files, you'll find the new kernel32.dll from SP3. You can also grab this file from another XP SP3 computer, of course; or what I did, which was put the XP SP3 slipstreamed install CD into my drive, and copying the file \i386\kernel32.dl_ to the VM's hard disk, then execute expand kernel32.dl_ kernel32.dll in the command line to uncompress it.

Any way you do it, you want to have the kernel32.dll file from SP3 somewhere accessible; I put it on the C:\ root.

Now, you have to put this file in place of the SP2 file. It will be in two locations: \windows\system32, and \windows\system32\dllcache. You can't do this while Windows is running, so you have two options:

1) Boot from a Linux Live CD. Then use its file manager to copy the new kernel32.dll to the above locations; make a backup of the original in case you need to revert this change.

2) Boot from the Windows XP install CD, then run the recovery console and copy the file using the command line. This is what I did:



Press "R" here.



These commands will make a copy of the old kernel32.dll as kernel32.sp2 and then copy the new file from the C:\ root into both locations.

After that, reboot the computer, and try to launch COH again:



Error is gone. Note that the desktop version is still SP2, but the kernel32.dll version is now newer.

Of course, this being a VM with generic video drivers, the game couldn't actually run:



But on a real computer with updated drivers, this wouldn't be an issue.

I played with the VM for about an hour, installing and running all sorts of programs, and I had no difficulties. However, if you do run into any problems, this change is easy to revert: just boot back into your Linux Live CD or Recovery Console, and put the SP2 kernel32.dll back, deleting the SP3 one.

Disclaimer: if everything that I said above sounds like chinese to you, especially the command line part, don't try it. This post is mostly to inform people who already know how to do these things that yes, it will work if you do it.

I ran Lambda four times today, and succeeded all four times. Some teams died more, others less; the last attempt was a breeze because we had a lot of debuffs.

The problem with the LFG tab is that there's no clearly defined leader. Just because someone got the star doesn't mean they have a clue of what to do. It's important for someone to start talking, and keep talking, informing people about what they're supposed to do.

When it comes time to split between lab and warehouse, let people know what they're looking for and what they're supposed to do with the temporary powers that drop. When you finish the sabotage, use ALL CAPS if necessary so people understand that they HAVE to look at their temp powers and hand them over, or you can't continue.

The LFG tab can work very well if at least one of the people who join the league is willing to actually lead it.

I've heard this happening several times, but it just happened to my entire league. We were in Lambda sector, and everybody mapserved. When we came back, we clicked Rejoin Last -- and we were dumped into a warehouse map full of "Cursed Warriors".

The mapserver happened at 04-06-2011 01:21:22 on the league led by Doctor Leo on the Freedom server.

I take any character on my leagues to run the trials. Build matters little; paying attention does. You *do* have to read up on them and follow instructions, or you'll fail a lot.

It's the default cube map for Praetoria.

I referred someone two days ago (May 23 2011 03:14AM) and it all worked fine, it says "Retail Activated" now.