Lothic

Yeah I probably won't need to see this movie the very millisecond it opens but I'll probably give it a try eventually.

And as far as "guys pretending to be the Stooges" goes I still sort of feel the same way with Abrams' Star Trek. I basically enjoyed the "reboot" of Star Trek, but there's always going to be a part of me which'll be thinking these new actors are simply "pretending" to be the real Kirk, Spock, etc. I think it'll take much more than one movie to overcome 40 years of history for me to fully accept them.

For what it's worth I actually wouldn't be all that opposed to a "solution" to this problem that involved something as drastic as removing them from the game. I have mentioned over the years that I was never really a huge fan of the way the original Vet badges worked anyway because of the way a newer player would never be able to "catch up" to the old-time Vets. These Annual Vet badges are the last remaining vestige of that short-sighted concept.

Like I said it's long past the time the Devs need to start looking "outside the box" for some kind of solution to this problem. Clearly they have some kind of convoluted account database problem that they've either been unable or unwilling to deal with. One really has to question whether it even makes sense to try to maintain that series of badges in their current form.

Yeah there are certainly plenty of things that are more important to more people than this Passport issue - that's another reason why I'm not expecting much to happen with it regardless.

In a few weeks I'm fully expecting to join all those other lost souls who should have their latest Annual Vet badge but don't. They really need to get on the ball with that one because it's already been like six months since CoH:Freedom. Like you say they might be at the point where they'll just have to start doing something radically different with them just to get it working in some form or fashion.

I know most people would probably want it to be an account badge (just to make things cheap and easy) but I really can't see much justification for that. Why should a character I create next week get a badge related to server transfers just because I transferred a different character yesterday? If they ever go back to the idea of making Passport be a badge for any generic server transfer I would pretty much expect it to be character based.

But even if that happened it would still be semi-annoying for any badging character that's a member of a SG. My badging characters have been members of the same SGs for years now - it'd be sad to have to give up that seniority and Prestige total just to server hop for a badge. *shrugs*

Eh, there have been vague rumors about it all along. You have to remember the Passport badge has a weird history to begin with.

IIRC it was originally going to be used as a generic "server transfer" badge that you'd get if you moved a character from any one server to another. But for some reason they semi-announced that plan quite a long time before server transfers actually became possible. I tend to think that they thought server transfers were "just about to happen" but for some reason they got held up much longer than they had anticipated.

So as time progressed and we were still waiting for server transfers to work I think they decided on a "Plan B" which turned out to be the one involving giving Passport to people who transferred from the NA servers over to the (at the time) brand new EU servers.

But there's actually another little wrinkle to this saga: When they finally started giving Passport out to the newly transferred EU players there was a random bug that allowed a small number of NA players to get Passport "auto-magically" even when none of their characters were involved in any of the EU transfers. I actually saw a couple of NA people with the Passport badge so I can personally confirm this bug - lucky bastiages.

Ever since then there have been ongoing rumors (especially since the re-merge of the EU servers back to the US) that there would be yet another "new" way to get Passport. Frankly I'm not really holding my breath for that. It would probably be fair for those people who chose not to transfer to the EU servers to have some kind of badge (Passport or otherwise) that could "equal out" the totals for everyone, but I figure the chances of the Devs doing that is just about nil. At this point because of the bugs and the EU weirdness I'm content to semi-pretend Passport doesn't exist just like I try my best to forget about the Bug Hunter anomaly. Anyone who actually has it (like OV_ohms) will just have to deal with my light-hearted envy and get over it.

It's been a while since I've run those missions on either side so I didn't really remember one side being any more exploitable than the other. Still it looks like you pretty much summarized the likely "redname reasoning" for the change only on one side right here. *shrugs*

I tend to blame Disney for fooling most Americans into thinking that cartoons and/or animation in general is a medium intended only for children. Obviously some cartoons are specifically designed for children, but that has never meant that -all- animation must forever and always be kid-oriented. Fortunately we have many non-Disney shows to enjoy now but it still amazes me how strongly the cultural bias Disney generated still hampers the general public's perceptions in this area.

The Stooges are unique in that they were probably the most well known "live action Looney Tunes". But while children can laugh at their silliness I don't really think the Stooges were ever really actually "geared" towards them specifically.

It'll be interesting to see how this movie does regardless.

Yeah I read somewhere that this was changed to be like that on purpose but I'm still not quite sure what the Devs were trying to accomplish. Was blueside teaming to get that badge being exploited somehow?

Sure I can see how it might be frustrating. But it's hardly surprising.

You have a combination of experienced players running newly-minted Incarnates which don't have the level shifts to play well regardless of the experience of the player playing them combined with a bunch of inexperienced players who probably just got their first Incarnates power-leveled over the weekend who don't know what they're doing yet.

Give it a week or two and everything will get back to normal.

Yeah it is pretty sad to think that there are people out there who'd consider the average Looney Tunes cartoon to be "too violent" for today's youth. I'm sure it won't be hard to find articles criticizing this new Stooges movie for "encouraging anti-social behavior" or some-such.

But I figure there's probably enough parents out there who'll either know better or don't care either way to make up for those fringe weirdos. Considering all the video games and other much more arguably violent media kids get to see these days I doubt that's going to be a terribly significant issue here. *shrugs*

Laugh it up Passport-boy...

As for me if I can get another MoITF, MoKuda and a Preservation Specialist (which'll get me a MoUG) I'll be done with my second badger.

I think it was probably always safe to say that any new "relaunch" of the Stooges would never have the same "magic" they ever had back in the day. And to be honest it really is kind of hard to accept the concept in 2012 because I think part of the charm of the whole thing was that it was the kind of comedy that worked decades ago but doesn't seem like it would have an audience today. Not saying the Stooges are intrinsically bad - just saying it doesn't seem like it'd be something worth retrying in the 21st century.

All that being said I have no real doubts that it'll at least break even. Sure I can understand how the trailers don't look too promising to people who might consider themselves "true fans" but there will be at least some built-in name recognition from older people and it looks "family friendly" enough that I'll bet plenty of parents will take children to see it. So no it won't make huge profits, but it probably won't outright bomb either.

Bottomline it's obvious -why- they made this new movie - Hollywood's banking on getting some new money based on an old brand. Purists are sure to hate it to some degree just like there were people out there who hated the recent Abrams' Star Trek. But that's probably not going to be enough to derail at least some modest success from this new effort.

I'd go for things like "GateKrasher", "G8Crasher" or "G A T E C R A S H E R" to make light of people's attempts to copy previously used character names.

This is what you get for ripping-off the Devs before they copy -your- ideas first.

For what it's worth I've had a character in this game for almost 8 years now whose background and general appearance is "fairly" similar to Desdemona's. But in the spirit of keeping everything good-natured I haven't bothered annoy the Devs with knowledge of that little accidental coincidence.

Yeah I'd be far more impressed to see someone with a trillion in liquid INF.
The relative "value" of slotted enhancements will always be vaguely defined at best.

I've got roughly 35-40 billion in liquid INF spread across my account and I've had that much give or take for a long time now. I didn't really have any motivation to take advantage of the market shifts the Converters caused, and the way I see it if the Converters generally made the high-priced things cheaper then I figure my 40 billion will go that much farther now if I ever choose to do a bunch of spending again.

I'm willing to say I "made" money via the actions of everyone else making things cheaper and call it a day.

So since I forgot to check and didn't see anyone talking about it I assume yesterday's patch didn't give us a "sneak fix" to this problem. Anyone heard any rumors as to when the Devs might get around to thinking up a unique name for this badge? Hopefully it'll find its way into the next patch.

I'm not so sure I would read -too- much into what Zwill said.

I get the feeling that the Devs of this game would have no problem with allowing us to submit costume items for review assuming they could just magically snap their fingers to make it happen. But in real life there are various problems and costs that would have to be overcome, and I suspect that the Devs have decided that, at least at the present time, it would be more trouble for them than it'd be worth.

I think this would be something the Devs would love to offer us. But like so many things it'll probably never get prioritized highly enough to ever get past the "would be nice to have" stage. This is why Zwill diplomatically answered your question with a non-committal semi-neutral answer.

At least we'd know that 60% of the time it would work every time.

This game was made in the same country that brought the world Barbie and Ken dolls.
You remember what they look like naked don't you?

I for one wouldn't mind seeing a few outfits in this game that better showed off the "male bulge" that we all know should exist in some of these tighter outfits. But considering the legacy of Barbie and Ken it's not really surprising that this game would consider that a "problem" that need to be fixed.

At this point Praetoria has been relegated to the status of a fancy level 1-20 tutorial. There's little reason to stay there much past just getting though it so that you can start playing the "rest" of the game.

I believe the only thing that might save Praetoria is for the Devs to create viable content for it all the way up to level 50. First Ward was a start towards that, but until Praetoria can stand on its own as a complete third "side" of the game it will always be taken as second class compared to the rest of the game.

Right we are just talking "dumb luck" here. That's exactly why there's absolutely no reason to hand-wave an elaborate theory that zombie herds move inertially without being able to be diverted once started -just- to have a mob of zombies randomly exist nearby when Carl shot Shane. Why couldn't that herd of zombies just BE there without the show trying (badly) to make us think that zombies will move as uniformly as you describe?

It seems the show went out of its way to be unnecessarily convoluted with a barely plausible scenario when it could have just stuck to the basics and had a zombie horde swarm out of thin air. What purpose did it serve for the show to try (and fail) to be cute about it?

The weak point in this theory of the "single helicopter causing a multi-week stampede" is that it assumes that there was nothing else that might have caught their attention and caused them to eventually brake apart into other random groups over the course of multiple days. After all the Altanta area itself is many square miles in size.

Of course this also assumes that the single helicopter would be able direct all these zombies in a single direction for days/weeks towards the very spot where the group just happens to be staying at Hershel's farm. If you aren't willing to see how completely contrived that would be just for the purposes of the show then you at least need to be willing to concede that it was an incredible "coincidence" that all the events transpired to create the exact scenario we saw in the final episode. Deus ex Machina anyone?