The_Spad_EU

The powers work everywhere, but the Level Shifts only work in the trials.

Now, now; the patch notes have a history of being outright wrong and missing out large sections of changes

Patch notes only say: But as at Lv50 they only drop from even or + mobs, that implies that the same is true at any lower level - otherwise at Lv50 you'd be able to get them off 47/48/49s too.

I'm pretty sure shards will only drop off of even level or above mobs, regardless of your level, while you can get inf, etc. off -3s.

No question; think back to every other challenge that's been added to the game and how easy they seem now compared to when they were introduced.

When the STF was first added, I ran it with an SG team on my Ice Tank and it was nothing short of a miracle that we managed to complete it; Recluse must have downed me 10 or 15 times during the battle. Ran it again last week on my Ice Tank - not even Alpha slotted, but respeced and IO setted (no purples), let alone level shifted and he barely hit me at all. We waltzed through the whole thing.

Same with the ITF - even dreadful teams can manage it these days, though it tends to take much longer. Give it a couple of months and people will be speed running the Mo incarnate trials as a matter of course.

Calm down, it wasn't intended as an insult - it's just that obviously comparing playtime before inventions were introduced to the game makes drop rates seem worse than they are as for the first ~4 years you *couldn't* have got any drops no matter how lucky you were.

Don't forget that SyFy has cancelled Farscape, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe & Caprica in its time, amongst others. There was a time in the distant past when it aired things other than wrestling and c-movies.

They have on every trial I've run so far.

It's not a bug; I've had 4 purple drops across all my toons since the launch of the invention system and I never had any of the "good" rares drop the TF reward tables either. That said, two of the purple drops were during the same tip mission.

PRNG is exactly what it says on the tin; sometimes you're a lucky ******* who seems to get good drops all the time and sometimes you never seem to get any. Just remember that we as humans are very bad at objectively assessing probabilities and there's always going to be people "luckier" than you with the PRNG for you to focus your rage on whilst ignoring all the other people "unluckier" than you who have had even fewer good drops.

And if you know what you're doing and are willing to accept that risk then nothing is stopping you. However, running an internet-connected OS that is no longer patched is a bad idea; always. If you're smart then you can mitigate the risks to an extent, but it's still a bad idea.

If you don't know what you're doing, then it's an extremely bad idea and so far, most people who have reported having this issue haven't known what they're doing (and that's not to disparage them in any way, simply a statement regarding their specific knowledge regarding the internal workings of Windows and the way it's patched and supported) hence the approach taken by most of the people providing them with support.

All that said, it's still no bad thing that NCSoft are hotfixing the launcher (presumably something as simple as an "if > XP SP3" check before running the processor lookup) because it allows more people to play the game without issue.

Be aware that not upgrading to SP3 could turn your computer into a keylogger-infested, spam-relaying, DDoSing zombie.

Do note that the only real reason Microsoft have that "don't use this for a single machine" notice on the SP3 download page is because the network installer is a bigger download and requires more user interaction to install than if you get it from Windows Update. It does, however, have the advantage of saving you from having to download it multiple times if you have multiple PCs and providing infinitely better error reporting if anything goes wrong during the update. Plus, if you want to, you can use it to make a slipstreamed "XP with SP3" install disc.

Assuming sufficient bandwidth at the patchserver end, 5.7Mb/s is only 45.6Mbit/s and thus easily achievable on a 50Mbit/s cable connection.

There are 2(?) portals inside bunkers that you can't destroy, so no matter how efficient you are, he'll still get some reinforcements during the fight.

You're probably right; but it's one of those things that, 6 months down the line, will end up causing some non-obvious issue that you never link back to it because you've forgotten you ever swapped the files over - and there's nothing more annoying that trying to troubleshoot something like that

If you're running 64-bit Windows 7 you'll get this issue with or without the old updater. The fix is to copy the updater + cityofheroes.exe to your desktop or other temporary location, run the updater from there, allow it to do its stuff and then you can go back to running it as normal.

Not sure why it happens, it's not a UAC issue or inherently a permissions issue; it looks like something to do with how the updater/windows is locking files.

No, they don't. Microsoft may, on occasion, decide to backport critical fixes where it's trivial to do so, but they do not have any formal support for SP2 in any form and have not since July 2010. Unless you're one of the few enterprises willing to pay vast amounts of money for custom support contracts from Microsoft, your chances of having SP2 machines that are up-to-date and secure are effectively nill.

For some crazy reason (yes, I know why) they're continuing to support XP SP3 until 2014, but after that, no more XP support of any kind.

That's what the internets are for; most channels stream their content in one form or another these days.