New efforts!

[Surelle]

The community of that server was pissed and the wow / blizzard services felt the wrath of ddos attacks among other things. So Blizzard probably thought it was in their best interest to not be a dick this time. Whether anything comes of it, only time will tell.

Blizzard has already stated it won't be Blizzard devs meeting with the Nostalrius team.  Common sense would dictate that of course it won't:  It will be their team of lawyers who are on retainer anyway who will meet with the Nostalrius folks instead. 

These lawyers will, of course, have NDAs for the Nost team to sign up front, right after which there will be contracts that the Nost team will be forced to sign promising that they will never release that vanilla WoW code they've got to anyone, nor will they release that anti-cheat software they developed and used on Nostalrius.  It will then be revealed to the Nost team how much pain and suffering lawyers' fees and jail time will cause them, should they refuse to sign said paperwork.  By this point, they will also have to hand back over all of WoW's code they've misappropriated and altered.

Then the Nost team will be forced into "Smiles, everyone, smiles!" plus fake bravado and whispers of NDAs on their Twitter, Facebook and forums.  Eventually, much like with the CoX rezzes, enough years will pass without anything else ever happening that the gamers wishing for official vanilla servers will finally give up and move on.

[Ulysses Dare]

** I recently had the opportunity to analyze the effects of impacts at comparable velocities when I was struck by a car while in a marked crosswalk.

Ouch. :( I hope the fact that you're posting here now means everything turned out okay. Still that made me wince.

[Arcana]

Ouch. :( I hope the fact that you're posting here now means everything turned out okay. Still that made me wince.

Two Christmas eve's ago.  I currently walk in straight lines and everything.  I ended up with a lot of cuts and scrapes, two sprained ankles, a torn up knee, and a hairline fracture.  While recuperating I did the calculations I mentioned and when they came up "19 feet per second, scribble scribble, 13 mph?" I was thinking that sounded absurdly slow.  Then I discovered in my research that 5% of pedestrians hit by cars at speeds of only 20 mph die.  That's only a little more than double the kinetic energy of impact and it also means when the idiot that didn't see me in the first place stepped on his brakes a fraction of a second before he hit me it is possible he saved my life.

I now have a much greater appreciation for the fact that one superpower almost everyone in action movies seems to have is invulnerability to kinetic impact.  Even people with no presumptive superhuman abilities at all can be struck at velocities well above the nominal lethal level and just limp away.

I also have a much greater appreciation for the fact that in the modern game defensive players in American football can be tackling players at nearly the same 20 mph.  They are tackling someone with a much higher structural integrity than I possess and they have significantly more body protection than I had that day, but they are still approaching the impact speed at which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would consider the probability of lethal impact to be non-zero.  NFL tackles are basically human traffic accidents.  I'm a football fan, but that's a sobering thought (CTE is, of course, an even more sobering thought).

[Twisted Toon]

Healers weren't necessary in CoH, in fact they were the least useful person in a team.  It's better to think of CoH as a game in which you had "muscle" and "backbone".  Characters with muscle were those whos raw stats were higher on there own, tankers/blasters/brutes ect, backbone characters made themselves and everyone stronger with buffs, weakened enemies with debuffs and protected the team with crowd control(even tankers could be seen somewhat as crowd control).

It wasn't so much as a trinity team game as a team game in which you had a huge variety of means to actually make things work and a wide variety of solutions to solve problems a team would face with.  Most holy trinity games from what I hear utterly fail at that.  I know for certain CO fails miserably at that.

To me, a trinity team in CoX that was boring consisted of: 1-2 tankers with the "strongest" defense set, 2-3 empathy defenders and the rest blasters.  Such teams were  not to common in the last 2-3 years I played, but I saw them frequently enough earlier on.  Teams like this couldn't take on more then one group at a time as the empathy defenders almost never used there buffs.  And in severe cases, those players would get all the credit for the teams success even if it was only due to the tankers and blasters actually being good players making up for the bad empaths.

A true CoX team however could consist of any combination of archtypes and could sport a wide variety of buffs/debuffs, you couldn't truely say who was truely making the team unstoppable.  All you could say, was the team was more than the sum of it's parts which is truely what a good team experience should amount to.  Maybe the team had no tankers/brutes, who cared though when it had three controllers and a dominator all locking everything down and a bunch of corruptors buffing everyones defenses/resistances to tanker levels of durability anyways.  Or maybe the blasters in that all blaster team had a few darkness blasters and an ice/ice blaster controlling the few dangerous enemies ect.  Maybe it was all tankers but they had one kineticist maxing the damage out.  There was variety in the game because people could synergize there powersets together into an unstoppable force.  And it was because the players in that team all understood there powersets and made them work.

I do know that a full team of Defenders can take on practically anything. No need for Tanks or Blasters with all the Buffs and DeBuffs flying around. There would be a full team of Tank Mages tearing things up.

[TimtheEnchanter]

I also have a much greater appreciation for the fact that in the modern game defensive players in American football can be tackling players at nearly the same 20 mph.  They are tackling someone with a much higher structural integrity than I possess and they have significantly more body protection than I had that day, but they are still approaching the impact speed at which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would consider the probability of lethal impact to be non-zero.  NFL tackles are basically human traffic accidents.  I'm a football fan, but that's a sobering thought (CTE is, of course, an even more sobering thought).

Keep in mind you can't just factor velocity into that but mass as well. Taking an impact at 20mph is highly dependent upon WHAT is hitting you. There are some insects and birds that can fly that fast but we wouldn't worry about being killed by them, If one human traveling at 20mph collides with another human standing still, some of that motion is going to be negated. Being hit by a Running Back at speed X is not going to be nearly as harmful as being hit by a car at the same speed. The car is going to keep moving and not even care that you're in its path. The Football player, that's a different story.

[Ulysses Dare]

Two Christmas eve's ago.  I currently walk in straight lines and everything. 

I'm delighted to hear it. We may love you for your big brain but walking in straight lines definitely has it's perks.

I now have a much greater appreciation for the fact that one superpower almost everyone in action movies seems to have is invulnerability to kinetic impact.  Even people with no presumptive superhuman abilities at all can be struck at velocities well above the nominal lethal level and just limp away.

Yeah, if I had a nickel for every time Mythbusters showed something the movies said was survivable would actually kill you—I'd have a whole lot of nickles.

[Noyjitat]

Blizzard has already stated it won't be Blizzard devs meeting with the Nostalrius team.  Common sense would dictate that of course it won't:  It will be their team of lawyers who are on retainer anyway who will meet with the Nostalrius folks instead. 

These lawyers will, of course, have NDAs for the Nost team to sign up front, right after which there will be contracts that the Nost team will be forced to sign promising that they will never release that vanilla WoW code they've got to anyone, nor will they release that anti-cheat software they developed and used on Nostalrius.  It will then be revealed to the Nost team how much pain and suffering lawyers' fees and jail time will cause them, should they refuse to sign said paperwork.  By this point, they will also have to hand back over all of WoW's code they've misappropriated and altered.

Then the Nost team will be forced into "Smiles, everyone, smiles!" plus fake bravado and whispers of NDAs on their Twitter, Facebook and forums.  Eventually, much like with the CoX rezzes, enough years will pass without anything else ever happening that the gamers wishing for official vanilla servers will finally give up and move on.

Because Blizzard is really going to pull all those lawyers in expecting a bunch of nerds that probably still live with mother and father to have enough cash from their free to play emulator server that they developed. Nost isn't the first vanilla wow server nor will it be the last as that code is easily available and has been for sometime since the elitepvpers days. It's just become one of the more popular servers

You really are a defeatist

[slickriptide]

Oh I don't know... perhaps being able to play the damn game they miss? Don't be a pin head

You're not even making sense any more, but on this point in particular -- If playing the damn game was incentive enough, then don't you think that all of those people who are programming Icon and Paragon Chat and forming new studios to make brand new games from scratch would be working on that emulator instead?

Apparently "playing the damn game they miss" isn't the incentive you believe it should be.

So, I'll ask again - What's in it for the people who would be putting in the time, resources, responsibility and risk just so that you can play a game that *YOU* miss?

[Victoria Victrix]

For those interested in such things:

https://give.umn.edu/sites/give.umn.edu/files/styles/oc_embed_large/public/comicbookphysics.jpg?itok=I8W6ft5b

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Superheroes-Spectacular-Second/dp/1592405088

[Taceus Jiwede]

Yeah, if I had a nickel for every time Mythbusters showed something the movies said was survivable would actually kill you—I'd have a whole lot of nickles.

When I see movies of people getting punched in the head a bunch.  Or even if a person gets knocked out for like...20 minutes.  I always wonder how those people aren't dying or at least suffering from some kind of brain damage.

I've known two people who after getting punched hit the ground head first and one of them almost died, and the other one did die.

People will get hit in the back of the head with like a lead pipe in a movie and just be knocked out for 30 minutes.  I always wonder what the hell is up with that.  Getting hit in the back of the head is a really easy way to die.  And being knocked out for 30 minutes is really bad for you.  The beatings people take in movies would either kill or cripple the average person.  But that would make for a boring movie.

Like Arcana said its a secret power all action heroes have.  I call them protagonist powers.  They can both survive this hits, and guarantee survival for other people they are hitting.  Its the only real reason Batman is a superhero.  Most of his victims would be crippled in real life.

[Azrael]

Early on, I thought healers were pretty essential.

Healers weren't 'essential' however, the best healer I ever met...helped me stay 'upright' (as an en/en blaster) when I picked a fight with a red tank show freak in Brickstown.  Rezzed me a 'good many times' on a 'this is how we roll' team on the way to my 1st L50.  (En/En!)  (For some reason, I thought I was a 'tank' as a battle crazed blapper blaster.  My defences weren't quite up to front line battle...vs. Mobs.)

Latterly, I found that duo-ing with two Defenders you can 'walk' the game's content by force multiplying your 'strengths'.  A good defence build with 'buff other' with two Force Field defenders rolled over even Nemesis content.  We got to L47 before my duo partner lost interest or something. 

Imagine 4 defenders.  1 rad.  1 son.  1 FF.  1 dark.  That would be a potent team of Defs.  I'd love to do Striga content with a team like that...

Early on in the game, I didn't quite make the connection with 'not being' hit.  It was hard for the 1st Dark defender to explain that...  But I thought his ten' tentacles were cool...

Azrael.

[Surelle]

Because Blizzard is really going to pull all those lawyers in expecting a bunch of nerds that probably still live with mother and father to have enough cash from their free to play emulator server that they developed. Nost isn't the first vanilla wow server nor will it be the last as that code is easily available and has been for sometime since the elitepvpers days. It's just become one of the more popular servers

You really are a defeatist

I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist:  I am a realist.   ;)

Blizzard has already stated (it's on the official forums) that they themselves are not going to be the ones meeting Nostalrius.  They have also said, multiple times, even post Nostalrius C&D, that actual vanilla code would be a logistical nightmare that they refuse to deal with.  (And let's face it, if you've played WoW for any length of time, you'll already know how lazy they are:  WoW has been on life support in between expansions for years now.) 

Blizzard is not, much as we would all love it, going to hire a bunch of code pirates, and incorporate a hacked, bludgeoned version of their twelve-year-old code into Battlenet.  Not happening.  And people would have much higher expectations for performance and security from Blizzard (especially as they'd be paying $15 a month for the privilege) than they had from some hacker group while they were playing for free.  Not to mention that there would be MANY demands for old emu characters to be restored, blah blah.

Among the WoW emu community, many of whom have come out of the woodwork to post on Blizzard's official forums, Nostalrius' code is said to be (by far) the most refined and advanced vanilla WoW code out there.  Their anti-cheat software is purportedly also by far the best (and it may be one of the only ones for all I know).  It's likely that it's the anti-cheat code that Blizzard *really* doesn't want out in the wild; hackers could reverse engineer it, study it, and even use that knowledge to better hack official, live-server WoW (and possibly its account database, too).

This is all common sense for rational adults. 

Are you a teenaged kid?  You sound like it. 

And anyway, shouldn't you be spending your time coding the simple, no-risk CoX emu you keep snapping your fingers about like it's no big deal?  Go on, we'll wait.   ;)

[kierthos]

This talk about collisions reminds me of a silly rule from Car Wars.

Because the game only had one set of collision rules (intending for cars hitting each other), two pedestrians who walk into each other on the sidewalk each have a 50% chance of dying.

[rookery.]

For those interested in such things:

https://give.umn.edu/sites/give.umn.edu/files/styles/oc_embed_large/public/comicbookphysics.jpg?itok=I8W6ft5b

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Superheroes-Spectacular-Second/dp/1592405088

Read this a long time ago, and I remember howling with laughter. There are chapters in it that explore where Superman would come from in order to have superstrength, whether the Flash could actually run across water or up the side of a building. Good stuff.

[darkgob]

It is easy to get distracted into thinking the problem with Iron Man is to protect the suit.  If the suit survives the guy inside also does.  Or to assume the guy inside is like a solid block of wood: as long as the guy inside doesn't move around too much, it will also be fine.

<snip>

** I recently had the opportunity to analyze the effects of impacts at comparable velocities when I was struck by a car while in a marked crosswalk.  Based on an analysis I did of the accident - because of course I did - I guestimate the impact velocity at between 10 and 15 mph.  That relatively low velocity impact was enough to send me to the emergency room, and a surprising amount of the injuries sustained were due not to the impact of the car on me, but me hitting the ground after the point of impact.  It turns out 10 mph is slow when you're driving but very fast when it is something hitting you, or you hitting something else.

Geez Arcana, talk about burying the lead.

[darkgob]

I now have a much greater appreciation for the fact that one superpower almost everyone in action movies seems to have is invulnerability to kinetic impact.  Even people with no presumptive superhuman abilities at all can be struck at velocities well above the nominal lethal level and just limp away.

Have you seen The Punisher (2004)?  It's kind of a great movie in that respect, when my friend and I saw it we had the theater to ourselves and we were laughing our asses off at how much (pardon me) punishment Castle was able to survive.

[Ironwolf]

Early on, I thought healers were pretty essential.

Healers weren't 'essential' however, the best healer I ever met...helped me stay 'upright' (as an en/en blaster) when I picked a fight with a red tank show freak in Brickstown.  Rezzed me a 'good many times' on a 'this is how we roll' team on the way to my 1st L50.  (En/En!)  (For some reason, I thought I was a 'tank' as a battle crazed blapper blaster.  My defences weren't quite up to front line battle...vs. Mobs.)

Latterly, I found that duo-ing with two Defenders you can 'walk' the game's content by force multiplying your 'strengths'.  A good defence build with 'buff other' with two Force Field defenders rolled over even Nemesis content.  We got to L47 before my duo partner lost interest or something. 

Imagine 4 defenders.  1 rad.  1 son.  1 FF.  1 dark.  That would be a potent team of Defs.  I'd love to do Striga content with a team like that...

Early on in the game, I didn't quite make the connection with 'not being' hit.  It was hard for the 1st Dark defender to explain that...  But I thought his ten' tentacles were cool...

Azrael.

I once had the joy of doing a Synapse TF with my Fire/Fire blaster and 7 Kin defenders. It took 45 minutes and I could use my nuke almost every group and was just a buzz saw.

[rookery.]

I was in a group running through missions in Rikti War Zone and the Rad/Rad defender tanked for us and tanked well.

They were also drunk apparently.

[Biz]

They were also drunk apparently.

Oh no, what have I done now?

[Sugoi]

Something I'll always remember was a run during the early days with an all-Defender team in Oranbega (aka 'The Big O').  When we ran into the Archvillain of the mission, I thought "Now we die..."  :gonk:  15 seconds later, there was nothing left to fight.   ;D After that, I had fun putting all-Def PUGs together, and showing others how effective they could be.

Another handy technique in my bag of tricks when I was running one of my Kins was to try to get a 2nd Kin on the team, keeping them Speedboosted, and getting them to return the favor (back when SB was targeted, rather than an AOE).  The team got buffed to the hilt, with the decrease in power recharge times.

Whenever I was asked if I was a Healer, I'd reply "Yep, I can heal, but with the buffs I can give the team, you won't need to be healed much."

My Emp's priorities were: 1) Buff whoever needed it most on the team, 2) Heal (as needed), 3) Snipe enemy stragglers.

My techniques seemed to work fairly well, as I got my Main (Sugoi) to 50 on 3 servers, and her daughter (Sugoi-chan) to 50 on 2 others.  I took pride in the fact that I never "Rocked the Aura", but always took an active part in giving my teammates my best in battle.