The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release

[Felderburg]

This might be a bit off topic but weren't there websites where we could list our characters and builds, things like that? I'm trying to remember some of my CoX characters but I'm realizing a lot of characters from CO and DCUO are blurring together in my brain and I'm wondering if any of those old CoX based sites are still active.

Even if we did have access to our old characters I don't know that I'd be able to even claim them if they're not somehow hooked to our old account names as that's the only thing I can find reliably through digging through old emails.

Do you mean this one?

https://cit.cohtitan.com/

Edit: Due to the migration of posts from "New Efforts" to this thread, the quotes above no longer link properly. But they are unmodified, and the originals can be found in this thread (I don't want to put the effort in right now).

I assume that's what Weenus was going for, but it's worth noting that Mids also had a way to export / import builds.

Edit: Hmm, my characters aren't showing up on CIT. That's odd.

[saipaman]

Those of us that exported our characters with Sentinel+ would have a better shot at proving any given character belonged to a particular account.  Unless the City Tracker goes away, it too demonstrates the association between characters and accounts.

[therain93]

By all means, quote me, go ahead.

If they aren't our characters, if they weren't made by us, leveled by us, used by us, if you're going to take issue with the fact that they were ours, then there's no point in talking then, is there? Because you don't respect the emotional attachment many of us have to the game.

And hey, you know, I sure can use that character tool to play in Co--oh right, I can't, because even if I had access to all of my character data (and I do, because hey, I was around here near the end like everyone else who was!) the best ~I~ have access to is paragon chat, which only really cares about costumes anyway.

If you aren't even going to respect people's basic feelings as to why they're feeling how they are, then your arguments inherently come from a negative place.

But you just read what I said and didn't actually listen, respond to it, etc. People's data is already being used. Data from people who are dead is being used for joyrides in other people's characters. That's a thing that I take issue with.

The points are that the characters aren't proprietary, could theoretically be recovered if you used the enhanced character tool CodeWalker wrote and the server had validation.  Finally, I certainly doubt anyone is taking them on a joyride as you wrote, especially given what the leaker said about confirming account and character names and character copy tool.  You must have been burning up if someone duped a character in Live too...

[weenus]

I'm going to be done addressing you directly. Sorry. It's not productive.

Weenus uses LEVITY.

It's not very effective . . .

Do you mean this one?

https://cit.cohtitan.com/

This is exactly what I was thinking of, I wasn't looking far enough down on the TitanNetwork home page, thank you!

[Vee]

Data from people who are dead is being used for joyrides in other people's characters. That's a thing that I take issue with.

Wait are people elsewhere alleging that or did you just come up with it? Pretty sure even those of us who aren't angry would take exception if we thought anyone was using other people's characters. But it never even crossed my mind that anyone would want to, much less that it'd be allowed even if the private server were as moustache twisting as some believe.

Personally I'd probably still not be angry, not sure I have the capacity for such feels. And the anger would be outweighed by the theoretical schadenfreude at the idea of someone else faceplanting my ta or khelds.

[therain93]

I have heard from people on that server. 1 is garbage because no one had qualifications with beta testing to get in, 2 we just want the damned game, 3 then release it and let the community sort it out because I've never heard of software updating after launch faster because MORE people can look at it. If anything, your arguments show why it should have been shared with more people sooner. Also enough people with it means you can't C&D SCORE and kill cox. Done.

Truly written like a gamer and not a software developer.... thank you for proving my point.

[Super Atom]

Wait are people elsewhere alleging that or did you just come up with it? Pretty sure even those of us who aren't angry would take exception of we thought anyone was using other people's characters. But it never even crossed my mind that anyone would want to, much less that it'd be allowed even if the private server were as moustache twisting as some believe.

Personally I'd probably still not be angry, not sure I have the capacity for such feels. And the anger would be outweighed by the theoretical schadenfreude at the idea of someone else faceplanting my ta or khelds.

It was a reddit thread, someone stated he noticed a character name/costume in the video belonging to a dead friend of his. You're welcome to search for it on the subreddit if you'd like. I'm not gonna sort through them for it.

[Kistulot]

Wait are people elsewhere alleging that or did you just come up with it? Pretty sure even those of us who aren't angry would take exception of we thought anyone was using other people's characters. But it never even crossed my mind that anyone would want to, much less that it'd be allowed even if the private server were as moustache twisting as some believe.

Personally I'd probably still not be angry, not sure I have the capacity for such feels. And the anger would be outweighed by the theoretical schadenfreude at the idea of someone else faceplanting my ta or khelds.

My data could be false, and I'd be the first to swallow it and apologize, but I have heard from multiple sources that unclaimed characters were occasionally being used, if not the most commonly.

That said, I fell asleep leveling my peacebringer and revived them almidst waking back up, so they wouldn't have too bad a time with mine  ;)

And yeah, it's all just data, and yeah, I honestly don't care if someone else downloads Argent Girl after the data drops if it does and uses her... I just want to be able to, and someone made that choice without us involved, and I'm callin schenanigans.

[saipaman]

Are your characters in the tracker?  Mine are and it hurts again to see how long it's been since they were last seen.

As for characters and accounts, I also have almost a terabyte of screenshots and FRAPS videos.  Including the character selection screens after login.  Those are best because they show blocks of characters associated with my account.

[therain93]

Weenus uses LEVITY.

It's not very effective . . .

I LOL'D irl, First time I did that reading this thread in what feels like ages.  ( ' :

[Ohioknight]

Plus, if you used Codewalker's character tool to download config info,  a long hash code was generated  for your characters if they were to ever be re-integrated into a server with a validation function to ensure they were legitimate.....

I only watched little bits of the destroyer video but wasn't this tool how they were loading the character data back?  I kindof got the impression that what he got was a full Codewalker file format download for every character on the system (I could be completely mistaken on that).

[Vee]

It was a reddit thread, someone stated he noticed a character name/costume in the video belonging to a dead friend of his. You're welcome to search for it on the subreddit if you'd like. I'm not gonna sort through them for it.

I'll take your word for it. I'm all set for mounds of unexpected reading just here. But afterlife login seems like a pretty sweet new feature.

[ChaosMatrix]

This whole situation is shameful, and those involved should feel shame, rather than attempt to defend the undefendable.

[Taceus Jiwede]

It honestly boils my blood quite a bit still.  Think of the people who died waiting to play this game again.  Think of all those stories we heard from the start of peoples kid finally finding a place they could fit in or overcame mental handicaps because of this game.  For the first few weeks after the game shut down, this forum was full of heartbreaking stories of people who would do ANYTHING to play the game again.

Then we find out it's actually been around this whole time, and even worse we get the excuse that "Well it was going to be made public soon anyway" well that is awfully convenient.  One could be forgiven for thinking that was a lie to save face, after all, what are the chances the private server was going to be made public just after it happened to be exposed? I mean come on, its been a secret for 6 years and just as it's exposed it comes out "Oh I was planning on releasing it in a few weeks" BS

No, unless proven wrong I believe this server would have never been released.  I think the intent of Leo and everyone involved was to keep it quiet and then slowly reverse engineer parts from it (Paragon Chat ETC) and slowly release chunks of the game.  Fine and dandy, and I appreciate he made Paragon Chat, but it certainly seems like a consolation prize.  This may sound mean, but currently from where I stand SCoRE is worse than NCSoft. At least NCSoft stopped everyone equally from playing it.  SCoRE just happily ignored those "I will never play CoH before I die again" comments

[MyriVerse]

My data could be false, and I'd be the first to swallow it and apologize, but I have heard from multiple sources that unclaimed characters were occasionally being used, if not the most commonly.

I just don't understand why someone would use the characters when there's nothing to be gained from it.

[Kyriani]

My data could be false, and I'd be the first to swallow it and apologize, but I have heard from multiple sources that unclaimed characters were occasionally being used, if not the most commonly.

That said, I fell asleep leveling my peacebringer and revived them almidst waking back up, so they wouldn't have too bad a time with mine  ;)

And yeah, it's all just data, and yeah, I honestly don't care if someone else downloads Argent Girl after the data drops if it does and uses her... I just want to be able to, and someone made that choice without us involved, and I'm callin schenanigans.

Getting fired up over hearsay that could very well be false isn't productive or healthy. There's a ton of information we don't have and just taking the words of people vying for 15 minutes of internet fame doesn't seem like a smart idea.

If someone has a copy of our characters... so what? It's irrelevant. Nothing changes for us. We still have all our good memories of playing those characters, telling stories about them, and keeping them in our hearts. A bunch of ones and zeroes aren't important.

If we finally get to play again and I have remake all my characters, that's ok. Someone having a copy of my character somewhere isn't important and you sound like you're getting far too upset over something that isn't important and allowing people to manipulate you with sensational drivel.

Take whatever you hear on either side with a grain of salt. I am. Because I know what its like to get caught up in BS like this and letting "he said, she said" nonsense get me all bent out of shape. I am not willing to let anyone do that to me again and you shouldn't either.

The only thing we know for sure is we don't have all the facts and half of what we do know isn't exactly substantiated. Letting people rile you up with what could be outright lies, is doing nothing but letting someone else have a laugh at your expense and allowing them to use you as a weapon against someone they have a grudge against. So chill out. Take a breath. And THINK LOGICALLY, not emotionally. I know that isn't easy given the circumstances but its what needs to be done.

[therain93]

Picture this.   Sicily, 194-


No, no, just consider this hypothetical:


Rewind to 3 days ago,  before all this hit.   Leandro makes an announcement that SCoRE has a very special treat for the 15th anniversary so you better have your issue 24 beta clients ready.


Fast forward,  2 weeks, the first announcement is made within paragon chat that you can direct your i24 client to this address and connect.  Later that night, server code gets torrented/box'd and the first server's ip address is announced to the world.


Days later people ask about the story.   "Yeah, we've been working on this for 6 years nonstop.   We've been so excited, it killed us not to tell you all the first time we bootd up and successfully logged in. "




Now,  would any one be screaming body murder about not being in the server?  No.  It's perspective.   And no, it didn't go this way,  but we're 11 days from the 15 th anniversary.   If you're hot under the collar, you may want to consider taking a break.

[Twi]

Hypothetically, what if it was laser beamed directly into our computers so we all had the code! That'd be amazing. Hypothetically.

[Ironwolf]

It's worth noting that in his video, People's Hero Mr. Destroyer Stroyer specifically called out how:

• Hardly anyone was on the server at any given time; sounding pretty much like Paragon Chat on a non-event day.
• When he hosted an event in Rikti War Zone, "RZW ran like crap" with more than a handful of people in the zone

That is a description of a server with a handful of active users that is still in need of further work; not a server with hundreds of active users and smooth as silk performance.

"3000 users", wherever that number came from, is a number spread over six years or more. If we take Mr. Destroyer Stroyer at his word, via his statements on his video, most of the people invited to the server either declined the invitations entirely or only came in for a short while before losing interest. He is not describing a thriving server full of supergroups and a vibrant community. He's describing the same sort of user base that uses Paragon Chat. Putting his "Liberator of /r/CityofHeroes" act aside, I suspect that what Mr. Destroyer Stroyer really hoped would happen is that the the server admins would be "forced" to open the server up to the public and Mr. Destroyer Stroyer would get the server-wide community in-game that he felt was missing and was therefore responsible for his feeling of it being non-fun to be a member of the server. (Yes, I'm aware he was banned. I don't think that changes his motivations, particularly, but only he really knows why he took the actions he took.)

However - we know nothing of the server. It might be running on someone's PC on a cable connection.

[ChaosMatrix]

Picture this.   Sicily, 194-


No, no, just consider this hypothetical:


Rewind to 3 days ago,  before all this hit.   Leandro makes an announcement that SCoRE has a very special treat for the 15th anniversary so you better have your issue 24 beta clients ready.


Fast forward,  2 weeks, the first announcement is made within paragon chat that you can direct your i24 client to this address and connect.  Later that night, server code gets torrented/box'd and the first server's ip address is announced to the world.


Days later people ask about the story.   "Yeah, we've been working on this for 6 years nonstop.   We've been so excited, it killed us not to tell you all the first time we bootd up and successfully logged in. "




Now,  would any one be screaming body murder about not being in the server?  No.  It's perspective.   And no, it didn't go this way,  but we're 11 days from the 15 th anniversary.   If you're hot under the collar, you may want to consider taking a break.

Consider if aliens dropped by tomorrow and told us that this life has been but a test and that we all get to evolve into the next space faring race.

At this point conjecture on what could had happened is pointless. Only what is and what has happened.