And the mask comes off.

[Arcana]

1. I don't understand this idea that the day Windows 9 is released, it will drop a nuclear warhead on CoX from which the game will never recover. What? I don't recall any other Windows release that bothered us who were playing this game, why is 9 some unthinkable Armageddon/DOOM?

2. Do YOU run out and buy the new Windows the day it is released, and install it right away? I sure don't. In fact, I don't bother upgrading until.... I buy a new computer. I would be more than willing to maintain two PCs JUST to run this game, were that necessary.

But we don't yet know that it will be.

3. Windows 9 will be here looooooooooooooooooong before CoT/CoX2. Not much of a transition, if you ask me.

With all due respect to downix, I believe his fears about Windows 9 are premature and probably exaggerated.  The CoH client ran stably on Win7x64, and I suspect unless Win9 fundamentally breaks OpenGL there will be a way to make the client work in Win9, since I highly doubt Win9 is going to be jettisoning the Win32 environment.

In fact being based on OpenGL insulates us partially from DirectX version problems killing the client, which is a plus.

[Arcana]

Lastly.. and this is where I think I have the biggest problem here with all of this:

Your looking at having a series of superhero MMO's launch as "successor" to CoX.  That's awesomesauce.. total awesomesauce.. HOWEVER.. it also means that each of the companies are going to be competing for a rather small gaming market segment of player funded dollars.  This means longer times between updates and expansions, no matter the financial model you use, because your only getting a small segment of the market share.  This is going to eventually cause a lot of friction, and even downright hostility between the companies involved.  We've all seen it before, especially with the various movements of CoH over the early years.  And frankly, I know I don't want to see it again.  I would suggest putting your collective heads together, and at least a couple of you merging over, with the consent of a majority of your player base that's financially supported you obviously, and making a banner under which the teams, like true heroes, work together to achieve a common goal.  In this case.. producing the best game possible, and keeping as many of us "refugee's" under the same digital roof.

Unfortunately, PseudoCool, sometimes mommy and daddy decide they can't live together anymore and have to start living apart.  They both love you, and its not your fault, but you can't fix everything that breaks.  Sometimes you have to build something new instead.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

With all due respect to downix, I believe his fears about Windows 9 are premature and probably exaggerated.

I think more than anything it was most likely just an example of a future problem. Perhaps a poorly laid out one.

Disclaimer: I know basically squat about Win 9.
I've heard rumor that Win 9 won't be shipping with an x32 version. That still leaves the really simple solution of...not using Windows 9.

[Harpospoke]

So thats mean, City of Heroes is returns? 

Why does this sound like "Gone to the Americans"?

I like it and hope it's worded just like that later.   

[Harpospoke]

Vet rewards.... will have to be re-earned. Just wait and see. I would bet on it. If you don't have your old account, how could they possibly verify this? Anyone and everyone could claim to have been there at original launch.

I wouldn't have a problem with everyone being a "veteran".    I might even suggest that most of the players will be long time vets.   It was that way at shutdown and everything was ok.   I can't see a downside.

[saipaman]

I was a paying customer from launch until shutdown.

I have no problem with either starting vet rewards over.  I also have no problems giving them out to everyone.

[Exxar]

I think this depends on how you define MMO - I'm talking about AAA MMORPG titles, and Im not aware of "dozens" of these in the fantasy genre.  And what's the market share of these "dozens" of fantasy MMOs?  Whats their profit margin, and how viable are they?  Whats their opportunity for development and expansion?  Id point to ArcheAge, from what Ive read they've had less than terrific success in keeping players.

Aion, TERA, Rift, LOTRO, WoW, DDO, Everquest 1 & 2, Neverwinter, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy whichever and I'm sure I've forgotten some. There are a bunch of them upcoming too, from Everquest 3 to Archeage and that Allods sequel or whatever it is.



And since this is my first post in this topic, unfathomable and limitless thanks to everyone working on getting our beloved game back

[Sinistar]

I was a paying customer from launch until shutdown.

I have no problem with either starting vet rewards over.  I also have no problems giving them out to everyone.

Here is the link to the vet rewards:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Veteran_Rewards

Given that many rewards were tailor or respec tokens or new costume pieces, and a few were weapons like the nemesis staff and blackwand, another was access to flight powers at Level 6, the base teleport power, the reveal map power and a few other minor things,  I really don't see it as game breaking if the game returns and we all start anew with our characters but all vet rewards are issued along with all the paragon tokens to unlock the special costumes such as mecha armor and other armors that were available.

Costumes tied to Task Forces such as the roman costume could be regained by doing the ITF
Holiday event costumes could wait until the event rolls around again.

[Arcana]

I think more than anything it was most likely just an example of a future problem. Perhaps a poorly laid out one.

Disclaimer: I know basically squat about Win 9.
I've heard rumor that Win 9 won't be shipping with an x32 version. That still leaves the really simple solution of...not using Windows 9.

I ran City of Heroes on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 the last three years of the game or so.  You did not need to run it on an x32 version of Windows.  In fact I heard more players had problems on Windows 7 x32 than on Windows 7 x64 (because Win7 x64 dealt a little more gracefully with that memory leak that was prevalent on the client).

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Aion, TERA, Rift, LOTRO, WoW, DDO, Everquest 1 & 2, Neverwinter, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy whichever and I'm sure I've forgotten some. There are a bunch of them upcoming too, from Everquest 3 to Archeage and that Allods sequel or whatever it is

And since this is my first post in this topic, unfathomable and limitless thanks to everyone working on getting our beloved game back

WoW, Everquest, Everquest 2, Everquest Next, Everquest Landmark, LOTRO, TERA Online, Neverwinter, Final Fantasty 11, Final Fantasty 14, Rift, Aion, Lineage, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, ArcheAge, Age of Conan, Asheron's Call, and of course...the first MMO to ever re-launch after being shuttered: Asheron's Call 2.
Does one count WildStar? What about Blade & Soul?
But the list really does go on.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

I ran City of Heroes on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 the last three years of the game or so.  You did not need to run it on an x32 version of Windows.  In fact I heard more players had problems on Windows 7 x32 than on Windows 7 x64 (because Win7 x64 dealt a little more gracefully with that memory leak that was prevalent on the client).

-facepalms- Derp. As I should know... Since I run a lot of x32 programs on my x64 computer... and have been around a computer once or twice in my life.
Forgive me, It's one of those days...
No sleep, and no coffee... Ugh.

[Taceus Jiwede]

Ah, the memories.  AC was my first MMO, and left there to play Horizons for a goodly while.  (Loved the crafting there, and playing a dragon!). After that City of Heroes.  After that primarily LOTRO, but always came back to CoX.  Just never got over Flying, Radio Missions, Wenty's and Base/IO crafting...

Ahhh horizons.  That game had so much potential,  have they dragons ever reached adulthood in that game?  I stopped playing shortly after the first huge content update. When the goat dudes were released.  You had to raid the.....evil place....and fight the....evil angel?  Its been about a decade  now so I can't quite remember.  It's a shame they never achieved the things they wanted with that game.  It was well before it's time.

Also I remember two people could play on the same account at the same time from different computers.

[Codewalker]

The character creator is part of the code base that's being provided by MWM.

Right, so you'll have to wait on that to be ready, then modify it to work with COH's character model. From what I've seen of CoT character model regions so far, I don't expect them to be directly compatible.

Not unless you're really sneaky!
Demo's are fantastic; the ability to edit them doubly so. Hint: Ragdoll code.

Ragdoll only gets you part of the way there, since the "neutral" (0) position of the bones in the player skeleton is not a zero-transformation state. You'll still have to get everything rotated and positioned around the origin just right so that they'll line up when transformed back to the appropriate place on the skeleton. All those cumulative transformations will inevitably introduce a small amount of shearing or non-linear transformation, though probably only perfectionists like me would be bothered by it.

You also lose bone bindings and weights for the verticies in the capture process, which is a much bigger deal for costume parts than is is for say, buildings.

Either way, it's still a huge effort to do that for every costume part, and it's not something that can be simply "ported".

[FloatingFatMan]

You also lose bone bindings and weights for the verticies in the capture process, which is a much bigger deal for costume parts than is is for say, buildings.

Either way, it's still a huge effort to do that for every costume part, and it's not something that can be simply "ported".

Are the actual meshes in the PIGG files not exportable in any way?

[Scendera]

I think more than anything it was most likely just an example of a future problem. Perhaps a poorly laid out one.

Disclaimer: I know basically squat about Win 9.
I've heard rumor that Win 9 won't be shipping with an x32 version. That still leaves the really simple solution of...not using Windows 9.

Vista x64 was perfectly compatible and stable; I played exclusively on it when the servers were still around. Win7 x64 is perfectly compatible and stable for Icon, tho I only switched to it last December and thus never tried it on live servers. Can't rule out something bizarre with networking due to that, but no one else has reported anything so I find it unlikely.

Unless you mean 9 is going to completely and totally break all 32 bit compatibility, which seems suicidally stupid, I don't think Win9 x64 is any likelier to suffer than Vista or 7.

[ArchPilgrim]

I was a paying customer from launch until shutdown.

I have no problem with either starting vet rewards over.  I also have no problems giving them out to everyone.

Same.  Biggest issue for me, as I recall, was that as long time subscriber who left for awhile then came back after the f2p switch, I had every slot on all my toons filled with crafted IOs for which I then had to pay rent or else they were inactive.  And the base was full of crafted and set IOs as well.

So, i23 will come back online (God willing) with that same f2p construct, yes?

[Sinistar]

Same.  Biggest issue for me, as I recall, was that as long time subscriber who left for awhile then came back after the f2p switch, I had every slot on all my toons filled with crafted IOs for which I then had to pay rent or else they were inactive.  And the base was full of crafted and set IOs as well.

So, i23 will come back online (God willing) with that same f2p construct, yes?

Unknown what type of payment system would exist, but bases and characters are not expected to return.

[Illusionss]

*I make a remark to the effect that the relaunch of i23 take precedence over all, including successors to the game*

Aww.... -insert obviously over the top pouting face here-

But, in all seriousness.
I don't foresee any way in which our needs would interfere at all with the Legacy servers re-opening ASAP.
More likely than anything, I'd see if the Legacy team needed anything from us to expedite their work.

Don't get me wrong, its not that I don't think successors to the game are not important, because they are. Definitely. I just think everyone will wait a little more patiently if they have something worthy to do while we wait. It'll take a lot of pressure off the CoT team, for instance, if everyone is happily getting their level 50s Hybrid'ed out. .

I'm just all thrilled thinking about CoT with SoAs in it: WHEEEE. And I'm picturing groups like the Carnival of Shadows, rendered in the Unreal engine. That would be unreal, for sure.

I still need to quit thinking like this is a done deal though, lest I jinx things.

[Illusionss]

I wouldn't have a problem with everyone being a "veteran".    I might even suggest that most of the players will be long time vets.   It was that way at shutdown and everything was ok.   I can't see a downside.

I would be fine with all rewards being available to everyone, but I'm not going in expecting that unless we're told we are getting that.

Since we are not getting the CODE, but just a mirror of the game, I don't think we will get vet rewards for free... because without the source code, how could they go in there and make this happen? [I am incredibly ignorant about coding stuff <------- disclaimer] They would have to modify the code, which can't be modified...? That's why I'm thinking its going to be business as usual as we all start from scratch.

But hey, if it can be done I am all for it.

[AnElfCalledMack]

I would be fine with all rewards being available to everyone, but I'm not going in expecting that unless we're told we are getting that.

Since we are not getting the CODE, but just a mirror of the game, I don't think we will get vet rewards for free... because without the source code, how could they go in there and make this happen? [I am incredibly ignorant about coding stuff <------- disclaimer] They would have to modify the code, which can't be modified...? That's why I'm thinking its going to be business as usual as we all start from scratch.

But hey, if it can be done I am all for it.

Vet rewards are a function of the user database, not the game code. The legacy derver team will need to write a new user database, and it'd be relatively simple to have it set things like "X months veteran" or "VIP" on all new users by default, which the code would then handle normally. That is, however, a commercial decision for an entity that doesn't exist yet, so we'll see what gets announced if there's a final deal.