And the mask comes off.

[RedWarlock]

I truly wish the first post would be amended or there was a FAQ regarding this... tired of seeing the same questions and misconceptions over and over and over.


Can someone create a sticky post of FAQs regarding all of this please to help calm the hysteria over who is doing what (MWM is not running/buying CoHi23)... that Windows 9 does not mean the death of CoHi23 etc etc..


I know why people are confused...because there is so much chatter in between relevant posts and they are easily missed; which is why I think a sticky FAQ that is locked should be implemented by someone who can in PLAIN language explain things to people.

Yes, would be very helpful...

[Arcana]

Of course, the Paragon Store itself was actually ran by an outside company unless I'm terribly mistaken.  This would make reopening it for business a little more complex.

Also insane.  MWM would be better off outsourcing the City of Titans store to a nine year old's lemonade stand.

The Freedom store was the kind of awful I could write a book about.  No aspect of it, from how the contract was awarded to the vendor selected to the initial design to the awful awful code that implemented it to its performance and (lack of) functionality to the ludicrous rate at which issues were addressed.  It was literally so bad if it was a senior high school programming project I would have given it an F.

[Taceus Jiwede]

If you do, let me know and I'll forward your info to my friends in Microsoft.

That would be awesome actually.  My boss would be much more willing to pursue the idea if I tell him that.   I'll pass what you said onto him

[Phaetan]

The Freedom store was the kind of awful I could write a book about.

Oh, undoubtedly.  I know that you are much more knowledgeable about the details, but what I'd observed as a player included things like staff admitting that things needed changed at one point, but they couldn't get the people running the store to respond in a timely manner when something was wrong.  I intentionally left out the problems with the service as it existed, as I felt pointing out that bringing the store back up as it was would involve negotiations with yet another company was a sufficiently large ice bath.

I seem to recall that the interface very similar to other services of the sort that they provided to other games, so likely they have proprietary control of the store as it existed.  Dies that sounds correct to you, Arcana?

[Sinistar]

I wondered if they could just give all subscribers XP buffs.  Everquest 2 does this.  And if they opened up all vet and shop power set/costumes to subscribers too, we'd be back to where our old accounts were in no time.  And think about how fun it would be just getting characters leveling again.  It would be like back at launch, only with 23 issues' worth of extra fringe benefits.   

An option might be about 6 months of DXP and by then the store will be up and running and XP/INF boosters and super packs will be available for purchase.   As to leveling again from scratch, well I can PL/Grind as well as the next person but with all the characters I had prior to shutdown I don't see them all coming back from scratch as there were too many.

Also the anniversary badges would have to start over from the beginning or else be offered all at once so that people can catch up quickly on adding them to their badge collecting alts. 

Now if they could arrange a way for us to pay a one time fee to regain our account  data and characters, that would be worth considering.

[AlienOne]

If you do, let me know and I'll forward your info to my friends in Microsoft.

WHAT?!?!? Microsoft never gets it right the first time around?

I must meditate on this....

[Rejolt]

Also insane.  MWM would be better off outsourcing the City of Titans store to a nine year old's lemonade stand.

The Freedom store was the kind of awful I could write a book about.  No aspect of it, from how the contract was awarded to the vendor selected to the initial design to the awful awful code that implemented it to its performance and (lack of) functionality to the ludicrous rate at which issues were addressed.  It was literally so bad if it was a senior high school programming project I would have given it an F.

(/Looks around)

DAMN.

Edit: Not disagreeing, as it was a pain looking for the stuff I was actually interested in, but we're kind of stuck with the UI as is if the game comes back, right?

[HEATSTROKE]

Now if they could arrange a way for us to pay a one time fee to regain our account  data and characters, that would be worth considering.

I would pay up to $100 bucks to get that back.. easily..

[Shard]

• I am not sure where you get the 12:1 ratio. The people I've worked with nail this in 2, maybe 3 takes. Nowhere near 12:1.

My understanding of the explanation is is not that  that is 12:1 takes/usable takes as it is 12:1 minutes/usable minutes.  I admint it still seems high to me noit working in that field but I expect that a good bit of that is "leaked time."

• Editing a V/O is comparatively easy and fast. Not like video. It shouldn't take an editor and producer long to get this sorted.

True, but what would you expect the time ratio is there? 

• Also 100,000 minutes sounds like a lot of dialog, that's well over 1,500 hours. I'd think this is a worst case scenario and not a minimum amount. That number I'd expect to be significantly lower. And therefore your multiplier would be lower as well.

The thing to remember here is the multiplier by number of languages.

[hopelives]

I would pay up to $100 bucks to get that back.. easily..

 agreed

[FloatingFatMan]

agreed

NOT agreed! I'd pay a fair and reasonable fee, not exceeding $20 and preferably more like in the $10 range.  I absolutely wouldn't pay $100 though! I'd rather just restart everything if that's how much is asked for!

[silvers1]

Also insane.  MWM would be better off outsourcing the City of Titans store to a nine year old's lemonade stand.

The Freedom store was the kind of awful I could write a book about.  No aspect of it, from how the contract was awarded to the vendor selected to the initial design to the awful awful code that implemented it to its performance and (lack of) functionality to the ludicrous rate at which issues were addressed.  It was literally so bad if it was a senior high school programming project I would have given it an F.

Yeah, the store was implemented very poorly.  I hated how some aspects of the game seemed to disable, like purchased costume pieces & auras, when the store went down.   There needed to be a delineation between already purchased items and the store, that would not be impacted by its availability.

[Waffles]

The store itself wasn't great, however, as far as content is concerned, it's arguably one of the better MMO stores to come out in that regard.

[ArchPilgrim]

I'm not particularly bothered by VA in MMO's really.  Whilst it might be nice to ge a greeting from your contact, it's by no means necessary.  Now, VA to add -ambience-, that I'd go with. Screams in the distance when there's a building fire, or someone getting mugged, or a giant monster rampaging, maybe the occasional half heard conversation of someone using a phone, police radio chatter as a squad car passes you by.  That kind of stuff is fine by me, but spoken mission texts and cutscenes? Not really bothered.

Amen.  Well said, Sir!

I really hate it when threads are derailed by Flaming Egos on display.  I was rather hoping for (1) the nice sticky FAQ to be posted, and (2) to be able to quietly sit on our collective hands and wait for meaningful news re: the ongoing negotiations.

Speculation be damned.

[CrimsonCapacitor]

One thing I've never been able to understand about any MMO store, be it LOTRO, TSW, COH... They're all freakin' slow.  I have broadband that occasionally works (Yeah, I'm lookin' at YOU, Comcast.)  Opening the stores in games is usually painful.  Things take forever to load.  Search?  Good luck with that. 

I'd love to have a store pretty much the exact opposite of LOTRO's:  Responsive, fast, searchable...  Is that too much to ask?

[Cailyn Alaynn]

I loathed the paragon store for that exact reason.

[KennonGL]

One thing I'm really going to miss:  being unable to recreate certain characters "perfectly".

My first character, Tau Zero, was still using costume pieces and a face that were no longer available
(having been replaced by later skins).

For quite a few years, he could never go to Icon.  But since he had the "perfect" costume that didn't matter.

I'll miss my vet rewards, I'll miss my base (a lot), and I'll miss all the "other" progress I had in the game,
but I'll miss Tau's old costume most of all.

Still, I'll happily give it all up just to be playing again.

[Exxar]

I'd love to have a store pretty much the exact opposite of LOTRO's:  Responsive, fast, searchable...  Is that too much to ask?

Apparently all games do stores as in-game browser windows which load complete web pages off the store's servers. Even if the art for stuff in the store is already in the game files, it's not read from the user's computer but from the webpage instead. GW2 in its upcoming feature pack is the first game to implement loading of store assets from game files themselves as far as I know of.

So basically, the slow loading is due to transferring a crapton of images from a web server that probably isn't even scaled well and is nowhere near the CDN where the rest of the game is delivered from. The search queries themselves are probably even worse since the stores are often done by third parties and/or just adapted from preexisting solutions so their optimization sucks.

[FloatingFatMan]

^ When CoH was still running, I was on a 50mbit/sec line. The store was STILL slow as molasses...

[Fridgy Daiere]

Reading your response made me smile and think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

You just said you do actually care about voice acting.   

And your response made me think of my new favorite song by Weird Al!