New efforts!

[OzonePrime]

If I start from the assumption that the game is going to come back in some form, then the only thing I really hope for is that enough people will support it - financially - to keep it a going concern.

It would be really tragic if all of the time and energy and effort that is going into bringing the game back turns out to be for naught because there aren't enough people willing to pay to keep it afloat.

Large player base won't be a problem! There are plenty of old players, as well as new, who will support the best game ever! :)

[Luna Eclypse]

Most of the time when I deleted a character he would have like 100k or so inf. I would go to atlas and look for someone who just seemed like they were new and give them the money.

I loved the "Oh wow! thanks a lot" kind of response when we all knew it was just about enough cash to get them SOs and not much more.

Same here. Or a couple times I'd ask trivia questions in Broadcast and the first one to answer right would get the inf. Hosted costume contests for it a few times too.

[Mageman]

I just want to throw in a few things here - I've looked at all 506 pages and there's no reason that I feel that the page count should be that high. Lots of post on stuff that has nothing to do with this thread (let alone CoX). There is one person who made (I think) 7-8 posts in rapid succession just so he could have the first post on page 500.

I started reading this post in June, and quickly joined so I could make the occasional post. Before June, I did nothing about the loss of CoX. When the shutdown was announced, I canceled my subscriptions and didn't play again. I bought CO and tried that, but gave up after the free month that comes with the game. In May/June I tried to see if CoX was back (obviously, it isn't), so I wrote a nasty e-mail to NCSoft (every address I could find, searching for a few hours). I'm not much of a facebook user, but that's just me.

Now my hopes are pinned to this thread. Every day, I read a little. On days I don't work, I get caught up to the most current page.

I still say, that unless I get my account stuff back (meaning all my purchases), I will probably play, and even pay some. But, it won't be as much as if my account data isn't restored. Character data I would like, but is not as important as my account data. I personally had 2 accounts. One that was paid most of the time, and the other was paid occasionally. My first account had every expansion and veteran reward. I think my second account started around the GvE edition, and had every expansion after that. I even bought 4 GvE editions for friends hoping they would play. Sadly, they never gave the effort to learn to play. Too complicated with which powers to choose from and, to assign your slots, and then having to buy enhancements every couple of levels. I really liked the generic IOs - you could slot them and then forget about them. I always ran the "introduction to crafting" missions at level 22 so I could get a free level 25 enhancement.

As far as Mids goes, I used it occasionally. Mainly to read up on the powers, and what I wanted to do more of when I would respec. Or if I would be posting my build  on the forums. I loved the people on the forums that would help you with your build (making suggestions and telling you why this will help). Of course, there are always those idiots who would tell you something like "Your Build SUCKS!" without any helpful information.

My first level 50 was a Fire/Kin controller to unlock the Khelds (never got into playing one though). My first level 50 villain was my Bots/Dark MM. So much fun! Although I would have preferred to play Blue-side (as I would consider myself more of a hero than a villain), MMs were too much fun not to play Red-side. I was also vocal on the forums for the ability to switch sides after the GvE edition (which I hoped would have that ability).


So this is my little rant. Bring back the account data! NCSoft has it, make them give it up!

[Illusionss]

Regarding the idea of getting all our stuff back...

From what I have seen, NCSoft will have to be able to reconstruct it all at 100% or they won't release any of it.  Remember, they were litigious enough that they announced the shutdown 90-91 days before it actually happened, then shut down pre-pay subbing.  That was so they could avoid any 3-month pre-paid subscription lawsuits.

If they think that they can't fulfill every legacy player's accounts, they won't risk a lawsuit.  As someone said earlier, we don't own any of the toons we made nor all the time and effort we put into them.  As per EULA, we paid NCSoft for the priviledge to log in and manipulate their game.  If they release some legacy accounts to some people but are unable to release to *every* account to *every* previous player, some lawyer somewhere might see an opportunity to get a settlement for 'emotional distress' or something similar.

Would I like to get all my stuff, and my wife's stuff back?  Hell yes!  But not if someone else can't also get all their stuff back too.  In that case, fair's fair and we all should restart at Square One.  If we are heroes, we should be prepared to sacrifice. (edited)

Ergh. All this makes most excellent sense. You are completely right. And that means we probably won't be getting our stuff back.

Oh well! Fire up the servers, I have everything saved, right down to bios/descriptions and what can be done once, will be done again.  8) beats not being able to do it AT ALL, right?

[MM3squints]

As far as Mids goes, I used it occasionally. Mainly to read up on the powers, and what I wanted to do more of when I would respec. Or if I would be posting my build  on the forums. I loved the people on the forums that would help you with your build (making suggestions and telling you why this will help). Of course, there are always those idiots who would tell you something like "Your Build SUCKS!" without any helpful information.

Heh that always made me laugh when people with E-Peens tell people in PuGs how to play the game without telling them why. Why join a PuG if you think your better than others, to make yourself feel better? xD. Being a min/maxer myself, I realized CoX truly catered to everyone regardless of their build and become effective even in big group raids. This was due to the Incarnate Buff of Hybrid where it will give a buff to you and several others around you and can stack. This in turn will give everyone with a boost dmg, control, etc regardless of your build (of course AT restrictions still apply) making everyone and anyone to be effective in the raid fights.

[Surelle]

Waffles,

Thanks for your video!  I never played a Spider and somehow it was just uplifting to see the CoH maps again but from a fresh perspective.   :)

Mageman,

Don't panic yet.  First off, we don't yet have the game back, and second, once we do, there will be plenty of time for working out all the other details.  The Mystery Team played CoH too.  They want their stuff back too.  But if that info isn't there, the only thing standing in our way is ideas.  For example, they could make it so players who pay the $15 a month sub price will be able to play with all vet rewards and all cash shop power sets unlocked.  Maybe they'd have free reign on max character slots as well.  Free players could perhaps still play but would have to buy and unlock cash shop and vet reward items to get those.  (I'll bet if they did it this way, most people, even new players, after trying the game would sub.)  But either way they'll figure something out.

And everyone is hanging out in this thread, because that's where the action is.  Everyone wants to hear The News first.   ;)  We're all just on pins and needles, trying not to get *too* psyched in case it falls through.  This is the most resilient band of gamers I've ever seen in an MMO, though, I'll say that.  Stubborn and old we may be, but here we are, refusing to give up or forget and move on.

[Ironwolf]

For minecraft maybe...

Off by a factor of 5x-10x.

(source of this info undisclosed for hopefully obvious reasons)

Login/Chat/Auction/AE/Per-shard dbservers/etc: Virtual. Rough guess, you'd probably want a cluster of 6-8 midrange physical hosts for proper availability and load balancing

Mapserver pool: Around 40 physical servers, probably high-capacity blades. Shared between ALL shards, so how many of these you need is solely dependent on how many concurrent players across the entire game you want to support. CPU is important, but having tons of RAM is more important due to heavy use of instanced maps.

SQL servers: 4 (physical). If it were me, I'd probably set these up with shared SAN storage in a 5-node cluster, so you only have to have 1 spare for failover.

If you went with a really high-end virtual cluster you might could reduce that some, but from what I hear certain things are quite sensitive to latency, so too much overprovisioning or VM migration would result in lag spikes.

Great to see a more precise value, so in other words they really need to host these themselves or server farm costs will eat them up.

On another note - I really don't care if people think this is all a hoax because the "goal they were shooting for is August" was not met dead on time. Things running a bit late due to the technical expertise project and my not asking for updates due to the Massively article are making things stay quiet.

If you can't understand the entire NCSoft does not want this to be done publicly thing - I can't help you. That things are going to stay quiet until near the end is now likely. I am not doing it out of spite but out of caution and I am sorry.

I would rather have the bunch of nasty gram emails from a few folks than not get the game back. I read this site daily still but I have held back a bit for obvious reasons.

[sindyr]

Been away for over two weeks. Last I heard NCSoft was requiring the dev team to provide some proof of competence. Any news on that front since two weeks ago? ETA? Progress? Anything? Beuller?

[Ryo Kinsaru]

Waffles!!!

Loving the crab-spider video, that is sweetness! The nostalgia flooded back in when I saw "Inspirations Full" and "Recipe Found" fly across the screen. You are MOST welcome on my maps my friend! I actually enjoyed PL because five people standing at the door for an unspecified amount of time would have the most random conversations, and it was hilarious. Elec/Fire was way too easy and I could just read chat and be highly entertained while actually doing something productive besides forming trial runs. Post sometime what server you plan to be on, I don't really have a preference at this point!

Sort of on and sort of off topic, I wonder if the server structure will actually be the same? I ended up on Exalted later in the game and honestly regretted the decision due to population, aside from a few really awesome people I met there. Will there still be a sub-only server? I honestly don't like the idea anymore, even though at the time it made me feel leet. I was much younger then and completely full of crap, so if there is one I won't be part of it most likely.

[EDIT: Fixing bbcode markup error. ~Agge]

[Power Gamer]

Great to see a more precise value, so in other words they really need to host these themselves or server farm costs will eat them up.

On another note - I really don't care if people think this is all a hoax because the "goal they were shooting for is August" was not met dead on time. Things running a bit late due to the technical expertise project and my not asking for updates due to the Massively article are making things stay quiet.

If you can't understand the entire NCSoft does not want this to be done publicly thing - I can't help you. That things are going to stay quiet until near the end is now likely. I am not doing it out of spite but out of caution and I am sorry.

I would rather have the bunch of nasty gram emails from a few folks than not get the game back. I read this site daily still but I have held back a bit for obvious reasons.

Stay the course, Ironwolf.

[Kistulot]

Stay the course, Ironwolf.

Here here! As much as I want updates, I too care more about having the game back eventually than knowing everything RIGHT NOW.

Sooner the better, obviously. :)

I just read over the Blue King Studios comic since I'd only read the Top Cow one, and it really reminded me what it was like to be a hero in Paragon City. It's too bad the series didnt get to continue, maybe showing some Redside action, swapping around to different NPCs...

Hopefully you don't get any nasty emails! You're doing what you should be doing in this scenario - holding aggro on all of that information so it doesn't cause NCSoft to declare the mission failed. We don't need a Suicide Jane right now to try going the extra mile to help out with the Lost. We need someone willing to stand their ground and take a beating to protect all of our mutual interests!

...I mighta stretched that metaphor a bit. Still, here's hoping for news Soon, but only as soon as it is no longer detrimental to the cause :)

[adarict]

I racked and stacked all that stuff in the last 6 years the hardware can get more expensive depending on what options you thrown on it but the hardware is cheap compared to licensing sometimes.

Stay away from IBM they will gouge you to all hell and back.  There where periods where we spent more money on monitoring the server each year than we did for the actual  purchase the dam thing. Stupid arse managers

The company I work for has 2 Primary Datacenters.  the particular product I work on includes a farm of about 100 Citrix servers, and probably another 30 web servers, plus another dozen or so SQL servers.  One of our datacenters is managed by IBM, and I would definitely concur with your assessment of them  :)  To make matters worse, our other datacenter is managed by Dell, and they are probably WORSE.  There is nothing quite as frustrating to an IT person than having to let some other group manage their servers, and see how much they charge you for things that take next to zero effort or actual cost. 

[Ironwolf]

We switched from Sun to Linux where I work and the license for our servers was over $100,000 per year - per machine. Switching to open source saved hundreds of millions a year.

It took us 3 years to roll it all out!

[LaughingAlex]

We switched from Sun to Linux where I work and the license for our servers was over $100,000 per year - per machine. Switching to open source saved hundreds of millions a year.

It took us 3 years to roll it all out!

Go Linux.  (Note, I do typically need to have my resources if I do use linux ever, but I do see why it's a likable os)

[Harpospoke]

Dark and Kinetics were always dicey for lowbie teams, because even if you were experienced, the people you were playing with weren't always aware of how to get their heals. I remember I'd always explain it to them, either "I am a Dark Defender, stand near me if you want to be healed" or "I am a Kinetic Defender, stay near the enemies if you want to be healed". Once they got that in their heads though, they usually noticed pretty quick that my heals spammed like crazy and kept them constantly topped up. They learned to love the Dark, then. :)

Mind you, there was one lowbie team where they didn't have ignorance as an excuse. It was a Kheld in Nova form who kept screaming, "Why won't you heal me!?!" when he was taking massive damage. My response was just, "Because you're standing way over there and my heal is PBAoE." Not stated: "How did you get a character to 50 without knowing how this works?"

If it was their first toon that got them to lvl 50, it's possible they never saw a Dark Defender in action.   I know I missed seeing one for a long time.   I'm trying to remember if I ever saw one before I made my own on a whim once.

I got that one to 50 and boy am I glad I did.   Absolutely loved playing her.   Being a Controller type, it felt just right to me.   The debuffing madness by itself just made me giddy.   And if you spend much time around Fire Imps, Fluffy is a joy of a pet.  Sooo smart in comparison.  (He's cute too)   I didn't play Defenders enough to know how that set compared with others, but I know my Dark/Dark was fun to solo at lvl 50.   Taking my time to set up and plan an attack made me happy.

[dwturducken]

I'm actually going to wait until September 1st to cry "Hoax!" I don't like to jump the gun.

[Harpospoke]

Some may look down on it but if everything does get wiped I fully intend to reroll my Elec/Fire brute and rebuild my AE maps. Those vets who want to recover a build that they already put all the blood/sweat/tears into will be more than welcome on my maps. Just stand at the door and talk amongst yourselves. I WILL however be checking credentials, I will not be PL'ing any new players. I've always got lowbies (being an altoholic) and I will group with them when possible, but you're not going straight to 50 with no knowledge of the game on my time hehe. 0-50 in less than five hours and off to trials.

Snobbish PL - if you have to munch purples then you're doing it wrong. Period. Have a nice day!

I'll certainly join.  PLing is a mystery to me.   I've got my Sentinel files that show vet badges.

Do you allow people to join in the fight?  Seems like I would feel guilty if I didn't help.

[Ironwolf]

If it was their first toon that got them to lvl 50, it's possible they never saw a Dark Defender in action.   I know I missed seeing one for a long time.   I'm trying to remember if I ever saw one before I made my own on a whim once.

I got that one to 50 and boy am I glad I did.   Absolutely loved playing her.   Being a Controller type, it felt just right to me.   The debuffing madness by itself just made me giddy.   And if you spend much time around Fire Imps, Fluffy is a joy of a pet.  Sooo smart in comparison.  (He's cute too)   I didn't play Defenders enough to know how that set compared with others, but I know my Dark/Dark was fun to solo at lvl 50.   Taking my time to set up and plan an attack made me happy.

I used to run +4x8 - solo on my Water/Dark corruptor. It really was like cheating, it was self power leveling.

[Sihada]

Assuming that the game comes back, I am guessing/speculating that the most likely outcome would be a complete account wipe with everyone starting from scratch (if only to avoid legal hassles of transferring account/payment data from NCSoft to the new caretakers).  I would also guess/speculate that all content would be available to monthly subscribers; again to create the easiest possible transition to the new caretakers.

Just a guess.

Will I be sad if my characters are lost?  Sure.  Right up until the moment that I do my very first clear of the Sewers in Atlas Park. ;)

[Waffles]

I used to run +4x8 - solo on my Water/Dark corruptor. It really was like cheating, it was self power leveling.

Water was pretty much the most perfected blast set.