City of Heroes: Going Rogue

[morlac]

Strongly considering picking this up.  Have an itch to play some superhero action, champions doesn't quite do it for me.  Where are you all playing should I decide to grab it?

I did not get going rogue but took advantage of  free 30 days offer.  I have herows/villians on Fredoom, Victory and Virtue.  freedom has the biggest population iirc.

[Abaddon]

There is a 7 day free trial you can subscribe too which unlocks all the Going Rogue content as well as I18. You have to create a new account but you can tie it in under your NCsoft master account if you have one. The free trial has some annoying restrictions such as your not allowed to use Global or Broadcast chat channels, you cannot send or recieve tells and you cannot initiate a group. You can still solo and you can use the LFG setting to get in groups. Once your in the group you can use the team chat.

General consensus is that the new Praetoria content is currently too difficult. There's a pretty good size thread on the topic on the official forums. You need to be a veteran player with an exceptionaly tight build to solo missions beyond level 8 or so in Praetoria and spawns can get really out of control running missions in a group. Seems everything in praetoria is sort of set at +2 difficulty by default. Ran a level 12ish mish tonight with a full team and we had one pull with 5 bosses, 3 lt's and 5 or 6 minions all level 13ish. Some folks are enjoying the added challenge others not so much since you tend to die/full wipe quite a bit now.

[Destructor]

General consensus is that the new Praetoria content is currently too difficult. There's a pretty good size thread on the topic on the official forums. You need to be a veteran player with an exceptionaly tight build to solo missions beyond level 8 or so in Praetoria and spawns can get really out of control running missions in a group. Seems everything in praetoria is sort of set at +2 difficulty by default. Ran a level 12ish mish tonight with a full team and we had one pull with 5 bosses, 3 lt's and 5 or 6 minions all level 13ish. Some folks are enjoying the added challenge others not so much since you tend to die/full wipe quite a bit now.

I completely and totally agree as far as the difficulty goes. I'm a vet of the game and have been so for quite some time now, and I've been having a ton of problems in Praetoria. It's not even funny the difficulty spike over 'regular' CoX content.

Thankfully you don't have to level there, but if I was a brand new player who went there for the first time, I'd put the game down in disgust it's that hard. Seriously. It's just not fun.

BTW, have a link to said thread? I'd love to read over it.

[Abaddon]

Here's the link to the thread on the difficulty level of Praetoria;

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=234708

[CeeKay]

8 bucks for 8 new emotes? 

[morlac]

8 bucks for 8 new emotes? 

wow.  That is awful.  Last game I would expect to have some lame DLC.

[CeeKay]

the alignment system explained.

[CeeKay]

City of Heroes has a re-activation weekend event coming up Oct. 7-10, including a sampling (up to L14) of the Praetoria zone:

Reactivation Weekend Featuring Going Rogue 10/7-10/10
http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/news_archive/reactivation_weekend_featuring.html

For everyone's gaming pleasure, Praetoria will be accessible to ALL accounts in good standing whether they are brand new, have been reactivated or have remained active!

If you've let your City of Heroes account lapse, but would like to see what Going Rogue is like, we will reactivate your account for FREE. Because there is so much new content to explore, you're getting almost FIVE full days to experience it all!

Active and reactivated account holders will be able to try out our newest and most visually captivating power sets* while discovering a brand new parallel world and the intestine struggle ripping apart its denizens behind those sterile Praetorian walls**!

The Reactivation Weekend starts on Thursday, October 7th at 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time / 10:00 a.m. Central Time / 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time / 4:00 p.m. British Time / 17:00 Central European Time and ends on Sunday, October 10th, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time / 1:59 a.m. Central Time / 2:59 a.m. Eastern Time / 7:59 a.m. British Time / 8:59 Central European Time.

** ** Please note all active or reactivated accounts that will be granted temporary access to Going Rogue will only have access to the Praetorian content up to level 14.

I may have to check this out.

[Destructor]

Do do so - CoX is still going strong in my book.

[morlac]

Do do so - CoX is still going strong in my book.

Agree.  Plus it has the best random pick up groups of any game I have ever played.  I tend to play mostly with a friend as a duo but when I am playing alone or we decide to add strangers it's almost always a great expierence.

[Blackjack]

So I guess the problem once you get an expansion out the door, is you may not need all those devs anymore...

Layoffs hit Paragon Studios
http://www.mmorpg.com/newsroom.cfm/read/18253/City-of-Heroes-Breaking-Layoffs-Hit-Paragon-Studios.html

According to an anonymous source, City of Heroes/Villains developer Paragon Studios has been hit with a round of layoffs today, totaling nine people, and also possibly including Senior Animator/VFX Lead Christopher "Back Alley Brawler" Bruce.

NCSoft:
"In an effort to put a greater focus on the City of Heroes franchise, Paragon Studios is shifting resources within the studio. In order to optimize the refocus, there has been a reduction in force that has impacted a small amount of people. Paragon Studios is an integral part of the NCsoft West family and will continue to prosper, delivering the world’s most popular superpowered hero MMO game, City of Heroes, to fans around the world."

I don't quite know how you "put greater focus" on COH when it's the only game Paragon Studios has (COV is pretty much integrated with it now).  

Unless maybe they had folks working on a COH2 and have decided to abandon it (then you, in theory, don't need the devs that were working on that). I bet if I Tweeted that, that would become the new rumor du jour.  

The COH forum community rep confirmed the brief statement, commitment to COH/COV, fwiw:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=3250067#post3250067

[Destructor]

Yeah, no kidding. That doesn't make any sense.

And they can't get rid of BAB - he rules.

[Blackjack]

Maybe Bab Will form his own studio to make a game called... "City of Sidekicks." 

[Abaddon]

If anyone else is playing thru the free weekend and looking for some grouping send me a tell. @Neuromancer

[Blackjack]

I meant to, but I blew it.

PC Gamer had a pretty ugly review of Going Rogue. What sounds disappointing is that other than the occasional well-designed story arc, apparently a lot of ballyhooed new quests are just hunt-this, hunt-that, click-this, click-that.

The best of the Mission Creator stuff really showed a lot of creativity within the limitations of the mission/quest design tools. If the new quests really are that "by the numbers," it's disappointing given what the Creator showed is possible.

[CeeKay]

Producers letter about 2011.  I think I grabbed this during the Steam holiday sale, so I'll probably dive back in at some point this year.

[CeeKay]

there's a double XP weekend going on... errr..... this weekend 

[CeeKay]

they have an animal pack coming to the store on the 23rd, so soon you will be able to better create super furries.

[morlac]

they have an animal pack coming to the store on the 23rd, so soon you will be able to better create super furries.

"FFFUUUURRRRR FREEEDOOOMM!"

[CeeKay]

best character ever?

Spoiler for Hiden:

[PR_GMR]

best character ever?

Spoiler for Hiden:

Hehehe. In Clive Barker's novel 'Weaverworld', there's a character that uses her menstrual flow as a dark magic spell of sorts. He called it the Menstrum.