Hey Brian,

They actually started work on this early last year. The people that were doing it were wanting to talk about it for a very long time, but were told no because NCSoft wasn't sure when it would actually be done.

Virtually every single art asset for power effects had to be completely redone in order to fit the new system. That was a huge number of files. And that only had to do with places where colors were created by art. In other cases, power colors were coded into the game and there weren't any handlers for changing it on the fly.

Put another way, there were two incompatible systems involved in creating the colors that you see on the powers. They had to merge the two systems while also changing it to allow for variable color values. And create a UI to make the system easy for users.

In short, the most reaction they could have had in response to CO would have been, "CO is coming out in six months and they will have power customization. We need to put a few more people on it." There is no way that this could have been a last-minute response to CO. It is what it is: a project that has been in the works for a long time now.

Put another way, your argument is a little like claiming that the producers of "Armageddon" thought "Deep Impact" was a big success and wanted to capitalize on it real quick. Sure, the movies are very similar in theme and came out within a couple months of each other. But both were in production for years before release.

All of that said, I don't play CoX anymore and really have no desire to go back. Eye candy doesn't fix the gameplay problems (like the mind-numbningly repetitive mission maps) that drove me away from the game in the first place. I've come back several times since then, but have always been too bored within a few days to keep on. It's still nice that NCSoft did this for their players, though. I think it shows promise for how they might handle Aion. :)