aliasisudonomo

For my part, I'd really like to see an Exalted-style MMO with the appropriate treatment of magic. For those unfamiliar with the RPG, every character type has a tree of 'charms', which for the two most usual Exalts - Solars and Dragon-blooded - key off their skills. Solars are humans turned up to 11, so for example at first they simply have superhuman skill, but further along in their charm tree they get the ability to perfectly parry an attack. ANY attack.

More practical for an MMO would be the Dragon-blooded, who are more numerous and lower powered, and they have elemental affinities. Above all, though, there's none of this 'you wear a robe and are useless in a fight and cast Magic Missile over and over' nonsense. The closest thing is Sorcery, which is the domain of *big* effects. You don't cast Fireball, you cast Death of Obsidian Butterflies, which can decimate an entire army. The drawback is Sorcery tends to leave you quite vulnerable while casting it, but it's not as if a sorcerer has to forego armor and knowing how to use a sword, being slow and expensive is what balances it.

Some of it would be tricky to translate to an MMO, but if the World of Darkness MMO actually takes off, I'd enjoy seeing an attempt at Exalted.

For the person kvetching Paragon is charging for stuff that "used to be free"... oh, yes, because they have never-ever released ANYTHING for free once they started in on booster packs, right? They haven't introduced new taskforces (Reichsman), story arcs (The newer Cimeora stuff) entire systems previously decreed impossible (power customization) and nearly unique features (Architect system). Nope, they've just been money-grubbing jerks, is that right?

That definitely DOES show your ignorance. ;)

SL is made by the users, not by professionals for the most part. it is entirely possible to have top quality looks in there - maybe not Crysis level, but certainly mass-market MMO level like WoW. I can even direct you to some very well done locations. But so long as people are happy with making a great big box with a badly done rip of an old Doom texture on it, you'll have to suffer everything inbetween.

I'd certainly agree with the concurrency idea. I still use SL a lot, for example, but my sessions are often much shorter than they used to be - after all, I've explored much of the bits of the grid that interest me. Even though there's a lot of new stuff, a lot of it (naturally) won't be to my taste.

Prok, you miss the point. All of these programs give you an icon, true - as does this very comments page! - but none of them demand you identify a person through the icon alone. It sounds as though the 2.0 viewer currently shows an icon and only the icon, with the name in a hovertip... and that IS pretty awful design, done nowhere else I know of.

The graphics don't bother me so much - an MMO is all about playing with the most people, and the hardcore gamers with machines hewn from magical black obsidian that can run Crysis at full detail don't remotely form the majority of the market. I can run CoX really well on a $300 computer from Staples and a midrange videocard; the CO Beta... not so well. The so-called 'dated graphics' are a FEATURE for some of us.

That said, I'd expect this expansion to offer as much 'new' as CoV did - which was, in effect, another whole game. I would expect Co..R for Rogues? P for Praetoria?... the new expansion to allow you use both hero and villain archetypes in new Praetorian Earth content from 1 to 50 at minimum.

Out of curiosity, where were you having the lag? The MA buildings are 'real' - people really are inside them - which has led to a lot of lag in some areas as everyone piles in. (I'd imagine you wouldn't have the problem in missions, then, though.)

You did notice the big giant Mission Architect thing right before it, right?

This really sort of feels like a 14.5 (or, given MA was originally part of i13, 13.7?) - a short update so they can have one out for the anniversary.

You mean, like, I dunno, City of Heroes? No, I can't insta-group, but I sure as hell have never felt the need to have Peggle or Tetris going while playing it.

There IS a tool to filter out those arcs, so to speak - use the 'only show arcs I haven't rated'. Rate all of those junk arcs with one star as you go through the list.