Scott

You're about a month early on the 2XP weekend. It's scheduled for March 16-19.

@Shirogetsune

Agreed. Lots of snarling and wringing of hands, but I don't see a huge deal. I don't think I'd go buy extra Paragon Points for these, but I'm more than happy to drop a part of my monthly allotment on a few. The costume set is gorgeous, but I can wait a month or so until I gather up all the pieces.

The costume set contained in the Super Packs (Elemental Order) is pretty gorgeous, but when trying out the Packs on the Test server, it seemed to take at least 10 packs and sometimes as many as 30 packs to get the full costume set. Although I ended up with over 1000 award merits as part of those packs as well, that's a huge investment for a "grab bag" feature.

@EvilCartographer

Definitely not alone. I'm delaying gratification and waiting until March 6 as well. Even though I'm crying a bit as I type this...

Nice. Now can we please have some turbans to go with this?

Statesman was the in-game embodiment of Jack Emmert. I'd imagine that most long-time players won't shed a tear to see him gone, me included.

@minameismud

I played through the LU Beta, and I have to admit, the simple inability to invert the mouse is what drove me to give up on the game.

Hmm, this is definitely an interesting take, Elliot, but I think your comparison of "not swapping alignments" vs. "swapping regularly" is a bit odd. I don't know anyone -- and I'm part of probably the biggest, most active cross-server group in the game -- that constantly flits back and forth across alignments on a single character, mainly due to the reason you bring up that there's *zero* reward for it. This isn't apples vs. oranges. It's apples vs. broken dishwashers.

The more apt comparison is "swapping to a new alignment" vs. "not swapping to a new alignment", and you've hit the major reasons for that (albeit lightly): badgers want to grab those shinies on the other side, moving to the "middle ground" alignments (Rogue + Vigilante) allow access to the other-side Task/Strike Forces, and until Freedom, it was the only way to get an archetype to the other side without wading through 20 levels of Praetoria. Match that up against Alignment Merits for staying put.

Another reason important to some: Epic Archetypes can't be created on the opposite side, so if you want a Vigilante Soldier of Arachnos (we have a big team of them running together), you have to start off red-side, get to 20, then transition to Rogue, then Hero, then back to Vigilante. And honestly, many of us will continue back to Villain around level 40 to pick up a Patron Pool (since VEATs can't get access to standard Epic pools, even as Heroes), then back to Rogue --> Hero --> Vigilante again. Whew.

The new Haunted House Trial in City of Heroes is fantastic. Wouldn't miss it for anything.

In terms of City of Heroes again, the reverse-destruction of Faultline a few issues back was a great move. The original Faultline zone was a navigational disaster for anyone without Fly, and contained nothing of any real interest or import. But the revamp turned it into a bustling zone with a fun mission arc for levels 15-25.

A great case study on how to turn around ailing zones.