So.....roughly 30 hours ago the Cryptic team starts a Poll with regards to developing new sets. Because they don't want the player base to see the results (because gods forbid that the people know what the majority wants) they screw it up so that supposedly they can't see the results. Solution? Hit the self destruct, start over and then don't tell folks that there is a 24 hour limit on Polling. Not that version 1.0 had a 30 day time limit.

What does this give you? Pretty much nothing. Most folks don't read the forums daily because its a poorly run pile of fecal matter where personal attacks are ok as long as you are a good buddy of the Community Coordinators. Many of those that do read daily didn't vote immediately because they wanted to think about the choices and make (oh my god...wait for it) an informed decision.

So now we have a former SOE employee in the form of Alex "Lighthouse" von Minden (yeah...SOE rejects moving to destroy another game, right?) coming on the forums ( as the Community Liaison) and stating that they will not reveal the results because the the Poll results were never to see the light of day, despite a comment on the Poll that led voters to believe otherwise. Change your titles son, because you are no Liaison between the community and anyone else. You are an overpaid press secretary.

Nice work guys ....... I wish I hadn't paid for a year long membership. Had I known how quickly COX was going to spiral down hill I would have never wasted my time or money.....and this is coming from a guy who played SWG for years.

Since Alex and his "assistant" have arrived, we've been treated to an increase in non-topic related and/or irrelevant posts, an increase in censorship of dissenting opinions (straight out of the SOE book) and a steady decrease in mature players. I remember when the forums used to be a place you could go to get help. I know because I helped a lot of folks there either with posts or PM's. Now its a clown car and the only real reason to go there is to see how many clowns or gonna climb out today.

See ya....

Your results:
You are Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)

Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 70% Derrial Book (Shepherd) 60% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 55% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 55% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 55% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 55% River (Stowaway) 55% Wash (Ship Pilot) 35% A Reaver (Cannibal) 35% Alliance 35% Inara Serra (Companion) 10%

Honest and a defender of the innocent. You sometimes make mistakes in judgment but you are generally good and would protect your crew from harm.

Click here to take the Serenity Firefly Personality Test

So the often touted Issue 9 has finally (2 months late) made it to Live status and while I wandered thru the Test Server (yes..a place where you, the paying customer can PAY to beta) and toyed with things here and there (posting honest opinions as I went)I was hoping that it would be somewhat better than I expected.

Sadly, that is not the case.

Loading times between Zones is up about 200%. Lag and skipping is up. Numerous people have DCs and on my very first Login after is going Live, I froze during load in and had to CAD to shut it down. Processor Usage on both was pegged at 100% and my Drive was paging as fast as it could (and I have 2 gigs of RAM here plus a 256 vid card).

For people with high level characters or characters at Cap you are going to have to shell out serious coinage to upgrade you toon with Invention Enhancers. Basic Recipes were going for 400K for a level 25 Recipe...a single Recipe. That's what it cost me to upgrade to a full suite of Single Origin Enhancers at that level. A Costume Recipe for Dragon wings was sold for 25 Million. For the record, that's the kind of cash I carry on my Main. Some people are getting insane drop rates and going to the Consignment House and raking in money hand over fist (one Forum-ite professed to have made 450 Million in 7 hours of play) while others are getting squat. Rumors abound with regards to some sort of Tray bug that prevents drops if one of your trays is full. All in all, its one big out of whack cluster fuck that was poorly planned and poorly executed after being Beta'd by a hand picked crew of "friends and family members" of the Dev staff. Lighthouse is showing his SOE origins by trumpetting a massive increase in new players logging in when they turned on all of the old expired accounts to try and lure some players back that had left. After this weekend I'll wager that those "new players" are going to evaporate along with some old ones.

Statesman's Task Force.....8 Heroes have to show up to start and you had better have 8 at the end with serious debuffs or you justed wasted hours of your time. One of the final Arch Villains laughs at Tankers status protection, holding them and sumarily disecting them at her leisure. This was discovered by a group of Tankers from Tanker Tuesday who got crushed...not beated....crushed. Debuffs are a must...not an option. Nukes and Shivans won a few of the successful runs while Mega Debuffs saved the rest. Fun fun.....just what I want to feel Super....watching my Hulk ass get beaten down because none of my abilities work.

The Consignment House (Auction House) is a stab at creating a Player Economy in a genre that really doesn't lend itself to one. Are there Heroes with incredible financial resources? Sure...Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark, Daniel Rand, Booster Gold, Blue Beatle and so on. Do you see these guys rushing out in their Super Suit (tm) to barter and bargin for things in some insane Super Hero Stock Market? Nope.....off screen and by people who WORK FOR THESE VERY RICH MEN. Villains? There are some with the cash but many just take it....if I have a battle suit that can lift your house, are you gonna stop me from taking your wallet? Even if they do have the cash they have minions that deal with the drudgery. Not in good olde Paragon City....nope, you get to pillage a warehouse for some tech you aren't smart enough to come up with and then if you don't want or need it to build your Quasi Neuclaic Transducer or whatever....you take it to a Super Hero Flea Market and trade it or sell it. Stupid idea that is already being abused on a scale that beggers the imagination. Honestly, it makes the UN Oil for Food program look like an honest and completely above board operation. 25 Million for a recipe to make a set of wings?!? Come on....its a set of blueprints you could buy on Ebay for 7$.

And finally, we see a continuely increasing focus on PvP. The completely unimaginitive manner in which PvP is executed in this game boggles the mind. Does it have a new wrinkle? Sure...PvP in three dimensions with dynamic movement abilities is fantastic. Beyond that, every update has some "tweak" designed to "balance" the various ATs which in this case means make them homogeneous. In short, everyone builds the same handful of toons with a different look because its the only thing there is. Does it change up a bit each time there is a "tweak"? Sure but only until that state of sameness reasserts itself. I have a character that I can rock a PvE enviornment with...I've Tanked with him and he's as squishy as they come. I worked hard to iron him out and make him unique but in PvP he is completely useless and I would have to make him into something completely different to even begin to be effective in PvP. How completely broken is that?

All in all, it continues a downward spiral that has taken a Game about being a Super Hero and turned it into a game about being Cookie Cutter Gang Bangers. Sad.

Instead of looking at is as a Comic Book Reader who was making a game, they are going at it as Game Designers who might read a comic here and there and are following the same tired olde "tried and true". In the end, its going to fail miserably.

Glad I already found something else to hold my attention.