If you happen to have a de-activated CoH account kicking around, NCSoft is having a free City of Heroes weekend for past customers to back and experience the Rikti invasion.
I’ll definately be dropping in the game just to see if any of my old Hero’s are still alive and kicking at the login screen. I’ve been feeling guilty about ditching my controller DoctorEvil to play WoW for some time. It ain’t easy being evil…
The latest free content update for City of Heroes® and City of Villains® is live and the invasion has already begun. In celebration of Issue 10: Invasion, simply log on to your City of Heroes or City of Villains account between now and Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 8:59pm PST/11:59pm EST and your account will be active and playable!
Issue 10 begins with a World Event that spans across numerous zones in both Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™, as the Rikti return in devastating waves. They are armed with new, brutal weapons and seek to establish a beachhead on Earth, presumably to save their lost brethren and to finish what they started the first time … the destruction of Earth!
After spending all evening, and all night waiting for the CoH client to update at 50kb/s on my 10Mbit Cable modem, and finally logging in this morning I’ve found that because my account fell under the CoH 90 Day Inactivity Policy, all 8 of my character lost their names I picked back on the games launch day to other players.
While I can see a benefit to implementing a policy like this to clear out reserved names so new players have a chance to get the names they want and hopefully stick around and subscribe, as a past subscriber who lost 8 very rare and popular names tied to themed Hero characters it’s enough to ruin any interest on my part in ever re-subscribing.
Obviously in other MMO’s its first come first serve, if you want a specific name you’ll just have to find a brand new server if it’s taken anywhere else. Plus you don’t have to maintain an active subscription to protect your names.
Is it just me or does anyone else feel put off about this [CoH] type of policy as well?
Scott on 08 3rd, 2007