Issue 7 stuff for Coh/Cov

[Cybsled]

Ya, that's what made it really obvious as well.

The positron(?) story arc had you preventing a 5th from going back to WW2 and mucking up time. Changed to civil war, no 5th.

The "Axis won WW2" portal vanished. Why would an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE be affected by a change in ours? dur

Atlas Plaque was changed from "he died saving the city from pearl harbor 2" to "he died on a door mission" basically. They did change it back to the Pearl Harbor 2 eventually, claiming "there was a miscommunication".

Was just so cheezy. I would have had no problem as well if they wanted to change things up, but they made it so damn obvious in what their true intent was then lied about it. At that point I lost all respect for them and quit (was bored anyways...30+ grind sucked).

[Duppin]

I don't really understand why people are so upset about the 5th Column thing.

I know people don't like PC stuff, and I certainly think it goes overboard myself sometimes; but if they want to sell the game in Europe, they have to take Germany's anti-Nazi laws seriously. It's not an option to cut yourself off completely from what is probably one of the more computer-savvy markets in Europe just to maintain some story continuity.

It's still a business.

[Cybsled]

Nothing in the game says outright they are nazis, though. There are no symbols, etc.

It would have been easy to just alter little nitpicks in the lore via localization and no one would have been the wiser. However, they took the lazy route and just had a unified game model.

[Iannis]

Originally Posted by Duppin

I don't really understand why people are so upset about the 5th Column thing.

I know people don't like PC stuff, and I certainly think it goes overboard myself sometimes; but if they want to sell the game in Europe, they have to take Germany's anti-Nazi laws seriously. It's not an option to cut yourself off completely from what is probably one of the more computer-savvy markets in Europe just to maintain some story continuity.

It's still a business.

Mostly since the changeover removed a clearly defined faction. They did a Find and Replace function but didn't bother to change the leadership (ie Nosferatu, the insane Dr. Mengele-type scientist, didn't care. Vandal, the robotic mastermind, didn't care. Requiem the nazi overlord got killed in the comic book but in CoH he's alive and...didn't care? "The Center" which footed the bill of the 5th turned out to be...space aliens?) I think the only ex-nazi who cared was the guy who built a giant robot in his volcano lair.

If they hadn't been so slack about it. Mostly it just muddled heirarchy and aim of the faction up and pretended it wasn't because of Euro laws.

[Bizanich]

Originally Posted by Duppin

I don't really understand why people are so upset about the 5th Column thing.

I know people don't like PC stuff, and I certainly think it goes overboard myself sometimes; but if they want to sell the game in Europe, they have to take Germany's anti-Nazi laws seriously. It's not an option to cut yourself off completely from what is probably one of the more computer-savvy markets in Europe just to maintain some story continuity.

It's still a business.

It would be more acceptable if the replacements didn't suck complete ass, if the replacement factionsr colors weren't absolutely horrible, and if the game would at least MENTION the 5th Column.

Anytime they might be mentioned, it's just vague references to "the organization that was subsumed" or some stupid shit. It's like the 5th Column is Lord Voldemort and you can't see an UTTERANCE of their name in game.

[Runnen]

Originally Posted by Bizanich

It would be more acceptable if the replacements didn't suck complete ass, if the replacement factionsr colors weren't absolutely horrible, and if the game would at least MENTION the 5th Column.

Anytime they might be mentioned, it's just vague references to "the organization that was subsumed" or some stupid shit. It's like the 5th Column is Lord Voldemort and you can't see an UTTERANCE of their name in game.

Especially since "5th Column" isn't a Nazi term at all.. a 5th column is an expression to describe an underground military group.. Quite retarded indeed.

[Cantatus]

Originally Posted by Iannis

I don't think the 5th Column was ever going to make a comeback. It might've been part of the original guy's story bible (Rick Dackarn i think was the name of the guy who wrote all the original background history) to have an invasion from the Nazi dimension supported by the 5th Column in paragon, but I think they abandoned that original notebook of ideas.

Manticore (the guy in charge of the story now) said they'll be coming back within the year back in August:

I think it is safe to say you haven’t heard the last from the 5th Column. Keeping a villain as powerful as the Reichsman down seems unlikely. Look for him to make an appearance next year.

[Araxen]

Originally Posted by Lyrical

Lol, so they are giving villains Aqua Man type abilities? I wonder how many Aqua Man or Namor clones will be running around?

People actually want to be Aquaman?

[goatface]

Originally Posted by Araxen

People actually want to be Aquaman?

Aquaman doesn't even want to Aquaman

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Araxen

People actually want to be Aquaman?

Aquaman is my wife's fave hero. I constantly kid her about it. If you have been watching Entourage on HBO, Aquaman has been the running joke the whole first season. I think he is so lame he has developed some sort of cult following.

[zilkoril]

Aquaman is really appealing to lame people. And me. He's old school.

[Angerz]

Originally Posted by Duppin

I don't really understand why people are so upset about the 5th Column thing.

I know people don't like PC stuff, and I certainly think it goes overboard myself sometimes; but if they want to sell the game in Europe, they have to take Germany's anti-Nazi laws seriously. It's not an option to cut yourself off completely from what is probably one of the more computer-savvy markets in Europe just to maintain some story continuity.

It's still a business.

It's still a business sure, but they could have just localized the game in Europe too. They didnt need to mess with one of (if not the best) story arcs, groups and lore the game had at the time.

They were well fleshed out and fun to kill (everyone likes killing Nazi's). Plus they plain made sense in the world the way they were implemented. They they got ripped out with a half assed story and find and replaced by something stupid and had none of the character or feel (immersion effect?) that the 5C had.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Duppin

I don't really understand why people are so upset about the 5th Column thing.

I know people don't like PC stuff, and I certainly think it goes overboard myself sometimes; but if they want to sell the game in Europe, they have to take Germany's anti-Nazi laws seriously. It's not an option to cut yourself off completely from what is probably one of the more computer-savvy markets in Europe just to maintain some story continuity.

It's still a business.

It doesn't piss me off they made the change. It pisses me off they lied about the change happening right before the Euro launch. In a style matching what SOE would have done in the Eq1 days, they had a choice to either tell the truth or lie. They chose the latter.

They assumed that none of knew anything about international law. But all it takes is a few people calling bs that this is just a part of the storyline. So not only did they lie, but they thought that we a bunch of uneducated idiots.

This lie was just a long list of lies the dev team started to say. With the current changes, it is almost better to have _Castle_ post, because he pretty much tells it like it is. Towards the end, Statesman was getting really bad in this area.

I had a mish last night with the 5th column. To me, they still are nazi's, no matter what you call 'em. And I still have this zeal to plow through a fleet of them, regardless of how squishy the char I am playing is. I still hate 'em.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Angerz

It's still a business sure, but they could have just localized the game in Europe too. They didnt need to mess with one of (if not the best) story arcs, groups and lore the game had at the time.

They would have to be really careful. In one of my law classes (mind you it's an MBA program and not law school), we studied a case just like this. I will be going off memory here, which is a bit faulty. In this case, not only could they confiscate any local company servers and equipment, but the way some of the US-France treaties are written, they could potentially do the same here (if any of the French managed to somehow play on US servers). Some of our century old treaties with them might apply.

At the very least, France could shut down Coh in their domestic market. At the very worst, if France was feeling a bit froggy, they could ask the US to enforce one of these old treaties and shut down all NCSoft games in the US.

The latter seems unlikely, but does show that the presence of Nazi's in the game could tie up NCSoft in years of a costly court battle. I am sure if you are a dev, you have your corporate lawyers yelling and screaming at you about the risk of launching in Europe as is, so you just pull the Nazi's out. You have other things to worry about, llike a declining sub base and at the time, a probably pretty expensive lawsuit with Marvel.

Its a pretty complicated subject, and one for the international business lawyers to argue. I am not sure we have too many of them posting on this board, however.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Sylas

8 months? Jesus. Blizzard gets shit for going 3 months without patching.

My guess is maybe its taking so long because they are going to have zones where you can smash anything in the environment. Buildings and cars are smashable. I bet that this was pretty hard to code.

Isn't this an MMO first?