NCsoft surely has people better trained in marketing than I, but I feel obliged to suggest that they wait a week or three after releasing a new City of Heroes update before sending out the “welcome back weekend” invitations.
- Some number of players will re-subscribe on their own, and immediately after the patch is the most likely time for that. Take their money. Granted, many will do so on patch day, before the welcome back weekend announcement, but it is a bad idea to give someone enough free play time to complete all the content. I do not know how long it would take to try all of Issue 13’s new toys, but Issue 12 was one weekend of content unless you started a new character. Give people a chance to buy it before you give it away.
- You want a little time after the update to issue your first fix to it. These are not necessarily game-breaking issues, but they are things people will notice on their welcome back weekend, and you will not want to show them off. When I log in a character, receive one of the new badges, and the badge description is an error message, that does not tell me that great care was taken with the new patch. When I make a character to try the new power sets, I notice that “The ‘Copy Current Colors Across Body’ button does not function correctly unless a subcategory is selected.” The chat text color from previous issues is still there, to indicate how quickly these get addressed. The two best new bugs must be that trading items can delete them (!) and that players cannot move inside their bases (but only in the French and German versions).
I also feel obliged to note that the elemental shields look great.
: Zubon