The Animal Pack is on Test for those who want to check it out.
FYI the Devs are giving away Animal Pack codes in game tonight in Pocket D on all servers. I would link to the info on the site but it is hard to do that from my phone.
And I got one! I’ve been running around on my two new characters; a cyborg minotaur called Taurus Malleus (War Mace/Electric Armor), and a griffin-ish Fire/Storm corruptor named Skyfyre. I also gave my Claws/Super Reflexes brute catgirl* Swiftshred a more genuinely catlike costume.
- Well, semi-catgirl, she had horns.
FYI the Steampunk pack is now out. Not as much mechanical stuff as I was hoping for but looks pretty cool.
Oh, yes. I promptly bought it and made the diabolic Professor Infernal on Union. Freshly decanted from his Presevator Chamber and deeply offended that no one remembers his exploits. And gave Miss Skinless on Freedom a blood trail with the new aura; it fits with her red colored Dark Melee ‘weaponized blood’ powers.
Man, seeing these new costumes makes me miss COH sooo muuuch.
Ah well.
I think the Steam Shogun is going to come out of retirement and get some upgrades. And Captain Zeppelin is going to get rerolled into a proper sky pirate. Even Earl Cheatham may get some spiffier duds, though his monocle shall remain ever in place. In fact, my whole Mad Science Fair contingent may get played more.
Here’s another example, my new Assault Rifle/Storm Corruptor Lady Venture. Frozen for over a century by her archnemesis The Arctic Duke, she has retrieved her personally designed Polyfunction Rifle and Tempest Engine and set forth to find adventure!
Yeah, I like these new parts.
Nice work!
Thanks! 
Say more of this Mad Science Fair you speak of. I find your ideas interesting, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. And perhaps join your supergroup, should it exist and welcome new members.
COH is going Free to play. Info here.
Not sure how I feel about that. The influx of new blood will do the game good and a lot of the new stuff looks neat. I will feel a whole lot better if I knew what 400 Paragon points actually gets me. If costume pieces are 5 or 10 points apiece it should be okay but if it is like 50 point for a hair style that will piss me off.
I found the following on the Penny Arcade forum who in turn got it from the Titan Network forums. It may give some insight as to how the F2P will work. Makes me a little more nervous…
It’s an SG on heroside Victory. Mostly Mad Science themed, obviously.
It looks more like a hybrid system to me. “VIP players” will essentially be the same as subscribers are now.
After spending way too much time today reading the City forums, I’m feeling cautiously optimistic about the change. I don’t expect it to really change anything about my play, except that I should get new content to play with a bit more often.
Also, I’m quite curious about the promised Time Manipulation set–yay, more Defenders! 
Sorry, Brainy–the thread must have dropped off the front page before I got back to it. Der Trihs covered the basics, but it’s more steampunk-themed than mad scientist (though we have a couple of those, each guarded by a steam-powered samurai who is supposed to keep him out of trouble). Most of the characters were on Captain Zeppelin’s airship when a temporal incident occurred (which may or may not have been caused by an argument between the two sparks, or by the big game hunter using his aetheric rifle on a warshade, or the transdimensional butler…). It ripped them out of space-time and they ended up crashing somewhere in the Shadow Shard and managed to make their way to Firebase Zulu to escape in to modern Paragon City.
It hasn’t seen much play in a while, but I believe Un Silencio has been active there, and been modifying the base. You’re perfectly welcome to join, if you wish–we’re not even strict about the theme; I think JB’s Atlantean is a modern representative sent to find out why Redfish and Bluefish reported in over a hundred years late.
Do returning oldtimers get their oldbies back is what I want to know.
Might be find to take them out for a spin again someday…
No worries, Balance - I figured it’d come around eventually. Which server is the Mad Science Fair on?
I’m optimistic about COH Freedom; I plan to remain a subscriber (sorry, VIP) because I have plenty of characters I want to play. The promise of new vet reward-like things from the Paragon Market is interesting. The promise that I’ll retain everything I have access to now is a good thing (and a minimum expectation for me - if I’m going to subscribe, you damn well better not take anything I have now away from me!), and accelerating the timetable for new stuff is good as well.
There is a comment on the forums from one of the devs in response to a question on vet rewards that hints at a revamp of some of the existing ones - there are a few duds in there (yay, free tailor visit).
And I’m definitely interested in Time Manipulation.
All in all, good news. It doesn’t feel like a desperation move, like Champions Online made - it feels more like an attempt to play in a bigger market. In retrospect, the content packs make more sense now.
As far as I know, they never delete accounts or characters. At worst, if you had been gone a long time when they did the name purge, you may have lost the names of a few low-level characters. You’ll have to pick which ones you really want to play, though–when you sign in, they’ll all be locked, and when you click on one, you’ll have the option to spend one of your slot tokens to permanently unlock it. You get two slot tokens, plus one for each slot you paid for or earned via vet rewards. (Some of the forumites are arguing that buying CoV or the GvE pack should add four more tokens as well. We’ll see if they get that changed.)
Victory, of course. They’re Victorian, after all.
Yes, they are quite curious about where those 2 were for so long. Although it has been a while since I played him. I may check some of the newer powersets and see if one of them is more suitable for the theme. And I believe I have a Taxibot in that crew. I will need to remake him to fit in better.
As Balanced said, you automatically get 2 slot tokens, and can purchase more. But there are a couple of caveats about those tokens. Free players can not play controllers, MM, or any of the EATs. They can purchase the ability to play controllers and/or MMs, but the only way to play EATs is by being a VIP player. And if you are a VIP and stop playing, you lose the ability to play them, again unless you have separately purchased that ability. And you can have the ability to play them opened automatically, for free, at about the 3 year veteran reward level. I am not sure if that unlock requires you to be a VIP at any point, or if it applies to someone that already was a 3 year veteran that is returning to play for free. I have not been keeping up the last couple of days.
One hopeful sign is the purchases all seem to be account wide. The Veteran equivalents definitely, and most of the costume, emote, etc. I have seen discussed. And they have said they studied other games that have made the switch, to see what the players liked and didn’t like. I know on LOTRO, the store is very annoying, with buttons all over to go to it. I keep pushing them by accident, which can be deadly. Just avoiding that mistake would be a huge improvement over LOTRO’s implementation.