now I am less than I was

[Help] Electro Valkyrie: I don't think this game has much confidence in me
[Help] Electro Valkyrie: I'm helping Mender Lazarus in the future, but I'm only level 15 :(
[Help] Sir Headless: You're the next Statesman EV!
[Help] Electro Valkyrie: Thanks for the confidence boost.
[Help] Major Fulcrum: you mean dead before his prime?
[Help] Tomb Princess: before his prime? the guy was like 130 years old
[Help] Major Fulcrum: nope
[Help] Major Fulcrum: and yeah, he really hadn't primed
[Help] Electro Valkyrie: Thanks for bringing me back down to earth :(
[Help] Major Fulcrum: maybe you are the next Synapse
[Help] Major Fulcrum: don't want to be really heroic but saves the day at the end
[Help] Tomb Princess: better than being the next Sister Psyche, embarassing outfit, married to a douche, and unceremoniously killed off

It does make you wonder. For the uninitiated: a lot of the City of Heroes overarching storyline involves time travel--and to that end, there's an entire cadre of time traveling folk called "Menders" whose job it is to send heroes (and villains) back in time to "mend" the places in the fabric of time where things have started to change. Translation: if we miss any missions as we go through the arc, we can go to Ouroboros and talk to one of the Menders, and be sent back to do it for the first time.

Why is this a good thing? First, because it gives a fun storyline to hang characters from (both in terms of the game developers, and players), and second, because there's a lot of badges given out on mission completion. The Ouroboros "flashback" conceit helps with that.

((Also--though it involves spoilers, considering that Sister Psyche is pretty much a Jean Grey clone, having her slain by her husband when her powers flared out of control...yeah. Pretty ignominous end.))

Some characters in City of Heroes just stick with you. I have no pictures, but Krahen has definitely stuck with me:

Description: [MRP Oriented]

"Can Krahen please play with the big man?
Krahen wants to see what pattern his blood makes on the floor~."

Forever caught in in a balanced display of life and death, bodily flesh decaying and growing at an exponential rate, Krahen is quite literally a walking corpse. But such a curse has not deterred her to see enjoyment out of curiosities most macabre. Perhaps she would play with you, instead?...

• She always bears the stench of methane when you are near
• Her body is frail yet shrugs off pain like a rag doll
• The artificial limbs are often used along with her hands and for travel
• She always displays child-like glee with every act

What's meant by the artificial limbs she uses for defense and for travel is--well, she's a Natural (means she was born to her power set in game terms) Arachnos Soldier. This gives you somewhat of an idea what a Crab Arachnos Soldier looks like (on a male heavy character, at least).

Arachnos soldiers--at least, the Crab Spider variants--wear this four-armed mechanical backpack, that stores weapons and energy cells. There's a power called Suppression that lays down intense cover fire from the four arms, which claw at the air as they fire into the crowd. If I had to put a name to it, I'd say plasma lasers on high, but Suppression also causes damage over time in a wide cone, so there has to be some sticky web component in there too.

Krahen, though? Krahen is tiny, small, frail. Her face is not in the traditional eight-eyed full-coverage Arachnos helmet, but instead she wears a bone-white skull mask. Or...maybe it's not a mask...

In my mind, her history spun out thusly: some time ago, Lord Recluse bartered a deal with Dr. Vahzilok, who had crafted his own, terrifying and disgusting, brand of immortality. Recluse would "donate" to the doctor Arachnos operatives just out of training, and he would...alter them. Krahen was one of those who came back...changed.

Likely Dr. Vahzilok broke her mind in her reconstruction. Now, her body is continually rotting apart and regenerating, and she finds joy in destruction, mutilation, torture, and similar amusements. And in this case, I'm really hoping "MRP Oriented" doesn't mean "ERP", because then we're talking necrophilia with claws and fangs, and....yeah.

But she stuck with me. Just the thought of being aware that one is decaying, and regenerating enough to still survive that process, and still wanting to "play"...Oh, yes, that's a horror movie trope for the ages.

I want a stainless steel road stretching off to the sky

The Behind the Steam blog published an official review of the 2 Cent Show album by Steam Powered Giraffe, and overwhelmingly it's positive. Which is good news indeed!

[Help] Kneecapitator: So what's with this popup as I log in? "Given recent events", watch your info? What happened?
[Help] Hexman: wow hacked... again
[Help] Scourging Gale: presumably a bunch of gullible nublets have given their account info to scammers
[Help] Scourging Gale: oh
[Help] Scourging Gale: I stand corrected
[Help] Hexman: I should say blizzard since it wasnt limited to just wow

In brief: this news has been everywhere at this point, but Blizzard got hacked. Specifically a lot of matching information the hackers can use to access user accounts for Diablo III and WoW (that we know of), so that they can get in to those accounts and change those user passwords.

It's a huge, huge hack, and it's pretty grim in a lot of different ways.

[Help] Kneecapitator: Glad I quit when I did and decided not to buy any more of Activizzard's crap.
[Help] Kneecapitator: Then again, my bank blacklisted them years before that, I was playing on timecards from Wrath on.
[Help] Hexman: I want to return to the days when I could go to the store, buy a game, go home and just play it, I dont want to log into some server, or give my CC# or create an account, I just want to play what was in the frikkin box that I spent 50 bucks on

Yeah. Those were the days.

[Help] Ettu?: amen Hexman
[Help] Hexman: hopefully they will see that you cant have accounts hacked if you dont require your customers to HAVE accounts
[Help] Hexman: with the exception of MMOs for obvious reasons :P
[Help] Kneecapitator: Back when copy protection was "What's the third word in the second paragraph on page 15 of the manual? XD
[Help] Sgt. HellTouched: I was going to say...
[Help] Hexman: I dont believe in copy protection, it simply does not work.

Well, yes and no. Back in the days they're talking to, "hacking" was pretty much "we photocopied this sheet with the flag colors and country names on it, use it when you open the program". Things have gotten a lot more technical since then.

[Help] Hexman: and adds a cost to the product you purchase

Always.

[Help] ThornyDevil: it's like Jeff Goldblum said "Nature finds a way"
[Help] ThornyDevil: except with piracy
[Help] ThornyDevil: and thus better

Or worse, depending on your point of view.

Turning to more personal topics, what do we do when the thing that gives us joy and delight turns into anguish and pain? All the work of our hands turned to dust and splinters, ashes and thorns? If we're anyone else, we start over somewhere else, somewhere that doesn't burden our heart more than it gladdens it.

Ah, but I've always been stubborn.

So I listen to the demon's music, and dance with the serpent of honeyed tongue, and vaguely resent the moon while I wait for a dawn that may never come. It could be a very long night indeed, and I still have no answers. I thrash inside the cage I helped to build and wonder when I'll feel free enough to fly through the open door.

Maybe flight is not what I need. Maybe it's not the method of movement that's important, as much as the desire to move. Maybe it's less about wanting to stay, and more about wanting to leave.

Or maybe I'm still falling, and I need to hit bottom before rising again. I just hope I figure out where I need to be, before I crash through bedrock.

I've also realized something else. Over the past five months, I've been reacting instead of acting--to pain, to hurt, to confusion, multilayered and dizzying in scope. And rather than face up to the things causing that hurt and pain, I've been trying to shut them out entirely, desperately seeking distraction, oblivion, blindness...thinking that if I can't see it, I won't hurt over it. Out of sight, out of mind? Or at least pushed far enough away that I start to forget entirely.

But I'm not that lucky. I never have been.

The thing is, I can't do that anymore. I mean, I cannot keep carving bits of myself away, in the hopes that my losses won't be quite enough to kill me before I heal.

And I've always healed slowly.

What I've always done is not the way I get through this. And just because I don't see another path doesn't mean there isn't one. It just means I've been standing in my own way again.

So we start small. Still not up for the rounds of social engagement, but I might show up in Cubidon now and again. And I'm going to make another stab at getting the writing off the ground again. Building things, even if they're just for me and never for retail. Making an effort, as hard as that seems, because waiting for things to feel less stressed and strained is also not working.

At some point, we have to realize that we fell into the hole on the path all on our own, and no one is going to come back and save us. That's not the point of falling. We have to save ourselves.

And if it's hard climbing out of the hole, well, maybe it needs to be. Maybe that will convince me not to fall again.

Or at least, not fall quite so far next time...

resort to shadows till your body expires

I really should stop paying attention to Help channel...

[Help] Havoc Salamander: I have a question guys, about roleplay ettiquite
[Help] Nebulous Veneer: Ooh, this should be good. Shoot.
[Help] Fire-kissed: always swallow
[Help] Havoc Salamander: eegh not that

Well, I suppose you should have been more specific, then, Havoc.

[Help] Havoc Salamander: Okay like
[Help] Havoc Salamander: This game isn't perfect
[Help] Havoc Salamander: You can have a robot do mission arcs where they're injected with poison
[Help] Nebulous Veneer: Everyone politely ignores that mission though, because it sucks.
[Help] Havoc Salamander: But other people are obviously different

I've never heard of a mission involving a poisoned robot. I asked Miss Neome, and she can't remember any mission like that, either. But I digress:

[Help] Havoc Salamander: So the question is, how do you handle having superpowers like crime solving superheroes
[Help] Nebulous Veneer: ...I'm not sure I follow your question.
[Help] Havoc Salamander: Because I kind of wanted to make a trenchcoat stylish hat-clad detective with the ability to suppress people's ability to tell lies
[Help] Havoc Salamander: That's the question
[Help] Onikaizen: you get up in Ms. Liberty's grill and be like "Bitch! I don't want this whack ass build no more!"
[Help] Iconic.: ROFL!
[Help] Nebulous Veneer: So... you're asking how to design a character whose powers don't directly translate to the game at all?

That does seem to be what he's asking, yes. To be fair, this is an interesting question: what happens to characters who have abilities the game doesn't cover? How do they play their characters in the larger setting of the game itself?

For instant, Wonder Woman. (Not that you could recreate her, but say you wanted to approximate someone with her powers.) Flight: covered. Invisibility: covered (of people, at least, not things). Her trademark golden lasso? Not there. In fact, there's still no whip power set. There are some storm sets that could sort of approximate, and there's a super-strength set that could work well with her basic concept, maybe.

But by and large, you'd be restricted to roleplaying much of your abilities. Which could be done, if it's reasonable--or even fantastical: I came across a lady in Dark Astoria today who'd taken the new Water Blast power set, dyed everything dark red, and her explanation was that her character was a former nun with stigmata, and she'd left the convent when the rest of her super-abilities surfaced.

(Okay, that's not the greatest character concept, but we're talking basic themes, here.)

So our hypothetical Wonder Woman imitation would pretty much be acting out most of her non-ability abilities. With friends, or in the right supergroup, this could be pretty easily done. And even if you didn't plan it out, you might be able to get RP going, in the right setting.

But this concept...how does one suppress totally the ability for other heroes or villains to lie? That's implausible, at best, and bafflingly ludicrous, at worst.

[Help] Havoc Salamander: I'm asking how I should go about roleplaying them around other people
[NPC] Kurtis: I don't know what you're talking about!
[Help] Onikaizen: Just hang around the D
[Help] Iconic.: First..you get yourself on a decent team. Then...hang in the back spouting theories, while they do all the fighting.
[Help] Nebulous Veneer: I hav no clue, really. Because you know nobody will go along with it. Just because.

Well, likely, because people--even roleplaying sorts--are obstinate and stubborn much of the time.

[Help] Black Deluge: So your not the one who can tell lies?
[Help] Havoc Salamander: That's the problem :(
[Help] Nebulous Veneer: But you're gonna want to be really nice to them OOCly. Be really nice about it and they'll probably go along with it.
[Help] Your Wifes Lawyer: So, you're roleplaying Commisioner Gordon?
[Help] Black Deluge: Like Pinnocio in a trenchcoat?
[Help] Onikaizen: Just smack'em upside the head and say "Do what I say because I said it."

We have now reached the point where helpful suggestion has left the building.

[Help] Havoc Salamander: Man godmodding has ruined things
[Help] Your Wifes Lawyer: Farms have ruined things
[Help] Onikaizen: And if that fails you take their ass to Warburg and you settle it like MEN!
[Help] Sand Springer: HELP channel, please HELP me.

And on it goes. Then, later, in the Looking For Group channel...

[Looking For Group] Doggz: come on guys whats wrong with virtue we need more lvl 53's for MoCuda run pst
[Looking For Group] Tankers Nightmare: Probably because it's impossible to meet your requirements.

This is actually true: there's still a cap at level 50. Advancing in building powering enhancements for your Incarnate slots can shift your level, but even then I wouldn't be a 53 if I did that, I'd be a 50+3. (And as it is, I have all four Incarnate slots full, and I'm only a 50+2.)

[Looking For Group] Sienna Fox: and a team with just SOs can get it...
[Looking For Group] Doggz: but are more of a "cripple" then level shifted guys
[Looking For Group] Sienna Fox: Your attitude is what is crippled.
[Looking For Group] Doggz: oh im sry did i hurt your feelings....?

And the fight was on.

And these conversations both happened the same night, within an hour of each other!

if you're here, can you prove you're really here?

As I'm likely the only person who still pays attention to what God's doing on the outside--and, Stiv being Stiv, it's bound to be strange anyway--I actually spent several minutes cackling to the latest.

Out of the blue (while taking the last run of Hair Fair shots), I got this:

PARTY MAN, not quite a hero: http://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0
Emilly cackles
PARTY MAN, not quite a hero: i have been thrashing around the room to this and Andrew WKs cover of the Mickey Mouse Club song
Emilly: Okay, the second one sounds disturbing.
PARTY MAN, not quite a hero: HEY THERE HI THERE HO THERE
PARTY MAN, not quite a hero: IS THE BEST PARTY
PARTY MAN, not quite a hero: CAUSE ITS JUST YELLING AND JUST THROWING YOURSELF ALL OVER THE PLACE
PARTY MAN, not quite a hero: TRY IT
Emilly: hee

So I went looking. Turns out there's an entire album of this. It's called "MOSH PIT on DISNEY". I have no idea whether it's official, or not, but it's out there.

In more ways than one.

Also, during the opening of the 2012 Olympics in London, the TARDIS materialized. Well, no, it didn't, but the sound was heard.

Still, that's cool enough. (Link now replaced with working one--sadly, the sound quality's much worse.)

And there's a group of scientists studying the manta ray for future use in undersea exploration vehicles. Which we still desperately need, being as how we're still living on a ball of mostly water, and our oceans are currently dying.

[Help] Santa Lady: wait am i on virtue server?
[Help] Rainwolf: meow

Yeah. That pretty much sums up Virtue server in City of Heroes.

things are getting weirder at the speed of light

Just so you know, WE'RE ALL DOOMED. I do not say this lightly, but considering the many, many denizens of the Steam network that I've run across, this is kind of like Second Life giving the Woodbury sims back to Woodbury and telling them to invite all their friends.

However, this likely ties in to the Forbes announcement back on August 8th--that Valve is preparing to expand beyond games into actual software. Which is--oddly--where Second Life might come in. It's not precisely a game in the traditional sense--it's always been more of a straight environment, or group of environments. But--and potentially known by Valve--there's also a lot of programmers in SL. Get Second Life available through Steam, launch their own creativity and productivity apps, and they get both the people new to SL to look it over, and the developers/coders/builders in SL to peruse Steam offerings.

Maybe. For me, still saying WE'RE ALL DOOMED. DOOMED DOOMED DOOMED.

[Help] Axis-Mundi: Let's back up here. What exactly is the problem?

Now, this isn't anything relating to SL, and it's also not a wholly blind intro--I just thought it went well after the Steam news. To break down what happened, since this particular strand of commentary happened a few days back, I had been in the middle of a firefight prior to this in City of Heroes, blipped off the net briefly (which erased my buffer of the preceding conversation), then came back. The basic gist is, someone started complaining about PvP, player-vs.-player combat. In some games it's been a huge deal; in City of Heroes it's always been an afterthought. Most people just don't play City of Heroes to beat on each other as their main goal.

[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: it would go hand in hand that PvP would be implemented
[Help] Starpunk: They did implement PVP.
[Help] Starpunk: It was the PVP zones.
[Help] Ms. Falsetto: The problem is Grandmaster UO Thief and Starpunk are going around in circles.

This also seemed to be the case from reading back.

[Help] Starpunk: Which - coincidentally! - were released when i6 or 7 came out.
[Help] Wrektor: Technically, it was the Arena first.

Translation for those who play the game: there are PvP zones where anyone can attack anyone at any time. The Arena is not that place. The Arena is staged combat between players, one on one.

[Help] Starpunk: i.e., pretty much literally at the same time as they allowed you to play villains.
[Help] Starpunk: Nobody counts the arena

Why not?

[Help] Starpunk: The arena wasn't a focused effort on PVP
[Help] Ms. Falsetto: Arena was i5, but i5 also had the silliest nerfs in coh history

Another little explanation--when folks refer to "i5, i6, i10", they mean the issue numbers. Whereas other games have updates, or have expansion sets, NCSoft releases their game updates as "issues"--which, considering the comic-book environment, is a cool little conceit.

[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: and in retrospect the villains were no different than heroes accept the classes were different

And now, the classes are the same on both sides, because they launched free-to-play. But I digress.

[Help] Ms. Falsetto: It was never a focus.
[Help] Ms. Falsetto: Thank goodness.
[Help] Starpunk: It was a focused effort, however

I maintain the whole "afterthought" theory, because PvP combat doesn't work the same way, it doesn't drop the same rewards--literally, the rewards system in City of Heroes? It rewards us as players for NOT attacking each other. It's literally not worth our time unless we have some desperate need to prove ourselves the best at taking down other people.

[Help] Tyrannicus: I'll never understand why MMOs can't just use PvE mechanics for PvP
[Help] Starpunk: It was a focused attempt to create a PVP system for players to use
[Help] Axis-Mundi: Because they don't work.
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: UO did

Yes, they did. In fact, Ultima Online instituted the first no-permissions PvP system in an MMO. This meant anyone could attack anyone else without provocation, or, conversely, could provoke someone into attacking first, and then wipe the floor with them, because "they started it". It was supremely childish, and sent a chilling wave of awareness through the MMO community--namely, PvP without some permissions system in place is a very bad idea.

[Help] Tyrannicus: Like literally every other game ever.
[Help] Starpunk: I don't know why you think that's different from WoW
[Help] Axis-Mundi: Players don't behave like mobs so you can't account for it that way.
[Help] Starpunk: WoW just has PVP set on the world.

But they still require an agreement to consent to PvP in the first place. No permission, no attacks.

[Help] Axis-Mundi: Also players care if they get blown up by a broken twink build, mobs don't.
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: but NC failed to do that and now pvp is a disaster
[Help] Ms. Falsetto: I would quit on the spot of PvP was the reason for PvE nerfs.
[Help] Axis-Mundi: So your problem is... PvP doesn't work?

It does seem a bizarre argument to make.

[Help] Starpunk: NC didn't "fail" - do you even know anything at all? NCSoft had nothing to do with the original development of City of Heroes.

This is actually true--Cryptic Studios developed City of Heroes, then went off to develop Champions Online. NCSoft picked up the existing game, and made it what it is today.

[Help] Starpunk: Cryptic Studios was the original creator of City of Heroes. None of the things you are talking about were ever in the core design.
[Help] Starpunk: At all.
[Help] Starpunk: PVP came about, in a serious fashion, two years after the original game was fully designed.
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: well maybe the company that we pay right now to play the game should be doing that stuff
[Help] Axis-Mundi: Why?
[Help] Starpunk: Because you demand it?
[Help] Wrektor: Find... Another product?
[Help] Wrektor: I mean.
[Help] Aqua Net: when you get a sentence like "pvp is the reason they nerfed pvp" there really isn't much of a hope for rational dialogue, I fear

I tend to agree. Once you've hit that point, it's like saying murder's responsible for the high rate of homicide, and the reason we have overpopulation is because of giving birth. They're null statements.

[Help] Wrektor: If you can find someone who can make a better thing out there, go for it.
[Help] MUCHO MAS: Thats a bit like saying marriage is the cause of divorce
[Help] Aqua Net: yeah, am all for PvPers having a place to go where it works well. That place just isn't here
[Help] Starpunk: You're complaining that "they didn't account for changes they didn't know were happening two years in advance"
[Help] Starpunk: Out of curiousity, do you understand that Sister Psyche and Numina are fictional characters?

And this bit made me giggle aloud, because we've now hit sarcasm on parade.

[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: see but they have been around for a long time that time they could have improved upon those fundamentals to create a decent villaiin side [Help] Starpunk: Villainside is decent.
[Help] Starpunk: It's just...it's only decent.
[Help] Axis-Mundi: What exactly is wrong with villain side?

Yeah, really. First Grandmaster takes on PvP and now Starpunk's taking on one-third of the current game? The hell?

[Help] Starpunk: It gets no interesting improvement.
[Help] Starpunk: It doesn't move forward.
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: that was my original point
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: they never do anything with it

• Okay, slow down there, Sparky, you're treading on dangerous ground. Now, I admit, I was not in favor of changing the everybody-gets-in-through-Galaxy-City bit, but as a game tutorial, it does several things right: you can easily figure out what your powers do and what your power icons look like
• you learn how to target, how to shift your target, and which powers are better at ranged, and which are better at melee attacks
• you get the chance to help in cooperative monster-killing, which creates that sense of chosen community
• you get to choose whether you're a villain or a hero by either a noble or an ignoble act
• AND if you're bored with the whole thing you can skip the tutorial and still--shock and horror!--not miss out on that much by doing so!

[Help] Starpunk: It's stuck, in stasis, while the rest of the game receives massive content unlocks.

How so? They changed the entire feel of the game, from Arachnos owns Mercy Island, to Longbow does. In fact, the first five levels new villains get in the game allow us to feel that minor sense of triumph because we--as villains--push back the invading spandex horde and gain some peace from constant Longbow harrying! How is that in any way "stuck in stasis"??

[Help] Starpunk: Yes, shared is generally "and the villains team up to save the world"
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: again you are finaly seeing my point
[Help] MUCHO MAS: Most of the content unlocks have been shared zones and content though
[Help] Tyrannicus: Go to posi and whine about it to him.

I'm still not sure what exactly the point is here...beyond them saying City of Villains sucks, PvP is bad because it's PvP, and...the content on both sides is essentially mirrored, is that the third complaint?

Save, look at any big MMO right about now. While they'll have different enemies, different bases of operations, different groups to fight, for the most part playing out missions on either side is a standard process:

1. make a character talk to people
2. get missions
3. beat up on enemy groups for fun and profit
4. go get the next mission

That's pretty much how it works in any MMO. What's the problem?

[Help] Wrektor: Except... Villains teaming up to save the world is a thing that happens?
[Help] Wrektor: In comics?
[Help] Taran Tatsui: Often? ;)
[Help] Wrektor: I mean. That's kind of a major trope.
[Help] Starpunk: Not every other issue
[Help] MUCHO MAS: Though, I will agree I would like to see stuff thats more exclusive to one side or the other

Okay, I'd like to see that, too. Except...that's been done, as well. There are places where you fight one of the named villains as a hero, and places where you fight at that villain's side as a villain. There are storylines that involve preventing bank robberies (hero side) and on the villain side, we get to cause as much mayhem and chaos as we can whilst robbing those banks.

Further: Atlas Park has Twinshot, and her team of maladapted hero wannabes; part of that entire arc is realizing that in groups, we are stronger than alone, that having bases of operations are cool, and that sometimes, there are those we think of as fellow heroes that...aren't, quite. (Well, really, any story arc that involves Bat-Manticore is bound to be doomed on the "noble hero" stand. Because dear gods, he's utterly underwhelming as a good guy.)

Conversely, a lot of the early missions for City of Villains feature Arbiter Sands, a gleeful, cackling, calculating mass of intelligent viciousness that stands in your way at nearly every turn. He wants nothing more than to return you to the faceless puppet horde that Lord Recluse encourages so well, and your job as a developing villain is to take him out and advance anyway.

Those are two vastly different goal sets.

[Help] Ms. Falsetto: But the first contact - WORD ONE - says that the rogue isles isn't worth saving
[Help] Ms. Falsetto: In the rikti warzone
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: last time i checked a Villain was a mass murdering stealing name taking son of a bitch who yet again has no remorse for his crimes
[Help] Starpunk: Incidentally, I've...been agreeing with you, until you started that ludicrous argument about PVP?
[Help] Wrektor: Well, I mean. I'd spoiler the ending of DA, but a lot of that is more than just SAAVE THE WOOOOORLD.

Having gone through the Dark Astoria arc now, as my hero, and as accompanying a friend's villain, not much changes on either side. But that's pretty much the point--that both heroes and villains will bind together to fight true evil, which is what Mot represents. It's very end-game, very meta in spots, but essentially, Mot is undiluted chaos. Mot is blood and pain and death forever and ever, melding living flesh with unliving flesh, and even though Mot did not exist until the revamp of Dark Astoria into Mot's main feeding ground, the ripples of that decision can now be seen in other missions, and a lot more stray threads in the weave than I thought are woven back in.

It's not the only place in the game where villains and heroes meet and mingle, but it's the one that makes the player most proud of their character choices--because facing Mot in the final showdown, the ultimate realization is that we are there, we are infant Incarnates stretching our power, and we are trusted by those who came before us. Villain or hero, that's monumental.

[Help] Starpunk: Uhh, no
[Help] Starpunk: If you think that, go pick up, I don't know, any Doctor Doom comic

Which seems like a spurious point, until you realize that as a super-villain, Doctor Doom--on his own--thinks he's doing the right things for the right reasons. In his eyes, he's the hero. And the Fantastic Four--and everyone who's ever been pitted against Doom in the comics--well, they're just meddlesome, misguided fools, trying to stop him from realizing his dreams.

[Help] Axis-Mundi: Oh
[Help] Axis-Mundi: You want hardcore baby-eating villain, right
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: yet this game makes the heros that they were killing welcome them with open arms and hot chocolate when they transfer over

How so? If he's talking about going rogue or going vigilante, while we can pick up missions that way, we're always looked upon with some suspicion, because we came from the "other side".

[Help] Colonial Federalist: Doctor Doom is a kind and loving man.
[Help] Tyrannicus: GTFO of my house!
[Help] Accalon: God damn kids these days
[Help] Ecatarina the Talon: not to mention control of a thirdworld country with super science, and more robots than actual citizens
[Help] Oriental Invincible: that is why he is so cool, he has very good reasons to do what ever he is doing
[Help] Colonial Federalist: He is friend to all children.
[Help] Bug Burn: he's that guy in that movie right?

Cue involuntary facepalming.

[Help] daedrius warbrand: he's some guy with a metal facemask
[Help] Direwing: I blame the education system
[Help] Taran Tatsui: I hardly keep up with comic supers, and I know who Doc Doom is... :/
[Help] Ecatarina the Talon: er... did you at least watch the Fantastic 4 Movie *shudder*

One would hope.

[Help] Roland Blackbriar: the movie dr doom was a poor version to base your opinion of him on
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: but the fact of the matter is the villains in this game are not true villains

Again, what's he basing this on? Part of the reason hero side is easier to play is that there aren't a lot of grey areas. Conversely, there's a TON of grey areas and moral choices on villain side. One of the first missions handed out involves our fledgling villains to talk to a captured Longbow officer. While talking, we're given the choice to break his arm, break his leg, or just convince him that we mean what we say by describing horrible tortures to him. And that happens within the first five levels of the game!

[Help] Oriental Invincible: i like magneto, he is a believable villain
[Help] Starpunk: What do you define as a "true villain"
[Help] Colonial Federalist: Doctor Doom is a warm fuzzy bear who will love you and bring you the wonders of Denpa Radiation.
[Help] Wrektor: What's a 'true villain?'
[Help] Wrektor: That's just a horrible thing to try and define.
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: they basicly go around doing exactly what the heroes do with a red HUD instead

Again, I disagree. While on both sides there's a lot of killing "bad guys" (on villains' side, it's Wyvern agents, Longbow agents, and then the standard evildoers on both sides (the cyber-enhanced punk Freakshow gangs, the dark Carnival of Shadows, and the mostly-undead and/or rotting Vahzilok), and for heroes it's the three villain groups mentioned above, plus the Sky Raiders, the Warriors, the Family, the Tsoo...okay, there are far more groups of bad guys on the hero side of things, yes. But still! There's more to both sides than that!

[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: they focus on making the heros so heroic and mighty and the red side which they implemented and have massive maps for is just left in the side lines

Yeah, I still don't agree.

[Help] Starpunk: You can't go "everyone should be a baby-eating psychopath" - it's relatively easy to...implement heroism.
[Help] Starpunk: Heroism is generally well-defined.
[Help] Starpunk: Villains are varied, and have many personal motives, lines drawn in the sand, honor codes, and other things
[Help] Literal Lass: I love anything with Arbiter Sands. Even stupid missions have good moments if he's involved.
[Help] Aqua Net: yeah, arbi sands is wonderful
[Help] Ms. Falsetto: Oh god Sands~
[Help] Ms. Falsetto: Villainy is hard when you can't kill everyone or rule the general area.
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: no but we all have an idea of what a villain should be there is atleast one general idea
[Help] Starpunk: Do you...do you know who Superman is
[Help] Tyrannicus: ...Yes?
[Help] Ms. Falsetto: And no real game developers can handle being a villain properly.
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: such as.... not doing the exact same thig the heros are doing

So basically, Grandmaster is complaining that villain side just isn't villainous enough? Redside has kidnappings, evil occult groups, human sacrifices, undead zombies rigged to explode, and the entire shebang is run by a man who thinks he's a spider. How much more villainous does he WANT?

[Help] Starpunk: You...don't.
[Help] Starpunk: I tell you what
[Help] Starpunk: Go play Westin Phipps
[Help] Starpunk: Just, go do that
[Help] Starpunk: It'll satisfy all your baby-eating needs
[Help] Starpunk: I promise

And cue massive, full-body shoulder, because Westin Phipps is, quite possibly, the most disturbing thing in the game. End stop.

Direct baby-eating? No. But child-killing, yes. And you can also toss in destruction of education materials, including books; poisoning of children via donated food for the poor; all the way down to mutation of the poor and very undeserving into creatures that even Arachnos fear.

You want villainy? Westin Phipps is, and moreover, during all of his story arc missions, he's blaming us for following his demands. He is creepy and disturbing beyond all reason, moreso because he's just this guy, you know? Glasses, balding with a combover, average cubicle-drone attire...he doesn't look outrageous in any way.

And that's part of what makes him so villainous.

[Help] Axis-Mundi: If they implemented CoV how you seem to want it, it'd basically be like EvE 0.0 play
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: i just wish they would add more content to the villain side
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: like they are for this
[Help] Ecatarina the Talon: to me the best villian is the one who truly believes he is the hero... even though the book drones on and on about it... Sword of Truth.
[Help] Starpunk: ...
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: maybe revamp their story

What, you mean, like when Longbow took over Mercy Isle from Arachnos? Oh, wait, that's content they already revised.

[Help] Starpunk: Trollin', got it

Pretty much.

[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: the odd thing is its a saturday night and im drunk off my ass so give or take 8 hours from now i wont even remember having this conversation anyways
[Help] Starpunk: Trust me
[Help] Starpunk: In eight hours, neither will I
[Help] Ms. Falsetto: That'd explain a lot
[Help] Starpunk: In fact, in eight minutes, I won't even remember that you exist
[Help] Starpunk: And all your wonderful, sagacious points.
[Help] Starpunk: All those moments, like tears in the rain.

Okay, he gets props for being a Blade Runner fan.

[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: welcome to the internet. im drunk off my ass right now to deal with the pain of an inch deep abcess in my theigh right now
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: whats your excuse
[Help] Starpunk: I'm a rational human being who just spent the last half hour arguing with a drunken lout while I faceplant my lowbie getting powerlevelled by my friend?

Annnnd he may have just lost those props.

Essentially, all this boils down to some very specific points:

• PvP is nerfed because of PvP (what?)
• Villain side isn't villainous (only it is)
• Villain side needs new content (which it has)
• and Grandmaster UO started this entire argument while intoxicated (and why, dear gods, why?)

I guess we'll never know.

I've lain by this window long enough to get used to an empty room

(from the City of Heroes album; hanging out in Dark Astoria)

Zania Londres, a level 50 mutation brute, Titan weapons/regeneration. (That means she uses the supremely oversized, quasi-anime style weapons set, and heals really fast.) She's wearing a powder blue crop top, powder blue hot pants, panda ears, glasses, and strappy red sandals over powder blue OTK socks. Her bio? Possibly the only thing capable of distracting me from her bizarre dance in Dark Astoria:

Description: First her home is destroyed during a hero and giant monster battle.

(from the City of Heroes album; watching Zania dance)

On her way to work, her car is picked up by a Gravity Controller and tossed at a Troll, while she was still in it. On her walk to work, she is frozen by an Outcast boss. Then thawed out by a flame throwing Tsoo. Feeling microwaved she finally makes it to her photo shoot. Mid shoot, Nemesis conducts his raids and the camera guy bites the dust. Being fed up, she decied to travel to galaxy city to cool off. Upon arriving to Galaxy city, it is in ruins and Shivans are runnin amok.

(from the City of Heroes album; more of watching Zania dance)

She finds that to be the final straw and taps into her inner powers and picks up the biggest weapon she could find, from some random dude standing on the corner selling it. What was he doing with those things, she never bothered to ask. After Galaxy city she returns to other zones to clean up the madness a bit.

(from the City of Heroes album: the dance in motion!)

All right, then. You go have fun, Zania. Take the edge off.

"Let's face it: most of the 'strange' worlds and dimensions you come from have nothing on the weird mess of crap affectionately known as Paragon."

(Faithward--who, in City of Heroes, at least--is a horned demon with a burning black halo in damaged gold and black armor. Makes sense.)

[Help] Imperial Templar: Should I go hero or villain?
[Help] Hexman: Both, be a Vigilante or Rogue
[Help] Lady of Broken Toys: hero has more people and is generally the safest bet.
[Help] Prospero the Purple: Hero only has more people because people tell people to go hero.

How much does this sound like "Firestorm/Phoenix/Emerald has more users because people tell their friends to use them"?

[Help] Prospero the Purple: IMO, Villain side is more fun but has less people since everyone is told to go hero.
[Help] Temple Divine: nnah was dead long before that
[Help] Chi Sota: hero if you cant wait for a group to form, vil if you want good everything else

These are the facts: when City of Villains launched into what had been, to that point, a hero-only game, there was a LOT of interest. There still is interest, but here's how it breaks down:

• Hero missions are simpler than villain missions.
• Redside (villain-side) is generally darker and grittier in terms of texturing, and the level of destruction on the buildings themselves, and more emotionally dark overall, than blueside (hero-side).
• It's easier to power-level on blue side--between the Death from Below and the Drowning in Blood queue challenges, dumping three hours on the game will generally level just about any character to level 20 (maybe higher, depending).
• Strike forces and task forces are easier to get into on blueside--again, because the missions are easier overall, more people are playing on blueside in a given day.

[Help] Operative Glass: go Gold side
[Help] Operative Glass: Be a praetorian!

Praetoria's another new zone--well, "new-ish", it was launched back in 2010, but "going gold" has its own unique set of challenges along the way. There's a lot of moral choices involved, even more than the villains' Rogue Isles mission set. That, and by design Praetoria is very clean, very structured, and overwhelmingly empty--not because no one plays there, because people do, but because all the cities are built on a very large scale. NPCs are confined to specific areas, and for the most part, most of the NPCs seen on the ground in Praetoria are either cleaner bots, or police.

But there are those who disagree:

[Help] Chi Sota: pratorian if you hate yourself
[Help] Hanku: Pfft, lol
[Help] Hexman: Or your graphics card
[Help] Literal Lass: Hey now. Praetoria is great for soloing, badge collecting, and you CAN find teams to work with, it's not impossible.
[Help] Operative Glass: It isn't really as hard as its reputation; a majority of the mobs that were overperforming were adjusted awhile ago.

What they mean: because Praetoria is one of the most recent zones (only the revised Dark Astoria is newer), it's coded differently than the original hero zones or even the villain zones. In a sense, it can be compared to the jump from viewer 1 to viewer 3: Praetoria is coded to demand higher performance from the client graphically, by default.

Conversation drifted at that point to discussion of the Virtue server itself:

[Help] Ceille: Do people actually still roleplay on this server?
[Help] Operative Glass: yes
[Help] Lady of Broken Toys: yes.
[Help] Hexman: Yes
[Help] Literal Lass: Yeah, but mostly in the D.
[Help] Hexman: Avoid pocket D
[Help] Lady of Broken Toys: why 'actually'? You act like it belongs in a museum.
[Help] Ceille: What's wrong with Pocket D?

I'm always amused by these interchanges. "Go to the D!" "Avoid the D!" And to be fair, both arguments have merit, in a twisted sense. Pocket D, because it's an interdimensional space where villains and heroes can attend, which frequently features actual DJ shows (via WinAmp or live streaming, if the radio station has a website). On top of that, though, it's a large space. RP can happen in local chat, broadcast throughout the zone (which is generally the entire club, anyway), or in Supergroup bases (and there's a handy base portal on the dance floor). This makes it a very attractive space for RP. Four bars on two differently colored "sides" of the club (redside and blueside) but no one's restricted just to those areas.

With virtual alcohol and themed club nights, it provides a free-for-all RP environment--privacy available (or not), banter allowed, personal story arcs mixing and melding--so there's both a lot of eye-rolling (usually on the particular types of RP) and a lot of people who specifically go to the D for engaging RP.

[Help] Prospero the Purple: I really only joined Virtue because it's much more populated than Pinnacle.

Again, because Virtue and Freedom are the highest-populated servers in the game.

[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: Pocket D is where you go when you run out of ideas for your character

Really? Really, that's the best you can do?

[Help] Lady of Broken Toys: I get most of my rp far from the D.
[Help] Andrieth: Same.
[Help] Hexman: Role playing in pocket D is like role playing with your wife on date night
[Help] Andrieth: Or when you're starting out, and you need a group to play with.
[Help] Temple Divine: D is sadly overrun with well...you will see.
[Help] Chi Sota: Pocket D/erp

There's also this weird split for people on Virtue: it seems about 30% "ERP isn't roleplay!" and 50% "ERP is the only roleplay!" with the remaining 20% pretty easy-going and flexible, because it's all RP in the first place.

This leads to a lot of player bios that state up front "Mature RP" or "RP/ERP", before anything else on the description, because some players on City of Heroes freak right the hell out over the concept of one virtual persona flirting/making out/having sex with another virtual persona. Having the years I've had in SL, this seems preciously naive, at best, but some folks just don't want any hint of erotic interpersonal relations to spoil their game--a game, I should add, that features fired electrical bolts from the hands, the abilities to fly, leap over buildings in a single bound, fade into invisibility, freeze miscreants in place, or terrorize them with phantoms from the nether spaces as routine daily occurences. What's a little slap-and-tickle to that?

Also, this impression that Pocket D is where new--or lazy--roleplayers hang out, that keeps cropping up too. It's comparable to the little Gorean slavegirl phenomenon in Second Life--the fact that some women sign on, and less than one hour past character creation they've found a freebie set of silks, at least one nadu pose (if not several, or an entire AO of bondage poses!), where they then happily scamper off to be abducted in the Gor lands.

I don't think that's a sign of laziness, or newness, though, as much as it is expediency. If you're looking for specific types of roleplay, you're going to go where the greatest numbers of potential roleplayers hang out, right? Which is the D in City of Heroes, and largely Gor (or Bloodlines sims) in SL.

[Help] Operative Glass: Since supergroups have been in decline, the D's been when I usually hang out for that.

People keep saying this too. Maybe I'm just in an active group, but how are they in decline? What does "in decline" even mean in a game where anyone (at the right level, at least) can start a supergroup? Honestly, I think we're overrun with supergroups, not suffering a scarcity.

[Help] Felicio: The RP in Pocket D is fine. Plenty of nice folks in there that RP good, like myself, who are welcoming.
[Help] Temple Divine: but outside of D it's pretty snub nose and prudish.
[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: you clearly have just been on the surface of Pocket D
[Help] Lady of Broken Toys: The D is a hive of villany, perversion, bad fanfiction, and sparkly vampires.

Only some of the time.

[Help] Grandmaster UO Thief: just like youtube its very easy to stumble upon that "wierd part"

Well, to be fair, Grandmaster UO isn't wrong. There's a lot of characters that seem to exist only for the sake of getting to the D as fast as possible, and living out their lives in a swimming haze of kink. There's more than a few "ooze girls" who hang around the D, as well, waiting to engulf the hapless, wriggling heroes who dare to approach.

Catgirls, ratgirls, bondage enthusiasts, stern torturers, flamboyantly gay prettyboys in the tightest of tight spandex, mistresses, masters, and the genuinely lost meet and mingle in the D. But here's the thing: no one FORCES anyone to play out anything. That distinction is important. Someone sends me a tell I don't want, I ask them to stop, or politely demur. They send again, I have the option of blocking their communication. Simple. Easy. Done.

And if you're getting uncomfortable with the daily D content, well...there's three whole play areas to go romp about in, for villains, heroes and Praetorians. Go there. Run solo missions, run group missions, run story arcs. No one makes anyone RP if they don't want to.

I may complain about the level of futa catgirl vampire vixens with bondage-oriented superpowers in schoolgirl uniforms, sure...but hey, if I'm not interested? I don't have to be there.

People keep forgetting that for some reason.

sorrow was their master, cackling with laughter

The Transylvania sim is celebrating its eighth year of operation this weekend, which is notable in itself, but I had a friend who fell head over heels in love with the outfit on the middle avatar below:

(from the mesh album)

That's a woman named Willow, in the center, and it turns out she got that outfit (all mesh, by the way) from a store named Yasum.

(from the mesh album)

The Yasum "Babes" top comes in five colors for L$299 each. It comes with the neck/chin piece, the buckles on the chest, and the long sleeves that cover the hands.

(from the mesh album)

The "Drop Down Baggies" mesh pants are in the same five colors for L$299 each.

(from the mesh album)

The platform combat boots (also mesh) come in two matching colors (mustard and black), and two complimentary colors (grass and baby blue; I'm showing grass here). Or, you can just buy the whole outfit package, which includes the top, the pants, and the boots for L$699 per color--that saves you L$198 over buying them individually.

(from the mesh album)

There are some clipping issues with the hands, due to the length of the sleeve, but other than the wisps of the Irisia hair disappearing into my shoulders, I had no other problems. The alpha for this is brilliantly invisible, and while there is some alpha fade-out, you REALLY have to get arcane with the camera to see it, because there's just a little glimpse on the INside of the neck/chin piece. If you're not looking for it, trust me, you're NEVER going to see it.

(from the mesh album)

I ran through several positions looking for errors or glitching, and as I said--save for the fingers protruding through the long sleeves on occasion (and nothing's going to stop that but changing animations, it just can't be done), there are zero glitches with this one. I'm wearing size L, but with adjustment of my base shape, I could likely get into a size M and probably wear it just as well.

(Wearing: Mortain Lumpen's Fae eyes in "Dreamy" [bought in 2008, likely no longer available], Sin Skin's "Etheria" Fae skin in Chalk [no idea if they're still available, maybe on the Marketplace?], the Pixelmen buckle and chain pants [no longer available], and La Viere's "Irisia" hair in Raspberry [Hair Fair gift this year, but the store itself is well worth checking out]. And the Windlight's on Bryn Oh's "BOX MetaLES".)

I wonder where you are tonight; no answer on the telephone

(from the loss album)

I cannot see me parting from you
I see no place on the road ahead
where I would willingly part from you
where I would choose to leave
the safety of your shadow...

Still not walking away, but that no longer seems to matter. After all, I'm the only one here. It's not like there's anyone else to walk away from...

Is this the giving up point? At least briefly, I think it might be.

Also, this is really disturbing. It's like exposing the vile underbelly of the net we know and love to sharp, reflecting light...and then giving those malformed and mutated creatures the ability to speak.

History of that link: basically, Mountain Dew is having a contest: name the new flavor. They're still taking votes, and they have said (as ridiculous as this now seems to be) that they will choose a winner from the top ten list. Based on the number of riffs on "apple" as a flavor component, I'm going to go out on this limb and say the new flavor will be apple-based. In some sense. Maybe.

But it's been appalling to watch. Reload the page, you'll see what new aberrations appeared in the top ten leaderboard. So far, our selections seem to be hovering around diseases, strange internet memes, My Little Pony characters, feeble racism, and several worse concepts that I don't even want to mention involving various body fluids. If that's the mind of the internet at present, we are in terrible, terrible shape.

[Update--prior to publishing, even: they seem to have taken the site down entirely. I can't help but think that's a good thing, frankly.]

In other pop-related news...sort of...this surfaced on the intarwebs tonight. Apparently the bottle of Orange Crush is there for comparison with the pygmy goat.

Okay, then.

And more strangeness from tonight on City of Heroes:

[Help] Pseudo Shock: So this is the Famous RP server, that's awesome.
[Help] Arkon Prime: I smell a troll.
[Help] Pseudo Shock: No, I'm serious. That really is awesome
[Help] Pseudo Shock: I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just not used to it

This is not the first time this has come up. It always confuses me slightly, because in one sense, it's just another game server, no big deal. But in the other sense, yeah, it's the main RP server--but why is that a big deal?

[Help] Crathos: this is a rp server? my friend just told me he plays on this one
[Help] Crathos: and I'm not being sarcastic
[Help] toxic mouth: i think it's a bit of both at this point
[Help] Fortunata Sin: Unofficial RP server.

Well, yes, it's never been officially named as the RP server, mainly because that would mean NCSoft is validating all forms of RP on Virtue, and well...I'm quite sure there's some RP that goes on they want a lot of distance on, just in case.

[Help] Crathos: ah. I just knew it was a heck of a lot busier than guardian
Well...yes. Virtue and Freedom (Freedom being the "unofficial" main NON-RP server) are also the two busiest, most populated servers in the game.

[Help] Pseudo Shock: Ahhh, that's still really cool though.
[Help] Satsuma: so is that an incarnate RP level or what?

What, Guardian? No, Incarnate-level play happens anywhere. There's a specific Incarnate-level zone called Dark Astoria, but that's a recent addition. Prior to that, running strike forces/task forces weekly, or Ouroboros flashback missions, would gain Incarnate shards, threads, and Incarnate salvage drops--all of which are necessary to "level up" characters past 50. (Seeing as how there's still--and there may be always--that cap of level 50 for actually earning experience and leveling.)

Unless Satsuma meant VIP content, in which case Exalted is the server locked to only subscribing players. (I have one character on Exalted; sadly, I never play her. I likely should try, because I'm starting to become elitist enough to want a world without spammers, or free-to-players 4channing in Help and Looking for Group because they can't do anything else.

[Help] Pseudo Shock: A little of Role-playing and a little of your self?
[Help] Crathos: like a guy I saw yesterday posting asking for someone to RP his brother? that other lvl?
[Help] Fortunata Sin: Yes, that level.

I'd say "bwuh" over this, but just the other day, someone approached a friend of mine in Second Life, and asked her to be his wife because he wanted a baby now. He then asked her how he could have a baby (what, sweetness, you never took a high school health class?), and how he got married.

He was about a week old.

[Help] Slaughtron: There will be bouts of RP all over the place. Seems that a lot of the "good" RP takes place within SG's...
[Help] Fortunata Sin: I'm the same Slaughtron. I tend to RP only in my SG. And for the non-RP communities sake i don't RP in PUGs.

For the unintiated, "PuGs" translates to "pick-up groups"--as in, groups of people who don't know each other, running for the sake of the mission at hand, versus folks who run because they're in the same SuperGroup, or because they're friends in or out of the game.

The big reason behind not RPing (as a generally unspoken rule) around random folks is that they may not understand. While just about anyone can RP in Pocket D, say (or just stand around and listen), it's a bit harder for random RP to really take off properly with a random mix of people. Not impossible, just more difficult.

[Help] Slaughtron: I try and be IC on PuGs, mainly cos sometimes people get a kick out of it. I like that. But If someone has cat ears, or a name that sounds like a porn star, RUN AWAY!

Cue hysterical laughter on the part of me, considering the prevalence of catgirls everywhere.

To be absolutely fair to City of Heroes, there aren't as many catgirls as there used to be, but considering there are official supercatgirls in the game's mythology, catgirls are an acceptable heroic (or even villainous) alternative.

so many little things that bothered me, because I am not your answer

More griping from the disenchanted forest.

[Help] Thunderbeard: I have a dumb question. Is there an in-game guide or encyclopedia that can inform or remind us who various characters, factions, etc. are?
[Help] Desert Ichor: Hmmm...
[Help] Amazingly Lame: Wikipedia.org
[Help] Thunderbeard: I mean in-game, so I don't have to log out to be reminded of who/what the Rikti are, etc.
[Help] Desert Ichor: I don't believe there is ingame, But the Titan wiki......
[Help] GodIike: wiki.cohtitan.com
[Help] Dragon Blessed: Another one is Paragon.wiki.com I believe
[Help] Desert Ichor: Paragon.wiki was the one with malware Dx)
[Help] GodIike: paragon wiki isn't being actively updated anymore I don't think

Not at this point, but there's also a specific City of Heroes wiki internally hosted by NCSoft, as well.

[Help] Thunderbeard: Right, I mean something in-game...
[Help] Desert Ichor: Then nope....
[Help] GodIike: you don't need to log out, just alt+tab
[Help] Desert Ichor: Unless you read What the contacts actually say...

A not-so-subtle jab at reminding Thunderbeard that much of the in-game information on the various gangs, groups, aliens, mystic powers, and zones come from NPCs and mission texts.

[Help] Night Lioness: the only thing i can think of ingame that is close to that is if u read the various clues when u go thru mish arcs, and if u can remember all those facts

As Night Lioness reinforced in this next line.

[Help] Thunderbeard: Whenever I opened a browser in WoW things would tend to crash...
[Help] GodIike: WoW is trash. CoH isn't.

And there it is. Listen, I profoundly disapprove of WoW on a lot of levels, but as a game itself I have never objected to it. The cultlike behavior of some adherents, the insistence that if I game, then I need a WoW account, is irritating to me, and I also blame Blizzard as a company for taking Diablo I and Diablo II--good, strong, dystopian games of sacrifice and challenge--and making them into DiabloWoW for the third iteration.

I think the thing I most blame on WoW is the proliferation of "toon" as a reference for in-game characters. In Runes of Magic, they were dolls, not "toons". In Second Life, they're avatars, not "toons". In City of Heroes, they're heroes, villains, alts or characters--again, not "toons".

How'ver, even with all my open contempt for WoW and for Blizzard's manipulative Diablo destruction, I wouldn't call the game itself trash. A lot of people like it, a lot of people still pay subscriptions, and go to the conventions, and make other media centered on WoW. Even though they've lost over a million players in the last quarter, weirdly they've lost them to Diablo III, so it's all still funds coming into Blizzard, itself. It is, by any standard definition, still a successful game.

[Help] Thunderbeard: Hey, I like WoW. But my computer isn't omnipotent in terms of running too many programs or windows at once.
[Help] Desert Ichor: In CoH it just lags a little.. or in my case epicly.
[Help] GodIike: WoW is where former AOL users get stuffed when everyone gets fed up with them.

And note the name--it's not "Godlike", which comes up later in the chat I'm excerpting here. It's actually "GodIike"--I guess the closest approximation to pronunciation, according to the spelling, would be "Gahd-Eye-Ike". He has enough limits on his imagination that he refuses to change "Godlike" into something else that's a near approximation, so he decides to misspell it deliberately so that, if we squint, we might see it as the "Godlike" he wants it to be?
Really?

[Help] Thunderbeard: That's not nice. I like WoW and CoH.
[Help] Arbiter Smythe: Godlike you're without a doubt a complete neckbeard take your hate elsewhere no one cares

Yeah, I had to look this one up. That's actually a pretty devastating insult, all things considered.

[Help] Imperial Templar: Now that's we've compared our E-Peenz, let's play some CoH.....
[Help] GodIike: it's not hate. just fact.
[Help] Thunderbeard: No, it's being rude to other players.
[Help] Arbiter Smythe: No it's pointless unwarrented hate
[Help] GodIike: when AOLers get tossed, and miss landing in the woodchipper, WoW is where they end up.

And yes, I have also made jests at AOL's expense, but those same jests can be made towards Hotmail users (those that spam, anyway), Gmail users (again, those that spam) and gold spammers in any MMO game at large (and City of Heroes has 'em too). (Also of morbid amusement: "gold spammer" was a term originated in WoW, and that term's gone global, too.)

[Help] komodai: just ignore him, it's going to end up gumming up help channel
[Help] Arbiter Smythe: Oh yeah ignore that's where morons go, I forgot sorry fixing that problem now

Indeed.

For reasons I can't adequately figure out, there's a LOT of WoW hatred in City of Heroes. Not just dislike, or to make this personal, not just my hard-coded twitch against the "toons" references--that proliferate through a lot of online games, not just WoW--but active, acid-spewing hate. What I can't figure out is why.

Seriously, think about it--WoW's main competition are similiarly-designed fantasy games: so things like Runes of Magic, TERA, Diablo III and similar console games, those are the ones directly abutting WoW's market share. City of Heroes is anything but fantasy-based, and so far, City of Heroes' only real competition is from Champions Online and DCUO--both superhero/supervillain-based games. So why all the hatred directed towards WoW? Don't like WoW, don't play it. And hey, if you're in City of Heroes, guess what--you're not playing WoW, are you?

It's a perpetual confusion, but this bit (from a much longer, rambling conversation) painted the controversy in exacerbatingly vivid colors. But making it brighter didn't make it any easier to understand.

I can untie these hands and get back up again

So, I've been hanging out in Dark Astoria of late:

(from the City of Heroes album)

It is a profoundly creepy place. I'll likely post more on it soon, but I wanted to talk today about the Incarnate Trial process.

There are three main Incarnate Trials accessible in Dark Astoria. In one, a group of twelve to twenty-four mixed heroes and villains takes on the Behavioral Adjustment Center in Praetoria, administered by Mother Mayhem as part of her Seer training program. (It also functions as a training/torture/mindwashing program with the main goal of seeding sleeper agents through the Praetorian Resistance.)

There are a few levels to the challenge: once we're on the grounds, we take out large, impossibly overpowered War Walkers (look for the giant mech image almost at the bottom of the page), plus an assortment of other powersuit-enabled fighting forces to get to the bivouac to stop Nightstar, Mother Mayhem's elite force trainer, and Seige, the ultimate powersuit guy. (If you're interested, there's an article specifically on what happens in the BAF Trial start to finish.)

How'ver, I'd never done one of these before. So, two days ago, this was me in BAF:

(from the City of Heroes album)

I have no idea what's going on.

(from the City of Heroes album)

This is really what happens when you plunge a psychic into a mix of multi-effect combat monkeys. She gets really, really confused.

(from the City of Heroes album)

Mostly, I just did my best to hang on and kill what I could and lope back from the hospital on my not infrequent deaths to kill more.

"Badly organized" would be a laughable way to state the problem. I had zero concept of our goals beyond "kill things". I had zero understanding of what we were really there for because no one had bothered to explain to me what was going to go on--before or during the Trial itself.

(from the City of Heroes album)

Then we moved to the TPN Trial. I do not recommend anyone to take this trial without knowing what's going on, or without going with someone who knows the trial very well, because it's complicated enough even WITH knowing who's going where.

The main objectives: sway the broadcast going out from the television campus in Primal Earth's favor. We do this in a variety of ways: namely, killing our way to the doors of the main building, then running in as fast as we can to the studio itself, taking over the broadcast terminals, and broadcasting our message over the airwaves.

Then we leave the building, and go to another one and do it all again.

Then we do it all again, before we fight the ultimate heroic poseur, Maelstrom.

This is me in the TPN Campus Trial:

(from the City of Heroes album)

Still nooooo idea what's happening other than "stay out of the way".

(from the City of Heroes album)

Thankfully, most of the campus buildings themselves, once inside, have remarkably similar layouts. After a while--because seriously, we change which building we're in CONSTANTLY--it became almost routine: fly in, dodge around enemies we're apparently not going to kill, get to the main studio/terminal room, kill things, broadcast, get ported back out to the next building.

(from the City of Heroes album)

And into the next one.

(from the City of Heroes album)

And into the next one. Rinse, repeat, burn.

It was an ultimately exhausting few hours, and it did make me seriously wonder why I was bothering to do this at all. Yet again, just like Second Life--when something that is supposed to be stress relief and a game becomes tense, stressful, confusing work...something's gone wrong somewhere.

hurt, the measure of blind ambition

[Help] UberSlash: can anyone teach me how to play?

OMG GET OFF MY GAME.

My apologies, that was hostile. Gentle sir, pray avail yourself of the many, many teaching resources that can be found in the Paragon Wiki and various other online resources dedicated to improving the daily play of City of Heroes. Alternatively, you may mark yourself with the title "Help Me!" and more experienced players will do their best to help you learn the ropes.

But if you ask that again, GET OFF MY GAME.

Also, back on the Singularity viewer again. Why? Because when I had downloaded (the CORRECT version!) of Nirans to the brand spanking new uber-comp...I had severe lag and an inability to set things to where I could even see the stores I was in. The hell. Logged out, downloaded Singularity, cursing my fate, making dark promises that I'd upgrade to v3 whenever I could force my brain into it...and it works fine, I can see things, and no lag in the stores I was in. Well. FINE, then.

Now, I know, the title of this next link may put you off, but trust me, you want to listen, because it may well baffle your brain into killing off a few weaker brain cells.

Let it. You don't need them anyway.

In an article beneath a Gutters comic page called "Till Crossover Event Do Them Part", we find these words:

Given the multiple series that are currently running AvX tie-in stories, it's entirely possible (read: entirely likely) that I'm missing a very heartfelt and emotional scene between Storm and T'Challa regarding the dissolving of their marriage.

Because if I'm not, the scene in Avengers Vs X-Men #9 that ends their marriage kinda reads something like this:

Storm: Hey man.
T'challa: Hey, I annulled our marriage.
Storm: Really? We should totally talk about that later.
T'Challa: Totally. Now get out of my country.

The whole exchange took less than three panels!

Moss is absolutely right--normally, marriages (and separations/divorces) have been sweeping, emotional story arcs that are designed, start to finish, to provoke loyalty, love, and strong emotion.

But this one? It was a throwaway side mention. Why?