11 Jul, 2010

10 Jul, 2010

09 Jul, 2010

09 Jul, 2010

08 Jul, 2010

03 Jul, 2010

I really like the looks of these.  Praetoria looks unbelievable.  I'm still anxious to see how you can transfer from hero to villain and back. If you look carefully in the crowd scenes at the Atlas steps after they start talking about costumes -- you'll see my character Crusading Cavalier in the center wearing his traditional blue outfit. Those shots were taken during the 5th anniversary over a year ago on Virtue. 

16 Dec, 2009

I've posted this before
 
Thanks to GSCViolet of the All Star Teen Sentinels (Virtue) for bringing it to my attention....

16 Dec, 2009

This is the second time my blog software has developed a problem that caused an "cannot fetch" error, effectively shutting down the blog.  And the second time it fixed itself.  Lousy timing.

02 Nov, 2009

As the Halloween event draws to a close (maybe a day left for badges -- IF you hurry), I thought I'd post some quick thoughts.

Most of it was the same as last year -- open a door, get the treats, or face the assortment of oppents as tricks.   It was possible to hit several doors in a row, but if you got TRICKs, the entities followed you MUCH better than last year.  Still, there was many a time that someone would open a door JUST after I had faced a mob, before I had recovered, and left the mob for me to face.  The one character I focused on got the suite of event badges, including some of the new ones. 

The new ones were on the Banners -- this event put 4 banners, guarded by different opponents, that would slowly phase in.  Eventually they would be vulnerable.  You had a time limit to attack and eliminate the 4 banners, and then coordinate on the "greater mystic aspect" which would be a giant monster.  I faced Jurasik in Atlas Park on one, and Adamastor in King's Row on another.   IF you were on a team you got a badge for each banner, and one for the final GM.  The unique thing was they showed the range to the Giant monster, but not a map point.   A trickier way of locating your foe, that I kind of liked.  The only thing I didn't like was that other than the banners themselves, the oppenents were mostly recycled stuff seen before in CoH.  I would have liked to seen FRESH opponents.  Granted it was wild seeing some of them in the low zones, but still, in this day and age, even the Architect system would give us NEW foes to face.

I've not seen as many people using the costumes given by the event this year -- I think it is old hat for some. 

I will be glad when the sun shines again in Paragon City.  If for no other reason than it makes the costume contests better. 

07 Oct, 2009

I've spent a good deal of time looking at City's competitor - Champions.  And there is as much I like as don't like.

02 Sep, 2009

While I was on last night, there was more than a few people in Atlas Park on Virtue talking about leaving the game for CO.  Even to the point of giving out all their money.  Others were groaning about how bad CO was.  Its apples and oranges if you ask  me.

26 Aug, 2009

I'd only tried the closed beta a couple times.   But I like what I saw.   The power customization is better than I thought with dark color choices and light color choices -- You can mix two colors on some things.  I tried an electric scrapper -- and was able to mix green and blue lightning effects.   Changing a Psychic Blaster / Mental Manipulation from the (*ugh*) default pinkish colors made it seem fresh.   I can imagine a lot of new characters coming up because of all the choices -- Patriotic characters with all their powers red/white/or blue, or some mix there of.  Christmas characters with all red and green powers.  You can give your primary or secondary powers a color theme of there own, copying it to all of them, OR you can individualize each an every power, assuming it can be customized.  IT could get confusing though -- If you don't know the purple effect coming off the villain is a transference because it is not the usual blue, COULD cause some of these powers to lose there effectiveness.  At least until you get used to the people you are with -- PICK up teams are going to be a real headache when this goes live.

30 Jun, 2009

I got a surprise yesterday - with Issue 15's release.  There are a couple things on it of interest....

18 May, 2009

Since my last spurt of updates, there has been a lot of stuff going on.

22 Apr, 2009

Between FLAG, American Legion, and other Patriotic groups there have been a LOT of Patriot types around.

 (More)

21 Apr, 2009

Reminds me of my warshade on Virtue

20 Apr, 2009

 (More)

19 Apr, 2009

A spooky look, but well pulled off.   The Protagonists is a new "Golden Age" RP supergroup.

18 Apr, 2009

17 Apr, 2009

Always liked this color combo...

15 Apr, 2009

I have to admit -- I'm enjoying this.  I've tried several characters in this.  Flagborn has received around 30 badges for his work, playing,testing and publishing a mission.  The variety of missions is what gets me -- the ability after so many years to so OFTEN see new content, new villain groups so often is a big plus.  EVERY day since launch the AE floor has been filled with people.


Flagborn has hit a variety of missions, some that can be a bit too challenging. I've noticed a big change, since created characters can have villain side powers. I myself made a Lt. level stalker that was tough to beat one on one -- when they came as a pair, they were almost unstoppable. Flagborn has also met up with signature villains like Lord Recluse, and seen wild post-holocaust zones.


The interesting thing is how some people are advertising their missions -- One person made a character that had a name of PLAY ARC #####, with notes on the mission in the character background. Others are pushing their missions via broadcast and request chat channels. An AEVirtue global channel has already popped up.  And several sites are popping up to allow people to advertise or comment on arcs.  See City of Guides for instance.  

13 Apr, 2009

11 Apr, 2009

09 Apr, 2009

08 Apr, 2009

07 Apr, 2009

It looks like we'll have early morning downtime, probably for hours. The latest update is "Starting at 6:00 AM CST - 11:00 AM CST all US, European, and testing shards for City of Heroes will be brought down for maintenance and publish of Issue 14: Architect. We expect the downtime to last the entire 5 hours but please allow for early release or an extension as necessary. "

07 Apr, 2009

28 Mar, 2009

I spent some time today looking at this system, from the creation standpoint.  I've played through several existing scenarios.  I must say seeing new content, which INCLUDES new enemies other than the standards is VERY welcome.  I'm afraid that after 5 years of play, I've become conditioned on all the low level stuff, and usually know what to expect on the high level stuff.   The custom opponents are QUITE welcome.

23 Mar, 2009

FYI everyone...HERO DAWN JAILHOUSE ROCK PARTY
Sponsored by The Cape Radio

WHEN: MARCH 28, 2009
LOCATION: Virtue Server, Hero Dawn Base, Zag Prison
TIME: 8PM - 11PM, EST

8:00pm - 8:30pm
Trivia Questions: 4

Prize: $1,000,000 influence paid per correct answer.

8:30 - 9:00pm
Prisoner’s Costume Contest

1st prize - $20,000,000
2nd prize - $10,000,000
3rd prize - $5,000,000

Honorable Mentions: 3 spots @ $500,000 influence each

9:00pm - 9:45pm
Lock Up Your Fellow Heroes

Bid influence to lock up your fellow heroes inside a Zag prison cell for a short while. All influence collected from the bidders will be placed into a pot and a lotto drawing will be held to choose a lucky winner. In the event of a tie, the influence will be split evenly among the winners.

9:45pm - 10:30pm
Famous Criminals Trivia

Prize: $1,000,000 influence paid per correct answer.

10:30pm - 11:00pm
Law Enforcement Costume Contest

1st prize - $40,000,000 + PPD Hard Suit Code
2nd prize - $20,000,000
3rd prize - $10,000,000

Honorable Mentions: 3 spots @ $500,000 influence each

20 Mar, 2009

More Youtube videos found...  This one is of a Villian base, which has several features I'm not familiar with, spending most of the time on the Blue side.


Villain LotD Base.



COH Underground Secret Lair

19 Mar, 2009

Continuing with video coverage -- Hero Dawn has posted their design on youtube, some of which has already been covered.  But you can see a lot of the stacking technique used.  

Alpha Omega Base




Troublemaker's base -- Triumph server --

Wings over Paragon Base -- Note the stacked torch chandelier at the beginning.  (More)

17 Mar, 2009

A mission center?  Or mega-meeting room?   Multilevel Stadium seeting, Desks and chairs, each with thier own screen.  The seating in this room is LARGE. 

A reverse view on the same room.

Another fancy wall -- floor pieces have been eembedded into the wall.  Transparent panels imbedded in the structure give the illusion of windows looking at other items.  I tend to wonder if such construction could make bases un-raidable, with key items hidden behind areas no one could get to.  Save a teleporter.

Here's a use of both air vents and FIRE EXTINGUISHERS to do base signage.  Some bases really need this as they designs are HYPER elaborate

Another banner logo -- I suppose you can guess which base THIS is.

Here the ENTRANCE of a base is very elaborate.  Transparent panels encompass the base entry portal.  Notice that the ceiling is low -- because it its tech storage items.

This is a meeting room with a statement.  We have a round tech table circled by two sets of pillars.  The outer fringe of the room is also surrounded by the clear panels AND the wall banners.  The room is lit by torches.

16 Mar, 2009

Somone is doing their Statesman impression... hmmm? :)

16 Mar, 2009

Still in the 3-level room.  Looking away from the podium/scanning rig. Notice the ceiling nodules -- which essentially are the floor safe "feet" showing.  We actually have two safe fronts showing in the corner.

A view of the second level here -- Notice the safe ceiling.  You can just see the stairway to the right by the bookshelf  Keep in mind the "floor" here is ALL the tops of floor-safes.

And the Third level

Another Auditorium design.  This one used several white panels that I've yet to identify for a Screen.   Believe it or not, the wall behind the view here actually had a screen and gear used to make a projection room, as if there was a movie screen in play.  Its a pity that we can't feed in some screenshots to be used here for the "movie".

An arcane area here.  Notice that obelisks have been overlayed with arcane stone benches AND floor torches.  Benches form pews in this HIDDEN altar room found in one base.

More use of split level design here.  Counters form the floor as well as the walls in this area.

15 Mar, 2009

Above is the Adventure Brigade base again.  In the same room as before you see their library stack.  THREE levels the same place, giving them lots of books displayed, several areas to sit, and gossip.  It shows you how much you can cram into a small area.  Notice the use of stairs

Here is something I've seen larger bases use -- floor lamps (off), used as a kind of railing.  It serves no purpose, other than for looks.  But keep in mind -- each lamp costs 100 influence.  So the railing in this room alone ran thousands. 

Notice the far wall. Multiple counter pieces have been stacked floor to ceiling, and used to form and elaborate overhang

Another trick if someone wants to do signs in a base is to use penants, rather than for emblems or characters, but for the letters themselves. Here they used Medium Wall banners for HERO and smaller Floor banners for AREA.

An elaborate splitlevel design.  What you are seeing is Wall safes, carefully oriented so you can't see the front of the safe.  The window is an overlayed transparent panel piece -- which probably means it is intersecting 2 or 3 safes.  You can see the stairway going up, and the safes that comprise the roof of the second level.  THREE levels are in play here.

Elaborate stacking in deed.  This is part of the above 3 level design.  A podium, facing away from the entering the lower room is surrounded by counters.  Notice several items are overlayed in each level for screens, and to give the appearance of a unique medical scanning rig of some kind.

14 Mar, 2009

This has been an ongoing evolvment, as supergroups grew and got more prestige.   Now with lowered base costs bases are getting bigger and more elaborte.  Some already have been.  But people are getting VERY tricky, very bold, and very creative with their bases.  For large groups this means bases that are an experience in themselves.

Base design has changed a lot -- When raiding was expected and common, bases constructed for that were mazes -- With destroyable targets hidden behind dense greenry and hanging lamps that made navigating the base a royal pain.  The base raiding issue has never really took off, except with a few groups.  Likewise the Cathedral of pain needs were dropped from many bases when that never really bore fruit.

Lately however peope are using items for other than their intended purposes.  They are also taking advantage of stacking of key items to do bizarre multiple level bases.   Items are allowed to overlay each other on some bases with suprprising effects.   Sometimes this is done to design rooms that really must be seen to be believed.  This blog post is the first of several where I'll show a few interesting base tricks, and try and figure out how they are doing them, showing a few choice images from a variety of bases.

Bases cost prestige still -- but after getting the initial items up and running, bases start expanding.  And room after room can be added, for a variety of purposes. 

Above this looks fairly simple -- but they've used extensive wood cabinets and wall wood pieces to segment off this two level floor.  Shrubs are put through out the center to give it a custom appearance. The purpose? Perhaps a memorial to fallen heroes? Tribute to the founders?  It could be either.

Here we see a small cubbyhoole of a room, what I suspect is a telepad room.  But rather than putting a telepad, they put up all the Beacon pictures, making a wall of location views that could comprise a Paragon City Mission bay.

Above is a VERY impressive use of object stacking.  Done in such a way that they can put 4 or 5 rows of chairs, with stairways leading up.  On the far wall LARGE penants are used as a curtain.  Even more impressive is that a first glance the room is closed off.  But if you go up to the curtain, you find that you can go beyond it and their are several rooms beyond.

Here we have the Adventure Brigade base.  A very SMALL base, but elaborte use of stacking belay that image completely.  Seen in the center is a podium stage.  White counter pieces are surounded by wooden ones to make it.   Also note the penant use.  Keep in mind that to place each one, the supergroup logo and colors had to be temporarily changed, then returned to normal after the pennant was placed.  For this group, each penant refers to another member.  Note also that coffee tables are used as benches.

12 Mar, 2009

I'm kind of wondering about this.  This could breathe so much new life into the game.  Everybody loathes starting new characters if they have to rehash low level content they've done dozens of times before.  Allowing such missions to be done could really allow for a flood of interest. 

I suspect we'll see several themes pop up.

• MY HERO - As I understand it you can add custom characters to the missions.  That means much like the Faultline zone Fusionette missions, you could add a NPC hero to the mission.  If that turns out to be true, I could see many vets take their favorite level 50 character, especially if they are unique characters, turn them into NPCs for several plots.
• SG THEME - A series or set of related missions where the founders of "famous" supergroups are NPCs that work with you.  I can just see you work with Liberty League members, maybe one or two each mission.  Once ONE of these hits, I could see several.
• INSIDE JOKES - We've seen the radio missions that hint at movies and book concepts.  I could see several player ones that do the same OR poke fun at the City games themselves.  Rescue members from Icon's? Wentworths?    Rescue 5 missing plumbers from the sewers may be too obvious, but rescuing 5 Dry Cleaners from the sewers and hinting that they have played a part with having the heroes get sent into the sewers?  I can see it!   How about something to explain why/how Frostfire gets LOOSE so often?

I'm anxious to see it action

16 Jan, 2009

Here we go again...

14 Jan, 2009

Couldn't resist passing along the second in these ad videos...

08 Jan, 2009

Couldn't resist passing this on on...

07 Jan, 2009

One more prediction struck me.  The early dead zones.  Perez Park and Boomtown are not what they once were.  Perez Park on launch was the primary place for leveling from 7 thru 10 --either thru door missions (usually caves), hunt missions, or teams hunting Hyrdas.     I used to see a lot of Boomtown hunt missions as well, but not so much any more.

I suspect something will happen to one or both zones.  Remember that Boomtown side of Steel Canyon has seen some activity.  If some of Baumtown was reclaimed, much the same way the Faultline has been, there could be some new fun areas there to play with.   Perez Park as reclaimed, with people and active businesses could provide some new material possibilities for the user created mission content.  Either wasy I would suggest it as a possibility.

06 Jan, 2009

The winter lords have gone back to their homes.  The Ski Chalet has vanished from Pocket D.  No more are presents sitting on the ground and rooftops of Paragon City.  We get to look forward to the upcoming year.  And what will it bring?  I've a few thoughts on that.

• Server Collapse.  This is something I think MIGHT be coming.  Lets face it.  Some servers are VERY empty right now.  While you can get on Virtue, Freedom, or even Champion and see crowds any time of the day in Atlas Park, other servers are barren of heroes at times.  I could very easily see a few servers get combined.  NOT a great many, but a few.  Since there might be the same hero name on both servers, and they very well might be active names, there is probably going to be some objections to this.  A sign this is coming possibly would be another name purge on all servers like they did a couple years ago, freeing up names from accounts that have been dormant for months to years.
• Issue Delays.   I really would expect I14 to be several months off.  I expec that with the mission construction component of the issue, that some problems will push this back once or twice from their expected release date.  Nature of the beast on something like that.  It probably will require an extended beta or two.
• Anti-competion events/gifts.   We have TWO possible super-hero MMOs on the horizon; DC Universe and Champions Online.  While Champions may be stuck at the moment with publisher problems, I expect one or both of these to be released this year.   To keep the attention on City, I expect NCSoft to release special things to coincide with releases.  IF they have an issue (which supports the above prediction) and a release is forthcoming on one of the two games, they may hold the issue and release it at the same time DC Universe or Champions release.   Or it might be something like another Pack that gets added to the game.  We've seen the Wedding Pack, and Cyborg pack.  How about a Mystic pack? A Creature Pack?  A Golden Age pack?  Even a minor release with some new costume options. I don't see them doing NOTHING when the other games release, and can't help but wonder if they have one or two items waiting in the wings to release at the same time.
• End Game content  One thing the game has lacked -- Level 50 (or beyond) content.  With a game entering its 5th year this year, I can't help but think that one of the best things they could do is give some sizable addition of content, that is all or in part focused on the upper level characters only.  I hesitate to say they will add levels beyond 50, but wouldn't say that is IMPOSSIBLE.

You might want to book mark the permalink for this post and check back in 12 months to see if I'm right.

21 Dec, 2008

I finally got the new computer up and running with City of Heroes tonight.  I've logged into several characters and even tried out a new one or two.  Mostly the new shield scrappers.  Remember my computer DIED before the latest issue release AND the Holiday release.

I've been involved on several Winter Lords so far, and even one Rikti Invasion.  To say the new computer is an improvement is an understatement.  With the exception of water effects, I've been able to run at the highest settings with no slowdown.  The Rikti invasion was a marvel compared to the slideshows that I'm used to.  Lots of people - lots of Riktis, Lots of effects, but no slow down.  My old machine was very intolerant of Rikti invasions as frame rate would drop below 1 per second -- getting 1 frame every 3 or 4 seconds was common on the old machine. 

I was running an old XP machine 2.4 ghz, with 2gb ram, a 256k Nvideo GeoForce 6200 series card -- No SE graphics, no DirectX 10.   The new machine has 8 gb Vista, with a Radeon ATI card HD 3650 card -- with a half gig of video ram.  I've seen no drop of the frame rate for the most part since I started giving it a try.  It is SO much better super-jumping when the frame rate isn't dropping in an out like I'm used to.  I'm also wondering about getting and trying that video saving service again.  On the old machine it had problem.  On this one? I doubt it.  I'm able to run with the settings nearly maxed out.  Water effects was making a weird mirroring effect that was insanely inacurate.  Turning off the water effects has been the only negative.

After a month away from game, I'm forgetting ALL my old shortcuts.  Which is annoying.  So far I got lucky -- All of the characters I was interested in playing have NOT been kicked from their respective Supergroups.  At least the ones I've checked in on.  That is a relief.

I'm loving the changes.  The badges now have "awarded" dates on them.  That is helpful on finding out which Winter badges are from previous years .  Defeating a Winter lord gets you merit rewards (?).  Something that I need to look into.  I've not been able to before now, and I didn't want to torture myself.

I'm still trying to get things reinstalled on my computer.  I'm making progress - slow as it is.   So far -- no problems.

20 Dec, 2008

I ended up most unexpectedly finding a replacement computer at a closing Circuit City today.  I'm trying to get my COH software updated and running as I speak.  Now If I can just get it all running and re-authorized and all that.  Where did I put that serial code .... I only purchased the Collector's edition 2 and a half years ago or so..... :)

I doubt I'll have MUCH time online today -- I've a mountain of stuff to reinstall and test to see if it will work.  I had to get a VISTA machine which means new territory across the board.

28 Nov, 2008

My computer is still in the shop -- Windows corruption.  No word, but I've a slim hope that it may be back this weekend.   I think this is getting to be my longest absense of from the game, with the exception of the trip to Hawaii.  And if it keeps up, its going to trump that.  At least there has been no word on Issue 13 hitting.

18 Nov, 2008

Isn't it just the way?  After the last post I find out that Open beta WAS active. 

Most issues have occurred when I've been unable to jump right in.  More often than not it seems.  So I'd say that I13 is RIGHT around the corner.  WHY?  We had work done in our condo -- pulling out the carpet and putting in laminated floors.  As a result we had to move EVERYTHING, including the computer.  My office is a lot cleaner and more ordered than it has been in quite a while.  BUT when the computer was reconnected it went belly-up.  Perpetual Windows reboot .  Maybe a virus.  Or a hard disk controller driver according to one friend.  Regardless it may be several days before its back up and running.  (I'm using my wife's computer to post this. )

So if everything follows form?  Issue 13 should be any day.  I've not been on since Friday and if not for my XBOX I'd be going positvely NUTS...

06 Nov, 2008

Halloween is over.  The sun has returned to the skies over Paragon.  People are no longer asking for Trick-or-Treat teams or Giant Monster teams.  No longer running from door to door.

But that leads us to the next stuff.  We have the new issue coming.  Chances are it will be released weeks before the Winter event, which usually preceeds Christmas by a week or two.  With that being the case anytime from the middle to the end of November is fair game for the upcoming event.  With the pending new shield powers, changes to base prices, changes to Kheldian powers, and more, I'm looking forward to it.  My guess?  Somewhere between November 15th and 20th.  Longer than that and you hit Thanksgiving weekend.  They'd want it up and running, so that any bugs can be eliminated. 

With that to be the case, I expect open beta at ANY time now, and to go QUICK.  So nows the time to check the boards often, and cross your fingers.   Expect a surge in population as old players return to check out the episode -- it always happens.

I'm anxious, like many veteran CoX players. 

19 Oct, 2008

Late Saturday night the Halloween event started early.  I was on Liberty Server when it happened a little after 11PM EST.  A zombie apocolypse event occurred in Atlas, followed quickly by several other zones simultaneously.  I must say that it was disturbing to see these new zombies crawling out of the ground.  I was against 1 then 2 then 5 in no time flat.  I ended up on a team quickly and was at the lagfest that started up near Ms. Liberty.  And quickly got 4 apocolypse badges during the slideshow battle that occured then.  Trick or treat teams started up after that .  I can't help but wonder at those red skies -- and more than one person drew paralells to Crisis on Infinite Earths -- wondering if the servers were going to collapse into one...

My main on liberty now has 22 costumes, 2 clothes badges, 3 Halloween badges, and the 4 Zombie event badges.  There are still some to go, and one person said they had 50 different costume powers.  Thats a lot more than were around last year by far.   Also a costume element was won as well.  A pumpkin head that showed up in special helmets. 

One oddity -- This is just the Halloween event, yet after a round of Trick or Treating,  several of the team had to break up and sell the salvage and enhancements that all that had brought up.  When I was leveling up by Luminary, a newsie said, and I quote, "Did someone say Shields?  Oh yeah, you got 'em!  Now!  Read all about it!"  Did this sneak through from I13 early? OR is Issue 13 going to happen SOONER than we think? I've checked a couple times , but there are no shields.  But if you log on and it wants to download, than Issue 13 may be on its way.  I would normally think its odd to do that in the middle of a major event, but maybe, just MAYBE, it will happen this year.

The Trick or treating wasn't supposed to begin until tomorrow, but Hero Con left the Devs in a good mood.  Unfortuantely several of the people in my groups probably took the weekend off thinking they were going to do that activity Monday.  Their loss...

13 Oct, 2008

I've been waiting to see something on the shields -- I stumbled onto this clip someone put on YouTube.

I like the looks of it -- if it is representative, we've got some good stuff coming in I13. Of course who knows at what point in what build, test or otherwise, that it was done. Or if they modified it in the final build. We should know when I13 hits open beta testing... SOMETIME soon.

06 Oct, 2008

I have to admit that I'm a little anxious to see what happens on the next issue.  Yes the Architect stuff is getting delayed, but the other stuff could be interesting.

• Shield power --- I've done a lot of scrappers before.  Depending upon the graphical choices -- patterns, logos, fancy designs, elemental designs (Ice shields, stone shields, etc.),  cybernetic designs,  force shields.   If they think to add a raise shield emote, I might just give it a try.   This for a tanker? I don't know...
  
• Pact system --- I can see WHY they did it, but I think that it may or may not work.  For me, I don't have anybody I keep close tabs with, save one, that we MIGHT do this.  And he's not been playing that much lately.  I could see this be problematic IF it becomes too one-sided.  Player 1 earns enough points to get BOTH characters in the pact to level 14.  FINE for the pact, but several of the players he's been running with have gotten to 20 by now.  It should work AS long as it doesn't get too one sided. 
  
• Base changes -- I love the idea that these are dropping some of the prestige costs for base items.  I've always thought that a lot of these things are OVER priced.  A small group can barely get a decent base going as it is.  I'm a little worried about the elimination of base salvage I've been hearing about.  I drop 98% of the base salvage I get in the bins.  That which I don't use ends up in the auctions, but ONLY so I can use it as a one-person influence transfer method.    Invention salvage to me has been use it or sell it.   I can usually sell most invention salvage at a profit, and fund the early characters.   Getting that first few hundred thousand influence thru Spiritual Essences, Artifacts, and Luck Charms has been the MAJOR source of influence for any of my trial and alt characters of late.  If supergroups start changing policy saying they want my INVENTION salvage, I could see some problems developing when they have strict rules. 
  

I'm in a wait and see attitude.  Personally I expect this to go live sometime in November.  I doubt it will go live until AFTER the Halloween event, but I think they will want to give it a few weeks on its own, before they activate the Winter Holiday event.  I'm guessing the second or third week, probably a Tuesday or Wednesday.   We'll see.

05 Oct, 2008

Normal 0

If there is one thing I *DON'T* understand when it comes to players of City of Heroes, it is cloning.   For those uninitiated souls out there, cloning in COH and COV is when you use the character creation engine to make a costume and/or name which is clearly and existing copyright of something else.  A couple years ago Marvel comics sued NCSoft and Cryptic both because that engine made it far to easy to make Hulk, Iron Man, and Wolverine characters -- among others.  This was settled out of court as long as NCSoft makes a best effort to clean house as it were.   The name filter has modified multiple times to make certain names disallowed automatically.  But people find all sorts of misspellings, l33t spellings, and secondary names.

Despite the proceedings of the lawsuit fading into memory, the EULA everyone agrees to when you log in clearly states that the name or likeness of any existing copyright is forbidden. Even Super groups can't be named after existing groups for the same reason according to the end user license agreement.   MOST clones are reported by long term players -- and will eventually become Generic 1308 1132 0083 or something similar in name, or at the very least will have offending costumes set to null.

There are a lot of new users, coming in on trial accounts, and I suspect that several of the clones that come in can be linked back to those trial accounts.  But not all.  Some people just have fun in their own weird way. 

The one thing that troubles me is the reactions I've seen when a cloner gets caught.   Case in point.  Atlas Park and there is a Kratos clone from the God of War video game.  This guy has made it to level 50.  His name is .Krat0s, so no name filter would have caught that misspelling.  His appearance is dead on to the video game character -- gray skin, bald, bar chest, warpaint battle tattoos, etc.    The classic example of a clone.  Within the hour though he is caught and is genericed.  And Complains and whines to the world over broadcast that he was caught, and what does he do now.  It starts a short debate on the broadcast channel.  Its clear that the player, along with several others still can't see why they can't play a copyrighted name.   MANY take offense when they are genericed.  Now some rightly so, especially if they have a near generic name with a custom look, which is genericed because their name is some obscure character they didn't know of.   But sadly it still has to be done.

Comic characters aren't the only things that get cloned.   Celebrities occur quite often.    I've seen several "Chuck Norris" characters over the years.  Anime comes in a close second with multiple Dragonball characters being done -- The orange jump suit, wild blond hair is easy to do for a Goku character.   I even saw a pair that were doing Marty McFly and Emmett Brown from the Back to the future series (throwing out quoted movie lines via binds as fast as possible).  Anything is fair game.

There are some exceptions.  Captain Nemo I've seen as a character, as well as Frankenstein's Monster, both of which are public domain characters at this time.  This is the same reason that allowed the publishers of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to combine characters from multiple works together -- all had gone into the public domain and were fair game.

What is it that drives people to do "clones"?  I've seen several groups tread on the grounds.  Rather than do clones, they will take a similar name, the colors and/or style of the original and make something new that might bring to mind the original character without LOOKING exactly like or even close to the original.  Some characters don't have a clear uniform since there have been so many variations over the years.   Green Lantern and the many variations worn by the members of the Corps would be a good example.  Almost any clean uniform in green black and white might bring about a hint of the GL Corps to many a viewer.

Is it lack of imagination?  My wife suggested that but I find them BEING imaginative in their character names.  I saw a Big Blue Boy Scout character the other day wearing a Superman costume.  And his name is a term he's been called in jest before.  Big Red Cheese for a Captain Marvel (Shazam family) I've seen used as well.  Superman clones abound with names like Last Son, Star Child, and other catch phrases.  Use of the El family name I've seen from time to time, for character OR background info. 

I think basically they've always wanted to PLAY those characters -- to BE those characters, but never have had a decent chance.  How many BAD Superman games can you think of versus how many GOOD ones?  Granted the CoX character engine isn't built to emulate wall crawling or web slinging among other things, and so probably isn't the best for some character concepts, but it is at this point the only thing we've got.

Keep in mind -- MOST of these clones can get a few levels in before getting caught.  The post-level 10 clone is a rarity.    If they don't spend too much time in public areas like Atlas Park, Pocket D, or special events, avoid super groups altogether, they might get several levels in.  I'd expect the Kratos clone mentioned earlier hadn't spent THAT much time in Atlas before he was caught.   

Cloning has ALWAYS been a problem with the game.   It happens despite best efforts.  IS there a solution? I don't know.   But the new games had best learn from City's experiences.   I doubt the new DC universe online will be looked kindly on from Marvel if Hulks and Wolverines start showing up THERE!

 (More)

23 Jul, 2008

Its been a wild ride.  I've not posted in a while for several reasons -- part procrastination, part illness.   The latter took hard turn over the weekend and kept me from most of the double XP weekend.  I suppose it was just as well.  Lately I've been focusing on Virtue characters again.  And getting into Virtue on Sunday was a pain -- the server load was almost always near full.  So you literally had to try repeatedly to get a chance to come in.   You only see load like that on Virtue and Freedom, and only during special events.  The price of playing on those servers I suppose.

I got my 51 month tried and true badge, but I think it may have problems.  Unlike other costume options Veteran awards have opened up previously, this one is opening up AFTER character creation.  The advertised MU helmet,  the one other than the Crab helm I really liked, is unavailable.   I did have a pre order villain helm, but it was the traditional Red Mystic Helm -- available only in red.  I can't help but wonder if the pre order you ALREADY had might affect what is given -- as opposed to what was advertised.    That being said I'm in a minority getting that badge, so I'll wait and see.  It didn't stop me from making a Villain on Virtue with a tech wired outfit, and a crab helm.  It looks great.

I've another Patriotic character on Virtue as well. 


The Bellringer has been getting noticed.  Its fun to play one of those again.  This one is a EB/Mental blaster, and the combination is surprisingly well, since it is mostly ranged abilities.  Knockback can be a problem, which flight can help mitigate if you attack directly from above - turning the knockback into knockdown.  People don't mind that as much.  I've even placed in a few costume contests with him.  He's 21 now, with 3 costumes.   I need to get back to Futura and Cavalier though.   Too many alts, not enough time.

Catch you soon -- I promise.    Keep an eye on my shared Google newsfeeds -- There has been a lot of buzz over DC Universe and Champions Online games.  I can't help but wonder how these will affect City, so I keep an eye on them.   Will console involvement draw new crowds?  Will hardware requirements keep the PC numbers down? Will City add some features to compete directly with them?  The games are both looking rather far in development, but whether they will see the light of day is up in the air.   Its going to take a LOT for me to leave City .  And even more to try a Sony game.   Whatever happens, they are going to make the next few years interesting to say the least.

13 Jun, 2008

Time to hit the streets of Paragon City again --- Certain sources report the Rikti are expected to begin mass invasions of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles commencing today thru next Thursday. Be on the look out for invading Rikti ships, falling Rikti bombs, and large numbers of Rikti troops in the streets.

(Its your chance to get the 3 badges, or any you are missing to get the accolade, Watchmen, that gives you the bonus psychic resistance power. There isn't another invasion scheduled for a while, and since Lady Grey task force induced invasions are rare now a days with everyone enjoying the new TF against the Romans, it may be your ONLY chance for a while. GOOD LUCK all!)

09 Jun, 2008

An amusing video I thought I'd share....

06 Jun, 2008

Truth be told, I've been under the weather off and on for over a week. If I've not been on, or haven't been that active, my spirit hasn't been in it lately. I've spent some of that time getting various alts to key levels or goals, logging in old characters before the June 2nd deadline for the 4th anniversary badge, and trying out a few new looks and power sets new to this issue. Blogging here has lagged some as well. I do what I can.

I've got a handful of stuff to show off today. I did get on Crusading Cavalier and get him up to level 30. It meant I could run him thru several things, including aura and third costume mission and the Origin of Power Midnight Squad mission. Getting him up there I went thru the Freakalympic missions ... something I've not done in AGES. I must bypass them somehow. I remember doing them years ago -- for American Yankee. So this was something of a hoot - for nostalgia sake. It was worth a few covers.





I played a little of everything. Voltavya saw some action -- including this poor Council who was bounced of a wall and end up like this...




Anyone notice the odd behavior of the Ghost Ship of late. Several times I've seen it stuck. Twice it was stuck with the bow below water as if it is sinking... again. I've got a screenshot of it going Titanic here......



I've seen a lot of Roman costumes on line lately, but not too many using the new chest detail elements. I wonder why. Many heroes seem to be going casual for some reason.



Is it just me? I've seen LOTS of weird SG names of late. It seems like almost anything can be a supergroup these days...



More later....

20 May, 2008

City of Heroes has a long downtime scheduled for this morning  --- 5 hours is not a picnic.  What are they doing?  While it could possibly be issue 12, it might also be some pre-issue 12 maintenance.  We'll see.  But be prepared for a long download when you try and log in today.

I've updated the Comics Cover page of my website (http://www.thecentralnexus.com/Comic_covers.htm)  Some of the added covers have been published here, but many have not.  See covers added for Black Barb, Doctor Futura, Lightforce, Cybersword, Crusading Cavalier, DragonKnight, Photon Defender, Voltavya, Starkind, Manadroid, and others -- just naming a few.   We're standing at 246 covers at the moment which is a total I'm not sure anyone else can match.  If you know of someone who has done a comparable amount, I'd love to hear it.

Crowds on City of Heroes tend to be low lately -- TOO many people are off playing on the test server, which means some low population servers and supergroups have become empty most of the time.  It really makes me want Issue 12 to come out.   I've visited Test only 3 times now, and the last time not too many NEW characters were being made.  I assume everyone is off playing characters in the new Cimmorora area.

Check out my Google Reader newsfeed at the sidebar (or at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/09574543441957451671/state/com.google/broadcast).  I just updated it this morning with several new articles I found --- some commetaries, some links to the Issue 12 Video, etc.

08 May, 2008

Summary: WOW!

Last night I downloaded the open beta to my test version of the game.  This took a LONG time -- be prepared for it.  It looked like it had to download several versions before it was done.  I watched it apply 2.4gig of stuff at least 3 times.  Afterward, I noticed several things both good and bad right away.

Bad? As usual my G15 keyboard and its COHLCD display macro went belly up -- I always have to wait for another version of the macro OR the underlying HeroStats software after a major upgrade.  This time the macro started using up ALL the CPU time once COH Beta went active with a character in Paragon City. Its annoying but not a deal breaking issue.  And I kind of expected it.

The Good?? First you notice the new power types.  I made a Plant / Thermal Controller -- both power groups formally Villain only.  And I wasn't the only one doing that combination.  Fire scrappers and cold Defenders were also noticed. 

Character creation.  You have the new costume sets that can be chosen.  Some of those are good, and some provide MUCH better starting points than the old beginning defaults.  I expect to see a lot more pirates, ninjas, samurai, and others, now that you don't have to figure out WHERE all the costume pieces are.   Also are several new styles like last issues Lock and Dagger -- Perplex and Thorns are good examples of that.  MANY new chest details are also evident.   New Target (like a crosshairs), new Nuke (a mod radioactive symbol),  Power on symbol,  Mantis symbol -- You REALLY have to look through the list for ALL the new ones.     Some things I noticed were odd -- like I've had access to the Special Helmet - Mystic Helmet.  The spider eyes on the sides were GLOWING this time around.  Never noticed that before.   Also the test system at least looks as if you could purchase an additional 20+ character slots on a server.  NEAT!

The interfaces have SO many wonderful changes.   Contacts are divided into Active, Inactive and Detectives.  When you do place enhancements, there is sliders now to show you what to expect from the powers number wise at higher levels.  A plus symbol on the power trays allows you to add free form power trays that can be made to be different orientations -- vertical, horizontal, bent around the corner of the screen, or maybe a 3 x 4 box, a 5 x 2 box , etc.  This gives you a lot of leeway in customizing your screen.

Play touches -- I ran my controller thru a quick sewer mission.  During the mission I died in battle RIGHT before I was to level.  When I hit the level, I auto-rezzed.  Another time I was able to change 3 accuracy inspirations into an awaken and later rez using that.  THAT is going to be SO helpful.  I don't know HOW many charcter I get so many inspirations that are just not readily usable.   Endurance ones on a regen or willpower scrapper, Heals on a healing defender, etc.  Most have troubles because you get awakens from contacts you've made into familiar friends by doing several missions.  Sometimes you don't play the contacts far enough to get them, if at all, or you're a zone or two away from them and really can't take the time to run to them and get the awakens.    THIS will help out a lot of players -- new and experienced alike.

I noticed alerts from the fire department concerning Steel Canyon fires and Ghost ship sightings in Talos while in Atlas.  This could REALLY help with getting certain badges, and drive some interest into some of those.  Maybe we'll even see more Lusca teams for a change.

I noticed a new contact for some high level missions or task force standing by the sewers in Atlas.  High level 30 or low 40s as I recall. Makes me wonder what is up there.

I didn't do any of the Roman stuff with a new character, and can't try the Villain epic stuff.  And I didn't get into the revamped Hollows.  But this was my first visit.  I expect 2 to 4 weeks in Open Beta before  issue 12 goes live.  But just based on last nights glimpse? I feel I've only scratched the surface.   I can't wait!!  Bravo!!

06 May, 2008

I'm not sure what happened -- If you checked in in the last few days the blog was non responsive. The blog database was having problems resolving posts. Although I was looking into the problem, and attempting to preserve as much as I could, I didn't really DO anything I'm aware of that could have resulted in a resolution. Now that things are back I'll probably be looking into an update of the underlying software.

Sorry for the confusion. I'm just glad its working again. I really wasn't looking forward to resurrecting years of blog posts from oblivion, nor starting over.

29 Apr, 2008

It is official - we've got the fourth year badge now on the game -- starting on the 28th thru May 28th every character that logs gets the 4 year badge "Entertainer".

There have been some subtle changes in the game I've noticed.   History badges now have completion bars -- If you have visited a few plaques, you should see a badge show on the History tab.  This is a big change from before - Not many people play with the History badges because they are so hard to track where you are on them.  Hopefully this will change things.

No word on when the next issue will come out.  I had hoped it would coincide with the anniversary, but so far no go.  I would expect it at the end of the next month, if not before.

My vacation has ended, and I'm back, but I've been going thru and doing some cleanup again.  With the badge up this month, I'll probably be doing that as well as the logging of old characters for the new badge.  I've only a few, mostly on Infinity that have all the anniversary badges.  Considering most are anywhere from levels 8 to 16, that may seem odd to most.

Another add is the 48 month badge. Battle-hardened struck me as an odd name, since there is a title you can get that says the same thing. The new shield or power pets are VERY flimsy, but easily resummoned.  They are buffs for just you, not the team as I had thought I had heard.   The fairy ones are pretty good with most magical types.  The Wisps are good -- I thought they would work well with Peacebringers.  I've used the drone on a couple science types.  The Oscillators are the least likely one for me to use -- but that is all personal preference.  They function the same and the bonuses are at most 5%.   But every little bit helps.

I thought I'd put in screnshots thru to the 28th -- and thus didn't get an update in here to make in concurrent thru the month as I had hoped.  I do like the effect that had, and will probably try and set up some more screenshots of the day going forward.  Heaven knows I've got enough to draw from.

More things will be forthcoming -- I witnessed a Billion influence Costume contest Saturday on Infinity.  This one got SO huge that it took up all 4 sides of the Atlas base -- and couldn't hold everyone --- so they moved it OUTSIDE the atlas base Water pools.  And STILL it was a tight fit.  Atlas Park did go to a 2nd instance, so AP 2 was around till Monday Morning.  More on that tomorrow -- I'll pull the pictures of it then.

13 Apr, 2008

11 Apr, 2008

10 Apr, 2008

09 Apr, 2008

03 Apr, 2008

02 Apr, 2008

01 Apr, 2008

31 Mar, 2008

31 Mar, 2008

Well it looks like my screenshots of the day are firing off -- I've already got a couple weeks in the queue - and should have all of April set up by the end of the week.  (Its one of the few things I can do while I'm out of town...)

Power proliferation still is on everyone's minds --- and they've released the final selections... See below for the new power archetype combos...

• Blaster:
  • New Primary - Psychic Blast
  • New Secondary - Mental Manipulation
    
• Corruptor:
  • New Primary - Electrical Blast
  • New Secondary - Storm Summoning
    
• ControllerL:
  • New Primary - Plant Control
  • New Secondary - Thermal Radiation
    
• Dominator:
  • New Primary - Earth Control
  • New Secondary - Electricity Manipulation
    
• Defender:
  • New Primary - Cold Domination
  • New Secondary - Ice Blast
    
• Mastermind:
  • New Secondary - Storm Summoning
    
• Brute:
  • New Primary - Battle Axe
  • New Primary - War Mace
  • New Secondary - Super Reflexes
    
• Stalker:
  • New Primary - Electric Melee
  • �New Secondary - Electric Armor
    
• Tank:
  • New Primary - Dark Armor
  • New Secondary - Dark Melee
    
• Scrapper:
  • New Primary - Fiery Melee
  • New Secondary - Fiery Aura
    

A plant controller interests me...although combining it with Thermal radiation might be an odd combo.  Burning bush jokes and all.  Fire melee for a scrapper caught me off guard, and could be intersting.  Electric corruptors? I wonder if it will be red effects?   I've always wondered since the Corruptors get BLUE energy blasting, and Dominators get RED Energy Blasting.   Will this be another miss-colored combo?   Icy Defenders are another thing ---  I could easily see Storm/Ice or Ice/Ice defenders popping up.    Dark/Dark tankers might be good -- especially tied with the roman gear.  I could definately see some possibilities there.

It does make you think.   The last issue had dual blade/Willpower characters popping up EVERWHERE.  With all these choices, what will be the next thing everyone will be going for...?

30 Mar, 2008

29 Mar, 2008

28 Mar, 2008

I'm going to try something. I've got several trips and conflicts coming up over the next few weeks. Rather than let the blog sit idle, I'm going to try something. I'll put a single screenshot out, preset to publish - one a day. This will be in addition to any of the comments that I'll add. So keep an eye out. I'm raiding shots of action, giant monster take-downs, costume contest, Pocket D parties, and other events. I may just have caught YOU!

13 Mar, 2008

I really need to get back to doing semi-regular entries here at least. After the get together, I kind of left it sit. I kept thinking of doing one type of entry or another, but didn't. Some quick notes for now.

1) TOO many alts. I've got too many active and semi-active characters spread over 3 servers. It usually means that a character advances a level too rarely, especially if they are over the level 20 point. I was playing Crusading Cavalier (virtue) during the winter event, but got off of him for some blaster action. Khartshma's group has lulled in activity, and my interest in him has waned as that has happened, despite getting him to lvl 26. Doctor Futura is still a must play, but he's been getting less action as I've been playing newer charactes. Flagborn's group has been asking for me to come back with an alt, so I did make a Kinetic/Pyschic defender last Friday. That character, High Impetus, is only level 22, but it hasn't even been a week yet. My test characters on Freedom are becoming less interesting . Although I enjoyed checking out Freedom, I really don't see what the attraction is. Voltavya, my blaster is probably going to be retained. Phenomeno I've had some mixed luck with. SOME characters solo better than others -- no teams means no play which means no experience which means no levels. But Some of the others, like Starkind, Starwatch, Weebit O'Blarney, etc., wil probably end up seeing less and less action. Leveling a new character to 14 or 15 takes me a single Saturday anymore -- and I've done that several weekend over the past few months. But doing a balancing act between even 5 characters will mean having to do the level/level/switch dance.

2) Upcoming updates - I'm in line for the 48 month vetern award -- something I'll try out as soon as I can. I won't get it until very shortly before the end of April, and am somewhat dubious about the effects the new power will have. Sounds like a good buff, but the fairy/wisp/oscillator/drone has so few hitpoints that unless someone is shielding it, it won't last long. So its good for maybe one good team buff? Depending on its recharge that might be good and bad. We'll see. As to Issue 12 - I wonder if that will coincide with the 4th year anniversarry. Depending upon how hard it is to open up the Roman costume pieces, I can imagine several characters going for them. I've done trojan-esque broadsword weilders before, but they were with disguised samauri gear. These elements look VERY neat. However if they have to be earned, you'd probably need to be level 30 or so to get them.

3) Rikti - I've taken advantage of the new Rikti invasion. Phenomeno, Weebit O'Blarney, and High Impetus all have gotten the Watchman Accolade.

4) Villain side -- I've played this less and less. I had a gravity character I made called Endpoint that only got to level 10 before I forgot him. I've maybe 3 or 4 level 20+ villains scattered, but I never really play them at alll any more. With the villain epics coming on Issue 12, I'm tempted. And besides, I've seen almost everything on the Hero side save maybe Hamidon itself.

I've a vacation coming up that will overlap some of the upcoming release schedule as I understand it -- and will affect whether I'm in game for a while and what I can see on the test system before the anniversary go-live.

See you around Paragon City soon.

 (More)

24 Feb, 2008

The event did go off today. I arrived right after they opened and stayed for a good 6 hours, when it kind of broke up. People were coming and going so an exact count of the attendees was somewhat difficult. We easily had over 20 I would say. At one time almost every computer was up and running City games. I got to game with several people on Virtue with various other mid teen alts. Lots of people were showing off various characters, costumes, and concepts. There was LOTS of discusions ranging from builds, upcoming trends in City, and the effects of the recent Cryptic/NcSoft/ Marvel/ Champions Online news. The host was renting computer time , and the equipment they had was running at top settings very smoothly with the Aegia Phyxs stuff in play. I love it!

There was plenty of free stuff for those that attended.



There was decorations, some complimentary refreshments (Come to the dark side we have cookies). Later on complimentary pizza was provided.


Some gamed in groups -- others had fun running arena matches.




First time I'd seen City running on a WIDE screen. *sigh*



A lot of names, Globals, email address were collected and traded -- I doubt this is the last we'll see of this group. Some buzz was already talking about having such events every so often.

23 Feb, 2008

There has been lot of buzz over the last few days on Champions Online.   Just check some of the articles I've shared on the sidebar over the past week.  We are VERY early in the game for this.  And I hear a lot of debate about whether the market can stand MORE than the current superhero genre MMOs.  I think it can, depending upon How they are done. 

Lately we've heard about the DC Game that I believe Sony is working on.  The Marvel MMO has been canceled.  Cryptic was working on it, so one would assume that freed from both City of Heroes AND Marvel by recent events that they want to salvage the current work they have been doing and move on.  Using the Champions liscence gives them and existing background.  Now I've played Champions as early as the early eighties.  Its changed, spawned the Fusion spinoff, but essentially it is still around.  It survived because of a couple factors -- ONE) It allowed a lot of customizability of powers.   TWO) Its one of the few that endurance came into play.  THREE) it is part of an existing HERO game system.    That system spawned other genres of role playing, and other game systems have been influenced by it.   It has a rich world.

But some of what I'm hearing about it leads me to think it might give City a run for its money.    The makers of City made it with archetypes for a reason -- to give players direction as to character development.  But it hinders true creativity on some levels, while limiting your primary and secondary power choices.    It sounds like they are going to be more free-form in the Champions Online game.    At this point we have no idea whether this will allow the ridiculous and unplayable combinaitons (a character that is ALL defense or ALL attack or ALL Movement, and as such has problems in battle).  It makes it sounds like they are going for a game that would make City of Heroes look like it has training wheels.

I think that depending on how they do that, it could result in a game that would be a big turn OFF for new players, lending itself to frustration as they make characters that do massive damage with an energy blast that couldn't hit the side of a barn at 20 feet.   It will be interesting, should this product actually GET to market, to see how a post-beta crowd reacts.

I like the cel shaded or as they call it "comic shaded" look of the screenshots we've seen.   Costume design looks  a lot less constructed of pieces and looks more like something designed as a uniform whole, pun intended.   Its obvious that Cryptic is working off a checklist here - They are going for  a more complex character conctruction engine, and allowing the player to make their own nemesis villain.   In the paper Champions, one would buy powers and abilities with points.  To get more points, you could take various drawbasks, including being hunted by a villain or maybe a villain group.   It looks like with this in the game, your standard mission could be made more difficult if one or more of the team's nemesises show up.

Will I give this a try IF it ever comes out? Probably.  But I have my doubts about it.  IF they can do it and keep a good low-level learning curve, they might have something. Otherwise people might flood back here.   Furthermore with the addition of the XBOX 360 crowd as potential players, one would expect a built-in voicchat accross the board.   I doubt the Xbox players will have a full keyboard, suggesting that their own chat system would be in use.

I'm still planning on attending the Meet and Greet --- looks like it will be from noon through 4PM.  So if you don't see me online in one guise or another, you'll know why.  I WILL be posting pictures of this event, if my camera works.  Gotta get some shut-eye before the event -- which is 10 hours away as I write this up.

13 Feb, 2008

Looks like we're finally going to get an event locally. I can't tell if any game reps are going to be there, but at least there is something going on. I stumbled on to it at the COH forums here. It looks like it is set to go on February 23rd, (a week from Saturday as I type this up), and will be at the Galaxy Games at the Mall of Georgia in Buford GA. This is just up the road from me, so I'm hoping to attend. Still trying to find out the when, but the doors open at 12Pm.

11 Feb, 2008

I had some good luck -- despite having to play with an ear infection.  The event going on  Friday thru Sunday, saw some high activity on the servers.  The evenings saw Virtue and Freedom go red frequently -- and in some cases Freedom showed FULL.   From what was said on the forums, there is an upper limit to the servers and Freedom hit it several times.   Most of the servers were yellow which is unusual for any servers other than Freedom or Virtue. 

Teaming was a grab bag -- there were plenty of odd teams but some were better and longer lived than others.  I played Starkind and got him up 5 levels -- running him thru cape and 2nd costume missions.  Sunday I ran Voltavya and though she had a false start when it came to teaming -- she was able to Street hunt Supa Trolls still stumbling upon a Synapse Task Force.  This got her 5 levels as well, not to mention several badges.  She did her cape mission as well, and got involved with  Phenomeno saw 3 levels -- though he had several bad times with getting teams, and also suffered a bad program crash in the process.

Things got hopping some of the time -- I saw a big Pocket D party going on Friday night -- Another CAPE event I believe.  Also there was a couple costume contests, but sadly no places for me, let alone any wins.

People were saying on several SG and chat channels, that they had seen several levels going up -- I saw more than a few familiar names hit 50.  One time I came by Luminary in Talos Island and saw 20 some players gathered around her leveling --- Thats more of an Atlas Park crowd than Talos.

I saw several new groups pop up in the event.  One was with a new theme - GodsNHeroes --- wanting mythological characters and heroes, gods, monsters, etc.  Though run by Hercules-SonOfZeus, it is not limited to any one mythology. It struck me as interesting -- I'm trying to imagine a gathering of all those types together around a supergroup table.  It makes a strange kind of sense.

All in all I think it was a big success.

I believe it was a roaring success.

08 Feb, 2008

I recently stumbled on Google Reader -- It like plenty of things allows you to scan various RSS news feeds. Unlike some of the keyword search news feeds I've had on the site for a while this one is my SELECTIONS from several feeds. Now that it is on the page, as long as I check Google Reader, I can tag items on City of Heroes and Villains that I think you might find interesting easily and quickly. We'll be trying it out of the next week or so. Its easy to find at the top of the sidebar NEWS section.

21 Jan, 2008

Okay - here is the first volley of the comic crossover event -- enjoy.

Note 1: Alternity Effect, the original name for the crossover was ditched after I discovered that it was owned by a game company. Not wanting to get legally involved the name was changed.

Note 2: Photon Defender is *NOT* one of my characters. Rather I was contacted by a follower of this blog, and we ended up exchanging emails. Now we have met several times in game, and he's responsible for me getting Phenomeno involved with the Millenium Paladin SG. The spotlight is on him now-- Enjoy it friend!

Note 3: The only reason I was playing Black Barb, a Justice Server villain was due to the VIRTUE problems that caused so much headaches Thursday and early Friday. At least they seemed to have gotten that fixed.

 

21 Jan, 2008

I have tried this site off and on with mixed results -- thanks to my OLD Audio card. I need a little more horsepower to capture sound and video without lagging too much. Flagborn was the best test I got off of it. I've tried a few others, but most ended up silent. Still haven't figured out why. The site is unique because not only does it let you upload videos, it provides you with software to make the clips. If you haave a low end system, you can get quick unedited clips up there VERY fast. If you want to get fancier, they do have another version that would allow you to get footage you can edit.

Here is a few of my characters -- ala WeGame.

Flagborn (Virtue)


Black Barb (Justice server)


Crusading Cavalier (Virtue)


Phenomeno (Virtue)


As you can see - results is mixed, and lag can be a problem. My system is over 2 years old, and doesn't have anywhere near a top of the line graphics or audio card. If you've got more serious hardware, you MIGHT have better luck. I'd love to know if YOU do. There are PLENTY of COH videos out on this site -- Lots of players are trying it. The site is beta -- So No guarantees on how long it stays up or what they end up doing with it. I'm not seeing any ads on the page or added to the videos, so one has to wonder how they are paying for this -- unless they are getting something from one or more of the game publishers -- attempting to get "free" advertisements for the games themselves. Who knows at this point.

11 Jan, 2008

I've done ALMOST 200 covers now. I wanted to do something unique, to celebrate doing that many. So I decided to do a crossover event. Much like Crisis, Armageddon, Onslaught, House of M, and all the other events that have come before. So I plan to do something here.

I did several titles as part of OLD school Paragon Comics -- but have made a madern Paragon Comics logo as well. I'd like to do a crossover event where I pose one of my characters in the limited series with friends and SG mates associated with that character -- a medium shot , probably looking forward, taken at about 30 to 40 degrees to the side. Repeat this with another charcter and group for the next issue of the limited series. Meanwhile those characters for several issues would bear the event logo for the crossover.

The Premise? We've been subject to Rikti attacks for months now. They teleport in en masse frequently. But their teleport technology is about as kind to space-time as a flamethrower is to a can of gasoline. They've ripped it till alternite worlds are starting to spill through. Think of a city block of Baumtown appearing in the desolation of modern day Boomtown -- only they've never seen Rikti at all. They've no idea what happened, or what the Shield walls are, probably never seen Lost, etc. Even if they stay only briefly, it is a sign of worse things to come. What must the heroes do? Find and seal the worst breaches in space-time before they get worse, or suffer The Alternity Effect.


Several of my old style books (Flagborn and Doctor Futura) will probably do modern style Alternity Effect one-shots. I could easily do one-shots for other player characters as well. I want to have fun and push this as far as it will go -- CROSS servers, genres, etc. Villains? -- If alternity floods Paragon they would suffer with everyone else. (And Lord Recluse probably wouldn't want something like that to interfere with his plans.) If you want to get involved -- send me word. @CentralNexus in game -- Or leave a message thru my GAX site.

Meanwhile I've already started with another pair of Cavalier covers -- with him getting a prelude-crossover.



This could be lots of fun -- I hope you join me...

09 Jan, 2008

4 years of character design, alt making, server shifting, belly-up supergroups, changing interests and focuses have resulted in the following.  100 characters scattered across all the servers.  I've just listed Name, Level, Origin, and Archetype here -- but it shows what kinds I like to play or tend to play, and what I don't.

• Virtue
• Atomfire           20 Science  Corruptor   
• Flagborn           50 Science  Scrapper  
• Fast Neutrino      40 Science  Defender  
• Doctor Futura      34 Science  Controller  
• Mud-Dauber         22 Science  Controller 
• Crusading Cavalier 22 Natural  Scrapper  
• Phenomeno          21 Magic    Defender 
• Pside Effect       16 Mutation Controller  
• Acoustix           15 Science  Defender 
• Bowman Unit XI     13 Tech     Blaster  
• Darkwatch          11 Science  Warshade  
• Blue Rook           4 Natural  Peacebringer 
• Triumph  
• Dr. M              11 Science  Mastermind 
• Lighforce          25 Natural  Peacebringer 
• Wild Owl           16 Magic    Scrapper  
• Psychic Screamer   14 Mutation Controller  
• Neo-Spartan        10 Natural  Scrapper 
• Nightforce         10 Science  Warshade   
• Abbie Normal        8 Science  Defender 
• Ambulus             7 Science  Defender   
• Freethrow           7 Science  Scrapper  
• Phenomeno           6 Natural  Peacebringer 
• Delta Blade         2 Tech     Tanker 
• Protector  
• Bloody Bat         20 Science  Corruptor 
• Phenomeno          14 Magic    Defender  
• Delta Vega         11 Mutation Defender 
• Thoughtwave         8 Science  Controller  
• Battle Dragon       5 Natural  Scrapper  
• Sovereign Samurai   1 Natural  Scrapper  
• Pinnacle  
• Curse Giver        14 Magic    Corruptor 
• Shieldwall         17 Mutation Defender  
• Madame Gamma       15 Science  Defender  
• Flash Inferno      13 Mutation Controller  
• Binary Code        13 Tech     Defender  
• Burning Hawk       11 Natural  Blaster 
• Anti-Nexus         11 Science  Scrapper  
• Batshriek          10 Science  Defender  
• NRG Gear            5 Techn    Blaster 
• Trooper Gold        1 Techn    Blaster 
• Sovereign Samurai   1 Natural  Scrapper 
• Liberty   
• Dark-Mite          23 Mutation Scrapper 
• Shieldwall         23 Tech     Mastermind
• K'zzak             17 Magic    Brute
• Ashfall            16 Mutation Dominator
• Mother Board       25 Science  Defender  
• Winter Wizard      24 Magic    Blaster 
• Lady Nippon        20 Mutation Scrapper 
• Verdict            14 Mutation Controller  
• Bronze Behemoth     4 Science  Tanker 
• Justice  
• Black Barb         18 Science  Corruptor 
• Omni-8             21 Tech     Blaster 
• Marshall Justice   18 Tech     Blaster 
• Pascella           14 Tech     Blaster 
• Holy Wanderer       9 Magic    Defender 
• Akhu                9 Magic    Scrapper
• Ice Cuber           8 Science  Blaster 
• Vectrox             7 Science  Defender 
• Dreamstrider        5 Natural  Defender 
• Central Nexus       3 Science  Warshade 
• Infinity  
• King Krakatoa      20 Magic    Brute
• Gravitic Spike     14 Mutation Dominator
• Demonculus         11 Magic    Corruptor 
• Blue Rook          28 Mutation Defender
• Star-Spangler      16 Natural  Scrapper  
• Ace of Clubs       15 Mutation Scrapper  
• Positive Terminal  12 Tech     Blaster  
• Jade-Blade         12 Natural  Scrapper  
• Psistrider         10 Science  Controller  
• Colonel Comet      10 Mutation Defender  
• Ms. Peacemaker      9 Natural  Peacebringer 
• Doc Megarad         8 Tech     Defender 
• Guardian  
• Accoustix           9 Science  Defender 
• Guardian Xur       18 Science  Defender 
• Tranya             11 Natural  Blaster 
• G-Wave Rider       11 Tech     Controller  
• Green Guardian I812 7 Natural  Peacebringer 
• Captain Rei         6 Science  Blaster 
• Freedom  
• Manadroid          21 Tech     Mastermind
• Demonculus         15 Magic    Corruptor   
• Professor Infinity 36 Tech     Scrapper  
• Holiday Elf        20 Magic    Blaster  
• Wise Old Owl       20 Magic    Scrapper  
• Starfront          19 Mutation Defender  
• Perceptrix         18 Tech     Controller  
• Lady Penthesilea   11 Tech     Blaster  
• Icepack            11 Science  Controller  
• Central Nexus       4 Science  Defender  
• Winged Furry        2 Mutation Scrapper  
• Mister Thistle     15 Science  Dominator
• Champion 
• Chaos-King         11 Tech     Corruptor 
• Paragon Gnome      32 Magic    Scrapper  
• Sandburr           28 Science  Scrapper  
• Central Nexus      25 Mutation Controller  
• Britainia          21 Mutation Tanker  
• Major Tremors      18 Science  Controller  
• Diamondo           16 Mutation Tanker  
• Vorticity          14 Natural  Defender  
• Freethrow           9 Science  Scrapper  
• Bright Corona       8 Mutation Defender  
• Brimstone Demon    17 Magic   Corruptor 

Average Level    14.6    

Total Heroes       84    
Total Villains     16    
Total Characters  100    

Origins       
Science            33    
Mutation           19    
Technology         17    
Natural            16    
Magic              15 

Archetypes   
Defender           24 
Scrapper           21 
Blaster            14 
Controller         13 
Corruptor           8 
Peacebringers       5 
Tanker              4 
Dominator           3 
Mastermind          3 
Warshades           3 
Brutes              2 
Stalker             0 

I sure favor Defenders and scrappers.  Tankers and Brutes are low on my list -- and Stalkers currently are non existant.  That is probably because I hated the way Regen was dinged on END MOD to make way for the initial mandatory invisibility.  And favor Heroes to villains over four to one.  THAT I do not find surprising.  I think the highest villain I ever had was 27 and is no longer around.

This list won't be accurate for long -- I'm always purging single digit alts where needed.  It depends on what I'm trying to do, if there is an SG that has asked me to join them and requires a themed character with strict naming rules. But it should give you an idea where or as who to find me...

08 Jan, 2008

I've been neglecting Doctor Futura some for a while. I have been spreading myself rather thin. I notice on the calendar that we were to have a meeting on the 3rd and attended it. This was the first one I've attended since shifting him from New Gods to the consolidated Gods of the Golden age. However I still didn't get a promotion at that meeting -- due to a technicality it seems. I was somewhat dissappointed since I've attended several meetings before this and was never promoted -- but then there was no officers above me at the majority of those meetings usually present at those meetings, while in the New Gods. This lack of recognition did make me somewhat less than eager to play him. I'm still not sure whose fault that is -- apparently their were some rank requirements posted, but I could never find them.

ALSO Doctor Futura was at one of those points where he's only got a few hunt missions - with all his other contacts wanting him to be level 35. After the meeting I did end up playing him. I got into one good group Friday night that got him the bulk of a level. Another group Saturday ended up evolving after a few good missions into a run at the Manticore Task Force. I've never done that before, and despite it taking a good 4 hours to complete, and several people leaving and returning, we were successful. By the end of these few sessions, he'd gotten nearly 2 full levels, putting him at level 34.

I was able to get a few shots of him up as comic covers. (I've not posted these to the gallery at this point.)




I wouldn't expect that the Doctor will be long in reaching level 35 -- I'm hoping at that time he can get Transferrance, but I'm not sure if 35 will be high enough for that. But I've still got the Cavilier , Pside Effect, and Lady Penthesilea to work on..

Yesterday saw the last of the Winter event. One thing I noticed on this event was the chaotic nature of the Candy Cane in the marketplace. I saw them as low as 5000 influence, and as high as 18000 a piece. I know that several of my rich or high characters litterally BOUGHT their badges by buying 50 to 100 candy canes. Since there was to be no post-event use for these at least until NEXT December, there were thousands of these for sale, and thousands bidding for them. I expect that several players ignore the canes for anything but buying jingle jets (29 days of use VERSUS just 2 hours of flight time is a BIG advantage on an active character), and just jused cane salvage as a means of making money for their character. I know I did one character and sold several extra canes at the tail end of the event, making a good 125K -- not bad on a character not even level 12. In addition to other salvage, or contest winnings, characters can be set for quite a while.

Last year we did have a Valentine's day event -- That would start up around February 7th I'd guess - more co-op missions with villains and heroes -- I know last year you had to work together. There were missions heroes got that needed villains to complete, and visa versa. And chances to go after Snaptooth again. So if you didn't get him enough during The winter event, he MIGHT just show up next month. After that I don't think we have any upcoming events until we hit late April -- THEN we'll be getting into the 4th anniversary of the game. And who knows WHAT that will bring. Another Issue? Maybe.

25 Dec, 2007

I've made some covers for two toons on Virtue that have gotten a lot of play over the last few days.  I'm getting up there in covers, so I thought I'd show them off.

24 Dec, 2007

I thought I'd seen almost everything -- but this one takes the proverbial cake.  The fine folks at the supergroup Light of Paragon sponsored a costume contest to end ALL contests. This one was held around 4PM EST time on the ski slopes at Pocket D -- Featuring contestants wearing swimsuit styled outfits.   With a planned 32 million of influence up for grabs, it ended up closer to 60 as some big rewards for some of the non-placing contenders. It did take a while to go through everyone that shown up.

Finalists were moved to the gazebo for a while...

Then ended up in the Chalet.

In the end, the winners were Arlow, Hailfire, and Cityscape for the men...

While for the woman the winners were Black Wildfire, Sharlisse, and Gaia's Sting.



I applaud Slaymore, Chemyst, Master VanKody, Lord Necromance, Starr Dust, and Sky Nomad of the Light of Paragon for a unique event.  These days they are hard to come by.

21 Dec, 2007

This video started this -- its been a while since I showed some videoes off.  The first is City of Bells -- which combines winter event footage with Christmas music.


A perfect ski-run is shown here. Explains how some of them are doing those 18 or less second runs..

Seems I'm not the only one having problems with the ski-run


Someone had fun with some Issue 11 dual blade footage -- NO you do not have Star Wars Lightsaber swords in City of Heroes -- NOR the sound effects. Someone overlaid them on the game swords -- somehow. Its obviously the kind of swords THEY would have wanted... I think LucasFilm and 20th Century Fox would jump on NCSoft faster than Marvel if they did... (em grin)

While we're on dual blades, here's a demo footage -- GOOD show off of the blade attack animations AND the various combos and effects. Since its take in the Vanguard base, someone has been VERY active to get a DB scrapper to level 35+ already...

And someone did this video on the Ouroboros missions from Issue 11 with appropriate soundtracking... I always loved those movies --   It does depict the 5th Column.  Which I have a nostalgic feeling for -- Always prefered them to the lame Council replacements. (I'm still trying to figure out how a level 17 toon of mine got the portal power -- which means he can summon but not USE the portal till level 25, and yet a level 36 one didn't get the portal power. So strange)

19 Dec, 2007

The Winter Lords are marching on Atlas Park.

People are enjoying their pet Snowbeasts, Jingle Jets, Snowballs they are getting -- sometimes TOO much.

Of course the holiday costume elements just HAD to give someone the idea for a holiday themed Costume contest.

Even the Cape Radio had a party going on tonight at the Chalet in Pocket D.

Where are you?

18 Dec, 2007

Starting last night the winter event went active on the live servers. Be prepared for MULTIPLE Pocket Ds to be in existance as everyone goes after the Baby New Year Mission, and its associated badges. A ski instructor has been added, which officiates the timed ski run (not the bunny slope one mind you.) Three different badges are there for those managing to get down the slope, through all the gates in sequence in under 45 seconds. The records I saw were in the 17 second range -- and I've been having trouble getting down in time to get the qualifying Bronze badge.

Also added is a Candy Cane man, in the Chalet. Here he will give you temporary powers like the snowball or summon snowbeast. Or reward you with badges and holiday costume elements. That is if you give him 10 candy cane salvage, found occasionally when you open presents. The usual badges for killing the Winter Lord (Giant Monster) and 100 lesser snowbeasts also apply -- and you'll see them often if you open presents. Gifts can be exchanged. So there is a lot going on all the way around.

This changes things everywhere -- I managed to participate in a Skyway City Invasion with Flagborn last night -- And more than a few snowbeasts were summoned to help fight off the Rikti.  I've seen two Winter Lords appear so far, both in Atlas Park.  More than a few characters are showing in Chrismas white, red and green costumes.

The event should last into next year -- but don't wait too long. Getting all the badges for all your active characters WILL take a while, especially if you have more than a few alts.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to everyone.

26 Nov, 2007

Announced today, There will be an extended server downtime this coming Wednesday, November 28th, from 7AM EST to around 1PM EST, as Issue 11 is installed on the live servers.  Based on past experience with issue releases, EXPECT huge delays as everyone downloads the updated content, especially after around 5PM EST.   Also expect larger than normal low level populations as people attempt to make their various new tankers and scrappers using the new WILLPOWER and DUAL WEAPONS sets.  

This gives Supergroups at most 12 days to get their membership rosters up to the magic 150 mark, as issue 11 doubles the maximum number of members.  I've already heard tales of coordinated efforts to get alts GALORE into supergroups, either through their own members using leftover spots, or getting Coallition partners to add an alt to their group. Expect recruiting efforts to SKYROCKET this week on all servers, and various schemes to attempt to exploit the December 10th 20,000 prestige-per-member bonus.   ANY supergroup that is KICKING any member now, even if they've been inactive for months, could be doing more harm than good.

Existign City of Heroes players who NEVER had City of Villains should NOW have access to bases with this release.  I would expect several of them checking out bases they've never bothered to enter before.

20 Nov, 2007

I still find myself hopping servers, checking out old characters.  Latest server has been Infinity.  I tried a couple experimental character types there after clearing out some dead wood.  You know the character hasn't been played by how many Vet awards it gets when you log on.   Every one is at least 3 months.  I've a few characters that have been there a while.  Infinity was my first server when the game opened -- I called it home there, starting with Omnitron.  But then we moved to Virtue. 

I found a villain group there for King Krakatoa -- the original Villain version of him.  Since then I got him leveled up to twenty, caped, and gotten his second costume. He is looking good -- at Level 20 he got his Brimstone armor which allows him to look rocky and lava covered.   I've had one such brute before back on Virtue, but that character, Mark Seven, doesn't exist any more.

I played around with a Tech hero called Positive Terminal, an electric/electric blaster.  I've only played him twice -- once got him nearly 3 levels and involved on an invasion of Atlas, enough to get the Sentry badge and almost the badge for the heavies.   Never saw that many show up at a time before.   Since then he's gotten into a supergroup called Legend of Heroes.  It looks like that group is over 2 years old, but is mainly a couple guys and their alts only -- before the Issue 11 induced drive to recruit.  I've already landed myself a spot in that group.   I've played such blasters before , but they usually don't last past the 20th level for some reason.  I'm hoping to get this one right.  Strangely he's been fun to play. 

I've also a peacebringer I tried here - a female one that I gave blond hair and white wings, by the name of Ms. Peacemaker.  She was able to help out the SG she joined by getting 6 beacon badges so far.  Surprising what some groups miss.   I played around with her appearance some, given that she has a skirt and metal armored legs.   I liked that look so much I went with metal overall.  But with some of the new Excess and Hacker patterns, she looks quite well.

I've got several days off coming up for Thanksgiving weekend, and plan to spend some on updating my website.  I'd like to get several characters on the Nexus Roster again, remove some that I've deleted, etc. And I'll have more than a few characters to level up.   Even if I don't stay with EVERY group, those that I do get characters in will at least get the prestige bonus in addition to my efforts.   Can't go wrong there. 

Recruiting drives are still growing strong, and there is no clue as to whether today is go-live for Issue 11.  Should it, there will probably be a few weapons characters that will get some play.  Infinity is not as strong as the big three servers , Virtue, Freedom, and Champion.   Its population is somewhat sparse.

07 Nov, 2007

Other MMOs are starting to head this way, despite the mismatch.  Pepsi ads in a Fantasy Game?  Nike ads?  It doesn't fit.  City of heroes on the otherhand seems to be a natural for such in game ads.    Billboards and banners are a constant, and havent' changed much since launch, save maybe for Cryptic's logo.  Do I think they would become true-life ads?  No.  Here is why.

Right now, NCSOFT and Cryptic owns the rights to all in-game content.  Even your character!  Read the EULA carefully.  I've no problems with that.   Most of the screen pictures on this site, no matter how much I play with them, are still their property.

Now if any real world ads come into play that ceases to be the case.  Which means that the company owners of some advertised product might object to your screenshots being displayed if their logo is in the background and they weren't contacted for permission first.  In that respects I think any real-life ads in Paragon City would be a ligal nightmare that could shut DOWN screenshots all together.  I really don't think that would go over well with the gaming populatce, even if the in-game ads made a discount to the monthly fee possible -- if not free all together.  Face it -- we all want to show off our characters at some time.  If you couldn't, it would be a big negative to the game.

I could see several situations occur -- say Burger King ads showed up in game.  Someone makes a Ronald McDonald Clone character and snaps a screenshot, perhaps doing an insulting emote.    Burger King would be NONE too happy.  Do they go after Ncsoft for letting it happen?  Doubtful.  Go after the player which in actuallity is the "potential customer"?   It puts everyone in an uncomfortable position.  Player actions could DIRECTLY affect advertising revenues.

Further some billboards are in disrepair in some zones.  If they only advertise in clean zones, like Atlas or Galaxy, there could be problems if there is some change in the game sending people into Boomtown.   A ruined "current" ad might not fly with the advertiser, but being excluded from all zones might not fly with them either.  You don't want advertisers DRIVING game design, nor do you want them RESTRICTING it.  Many of the early Villain zones are old and faded.  A bright new ad may take away from the reality of the zone.   Seeing an Apple iTouch ad in Boomtown that looks like it is 6 or 7 years old just wouldn't --- seeing one that looks like it was just put up doesn't fit either -- if no one actually goes to the zone.

Current ads are themed.  Anti- Alien ads in Paragon remind us of the original Rikti Invasion.  Rogue Isles are filled with pro-Arachnos posters.   Take away these and you hurt some of the background of the game.

Could In-game ads happen? Maybe.  But I think it would cause more problems than it would solve.

15 Oct, 2007

I've not spent as much time online this past week, due to the on-going stuff at home. Lots of fall cleaning, room reorganization, in part due to new furniture we got. Even my office got a going over -- first in AGES. I've had to take a couple days off to do some of this. Being the same week I picked up an Xbox360, also interferred with my usual play schedule. I did get on yesterday for a while and got rid of several low characters on two servers. Some are recent tests and others just time killers. Some were ANCIENT characters I've not touched since I first made them, and that could have been months or years ago.

I tried to get into test -- I had thought they were still running the Halloween test, but they were already running the Issue 11 test. While I couldn't get in and play, I could play with character design, which did show the new weapon customization. There are lots more options than I thought. On both Dual blades and claws you can mix and match the different types. Claws allows for painted and standard versions of both Hero and villain blades, and a Fury blade, which remainds me of some viscious blade covered guantlets I've seen. Some of these do NOT go well with bare hands, but could look cool with various other pieces. Painting blades, allows you to color the blade and or hilt of the weapon. I can see that coming in to play with LOTS of character concepts - "I weild the Azure Blade of Agira". There was one high tech sword that reminded me of some anime shows I've seen, only not QUITE as oversized. As such this could lead to a lot of Anime rip offs. I saw a neat hooked blade of Egyptian origin that intrigued me, and use it was paintable.

Maces did include several types, but also included Clubs, a shovel, a baseball bat, a warhammer, a sledgehammer, among others. Axes had Pick Axes, hatchets, Fireman axe, lumberjack axe, along with various traditional axes. Assault rifles had several possibilities -- mostly tech guns or military types, most of which have been used in the game before. However SOME of them are paintable, so I can see some characters with color-coordinated weapons. (Why do I see a Hero or villain group all having Golden guns...?) I can imagine LOTS of blood-red blades coming into play. I can see some oddities though -- Tommy gun assault rifle users would look odd using the Flamethrower power.

I'm really looking forward to this -- not sure who if anyone I could use it on. I don't play tankers that much, though I do have one level 21 Mace tanker (Britainia over on Champion). I've done a 300s themed trojan swordman , but again, I'm not sure if he would be using that much of a different sword. Likewise Black Barb would do well with six guns, but she is not a mastermind, but an assault rifle user. I'm not sure what she would use. I don't see a western rifle per se, and military hardware doesn't really match her. I do have some Thug masterminds, but none of them are themed as such that a change is warranted. Nor have I been touching them of late. I'm tempted to start an Egyptian swordwielder - but heaven knows I've been spread thin on playing the characters.

Granted it is the test system, and how MUCH of this gets to live after the beta is debatable. But I can see this affecting LOTS of characters, and inspiring a multitude of others. I'm keeping my eyes out for some weapon useing characters that might be anticipating this aspect of Issue 11. I still expect this sometime in mid November; I hope it is out BEFORE Thanksgiving.

Only one cover right now -- for my chief Kheldian, Lightforce, which is currently on Triumph Server, and now at level 14. He's been getting a lot of my play time. and is now one of the top officers in the Sky Corps, which is mainly because of my in-game efforts getting a dozen beacon badges or so for the group, and starting the website. The only problem I've had with kheldians so far is soloing. I keep running into surprise Quantums or worse Void stalkers. Soloing those is NOT always possible. The group has been growing rather rapidly, and for Triumph has a surprising number of active players. Several are based out of Austraila, which means there are lots of people playing at different times, and the times do overlap. It is a flyer based theme- so you do need to have some sort of flying power to join.

I've poked in on Doctor Futura and Black Barb, but have done little else THIS week, due to all the distractions and other needs on my time. I do have some time I need to use before the end of the year, and am thinking I might try and get a week off for myself sometime in the near future. If I do that who knows WHAT I will end up doing. I might hit a museum or two that week, a movie, but I would expect to be spending some time either on the 360 or in CoV or CoH.

03 Oct, 2007

I still haven't gotten around to trying the Test system, now that the Halloween event is over there.  Been meaning to though.  Part of my efforts have been on Black Barb still -- having gotten her a title and then some.

I also checked in on Triumph server after someone mentioned it, making a peacebringer called Lightforce.  I was immediately recruited by Rocket Avenger to participate in an all-flyer group called the Sky Corps.  Its NEW, small, but growing fast.  I think some of the leaders are actually based in Australia.

Meanwhile the devs have released some news about the upcoming Issue 11.  I must say the items I'm hearing about are really peaking my interest.

• Ouroboros System - A flashback system to "relive" key points in Paragon City and Rogue Isle history.  THIS makes me wonder... If this is like a Portal corp mission, only going through time and not dimensions, WHAT happens if the missions are a failure.  If you were part of historical events, and you failed, wouldn't that mean time changes?   I'm wondering if this means that such a mission must be done successfully before you can move on -- Failure meaning you have to try again.  This might be fun, but what happens if you have to try the same mission, perhaps solo SEVERAL times?  Could you earn several levels while TRYING to finish such a mission and failing?  I've lots of questions about this one...
• Weapon Customization - "Players will be able to change their weapon like they do costume parts." -  While not power customization, this does have a lot of possibilities.  If you are a pirate, you might want a cutlass or rapier, EVEN if you are still using the Broadsword power.  And katannas aren't the only oriental swords.   This could make for some VERY good character customization.  I wonder if this extends to bows (crossbows? - Great bows?), guns (alternate possibilities for Assault Rifle?), or Mastermind Pistols (imagine a westerned themed Pistol Mastermind, only with Six guns rather than automatics...).
• Two New Power sets - Willpower and Dual weapons.   The Dual Weapon could be WILD when combined with customization.  Combining a short blade and long blade? Different style medium blades?  The combination could send the altaholics wild with possibilities.
• New Inventions -- Very Rare sets - also new Taunt, Buff and Debuff sets among others.   This is good news -- While I'm not using Invention sets until I have a character really raking in the influence/infamy, this may mean some REALLY valuable drops that could be turned in for big bucks at the marketplace. 

With the new stuff I can't help but imagine the first few weeks after this goes live would probably mean some high population of users as some people return.  Its been quite a while since new powersets have been added to the game.   I'm going to be eager to see this one reach the test system -- but THAT won't be until after the Halloween event is over I'd guess.  Second or third week of November, with an early December release for Issue 11 to live.  We'll see.

26 Sep, 2007

Two Flagborn covers -- one from a high level Rikti Warzone mission.  The other Annual cover is derived from a photoshopped image one of Flagborn's SG teammates made, using some unknown Photoshop technique.  I couldn't resist making it into a cover... :)

I've spent the last couple days working up a Assault Rifle/ Kinetic Corruptor on Justice, the same server I have a dead opposite character in the guise of Marshall Justice. I ended up making a couple covers of her as well.

28 Aug, 2007

Whoa - busy week on several points.

One point -- Yes I am going to Dragon*Con, baring a total disaster. I usually have a friend coming in from out of town , but this year both of the friends that can come aren't. So I'm going solo. That has its good and bad points. At least I won't be blowing any time trying to find or rendevous with someone. I'm not expecting to do any big spending at this one this year, but there is a more MMO exposure this year, and there WILL be a CoH session on the schedule. That is a big departure from the usual MMO session that has a panel that has to even be reminded that the game exists. (So out of touch they'll mention MUDS and leave CoH/CoV to the "anything else?" category...) If you are going, and see a Central Nexus BLOGGER Id card on someone -- say hello to me.

According to multiple threads on the official forums we are getting two new powersets finally -- sounds like it will be for issue 11, which I'd expect by the end of October if not sooner. The winners are an Offensive Dual Blade and Willpower. I'm wondering about this first one -- sounds like it will be applied to Scrappers, Tankers, Brutes and Stalkers. If that is the case it could be interesting. I'd love to see WHAT the blades are going to be. They do need something in-between the thin katanna and the huge broadsword. I wonder how they can make it unique though -- on the surface, my first impression is that it will be similar to Claws, just with different animations. As to Willpower? It sounds interesting -- if it allows a tanker or brute to keep going and going despite being damaged. How that would work in the game eludes me -- we have powersets that up defense, others that up damage resistance. This sounds like it would have to be like a whole mess of Dull pain type stuff that increases the hit points you have somehow. Sounds like the Willpower users would be good in battle, but have a cool-down period of some kind afterward. At this time we can debate and wait until issue 11 hits the test system.

I finally got around to making the last few Flagborn covers. I'm not playing him actively now -- I'm having too much fun with my Kheldians (Bright Eagle - Peacebringer, and Darkwatch - Warshade ) . I hope to be putting time into Doctor Futura. Except for a few experimental characters it is all VIRTUE of late.

That'll be it for now--- I hope to make one more post before Dragon*Con, and possibly some quick posts starting Friday. Keep checking!

03 Aug, 2007

Just a quick heads up here --- To give everyone a taste of the Invasion, If you've EVER played City of Heroes, you can play this weekend for free until 11:59 EST Sunday August 5th.  So if someone WAS a player, nows the time to see if you can bring them back to the fold!  Check it out at the City of Heroes website here.

I find it strange they still haven't listed the 39 month Veteran Award on the site. 

25 Jul, 2007

Well I got in - after a near 2 hour download time.   It took a considerable amount of time -- everyone was trying to download it simultaneously which slowed it down.  I checked in with several characters.

Sonic characters will have fun -- they've changed the power effects.  Instead of the barely visible stuff that the buff shields used to do, there was a new orange pulsing aura that enveloped the target.  MUCH nicer and easier to see who needs buffs and who doesn't.  And the BIG dispersion sheild is a huge orange field with pulse lines going thru it.  FAR better than the old one.

When zones suffer invasions the war walls flicker out, the skies darken, and waves of Drop ships come in.  A-Bombs can be dropped, but they are destroyable.   Rikti soldiers come down, with monkeys and drones.  There are several new types - a huge drone type, a Priest type and several other  types.  The faces look different, and some of the armor they were is lots more colorful.  Of course once the invasion ends, the zone goes back to normal.  On this, the opening night, there were several mobs I got involved with that had 20 or 30 characters around and the LAG was moving EVERYTHING down to where you could barely do anything at all.  The last mob I tried was far better.

It was the first evening in AGES that I saw Infinity with a medium load.  And also the first evening in ages where I saw multiple Atlas Parks, Kings Rows, and Steel Canyons.   Wild.  A lot of people were complaing about the lag, but I think that is mostly due to first day overload.  Servers contending with multipe invasion zones and mult downloads and high player counts all at the same time???  I don't envy them trying to contend with this sudden influx of players.  I saw a lot of old faces, and a lot of level 50 characters with no supergroups. 

I tried to take several screenshots, but haven't gone through them yet.  I hope to do that after work tomorrow.  I need to get some shut-eye.   One thing for sure, it should be an interesting weekend.

 

24 Jul, 2007

As I write this, by computer is downloading the 2.4 gigabyte download of Issue 10.  Its been nearly an hour and its still chugging along.  Probably because everyone with an active account is ALSO trying to download it. I'm wondering what the server load will be.  It looked like before I started it that the servers were down, but that wasn't the case.  I'm wondering what the server load will be like tonight and the rest of the week -- usually all servers go to yellow and the favorites, Virtue and Freedom go to red (HEAVY) load.

I'm a little anxious to see what is in store for us.  I really hadn't expected this to go live for another few weeks -- like during Dragon*Con.  But I'll take it.

24 Jul, 2007

I've had some intermittent lag issues --- it gets SO irritating to play when you get stopped rather frequently with "Mapserver disconects" .  I suspect it is on my side though and I'm trying to figure out what's causing it.  I know that some time it is the anti virus software kicking in, or the firewall trying to approve something.  But I'm not sure if that is all that is happening -- If a popup doesn't warn me of activity.

I did spend some time going through old servers over the weekend.  More than a few characters, most single digit level variety, met their end at the hand of the Deletion Key.  They've probably been there for months - former test characters, trying to be a tanker or controller, but never took off.  No sense taking the name if I don't intend to use it.  But it also meant I took a peek at some OLD characters.  I checked in on Wise Old Owl and actually ran a couple levels on him.  I've looked in on the old Accoustix (Guardian server).  Diamondo (Champion I believe) was another I peeked in on.

I must say that after playing on VIRTUE rather heavily these last few months, that it is VERY hard to get used to the sparse crowds of the other servers.  Virtue will have over a dozen characters under Atlas at any time of the day or night.  Sometimes several times that.  But on the other servers, it is quite common to hit them at times where barely a half dozen are present.  Seeing Atlas at those population levels makes it appear almost ghost-town like; very troubling to experience in you favorite cyber-town.

I've heard about the character transfer tool now in beta.  I could see that useful to preserve some old friends you never touch.  For instance on Virtue I have Yankee Fighter, Blue Rook, and Starmax still in existance -- They are like levels 32, 28, and 28.  And all have been around on virtue for years.  I wouldn't consider deleting them, but I would consider moving them to another server to PRESERVE them, but open up a slot on Virtue for a NEW face I would play.  Even to rename Starmax (It was a weird name that I THOUGHT was original, but is also the same as an existing company.), would be good - although to what I don't know.  Without even ONE free slot on Virtue it is hard to decide WHO goes to the chopping block. Especially when EVERY character is in the high teens or more - minimum.  You need that one free slot to even see WHAT names might be available.

As to the tool being used to move characters around I can't help but wonder WHAT that will do to the play evironement.  The cost of moving each character will be high, but I could see some do it rather easy.  Makeing room on a packed server is one reason.  Moving from a packed server to one less laggy is another.  Moving OFF a RP server like Virtue to a non-RP server is another.  With a whole host of reasons, we could see a shift in population.  I doubt that Virtue or Freedom would swell up FURTHER, but would their population decrease?  Would we possibly see a third major server rise?  Would that be good or bad?   I don't know.

As certain names move to other servers, will they be picked up?  CLASSIC COH names like Killer Whale or Ascendant -- if they relocated, how long would their names last before someone snatched them up.  Would that prevent them from moving back some time in the future?

There has been discussions of City moving to some sort of a serverless environment.  I'm not sure how THAT is possible.   Name duplication is rampant.  For instance I've tried to set up a favorite name like Omnitron and Acoustix on several servers.  On several THEY are taken!  So if we moved to a serverless environment, does everyone that came after the FIRST Omnitron still in existance CEASE to be Omnitron, and becomes Generic 898 392 111? Or is it based on the last time the character was played? I don't relish the clean up of THAT move, in any case.   I can't see them doing it in such a way as to make EVERYONE happy.  

 Finally I've been making some changes to the side bar -- you might have noticed the new hit counter.  I've been trying to track down actual usage of the blog after reviewing some stats provided by my domain host.  They are rather confusing there hinting at 600 to 800 hits a day overall on my website - most of which seemed to be from the blog.  While I'm not seeing those numbers thru the hit counter I am seeing 80+ visitors a day.  That does makes me feel good.  More than half comes from search engine activity, and some of that is not obvious City of Heroes or City of Villains searches either.    More than a few times it was terms like "Giant Octopus" or even "Ghost Ship" that brought them in.  And the hits are not all USA -- I'm seeing a considerable number of hits from Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Germany, and Austrailia.    To think of people in Anchorage Alaska, South Africa, or South east Asia reading my site is a bit wild.   Whatever brought you in -- thanks -- I hope you stick around.  

I hope to be adding more links to the sidebar, so if you have any supergroup sites, helpful tip sites, tool sites, software download sites, or forums that you would like listed, send me an email at centralnexus(at)gmail.com .  I'll be happy to add it in.

19 Jul, 2007

Logging into the game, I saw the link for a Youtube player made video on Issue 10.  But once there I found several more covering Issue 10 thanks to the beta currently running on test.  So if you don't mind a spoiler or too, I'll present them here.

Taking down Rikti Dropships



Vanguard base (If you're an alien, you're probably not welcome)



Rikti War Zone Base



Drop Ship bombings and Rikti Attack



Worlds Collide



I don't know about you, but this is making me a little anxious. Will Issue 10 have the invasion going SHORT term or, weill it be ongoing for months???   Atlas Park is usually a bright place to be -- Having Rikti beam in will make Costume Contests a bit hard to hold...

19 Jul, 2007

I stumbled onto this video, investigating a link to my blog from another website.  Apparently this supergroup made a field in their base, and taking their kinetic heroes using the Repel power are playing some sort of soccer-like game.    I've seen some wild things WITHIN bases -- from words spelled out in air vents on the walls, to wood column mazes (mainly for base raiding play), but this has to take the cake.  Sorry to embed another Youtube video, but you HAVE to see this.

I'm surprised, playing as many Kinetic heroes as I have, that I never heard of this. It would require a pretty good base to have a "field " the size shown. I wonder what a movie would look from the ball's point of view...

How many groups would have THIS many Kinetic Defender/Controllers?

16 Jul, 2007

I did get on this weekend.  Flagborn is now 43, although that was a strain.  Virtue was having some problems.  It wasn't quite lag, but there was a lot of disjointed animations, missing animations, laggy effects that were occurring repeated and randomly.  I tried other servers and didn't notice the problem.  Playing Flagborn any further was out of the question -- playing a scrapper when you can't see what you are doing is not good, nor fun.   I played around on some other servers, but that meant ignoring my current favorites.  *sigh*.

I got an email today that announced a new website for Dragon*Con MMO discussions.  I've already registered there; It sounds that there is good likelyhood of a City of Heroes/ City of Villains panel at this year's Dragon*Con.  If you are a DragonCon attendee and reading these words, put in you 2 cents on what you want to discuss.  I think with all the Issue 9 changes and the Issue 10 events, we should have PLENTY to discuss.   Considering how many times City came up in panel discussions previously, much to the surprise and shock of the panel members,  I hope we can make a good showing.  I'm not sure at this point whether I'll be able to attend this year thanks to work complications, but I hope that if at ALL possible, I'll be there.

11 Jul, 2007

I was listening to Diggnation,  and they mentioned a new Youtube-like service that is SOLELY for game videos.  Its called GeeVee, and is pretty new.  I looked and was surprised to see that there were NO videos of City of Heroes or Villains on it.  Come on people! With all those on Youtube?

I found a few of my favorites on Youtube like the following

This one is old -- long time players may notice old-style animations from the first Issue or two for Martial Arts scrappers.



Of course there are more current videos -- like this one posted advertising Issue 10. (Gotta love the looks of some of THIS!)

Even Issue 9 had its promo video posted... in case you haven't seen it





I found this humorous video -- with some Issue 10 action footage -- Someone has been spending some time on the test server...





I even found this familiar tune used by some German players of the game





So if you haven't looked around YouTube for some videos -- you've been missing some fun...

17 Jun, 2007

Its the halfway point on the weekend -- which means I've already put in some time on the game.  Flagborn has reached level 42, and is over halfway to 43.  Atomfire got some play last night -- enough to just make level 19 on a session that comprised going through lots of St. Martial as a sidekick to Arachnos Warrior.  A 5 level session for someone in the teams is UNHEARD of outside of a special weekend like this.  I've played around with a couple new character designs as well --seeing if they would work.

Server loads have been pretty high.  Freedom and Virtue are pegging HEAVY usage, with many if not all of the other servers going to medium load, depending upon the time of day.  Virtue did crash at one time yesterday and was down for at least a half hour, give or take.   So crowds are very heavy at the low end zones and high end zones.  People are either trying to level up NEW characters or old ones.... Haven't seen much activity in the middle.

On a side note, I hope to see Fantastic Four 2 today, but we'll see.  My wife wanted to go to a movie, but doesn't remember the first movie.  If we don't see FF2, it will likely be another sequel - Pirates or Shrek 3.  Since I've been on call for WEEKS, I've not been to the movies in QUITE a while...

I've a few Flagborn covers to add, but since they are part of a series, I'm going to hold off until the last few are done.  See you later...

13 Jun, 2007

Finally got busy and did some promised covers for Ms. Vista --- tricky given the images I had to work with.




And Finally I've done a villain cover -- for my new villain, Atomfire.

12 Jun, 2007

It has been a while since I did a character gallery post -- what follows is screenshots of various characters I came accross in my various roles on Virtue server over the last few weeks.

I've been noticing several patriotic costumes, and several patriotic groups.  I don't see many using the kilt at all lately.

More girls here - All with style.  The last is Miracu-Lass.  (Gotta love a name like that!)

Some go for simple like Ches and get away with it.  Others go all out like Slytech and still manage it. I prefer a good theme --Atomic is one of Flagborn's new SG mates -- I've seen him at an SG meeting, but not in action, except possibly an Arena night...

GalactoMan I remember from another server.  I ran Diamondo under him.   Psy-Chic manages that baby blue/pink combo that a guy toon would NEVER get away with.  Master Skulls is a good design, but to me it would be more suitable as a VILLAIN, rather than a hero.

Starlette here just sings out style -- but I'm partial to those colors.   Sentry Man is a good armor suit -- seems like MOST armor characters are using the Justice shoulder plates.   And the Captain is a good example of an all out Insect armor style character.  I've tried those myself, but I've never been to fond of the results.

These girls were on one of Mud-Dauber's early teams. 

Gotta wonder about some people and their name choices. Ronald here is the only VILLAIN -- and is probably pushing well past the EULA limits.   I'm not sure about naming yourself after a drug... 



Till next time....

11 Jun, 2007

Its been a while since my last post.  What have I been doing?  A little bit of everything. 

Dr. Futura is still holding at level 31.  As a controller he is increasingly harder to level up.  Especially if he goes unteamed.  Flagborn is still going up slowly - but I've not played him as much lately.  Why?  Because its time for something I do every Issue any more -- test it with new characters and see how easy it is to star fresh.

This time around I wanted to do something on the hero side -- an Insect character.  I've tried to do them before -- on occasion.  They never got that far.  Burn Bug, Silver Cicada, a grasshopper themed one, even a Thranx inspired one. They can be fun to do - You can do a little or a lot on an insect character these days -- full blown insect or insect armor, eyes, attenna, etc.   I decided on this guy to go insect lite.  Costume plus eyes/antenna. 

I also wanted to do Earth control again.  I liked it on Geostrike, but hadn't touched that on Virtue.  Somewhere along the way I tied the two ideas together with the Mud-Dauber wasps I remember seeing every summer back on the farm in Kansas.  This gave me a black and yellow theme (or a black/yellow/brown theme, if you look at pictures.).  Coincidentally when I did look up Mud-Dauber's on the web, there was a blue variety I wasn't aware of -- from California.  Anyway, adding an insect cape and I was done.

The weekend I thought about doing this was also the weekend that Virtue ran an impromptu recruitment fair inside the Galaxy city arena.  I stopped by in SEVERAL guises looking around.  As Flagborn, I got several comments on my outfit, which seems to be one of the most liked costumes I've EVER come up with.  Of the groups at the fair, The Order  seemed to be the clear winner for me.  They had a good guildportal site, an alt-group, a corresponding Villain group, and seemed to be well organized.  So I went with them.

Low level hero play continued much as before -- but after 4 levels or so you did start to get salvage drops, and that is where the game changed.  Low level characters have already had a problem equipping -- getting funds to fully equip is difficult.  You don't get nearly enough from simple adventuring, and dropped enhancements you can't use are usually worth that much, and you'll never have more than 10 of those to sell. BUT now, its all in the salvage.  In the case of Mud-Dauber, there were several in his first half-dozen drops that were worth several thousand influence apiece at the market.  Getting them on the market was the biggest hurdle.  That 5% commisssion fee is hard to come up with on a 20,000 influnce salvage for a low character.  The most valuable pieces waited until last.  The lesser ones were put on the market and sold, and then the others follwed in suit.  Before he hit level 7, he had well over 60,000 influence.  Which, barring a gift OR a costume contest win, is UNHEARD of on that low of a character.  It made leveling up MUCH easier.

The changes to Kings Row are also noticed at that level -- having stores there simplifies things.  Having a market there also makes it easier. I still tend to shift to Kings Row on a new character after about level 5 -- to run several radio missions, and that first bank mission to get that temp movement power.

After playing Mud-Dauber for several levels, I decided to have Flagborn fund him.  I needed to get him true Insect wings.  That is a costume piece recipe, and at the time was going for 13 million.  Plus you had to get the recipe components, which was a couple hundred thousand more.   I also packaged a couple million with it.  (Yes they finally allow you to transfer influence in larger than 99,999 chunks...)  At the time Flagborn had around 42 million -- thanks to drops and sales.      Even now after the 15 million that went to fund Mud-Dauber, he's back to 32 million.  With an old friend's help, the transfer was made, and Mud-Dauber was able to get his insect wings up and running.  People seem to like the look/concept.  Not to Flagborn's level, but he still gets noticed.

Just this past weekend I did the same thing on the villain side.  The market helps, although the character I did there, a science corruptor Atomfire (Radiation/Thermal Radiation), didn't fair as well on the early drops.  Getting to the black market is a tad harder.  He did win a costume contest , which helped.   He ended up joining R.A.G.E. , the counterpoint group to The Order that Mud-Dauber joined.  He's fun to play, although its been a while for me playing the villain side of the game. He's almost to level 14, less than a half level from reaching it. 

All in all I say that the market/invention system helps.  It gives us a lot more salvage than just the 10 enhancement slots ever could.  IF someone utilizes this and manages to understand the market, they can make more than enough to fund their character - and even get lucky.  If you manage to get ANY costume recipe, they are going for BIG influence.  Anywhere from 10-25 million.  ANY such piece that drops can fund any character for a LONG time.  Assuming they don't actually want to put said recipe to use.  And don't forget that the demon wings and feathered wings come to only those players that have been with the game for 15+ months -- Costume drops may be the ONLY way for new players to get winged.

I intend to do some character picture posts later this week.  For now I'll leave you with some character pics.  I've done 4 covers for Mud-Dauber, I'm partial to #1 myself.  Sometime After doing these I did put ALL my comic covers up on my main site, under the City of Heroes page.  As of now there are 113 covers I've made for all my characters, and now 3 that I've done for other players.  With more in the cue for later in the week.  See the Comic Cover page.

And as to Atomfire






That is all for now - More to come later.

19 May, 2007

I'm still figuring out the consignment house it seems.  I used to fuss trying to find whatever I had to sell on the list BEFORE I placed it on the tray to be sold.  There is a MORE button there at the right hand corner of the highlighted area when you have an item selected that is stored or for sale.  IF you click that it becomes LESS, but shows a more detailed description of the item your are selling (or bidding), a larger image, and most importantly the last 5 sales of such an item, when they were and what they went for.  If you use that, you can usually price your item quickly and better.  I find that if you take the going rate, you might have to wait a while to sell an item, especially if no one is looking for it.  Some recipies just don't sell.  If you sell for a few percent under the going rate it tends to sell quicker.    I ought to know --- I've got the Inspiring badge for selling 50 inspirations, (I like that just to have as a title on Flagborn :) ), and the badge for selling 500 items at the consignment house.   

I managed to hit level 38 with Flagborn, making him my #2 highest character of all time, and 19 million influence again, but that dropped a few hundred thousand after I went to the Brickstown Science store and upgraded everything with 40s -- save for the Set items.  I'm still wondering how advantagous it will be to repurchase some of the lower MULTI-STRIKE recipies and upgrade them.  My sets are a mix -- the earliest are 34s and 35s -- but some of the last additions were 40s.   

I did have an event the other night with Flagborn where he suddenly found himself out of the Supergroup.   No explanation, no warning, he was just OUT.   I can't find that I did it, but it made my prestige count go back down to zero.  I had 325,000 -- which was easily the 3rd highest for the group.  Now I've barely got 3000.   It comes SOOOOOOO slowly now, and at the expense of ALL influence.  Of no SG MODE, means no base salvage.   It skews my perception of the drop rates in the game, which are already being adjusted due to recipe and invention salvage drops.   So far I've not seen anything more in the way of Costume piece drops, although I did see an Etheral temp power drop .  The going rate for it in Wentworth's wasn't much, so I doubt it would have been THAT much good to me.

11 May, 2007

Well my updates lately have been informative, I hope, but bland. None of the usual pics. Part of that has been due to a recent hard drive crash. Part of that has been due to a little laziness, and illness induced fatigue. But I haven't forgotten you dear reader. You are out there aren't you? With the comments shut down thanks to overwhelming comment spam, its hard to tell other than the hit counter...

Markets have been crowded -- when they were working. And I've been checking in with MANY an old character, in part to make sure that they get the anniversary badge. As seen here with Manadroid.


Pets are fun, but since you have no control over them whatsoever, they are just... there. I was hoping to at least give a few emote commands to them ala the same method used for Masterminds. Trying it -- it doesn't work. You get the Only-Mastermind-Can-do-That error message. *sigh*


Some of the characters got some play during the winter event, and had some bonuses they could use -- like Britainia that got to use her pet snowman -- not something you expect to see in MAY.


I love the new emotes -- and I'm not the only one. Fishing in the pools under Atlas is COMMON - and many get into it...


And the drums are fun... Note the floating books emote in the background.


Of course the new wings costume pieces are great -- IF you can get ahold of the one you want. Not easy unless you have a lot of luck, or a lot of influence.


More later ...

10 May, 2007

Despite a momentary scare on when the auction house crashed and the dozen or so items I had for sale vanished, I've been doing VERY well with this part of the new update.  Flagborn got his second costume piece drop, Some Rocket boots.   These sold within a few minutes and netted another 10 million -- 26.5 at latest count.  Not too shabby at all.

I spent some time over the last day getting a dozen or so badges that I'd not gotten before -- for Trolls, exploding zombies, Freakshow Tanks, Clocwork Gears, Thorn Mages, Dammned Hellions, and even Sky Raider Sky Skiffs.   That takes Flagborn to 185 badges -- putting him well at the top of the list of my badge collectors.  Add to that two new badges from using the auction house -- Vendor for making 10 sales, and Salesman for making 50 sales. 

I'm still ill - workwise it looks like I'll be home through the weekend.   A mixed blessing -- if I wasn't feeling so miserable and coughing non stop.

09 May, 2007

I've had some time -- my travels exposed me to a nice but which has me laid up with a slight fever and cough.  Which has left me with some game time.  At least some of them time when I'm not feeling TOTALLY out of it.  Its a chest cold and sitting up apparently is better for me.  Go figure.

Yesterday Flagborn got to 35 - and became my richest character.  This is because he got a particular drop.  One costume piece -- Draconian Wings Lvl 1.  But right now the going price in the auction house was 20 MILLION influence -- I sold it in 3 seconds !  IF you get wings, and you don't need them -- sell them quick.  These prices won't maintain until people find more of them, and that will happen sooner than later.  Even after fully equipping him up to 37 across the board, and getting a Multi-Strike set going for his leg sweep attack (4 slots out of 6 so far), I've still got 17 million.  I've never had more than 2 and a half million on ANY character, and most of those were big wins on the costume contest front.  Flagborn had several things underpowered before then -- I doubt that will happen again for a while.... :)

That being said it seems wings ARE available, just not as an immediately available piece.  It has to be found or bought.  I've seen a couple robot wings running around, one bone wings, and one insect wings (Fairy wings?). 

We've got new poses -- I love the crouch pose -- it somehow fits Flagborn's look; and gives him a powerful launching position.   I'm going to have to switch to a flying character and try out the new flying pose emotes....

Wentworth's is BUSY right now.  Some people aren't getting involved with it, while others are HANGING around it a lot.   I've sold enough for a Vendor badge on Flagborn.

03 May, 2007

Yes Issue 9 came out on May 1st, but I'm going to be out of game a few days dealing with family business.  In the meantime, I thought I'd put first impressions down.

Point 1 - When you log on you get the MerryMaker badge -- which is for being there in May for the anniversary.  All my Virtue characters have it now, as well as Guardian Xur, Sandburr, Paragan Gnome, Maelstromus,  and a few others.

Point 2 - The university is up and running, and crowded.   The only thing I don't like about it is there is a 6 contact thread you have to go through -- fast mostly, although there is a mission involved which has you clearing Council out from the basement of another building.  The course is only available at the Steel Canyon university, though the others are available and open (I tried Croatoa) for Invention creation.  Invention creation does require some influence for the actual building, and since that is part of the "course", don't try it broke.  That being said, be prepared to go through the "course" for ALL your characters.    Invention salvage is dropping rather rapidly, as are the recipe's -- but finding an exact match to the recipe's is a problem.

Point 3 - Wings, which I thought to be part of this issue, aren't.  A dissappointment.  But I was wondering why they didn't show up on the test server.  Probably going to have it for the next issue -- which I would put around August if they follow suit.

Point 4 - New emotes -- I saw several good ones.  People can now do Banished Pantheon style bone-drumming (em drum), or tomtoms (em ?).  Also there is a fishing reel (em fishing).  One good one for the mystics is a trio of floating books .... (em floatbook or was that floatbooks?)  Another one is a cellphone (em cellphone), which has you holding one to an ear and having a very animated discussion with another party.   I'm all for more emotes...

SEVERAL people have been seen using them.  Fishing in the small pools under atlas is a recurring gag.   I've probably only scratched the surface on these new ones, but they are something to keep an eye out for. 

As of last night, i got my 36 month badge --- And that gave me access to Pets on all my characters -- several of the non-Virtue characters have already selected one.   You can't name them, or control them as a Mastermind would -- they just hang around you once you call them.   Getting them to at least backflip or sit on command would have been appreciated.  I realize they are non-combat, but still I expected a little bit more.    The robot appears to be Fifth Column more than Council, which I like.  Only the demon flies.    Maelstormus got a demon, Xur a rikti, Paragon Gnome got a redcap - I'm trying to fit these closely.  I've yet to take a clockwork on anyone.   I'm still leaning on a Rikti monkey or robot for Flagborn.

My time is up - I hope to be posting more pics when I return. Take care...

25 Apr, 2007

I'm stuck off game for a few days -- traveling for work again.   I did notice a site I'd thought I'd mention.  Ignitorch's Hero and Villain Card Builder.  It is the third such card builder site I've seen.  This one has an extensive interface, allows you to get and combine multiple views, even add ALT images to the card.  I'll probably make a few for Doctor Futura and Flagborn when I return, but thought I'd mention it...

Check the FUN SITES on the sidebar for 2 other such card builder site links...

26 Feb, 2007

Thats what I got this weekend.  Starting around noon Saturday the internet went down.  I think It came up once and then went back down that evening.  I know it was up EARLY in the evening, and a little bit Sunday afternoon, but it was a VERY rubber-banding connection, and after the 3rd consecutive mapserver stopping me from finishing a SINGLE mission (and the first one stopped me like 2 mobs from completion...), I gave up.  Even this morning it was up only for a while.  I must have called their help line 10 times, and spoke to 2 of their personnel - one of which could BARELY speak English.  But did the know anything? NO.  Could they help me? NO.  Did they know when it would come up? NO.   It made for a totally infurating weekend.

I got on long enough Friday and Saturday Morning to get Doctor Futura up to level 28 -- not bad for a character who is closing in on the end of his first month.  On Virtue he's surpassed only by Yankee Fighter and Fast Neutrino.  I did check in and run a mission or two with several characters; Cyborgorilla, Fast Neutrino, etc..  And even tried a new alt, that was a design that had been buzzng around my head all last week; Soulmark. 

After the Internet was shifted to YoYo mode, I ended up getting out TitanQuest on the PC and several things on the XBox.  (Robotech, Battlestar Galactica, Whacked, Pure Pinball, etc.)

Hopefully, with events and meetings online this week, things will go BETTER.  At least the fact that I'm able to update this now is a good sign.  We'll see.

21 Feb, 2007

Well I've not been on COH or COV since Sunday afternoon. WHY? I'm away from home, on a businesss trip. So if you're wondering why I've not been around lately, go figure.

I've been able to check a few boards while I'm here, but my access to the internet is limited. The timing of this trip coincides wih both the Valentines event , and I've still a few things I'd like to do on my main characters that will have to wait until this weekend.

Both Fast Neutrino and Doctor Futura both need a few more badges o complete everthing. Neither could really be seen in the toga stuff. Even my new tanker would look lame. Further, by the time I get back, I should have the 36 month vet awards. So I'll have to choose pets on a few characters. I'm still leaning towards the little Council robot (or is it Column?) or the Rikti. He's only ran into Rikti on one sidekicked mission, but the Council he's met frequently. Fast could go with anything save the demon.

So I can't help but think of this as I linger up here. I'm entering this in on my PDA wireleslly; so no photos or anyhing. I plan on making an entry on some YOUTUBE videos I recently found that I forgot to mention before I left. Oh well See you this weekend in Paragon City...

03 Jan, 2007

In the wake of the Holiday event, there's been a lot of changes. Holiday Elf got less play as I tried to level up some others, and activity in that group seemed to taper off. The Avatar group has suffered a slow decline as well. Major Flag hasn't been played in a while and got booted. Likewise with Heavy Star. I liked the Earth/Kinetic Controller build, but HATED that name. So I deleted him, despite being level 14, and started anew. I tried a dark blue look and trenchcoat, and hit upon the name Geostrike. It kind of took off - after a handful of levels he joined the Gods and Goddesses Academy - another trial-period group like Major Flag was in for a while. Difference here was that this group was considerably more active, by a few orders of magnitude. And the Academy base was actually equipped!

I got motivated, and have been doing comic covers for Geostrike.














I've also started a couple villains on Freedom for the Fallen Gods and Goddess VG. Omegea is a Gravity/Psionic Dominator and has hit level 14. I also started Manadroid which is a Robotic/Dark Miasma Mastermind. I always enjoyed Robots, but prefered healing -- The two powers really didn't go together without a android-mutated-by-magic background.

He's been busy robbing banks...
  (More)

14 Dec, 2006

Yes the 2006 Winter Holiday event goes live today.

Players logging in from today, December 14th, thru January 2nd get a Badge (Cold Front), Fuzzy Earmuffs as an optional costume piece, A temporary power giving 24hrs debt protection, and anotherone that allows you to GIVE another player a mystery gift. Apparently it could be Influence/Infamy, temporary powers, or a special holiday hat (the 2005 Santa hat?).   We'll see.   I'd love to know how many gifts you can give.  I can see people making generic toons to re-earn this award and give it again.    Further, Pocket D opens up on a Shadow Shard Ski chalet -- which promises to be fun. Expect to see Presents, and maybe some of the Snowmen again this year.

I've been working up Holiday Elf this week -- 6 days and he's almost Level 19. He's wearing a Vet award scarf (shoulder cape), but its occasionally buggy - trying to a full cape on the mantle at times, breaking the illusion of the scarf. I hope to get him a regular scarf/cape to avoid that. Playing a holiday theme is weird -- I either get VERY positive responses on the toon, including frequent compliments via tell and in team. But there are the occasional Scrooges out there. NOT often, but they do exist. When in team, I frequently throw out the occasional Naughty/Nice comment, Santa comment; I've several macros that do that. Its interesting to see the reactions.

On a personal note: My computer had a weird crash yesterday. At first it appeared to be QUITE serious, but after a while I got it to come back up. No hints as to WHAT it was, but it took several reboots and a system restore to get it to come back. IF I go incommunicado, or absent from the games and forums universally? You can bet that entropy has caught up with my system... I'm NOT looking forward to replacing it, especially with the new Windows about to be released. Nor am i looking forward to updating/replacing or reinstalling all my software. UGH... Hopefully my computer will continue working...

29 Nov, 2006

If you haven't heard it is out.  Be prepared for long loads of the update when you try and sign on.

Impressions?

We've still got some server lag probably coming from all the downloads dragging down the system, but... its good.  The cowering citizenry appears to have been fixed.  We've got the police band and safeguard missions now -- meaning we've travel temp power devices to be earned by characters under level 14.  A big help for CoH!  

LOTS of wings around, and visiting Steel Canyon Icons will probably find you a big crowd.  I went to IP for mine- a lot less traffic.    I noticed Lusca nearby -- which is a new spawn point for that!

I went after the Paladin in KR with a small group - Giant Monster, but it seemed a tad easier than usual for late.  At least we didn't 2 or more teams to take it down...

There are a few new costume options here and there, plus those from the vet awards.

Expect a lot of COH & COV traffic for the next few days as everyone gets on and takes a peak.

15 Nov, 2006

Issue 8 is only days from hitting the live servers now.  The pre-down load started when players logged off the live servers over a week ago.  The test server now has veteran awards on it.  I'm getting the first 10, thru Committed, with the 11th Unswerving award to follow on the 20th.

The test servers, as a consequence is wing-happy at the moment.  If you go there, you'll usally find 4 or 5 characters hovering in the usual spot under atlas, all flapping around.  I can only imagine how it will look come the release to live as winged players flock (sorry) over Atlas like a bunch of oversized pigeons. 

Don't get me wrong - the wings look good.  The feathered wings come in single or dual colors, using a blend effect between two colors.  The demon wings are a little differente with the webbing on  them the secondary color versus the skeletal primary color.  Now I've heard that we have more wing types coming, presumably in issue 9.  Insect wings, cherub wings, burned (?) wings, fairy wings, and dragon wings.  Apparently they intended the issue 8 wings to be just a "taste".  Whether the other wing types will be rewarded the same way or based on some new type of character (like the peacebringers), is ANYBODY's guess.

When I first got on test when they put Issue 8 stuff on it one of the tings I liked was flight poses; the new randomly selected flight poses that were supposed to be an early award.  Users wanted them selectable and NCSOFT listened - so they have been pulled from the Issue 8 release for now.  Much as I liked the poses, I kind of agree.  Some poses fit muscle bound character types while others don't.  I hope they select it through the options menus rather than having multiple flight powers.   The latter approach would mean the use of respecs just to get the appropriate power reworked with any additional slots instead of the current standard one.   That would be a hassle for the users.

Veteran Awards do have their downside.  Its a little confusing to get some new features.  In addition to the named badges for each three month threshold awarded to the new Veteran badge category, there is the various badges there that are used to trigger the selection of new powers, and add base items to your "personal items" area so they can be added to the base.  But EACH badge goes throught the 3-5 second zoom in/ zoom out announcement animation.  If you have LOTS of awards coming this can get VERY time consuming when you log on to a character for the first time.   Likewise each base item it awards goes through a new announcement.  These announcements can get old as you may have to wait through several minutes of announcements going through that slow animation.   Long term players may find this somewhat irritating as it seems to go on forever.  I'm not being picky - just noticing something I can almost guarantee some will complain about.

I played a character through on the test server to almost level 8 to get a feel for the new features, making one with wings.  The wings are not animated unless you are hovering or flying.  I didn't notice any change when I used the Good or Evil Jump pack to get to the top of Atlas.  I kind of expected long jumps to react somehow...

When I got the character to Kings Row a new contact showed up.  This one was inside the Police Department building, a new small 2 story structure a couple blocks from the main one Blue Steel stands in front of.  Seeing him got the police band.   I liked using it since you could select the missions you wanted from 3 at any time.  This allowed you to get the opponents you preferred or possibly needed for a particular badge, including Arachnos.  Like on City of Villains, after a few of these you got to be the hero stopping an Atlas Park Bank Robbery, reversing the usual role of the mayhem mission.  I was able to succeed here and was awarded a Raptor Pack.   A winged character with a raptor pack does look odd flying, because it is a larged back mounted fixed wing affair with rockets, and the wings do go through it and flap, and the flapping motion has them moving THROUGH the pack structure.    I was able to find and stop three plots on this timed mission in Atlas, all by Vahz.  One had multiple bombs in a building near the bank, another was just attacking a panel truck, and the third had me going into the sewers, and up from them into an office building.  I noticed multiple map changes, where the usual elements were subtly to greatly altered.  Some of these offices actually LOOKED like offices.

I've noticed several odd elements added to the character design selections.  New galactic goggles (very large and VERY reflective), blast goggles that are worn above the eyes (I can see multiple costume users with those goggles loving that).    There is a new Tech Sleek Masked style armor - which has a kind of mesh under structure.   New to chest modifiers is the new EMBLEM forms -- Essentially you have a plane mono-colored top with a large shape of a secondary color.  This is used by itself or as a background to offset an existing chest-detail.  You've got a Emblem Blend, which gives an undefined glow behind a chest logo.  You've also a large Square, Circle, Diamond, and two 5 pointed stars, One with the point down.   Assasins style striping looks interesting. 

Of course the veteran awards are adding Faction chest logos, greek lettering (Upper and lower case), and all the various samauri elements.  Those samauri features come in three flavors each usually, which gives the number of possible samauri costumes a HIGH count right out of the ball park before you start adding color variations.  Some are useful outside of full samauri outfits.  For instance my test character wore a round half-helm.  I was able to give it a brim using one of the samauri features without making it look at all samauri of itself.  However I do think we will see all samauri hero and villain groups as SOON as issue 8 goes live.

Other features are the kilts - you've got two you can select from with one neat and one battle-worn.   The other back detail is the shoulder capes.  This is kind of a cheat - giving you a pseudo-cape on a new character.  I wonder how many will be using this. 

A reminder to badge-hunters;  Login before the end of November to get the COV first anniversary badge.  Any hero logging in now gets the Pursuer accolade badge, and any villain gets the Elusive accolade badge.   Get them NOW while they are available.

On test server Atlas Park has a new building, just outside one corner of the city hall parking lot opposite the train station.  Its a glass bubble affair with a sign called Wentworth's or something in front and police bots around it.  I couldn't get in, but I heard it discussed on the chat channel as if it was to be an Auction house.  I don't know if that was someone from WOW talking out of their hat - I can't really see anything profit in that.  At least until inventions come into play, all you could sell there would be rare enhancements like Hamios and maybe rare salvage.  Anyone high enough to get hamios isn't going to be THAT strapped for funds.  It does make me wonder. 

There are some new emotes on issue 8.  "/em eat" has you eating a hot dog or a hamburger, though no bites are shown in the sandwich.   "em invent" has you working a glowing transluscent and sometimes hovering rubik's cube like device.  I'd expect there to be more, but those are the ones I've found and tried.

This should be VERY close to release, probably less than a week away.  I hear that it is to be out before the holidays, and I would expect if so there are libable to be several City players dissappearing come the long holiday weekend.  You'll probably find me online then - on one of several characters on Freedom, or maybe my Owl character back on Triumph.

16 Oct, 2006

I peeked on the test server over the weekend.  VERY interesting.    If you have a flying character, then you'll notice right away.  There are several flying poses that are triggered automtically at random.    A couple have hands both forward,  others one fist forward, and I even saw one with kind of a muscle flex style off to the sides.   They instantly remind me of traditional comic book poses and help reinforce the environment.   I must say it made me very happy when I saw those.

I did check out Faultline there as well.  If you get a chance to check it out - DO so.   It does raise questions.  This used to be a security gate - but now it is an open tunnel.  The first few blocks of the city have been rebuilt.  There is a police lot right off the bat, and a donut shop.  (CUTE guys.)   Several hotels are there as well, even have working hot tubs and swimming pools.

The rest of the zone is a mixture of reconstruction.  The far end of the zone, that used to be deep chasms is flooded.   Barges and tugboats are out there.   We have some clocks in the zone, but now we've got Lost, Freakshow, and Arachnos. 

There were contacts there as well that allowed you to set up your radio band.  Makes me wonder --  The Villain side you had to get to the second zone - which made you usually get to around 6 or 7 before you made it.  ONCE there you saw the broker and then the newspaper was available.  It would seem a new character on issue 8 is going to have to make his way to Faultline to get the radio up and working?  That was seem to suggest the radio is for at least level 10 characters or higher.   Personally I would have expected it earlier.  But I'm eager to see it.  Too often I've had characters that get through all the contacts and their missions except for those that wait until you reach level X.  WHICH may be hard to do if you are just barely level X-1.  And if that happens to a HIGH level character - there could be a lot of time involved if he can't get on a team for any reason and do OTHER people's missions.   THIS at least gives you some contact INDEPENDENT missions.

One thing about Faultline - There are new badges there; I found Old Fashioned and Drowned Rat in some obvious places.  Escape Artist was a little harder to find.  I suspect some of the old ones are gone.  I found the Newsman badge still there , but I suspect some of the others, originally found in the deep chasms is no longer there, as well as some of the rebuilt areas.  Now whether it has been relocated I don't know.  I wonder -- some of the exploration badges are needed for accolades -- I believe there is one that is related to the Archmage accolade down there.  If it is gone, is it no longer required?  What about the plaques that were in the flooded zone? What happens to them? I found one plaque in rebuilt area; is it the only one? Clearly after Issue 8 goes live SEVERAL things on Badge-Hunter.com are going to have to be updated.   If you are working on badge collecting, you MIGHT want to visit Faultline BEFORE issue 8 goes live.  JUST in case these badges cease to exist later on.  I don't THINK it will happen, but its not an impossibility. 

If you get to the dam at the far end, there is a door at the Power company building that lets you go into the dam itself.  Pass the Dynamos to the far side and you will be on the far side of the dam.  Here are MANY more villains - lots of Archonos, Freakshow and the like over here.

I've always avoided Faultline.  The mobs were usually too large if you were on your own.  I went there if I had a mission - but usually avoided taking such missions if I had a choice.  I went there when I could manage it after level 14, and try and get the badges and plaques.  After that I left it alone.  This should be a lot more interesting.  I just tend to wonder if in an issue or two, this zone will be completely reclaimed or not.  I kind of hope so.  Maybe after Faultline is taken back, they'll get started on Boomtown.  I'd love to see THAT place in an undamaged state - even if it was just a Portal corp alternate world mission or something.

I applaud the developers for pushing the game in this direction.  We've only seen a few such changes lately - Long term players remember there  NOT being a Hollows.  No arenas.  No Universities.  No Croatoa. No Striga. No Bloody Bay. No Sirens Call.  The world continues to change.   I like the idea of reworking the old - rather than just adding another new zone... 

16 Oct, 2006

I finally bit the bullet.  I paid the $10 for the Good or Evil pack features.  I've already got the games so why not. 

One of the things you get is costume features.  The Justice design is a kind of stylized winged design.  There are gloves, gloves with plates, shoulder pieces, chest, pants, boots, and boots with plates.  A full set is VERY slick. BUT a lot of people have it so it can get old quickly.  I've seen some good combinations of the pieces.  Likewise there is the Sinister set.  The main body of it forms a spider design the body when viewed from either side.  And to some extent, its plates do as well.   VERY good for a villain.  The plain Sinister boots and gloves I have seen used effectively on heroes.   I was asked a couple times where I got it from.

The Jump pack is VERY useful if done carefully.  It only gives you 30 seconds  and has a sizable recharge time.  It acts like super leap - sort of.  You can give extra thrusts in mid air.  I've been able to use it on a level one character to jump to the roof of city hall, and then to the top of the globe, and get back down before the thing wears out competely.  Great for badge hunters - and it will give a low level character an extra method of getting around obstacles...

The last feature you get is another accolade - a teleport pass to the Tiki lounge inside Pocket D. A useful item.  It doesn't seem to be available immediately on a new character - whether that is due to leveling or some sort of refresh timing - I don't know.    It wouldn't be a way of getting out of a jam - it takes too long to activate.  But it would get you there avoiding a zone or too.   It might get you out of a hazard zone without using the hospital to port you...

If it was just the costume stuff - I don't think it would be worth it.  The Jump pack alone is a shortcut.  I've had superspeesters that couldn't make it to the top of the globe on their own.  This gives them that chance...

Is it worth $10? Hard call.  I think so.  Especially if events start happening in the Tiki Lounge.  I think there will be.  Gotta love the mirror ball . 

The timing of this release interests me -- it seems close to the release of issue 8 --  Does that mean issue 8 is late November?  I hope not.

09 Oct, 2006

We finally have a date now.   It appears that October 18th the festivities start.  Apparently there will be some new faces coming on this event.  If you missed the 2004 event, you play a form of trick or treat.  Check a key door and you might get a treat in the form of an inspiration.  A trick and various Halloween creatures come out and attack you.  Enough creatures of a certain type and the last time you got a badge.  Those badges were specials not seen since. 

Also several LARGE creatures were seen throughout the city.  This time looks like we'll see them again, and more.  The Pumpkin King may be coming for YOU!

Last Halloween we had the launch of City of Villains and as such no Halloween event -- They had enough to worry about with the villain overload going on as everyone started new characters on the Rogue Isles.    This year looks to be new and different for newcomers, and familiar for the veterans.   It will probably last thru November 1st or so, so don't delay visiting the city in that time period.   This year evidentally the Rogue Isles will also be joining in the fun.

See the newsbrief on The City of Heroes website...

04 Oct, 2006

Check out the Veteran Awards on the CoH site - Details have been released about the 2nd year awards

15 month - Angelic or Demonic wings and a Costume token

18 month - Samauri Armor (or the pieces from) - Costume token

21 month - Shoulder capes - Costume Token

24 month - Teleport to base power (long recharge Time, interruptable) - COH Comic cover art as wall decorations in the base.  - Respec for all characters.  Veteran Titles.

Not as much as I expected - but not bad either.  I like the fact that the wings are in range -- People who have ONLY participated in Villains might be upset - but not so bad as if it was placed as one of the other three award levels.    We should see winged villains before the end of the year.  Wings will be on Level 1 characters - but it doesn't sound as if they automatically convey flight.

Samauri armor -- nice thing to put on a Japanese or Katana character.  I really didn't see this coming. 

Shoulder capes? I wonder -- I know some capes have had problems with other things (try putting chains as a chest detail on a character -- it tends to always stick thru the capes...in ODD places).   The Kilted characters it looks good on.  I'd have to see it in play to see HOW useful it is.  And what shoulder capes they HAVE available.

The teleport could help on occasion - depends on HOW long the recharge is.  Great thing for high level characters out in the middle of nowhere - 2 or 3 zones from a base portal.  Kind of wait and see.  The cover art is good - putting shots of the signature in the base sounds like something that you would see in a base.  I wonder if these will be only one size (painting as opposed to murals, etc.) 

I wonder about all these costume change tokens -- will a 24+ month veteran be sitting on 3 or more tokens?   I wonder - It might means wings now, and a free second costume when I hit 20 on some of my characters...

I kind of expected a few more things on these levels - but I'm not unhappy.  I just hope that Issue 8 and all these awards come out before the end of the month.  I'm eager to spread my wings...

02 Oct, 2006

Time flies - I kept wanting to make a post but didn't bother formating some screenshots.  But so much is COMING that I still need to speak.

• Halloween -- Halloween is supposedly on the Test system again.  I checked a while back and evidentally got there between its initial release to test and its return to test.  Oh well.  Before the end of this month it should return for the Halloween weekend.  If you weren't here for Halloween 2004, there are several unique badges to be earned for trick or treating.  Which involves opening various key doors around town.  You either get an inspiration (which could be "A Rock"), or ghosts, witches, vampires, werewolves, walking jack-o-lanterns and others appear to battle you.  The way they did it last time was to give you a badge for EACH if you get 100 of them.  Given the short timespan of the event, this may take some effort.  Also there is a large walking Jack-o-lantern (The Eoachai? not sure if I got the spelling), that can appear as well - I saw them in Steel Canyon by the sewer entrance,  a pair of them hitting a tanker in Indepence Port, and assaulting heroes near the train station in Talos Island.  Its lots of fun - and draws out the badge hunters.  So expect crowds and busy servers when it goes live....
• Veteran awards -- If you have read this blog for long, you'll know that I've stayed with the game since launch, and have been blogging about it for most of that time.  As such, I've stayed away from other MMOs, not that any of them Wowed me. (pun intended).  But they are comming.  I've heard rumors about a date of October 15th, but nothing definate.  They've released details about the upcoming rewards, presented as badges and a variety of unlocked alternate powers, permanent versions of temporary powers, unlocked costume options, unlocked base options and more.  See here for details on the COH site.  I am really looking forward to some of these.  Trenchcoats will be nice on some characters.   I'm Hoping for wings on up to 3 characters, but only two of those are active at all any more.  Greek letter options --- maybe one character will use that.   Kilts? I've no takers there.  Belly tops? I've got maybe 4 female alts - tops (pun alert), and only one of those am I playing at present.   At the time I write this only the first 4 of the 3 month badges have been released with details.  Within the next couple days I hear they may release more.   The 15th month and beyond should be REALLY good - they added more and more to each level so far.   There have been a lot of buzz on the boards about what it could or should be, and some of those have been a tad outlandish.  But we'll see.
• Issue 8 - plenty of stuff in the offing for that - I just wonder as to how much it will be combined with above.  IF they do a release of the Veteran Awards PRIOR to the the Halloween release, that will mean two BIG updates in a month.  As such, I don't expect this to come until November, unless it is combined with the Veteran Awards.  But then there has been no release to test - which usually comes first.  Its been 4 months since the last Issue, which has been their usual length between issues.  I do hope we see all of this soon.
• Good or Evil Pack --  There is a new release of the game with updates to Issue 7, putting both City of Heroes and City of Villains into one package.  (see here)  There is some exclusive costumes, a Jump jet power for purchases of this pack.  However I hear that for $10 you are supposed to be able to get those exclusive extras.  It doesn't matter - some of that content hasn't gone live to the game, despite the pack being on sale.  It should go live later this week.  I can't help but wonder if that content might ALSO be a high level veteran award...
• Cryptic working for MARVEL??? -- I had thought that Vivendi Universal was working on the Marvel MMO.  Apparently not.  Cryptic is working for Microsoft on this project, and apparently there may be a console version involved.  There have been several press releases about this -- to squash any rumors that Cryptic is jumping ship.  It will be curious to see how many City-esque features DO make it in to the Marvel MMO given that involvement.  I also tend to wonder if this was somehow a part of the undisclosed lawsuit settlement between NCSoft, Cryptic, and Marvel over the never-ending cloning problem with City of Heroes.  Hmmmmm......

So there you have it - a lot to look forward to in the near future.  Not to much detail wise, and no dates YET, but if I hear anything concrete, I'll be sure and post it here.  Also keep an eye on the news sidebars -- some of those might beat me to the punch, as they are updated automatically from their various sources.

15 Sep, 2006

Is it just me?  Teaming seems to have such a weird curve any more.  I mean unless you use the new "I-won't-team-with-anyone" status, regardless of whether you are looking or not for a team, you get invites.

Blind invites, where someone invites you to a team without any previous tells, comments or announcements, seem to occur much more frequently to me, at least when I'm playing low level characters in the 5 -15 range.  Some people find blind invites in and of themseleves to be offensive.  I tend to concur at most times.  REPEAT blind invites really annoy me.  A repeat blind invite from someone who you don't know is bad enough.  And it seems like some WON'T take NO for an answer.   Strangely, it seems most of these lately are from some characters who can't spell, or have their name in all caps, leet-speek, or someother bizarre form.  Such individuals tend to result in a new addition to my ignore list.  They, in that action have three strikes against them already.

Sometimes I might be in the mood and not marked as looking, but since I know nothing about the team will be somewhat apprehensive.  Are they running missions or street-hunting?  What level is the group?  What is the level of the mission?  Difficulty settings?  Will I be forced to mentor or BE mentored?  Will there be an odd number and NO mentors available?  Usually I'm not interested in mobs TOO low, especially NOT in a group where my rewards will be further reduced.  If the level is a few higher, making all opponents reds or purple, and no mentor is available, I 'll think twice, depending on what character type I'm playing.

Simple tells save a lot of time in determining these issues.  "Level ## team running missions - Join us?"  I got such a tell just the other day.  Only a few words but it tells so much.  I had one other tell the same night, very similiar, only it added "running invc." to it.  That tells me a lot.  Some people like setting the difficuluty up high.  I get it one level up on masterminds, and even higher if I have leveled past my missions and need to get them up to wheree I'm at least getting some experience for running them.  But RARELY do I set the difficulty up otherwise.  Others do not.

My level 30 characters, no matter what, always attract invites.  Blind invites are strangely fewer.  A sign of experience ?  Perhaps.  I think they learn what attracts players, and what doesn't.

Blind invites can be dangerous to a team.  yes you MIGHT find a new friend.  But no matter what the level, you have no idea about the character or the player.   Is it under-enhanced?  When did they last play it?  is the character being ran by its owner or their little brother?  have they spent the last few weeks playing a scraper before coming back to this defender?  Do their usual team mates play differently than us?  Even the stability and speed of their internet connection could affect the team.  Are they a young player who will be distracted by chores and an insistent parent?  It can be such a gamble on every new face...

The polite thing is to send a tell if you want a team.  I usually reply even if I can't team for one reason or another.  Most appreciate even the negative response.

Another thing that will turn off some is the tell and the IMMEDIATE invite coming almost simultaneously.  You don't get the chance to deny verbally first.  Sometimes I don't have a window up that displays my tells and have to check the appropriate tab.  not giving me that chance can meean the difference between acceptance and not.

I've been a team leader on occasion.  Frankly it is not a job I like.  But when I do , I try to be polite.  I realize that your team may desperately need a defender but I might be breaking for a meal, or do to an errand or honey-do, or logging off.   Maybe I'm just checking in with my supergroup, resetting  my played time stamp.  Just because I'm in game doesn't mean I can help.  Sometimes yes, but not all the time.   

And despite this being a MULTIPLAYER game, there are times when soloing can and is done.

Teams usually are short lived.  Eventually one or more leave at the same time, and the team quickly collapses.  BE Polite and your team might survive longer.  Make it an enjoyable event, and not something I feel I have to escape!

08 Aug, 2006

The costume contest is a natural evolution of the City of Heroes game.  It came from the union of two aspects of the game design.

1. The Character generation engine is so open ended, there is usually some combination of form, color, logo, style, or them yet to be done.  Lets face it - there are millions of costumes out there.  We've not seen them all. (Except possibly for the Superman clones, Hulk clones, Green Lantern Clones, Flash Clones, Wolverine Clones, Magneto Clones, etc.)
2. Once players level up into the 47+ range, they are making lots of influence but not having much in the way of expenses as the enhancements start to get maxed out.  That means lots of influence and nothing gamewise it can be used for. 

When these two items get together somewhere someone came up with the idea of a beauty contest of sorts.  Who looks the best, has the most interesting or unique them.  Every contest has its own rules -- some times they put a level limit (under 16 is a common one). Other times they want and will read all the bios as well.  (Which can make the contests long as they will have a lot of reading to do.)  Contests can split a couple hundred thousand influence (or more) three or four ways.  Some give consulations gifts to participants if the turnout was light, or maybe just to the non-placing finalists.  Some give out HUGE 1 million influence prizes to first place.  I seem to remember a 5 million influence contests several months ago.  The 99,999 influence trading limit can make such big payoffs tedius to transfer, but not impossible.

But is it good?

Before I continue I will say that I've benifited several times from such contests.  I tend to make memorable characters in bio, theme and or custme - or at least try to .  And they do get noticed from time to time.  If I'm on a "new" server, a good win is an escellant way to make the leveling of a character far easier.  A character with a balanced maxed set of enhancements mnisses less, does more, and thus survives longer.

Contests are soscial events.  People gab away on local and broadcast channels as the event continues.  Jokes are cracked - good and bad.  Sometimes new friendships are made.  Supergroups use them all the time as recruiting tools.  Of course the flip side is there are a few annoying souls that insult, repeatedly slap others for no reason, or otherwise act annoyingly and probably end up on dozens of ignore lists simultaneously.

But are they in the long run beneficial?  I've seen 20 to 40 heroes gathered for a chance at maybe 3 prizes.  Some with lame costumes that have NO chance of winning -- and yet they will hang out for a quarter hour or longer in  the vain hope of a handout.   And some will whine and beg when they don't win, complaining that it was rigged, or that the winner(s) were too high level and don't need the influence like they do.  Frequently they'll be level 2 or 3.  It is a sad fact that a contest will bring out these sorry heroes.

Costume contests can be confusing.   Most require contests to be unteamed so they can be invited into a team of finalists.    How many times have I gotten a blind invite that is NOT from the contest organizer - only to find out after you accept it that it isn't, and have to race to make quick apologies and hope that they've not tried to invite you during that period as well and blown your opportunity.  I've even seen some prankster form a team from contestants just to confuse them...if not disqualify them.

So like any social event you've got he good and the bad -- sure you attract the greedy, the lazy, the playful, the pests, and the annoying, but you also attract the eager, the willing, and those just trying to have fun.

City of Villains hasn't had as many contests.  In all my time on CoV, I've seen only two.  Why?  Until Issue 7 there was no upper level characters with disposable infamy.  Level 40 was the temporary cap, but people KNEW they would surpass that.  And once they did they would need the infamy to enhance their character when level 41-50 missions were added. Hence fewer with the funds to give away.  500K in prizes for a level 40 requires much more effort than say a level 50.

Will we see Villain contests? Probably.  They still make good VG recruiting events.  The only limiting factor is finding a place in Mercy Island that is open and protected enough to have one.  Where all players can go to regardless of level?  The crampt and cluttered Mercy map is just not condusive as Atlas park and the open space around Atlas.

In the end the costume is a short cut for the winners, few though the may be.  A level 5 character given a million may still most of those funds on up to level 15!  But eventually it runs low and problems occur once fully outfitted with dual origin enhancements become pricey and difficult to keep them all in the green.  Some winners may not like that struggle and lose interest.

So is the ongoing fight with enhancements part of the city experience?  Should it be missed?  Will you make the wrong choices without it?  Must you do it on all characters? Or just your first one.

I've frequently wondered why the 99,999 transfer limit has been maintained.  Level 50 characters have been transferring to new toons, especially if they want to try out the warshade or peacebringer character types.  It would be a lot faster with even just the 1 more digit.  Granted there is a small sell-influence-for-real-money industry out there but its got to be SMALL.  Our equivalent to gold-farming can't be that LARGE.

Is the limit there to keep influence from getting too widely spread?  It happens regardless.  I've seen level 50s give out 100K rewards to anyone visiting them after they hit that magic number.   Would that increase if the limit was increased?

The next time you see a contest step back.  Look at the contestants. Look at the spectators.  Look at the organizers.  Listen to the chatter.  How many are there for fun? for Influence? For their SG?  What are the levels.  How long does it go on?  And how many does it ACTUALLY benefit?

02 Aug, 2006

I did get on a couple alts and level them up solo - because my wife was home from the hospital, teaming was near impossible as I might have to leave to help her at any time.  Despite that, I must have gotten 2 characters up to 14 getting 5 levels each, and a few others a level or two.  Several of my SGs are happy, and one character got a promotion because all that soloing meant LOTS of prestige, sending him up to the top of the SG very quickly.  In the teens, it was easily 300-400 prestige a mission for the bonus.  Of course the SGs already got a big membership bonus of 20K a head during the event.

Despite the leveling speed, most of my characters did NOT level past their contacts -- a frequent problem if you level to fast.   Bloody Bay especially helps, giving you a few lvl 15 options.   I did have a few problems with Faultline missions -- Those hunts are hard to solo when you are more or less even with the mobs -- especially if you aren't  a scrapper or tanker.

I hear a lot of complaints from some that missed it completely for one reason or another.

Do I think they'll do it again? Possibly.  The server loads across the board were medium or higher the majority of the weekend -- which is not atypical for the City games at the moment.   Which meant a lot of people were getting on for this event.  But there is a danger of fast experience.  New players don't learn their characters as well and make mistakes, if they even know how to use the powers they've earned. And influence rarely matches they needs of a character, especially after level 12 and Dual Origins get involved.  If a character comes into influence, spends it all on Dual origins, and keeps leveling, chances are he will Level past his Dual Origins well before he can afford to upgrade them all.  A character that starts having all those costly dual origins fail can do less, and the players MAY get frustrated.   The City game at this late date is well balanced and I do believe that pushing the envelope may only please players in the short term, and cause problems later on.  I think I'd hold another double XP weekend only as a stop gap messure for a pending update.

The response to the weekend event was VERY positive.  Players are always greedy for shortcuts -- Otherwise the gold farmers wouldn't be the problem they are in the fantasy games.   We've still another upgrade on the horizon, but it will probably be the end of the month or longer before Issue 8 debuts.  I hear Lots of rumors about new archetypes, Winged characters, and other stuff - nothing conclusive.  There hasn't been an update yet that didn't get WAY too many rumors on it.

21 Jul, 2006

Quick note Here - Double XP weekend started around 4 hours ago and still has the better part of 2 days to go.  Give it a chance!!!  Its double XP and PRESTIGE.  Great way to help out your SG!  Work off debt!

This is a great event and I hope they do it again once in a while...

The SGs I've been on have had twice as many present as usual... So I guess A lot of people will be around.  Keep that in mind.  Get in there and play while the XP is rolling in !!!

15 May, 2006

I did get some time in on Bloody Bat -- He hit 20 and got his cape

And the Prof continued on. Still at 35.5, but climbing! I spent some time in Bloody Bay playing with the Shivan, earning badges, etc. The outing inspired me.

Hope you enjoy!

29 Apr, 2006

I know we set some records.  w00tRadio was reaching numbers approaching 700 listeners!  They had to give out their BACKUP server address several times so that party-goers could tune in.

Manticore was spotted here and was giving out a few titles...





When I took this shot I didn't spot CuppaJo in the crowd!

The Last Dev I spotted was Ghost Widow.

Silver Mantis and Ms. Liberty were spotted at the party as well, though I didn't get a decent shot of them.

All in all the 2nd anniversary party was a huge success -- On Freedom at least. Lots of people were asking the devs about Issue 7, and it sounded like we should see it hit the Test server VERY soon - I'm going to have to check my chat logs, but it might be next week. It was hard to listen in to a conversation - frequently EVERYONE was talking -- keeping conversations on Local, Broadcast, Supergroup, and Coallition STRAIGHT was sometimes impossible!

On behalf of the Central Nexus, let me wish NCsoft, Cryptic Studios best wishes and hopes that we can celebrate MANY more such anniversary parties. (Better get the servers ready!)

29 Apr, 2006

Pocked D 1 had the contests as seen in these next two shots. Trivia conests, worst costume contests, and others ran by The Babes were the fun here. Professor Infinity visited the zone a few times, but stayed out of it most of the night to make room for other Revelers...



Kings Row turned into a madhouse as more gathered trying to get in as more and more devs would pop in.

I saw several devs thru the evening. Like Mynx seen here

It was interesting to see how the Dev's characters were represented -- usually NOT having an official Origin/Class. Ms. Liberty was showing as a Villain / Giant Monster if you looked at her info! Ghost Widow showed as a level 40 corruptor even though she had a level 50 badge -- A fact that was commented on REPEATEDLY by the crowd. The Devs also bestowed special Yellow titles on various lucky party goers -- Signing their capes as it were. Which meant that when a dev came in everyone Crowded around them hoping to be so tagged!

29 Apr, 2006

A lot of groups were at the parties...   Which led to groups sometimes, like these Blood Moon Angels

The Lollipop Illusion played on the "L" versus "1" font effect. Using different combinations of 1s and Ls they made it appear to the casual observer that their entire supergroup had the same name. Makes you wonder how such a group tells THEMSELVES apart! If you look at the INFO on the character, the naming becomes more clear, but the font that shows their name on screen masks the effect. City players can be SOOOooooo creative and sneaky.

And they can have a sense of humor --- as these Bluez brothers could attest...

This guy made me laugh - Posing as a bootlegger of the much anticipated much delayed Issue 7 release. He greeted people as they came in...

Meanwhile, outside in Talos --- The line grew as people tried to get into the Pocket D of their choice. Getting into a particular one, while not impossible, took patience.

29 Apr, 2006

Unless you've been living outside Paragon City, you would know that City of Heroes celebrates the end of its 2nd year now! That's right! And things are hopping. I got onto SEVERAL of my characters yesterday that were old -- Anyone logging in yesterday got a 2nd year anniversary badge Reveler. IF they had the 1st year anniversary badge they got a Gladiator badge for 5th Columnist. Great if you go to the arena and run Gladiator matches (You select individuals based on points and the gladiator badges you have available and go into combat against other players and their gladiator proxies. You aren't a combantant in those matches - more of a spectator).

But the real event of the 28th? Every Pocket D (neutral common ground and dance hall for villains and heroes alike) on every server was running a party. But on the FREEDOM server there was a special event. The Babes of War super group in conjunction with Freedom Reborn (of which I'm a member in the guise of Professor Infinity), was sponsoring a big contest laden event, featured on w00tradio, and to have various devs appear. It wasn't supposed to start until 9PM eastern, but even before 7PM Pocket D was getting its 3rd and 4th instance. If you haven't been around City , if a zone gets too full of people, it spawns a second and third instance. Over the past 2 years, most of the time there is only 1 instance to a zone. But special events can force a second zone, like an occasional costume contest in Atlas. It hasn't happened much lately unless there has been a new issue released, or a new zone opened. The party started filling up fast!

And so did the Pocket Ds!. Before the night was over we had 8 instances of Pocket D running!

Some zones got a little busy, and people with powers and pets did cause some lag issues.

Lots of people were migrating between zones, with most trying to get into the first instance of Pocket D where the contests were being held. It wasn't easy. And when the Devs started to appear, it got crazier still as people would flock to the zone they heard a dev was at! Lots of screenshots were probably being taken...  Even more so when CuppaJo and others appeared as below...

23 Apr, 2006

One thing I've been toying with for a while is replacing my original system keyboard which is now over 2 years old and showing it with a replacement, more geared for what I've been doing - which is City gaming.

I looked at several models -- Zboard puts out Zboard keyboards -- custom keyboards that fold and remove from a common mount. They have a traditional keyboard and a gaming one with large fancy buttons for the traditional movement keys (W A S D) and a layout of the associted right hand controls all layed out on a special section. Zboard also puts out a product called the Mercboard which is a permenant gaming keybord style. Though they compress the control/cursor keys that usuallly lie between the traditional keyboard and the numpad together into one section. I really didn't like that - I frequently have several settings for the numpad as common buttons for lots of characters -- (numpad7 is a no ui screenshot, numpad 9 is a ui screenshot, numpad 0 toggles sgmode, numpad 1 2 and 3 are usually costume controls, etc.)

I also saw a Saitek version -- but it had a 9 key keypad REMOTE from a central keyboard, apparently to handle right and left handed users. Even though that would allow 3 different 9 key macros, it was a tad cumbersome.

Finally the most expensive version was the Logitech G15. It backlights the keys like the Saitek, has 18 special G keys, and 3 mode buttons, so it can have LOTS of G key settings. Its most notible feature is a small lcd screen that pops up. This, with the appropriate software, can give you a readout of game stats.

I was also looking at the Optimus keyboard, primarily because it allows for the keys to be programmed as individual screens, thus replacing the labels with whatever you need -- new keys, shortcuts, or actual icons as the case may be. However that keyboard is almost an internet rumor. Despite pictures and promises it continues to be a release pending product. Also it has missed a few release dates. Its price would be expected to be CONSIDERABLE, but is kind of getting the reputation of being the Duke Nukem Forever of the Keyboard lot. Still , can you imagine having a different keyboard profile for each character whre ethe keys that you've set up with binds all have the appropriate power icon ACTUALLY on the keys? Maybe the entire keyboard FLASHES or goes thru some elaborate animation when you Level? That would be sweet!

I was kind of leaning toward the MercBoard. Cheap ($39), gets the job done, but it would be a numpad semi-sacrifice. However on the fast responding thread I started on City of Heroes Forums, one user Duck L'Orange mentioned that he did HAVE special software for the G15 for City of Heroes. It used HeroStats to pump game statistics to the screen. That pushed the G15 up to the top of the list. I checked both Fry's and Best Buy and both had it at $99, despite the fact I seem to remember it recently being offered at $69. Must have been a sale... *sigh*. I made the plunge.

I did have trouble getting Duck's software downloaded, but once that was solved, I got it up and running. Now I have the screen running with the Character name, current level and actuall level, time of day, HP END guages, INFLUNCE, XP to LEVEL, and DEBT amounts ALL easily visible at a glance. I used to have to force the program to display that on the ID screen, or trying to highlight it somewhere.

I'm still learning the ropes as far as macro programming. It will take a while before I get anything reallly fancy set up there. With 54 possible keys -- I doubt I'll be lacking possibilities.

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