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Sicken

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  1. I didn't drop it after 1/2 an hour, but I had a toon that used teleport as a travel power to move around years ago. Had to bind the target and/or fire for it, but as I remember it was kinda fun. Ultimately more work than a person wanted to do to get across town. I may have to do it again though. Probably pair it with hover to make things a bit easier.
  2. I know a guy who did it in 12 parsecs. (Yes, I know what a parsec is...)
  3. Allow me to take n of my alts and turn them into NPC teammates on a mission or TF. There could be a "teammate" setting screen that basically controls your alt's basic AI during a mish. Sicken would be a fan.
  4. For me, one of the greatest benefits of COH was that it let me play any way I wanted. I came to the game with virtually no MMO experience. I'd played Starcraft, Quake, stuff like that. I even got into AvP and enjoyed that some, but the multiplayer modes in that game left you pretty much a stain on the ground the moment you spawned. Then I saw this new game coming out and you got to be a 'Hero'? Being kind of a cheap guy, it wasn't easy for me to drop the $40 or whatever bucks it was for the game and then another chunk for what? A 'Game pack"? But then... I was in, making my trashy looking super heroine. (Indeed, she was SO trashy, I found myself embarrassed and had to make another slightly less trashy hero.) But I'm not an MMO guy, so what do I do? I was immediately drawn to the Scrapper out of the box. I liked the idea of somebody who was balanced toward defense AND offense and could hold their own if necessary. That was PRECISELY what I needed. So, dual blades scrapper with regen secondary and I was off to the races. Glorious! Glorious gaming! I was able to wander around, hack up bad guys and level without grinding for days and days... Remember when the big deal was to get your cape? That's a bit of the 'way back' machine there... But then something happened... I got into the infamous FrostFire mission and it was just a bit hard to run solo. So, I ended up on a TEAM! Glorious Glorious gaming! Here I was with a TEAM! Everyone adding their unique abilities to the fray. I had always played such that I could wade in to a mass of baddies and start hacking, but here I had somebody HEALING me while I was whacking away, and to my left somebody was blasting some kind of energy ray at the fellow who was beating on me from my blind-side. From those experiences, my true hero-love was born. Sicken was/is a Dark/Dark scrapper who can ultimately do some minor tanking for you if you like by "death-shrouding" the mobs and happily accruing aggro while a healer or blaster just goes to town. As Sicken grew and I recognized both my solo and team-up strengths, I was encouraged to try OTHER archetypes. I did the Rad/Rad defender, (My need for a 'logical and realistic' origin story force me to tend to be a bit linear in my power sets... A weakness for some game styles, but hey, it's MY hero!) I built and played an energy blaster... I was never much of a tank or controller. They weren't really my cup of tea. The ease of the combat system - you didn't have to be a math major to jump in and start pummeling bad guys, was and is a HUGE factor in the game's success. It takes literally 15 minutes to come up with an attack chain that works for you and you get to evolve it organically as you get more powers and earn new ways to enhance your existing powers. And then, just when you though the game couldn't get ANY better... Travel Powers! Glorious Glorious Travel! Personally, I'm a jumper. Love the idea of 'hulk-jumping' all over the place. Flight is fine too and ultimately a nice easy, 'hands off' form of travel. I even did teleport for my defender. Lot's of fun, but soo much work. Still - how cool is it to teleport all over the place. And about 8 minutes after you figure out teleportation you realize you have 'poor man's flight'. The game design was built to let you do whatever you wanted to, or needed to given the situation. Lots of people online? Jump on a team and spend the whole day doing everyone's FrostFire mission. Bit Slow out there? Run some solo missions, grab some badges, farm some influence to buy an enhancement or two... You could/can do whatever you want. Such a great game. I wish they'd never given up the subscription model. NCSoft, admittedly began considering shutting down the game for a number of reasons, but one of the biggest was that they weren't gathering more players. (Ya, they had THOUSANDS, but they weren't getting more...) If they'd been charging all those thousands of folks 9.99 a month to play however, I suspect they may have kept the lights on. Anyway, I am a fan. Have always been a fan, will continue to be a fan.
  5. Mine is long... sorry... Sicken is dying… When she was a teenager, Alli excelled in sports and carried a good enough GPA to keep her father, a nobel winning physicist off her back. Although her mother had died when she was 6, She lead a normal, happy life and although she never ran with the “cool” crowd she was well liked enough by pretty much everyone. Her father, Jack Alsgaard, worked for a secret government program dedicated to creating clean, renewable energy. This program combined the talents of the top physicists, chemists and engineers in the world. The goal was to create a stable self-sustaining nuclear generation process that did not depend on water cooling. Alsgaard and the other scientist focused on natural energy generation processes in nature and attempted to improve upon those models. Photosynthesis, the conversion of oxygen to energy in blood cells, phosphorescent light generation based on kinetic movement and chemical interactions in deep sea creatures were all studied, along with traditional nuclear power generation processes. A breakthrough came when a brilliant chemist on the team determined that biologically initiated fusion could occur on a small scale. Given sufficient fuel and virtually any external power source, like solar radiation or even kinetic heat - specially modified plant cells could initiate, but not sustain a fissionable event. The cells were genetically created through gene-splicing technology and the resultant cells were called “Genesis Cells”. The issue was that the Genesis Cells used the fuel, generated the power, but unless they were placed in a system that provided continual external energy, the conversion process failed. Some team members suggested that an experiment be done where the cells were placed out doors in the sun with a large fuel supply. The chemist pointed out the tremendous danger in such an experiment as the cells would continue producing energy unchecked and unconfined. He feared a cataclysmic release of power that may destroy up to 1/4 mile of the surrounding countryside. And that was with virtually no fissionable material present. For that reason, the priority protocol was to contain the cells in a controlled environment where the fuel and external energy source could be monitored. This of course meant the project was failing one of its primary tenets - the process needed to be clean, self sustaining AND stable. Early tests of the new technology were disappointing, not because it didn’t work, but because it worked too well. The amount of power generated from even small amounts of fissionable material were frightening. In fact, the team discovered early on, that uranium and plutonium were TOO effective and for any hope of energy containment to be successful, hydrogen, despite it’s inefficiency in fission compared to other sources, was the best fuel. Truly, it was BECAUSE of hydrogen’s smaller output that it could even be considered for the project, which firstly needed a readily available source of fuel, and secondly created SO much energy output. Massive work was put into containment and routing of the generated power. Virtually every containment methodology known to man or invented by the team eventually failed in simulation tests. The output of energy and radiation was simply too great. The team was on the verge of quitting on the project. The molecular density of all known and widely used containment materials was too high. Radiation and energy pulsed against the containment and shortly vibrated them apart. Sicken’s father postulated that any successful containment field needed to be uniquely malleable and able to cope with the energy pulses created from the generation process. He and other team members had long since noted that despite the massive energy creation and release, the modified cells did not fail. The cells were uniquely designed to replicate at a high rate so that any damage caused by the energy and radiation release was mitigated by newly developing cells. Essentially the “generator” was constantly destroying and rebuilding itself at a rate that ultimately evened out. The problem of course was that any cellular containment system would be bombarded by energy and radiation and that would destroy THOSE cells just as the energy release had destroyed other traditional containment systems. Alsgaard theorized that the only way a biological containment system could work was if it utilized the same rapid regeneration properties that the generator cells possessed. The trick, was to create containment cells that could absorb energy and radiation and rapidly reduce but which could NOT generate additional power like the “Genesis Cells”. The mutated containment cells were spliced. Ironically the best suited base cells were human skin-cells. They proved resilient and with minor modification they were able to reproduce at astounding rates. These new cells were half-jokingly called “Def-Con Cells”. The physicist in charge of their development came up with that name because he said, “If THESE cells fail we’ll be at Def-Con Doom in NO TIME!” With a small grouping of Genesis Cells and a giant, grown sphere of Def-Con cells to envelope them, the team prepared for it’s first test. The now prototyped Gen-Con Generator was placed in a small radiation containment room and a skylight was opened to let some sun shine upon the generator. Nothing happened. The Def-Con cells absorbed the light, and because they were not designed to convert any of that light to energy, the Genesis cells underneath starved. Clearly more work needed to be done. Alsgaard informed the state of the project's current status and, frustrated with the massive amount of research money and time that had been lost, it was decided to terminate the project. Alsgaard was ordered to destroy everything. Unable to let go of the massive potential for the project, Alsgaard saved 1 Genesis Cell and 1 Def-Con cell for possible future work. The Genesis cell was perfectly safe as long as it couldn’t get access to any hydrogen for fuel and Def-Con cell was designed to stay completely dormant unless it was attacked by the specific radiation signature produced by the Genesis Cell. And so, Alsgaard put the saved cells on slides and planned to hide them away. Years later, Alli was dealing with severe “Senioritis” as she gutted out the last few weeks of high school. She had an English final and an advanced biology final and she was finally OUT! The English final was easy. She had to write an essay about how high school had “changed” her. In truth, high school had really just bored her, but she wrote an acceptable if complete crap paper about how she’d become some new and amazing creation because of classes like Art and History. Her advanced biology final was more challenging. She had to identify and classify different types of cells and she only had 30 minutes to get through 10 of them. Fortunately, she could earn extra credit if she could “stump the teacher”, Mr. Bordell. Many had tried, none had succeeded. But Alli had a secret weapon. She knew of TWO different slides her father had put in an old box in his office from a long time ago. He’d shown them to her once and said they were the only two of their kind in the entire world. If she could stump Mr. Bordell ONCE she’d get an extra 10%. if she could do it TWICE… Well she may not even have to take the final. Walking into the biology room, extraordinarily confident - Alli never saw the backpack on the floor. She stumbled over it and crashing into a lab table, she badly cut her hands on the slides she had been carrying in. Although Alli had never had a problem with the sight of blood before, she soon fainted and… within hours Alli Alsgaard was dead. The moment the cells were introduced to her body, they started doing what they were designed to do. The Genesis cell began searching for sources of Hydrogen. It found it in the vast amount of water that made up Alli’s body. It was no work at all for the Genesis Cell to start splitting off Hydrogen and using it to generate energy. Her own body heat provided the kinetic energy source to keep the Genesis Cells operating on a small level and continually duplicating. At the same time the Def-Con cell merely integrated into Alli’s bloodstream, but almost instantly a burst of genesis radiation pulsed from the replicating Genesis cells. In response, the Def-Con cell began replicating at a wild rate attempting to contain and control the energy. And so, a war started in Alli Alsgaard’s body. One that would consume her at a genetic level as the Genesis and Def-Con cells battled for equivalency. Had she been out in the sunshine, she likely would have exploded - destroying half the city. But, inside under fluorescent lights her rapidly replicating Genesis Cells could find no external power source great enough to continue producing energy. When she woke, her father was standing over her. The frightened look in his eyes terrified her. He tried to explain to her that she had some kind of terrible cancer or something that was constantly trying to burn her alive from the inside. He told her that she was emitting toxic radiation from her body and that nobody could be near her for more than a few seconds without getting sick and dying. She asked how he could sit by her, and he just smiled and held her hand. “I’m with you to the end.” He said simply and squeezed. “No matter how much you sicken, I’ll always be right here.” She watched as he grew shorter of breath. His skin became clammy. She tried to pull his hand away, but he held tightly until his strength failed. Then he collapsed on the hospital bed by her legs. She held him and his last words were, “I’m sorry.” Alli died with her father Jack Alsgaard. Sicken was born. Her body is constantly at war. In order to keep the Genesis cells from overtaking her and causing a catastrophe, she must regularly vent energy and radiation. With nothing else to live for, she decided to take to the streets and do what she could to fight crime and somehow turn her curse into something that wasn’t so terrible. She can never have a relationship, never fall in love, never make friends. But if you hurt somebody, she can make you sicken.
  6. The love of my COH life is "Sicken" She's a Dark/Dark scrapper and I loved NOTHING more than just walking into a group of mobs and standing there, watching them get sick and die. Good times. Don't ask her to dinner though. She'll kill ya.
  7. Always been more of a solo player. Sure, love a good team up when it happens and I build such that I can help in a fight. I spend the bulk of my time, however solo-hunting and working my way through missions. Oh, the joy I will feel when I get my travel power back and start super-jumping all over the place. I will be happily awaiting the next funding cycle. Happy to do whatever I can to make sure you guys can maintain.
  8. I just arrived, and if the world ends tomorrow - If I can spend just a few minutes in "Sicken's" skin I will be so very happy. If only NCSoft knew what this game really meant to the folks who played it. So very happy to be launching Sicken sometime in the next few hours.
  9. I would suspect NCSoft has a very good idea of how loved the game is and recognizes that the value of the asset is extraordinarily high, even though they don't plan on doing anything with the game. They still have the right to say, "1 BILLION Dollars!" Obviously nobody can afford a ridiculously high price-tag as it would cripple the new holder of the game's code from the outset.
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