Darmian

If that's where I think it is, that is Dupont Tower. From its description in the Laura Lockhart arc it seems to be residential in that we're told it has civilians in it.

Welcome back @TerroirNoir2!

I'm not arguing the point that Diabolique dies/had to die, or even in fact that Dream Doctor did it. But the way it was done relegates the player/team lead to a side line character. A scene where the team hand her over to Dream Doctor and then he deals with her would IMO have been better.

I do know, and yes, MMMV LOL. It varies very much from what I consider to be a total BS move to shoehorn a pre-existing IP Icon into something else in the possible hope of dragging the previously dedicated COH base to MXM. But hey, corporate gonna corporate, y' know 😉 But hey, I'm just spitballing my take here. And if they had gone ahead with it, it was easy to plant it as a fait accompli and let it run. Can't see HC doing that here.

There's plenty of aggro aimed at Dream Doctor for swooping in for the kill in Dilemma Diaibolique. Player Agency is important and this would negate it.

Considering Statesman was a very public figure for the best part of a century I'd be very surprised if Crey didn't already have his DNA profile mapped somewhere. The snag being that if they made a clone then that clone never had access to the Well of the Furies.

Last Bastion is it. It's possible Night Ward had refugees/escapees for a while, but nothing grows there so no food although surviving supers might survive longer. Either way it's probably reverted to the dead and Drudges.

I'm going to disagree. Fight off the storm on the horizon? Absolutely. But on his terms. With Emperor Cole it's always on his terms. Stand with Vanguard and the Primals against the Coming Storm? I could see him doing that, but taking on Statesman's mantle to do it? That's a big no IMO.

There we go! I don't do it myself so the hearsay was wrong. Thanks @Greycat.

I'm told it's mostly on Excelsior.

There's another knot to the problem though. And I'm not veering away from my opinion that he shouldn't be brought back as detailed above, just working through an angle. Statesman is dead, but Statesman didn't die. Marcus Cole, an ordinary man, died. In Who Will Die? his powers are stripped from him and he dies as a normal human. So, do you bring back that man somehow? Hey folks, here's your symbol of hope, no he can't help with anything. Or do you break the entire canon timeline? Something HC, as far as I can see, is not going to do. COH is not having a Crisis on Infinite Earths moment ever.

No, Statesman is dead. As they say in Doctor Who, that's a fixed point in time. As to HOW he died? I always felt there was more to that story than we were given in Who Will Die? Perhaps someday we'll see it in something akin to "Along Came A Spider". I think the biggest issue the Live Devs left behind by killing off Statesman was not actually his death but his removal from almost ALL game material before his death. We never interact with him at all prior to that. Hell, if it wasn't for the HC Devs we wouldn't even have the Statesman led Freedom Phalanx version of the Lord Recluse Strike Force in Ouro. So if Statesman were to "return" I'd personally prefer cameos or what have you in the "earlier" parts of the game timeline so that when Who Will Die? drops for you, you at least have something to link it to. And the final thing? Making Tyrant a new Statesman was and remains one of the stupidest things I've read about City of Heroes. Anyone who has played through Praetoria in depth can tell you that the man just wouldn't do that. And there's no incentive for him to ever do it.

Chaosium print Call of Cthulhu. It's pretty much their signature game line.

Saw it today. I'd rate Thunderbolts as better personally. While enjoyable I felt that several great actors (Vanessa Kirby stood out for me) were trying very hard to make an OK script better by sheer force of will. The Retro-future 60s DID look great though. And Galactus is not a cloud. Bonus point.

Oh, I had a blast watching Boss Level. Nothing serious, just a rollercoaster of fun action.

Still rocking it, @Six-Six!

I've mainly tried to do that (details in signature) but then you run out of maps, not to mention keeping everything scaled at a certain level.

Yep. Paying it forward is the way.

As a further aside, I'd posit possible Praetorian access to the Shadow Shard. Since (a) the events currently there all take place before the fall of Praetoria, and (b) narratively Praetorians can get there. Alas no player Praetorians but both Mayhem and Malaise appear as antagonists in Faathim the Kind's TF. It would make more sense than shoehorning them in in other places. As for moving forward, I'd advocate a series of arcs set in Primal that you can only get in game if you were Praetorian (of whatever faction) since you would be dealing with fallout from Refugees, the UPA and so on on a personal history basis. To alleviate things ANYONE should be able to do them via Ouro, in the same way that Primal characters can access the Pre-War Praetorian content normally shut off to them. Sadly, however good my or your ideas are, we have enough difficulty getting more people to play Redside, never mind Gold, so most of the suggestions here will remain just that. The most we can really hope for is the release of missing Praetorian maps to the AE where players can "fill in the gaps" in their own way. Best.

Hmm, I tentatively disagree here. First Ward and Night Ward make it very plain that whatever faction you're from, it doesn't matter. Whatever side you picked in Nova/Imperial/Neutropolis, that's irrelevant once you get to First Ward. And yet mechanically you're still that faction. The choices you make now are yours alone. So you're facing off against D.U.S.T. and Calvin's Resistance at the same time, while generally trying to make life better for the Elten Towners. Or caught up in the schemes of the Black Knights and Diabolique. Again, whether Loyalist or Resistance it doesn't matter. And you don't have to choose Blue/Red to do it. At the end of the day I think we are, to borrow a phrase, "violently agreeing"! It's just that the narrative gets damn confusing at times. And I have definitely done a deep dive into the timeline to sort things out for my own edification. And even after that I still scratch my head and think "wait, what?"

I'm actually not disagreeing with any of that. Frankly, as a dedicated Goldside player I'd like to see the level ranges for each of the 5 zones expanded so that you can't just outlevel contacts before you've noticed; I'd like more Pre War Material here and there that builds more into the coming War ( much how Clone Wars works for Star Wars in some ways). And finally I'd like to see the Undergrounds of First Ward and Night Ward actually exist beyond a few instances in missions. I mean the UG iTrial takes place SOMEWHERE, and it isn't in Nova/ImperialNeutropolis. So us Gold players have workarounds. And I'm 100 per cent agreeing that things should be caught up. And now the thing that even I, someone whose Main is 100% Loyalist Gold and who adores the story of Praetoria, even I say. If I had been an OG Dev for Retail I would NEVER have made Goldside and just updated the existing Praetorian factions. I'd have put all that work into the Rogue Isles to make IT better. But we are where we are. And if I ever get the maps for it I'll finish off my last set of Pre War Praetorian AE trilogies. Best.

And yet my Gold Side only Resistance character has taken part in the iTrials. (Ok, so has my Loyalist! But that was so I could play something rather than the thematic reasons my Resistance character had)

No, that's not a good enough reason. There's no reason a Goldsider who hadn't left, whether Resistance or Loyalist, would refuse to fight Hamidon. Part of the plot IS that, in that Reese, one of the biggest douches Powers Division ever produced, even HE decided to fight Hamidon there. Ok, he got his ass handed to him but whatever.

Except it does. Oh not the fight against the Rikti, but it very much affects Praetorians in one spot and that is Number Six's missions to Last Bastion. Which is somewhere IN Praetoria no Goldsider can go. Kinda annoying. The reason? There's none apart from Number Six as a contact is in the RWZ and that's it. All it needs is a door moved, similar to Vetrano in Night Ward perhaps.