Black Talon

The article linked below details a number of problems that World of Warcraft has, is, and will probably continue to experience over the foreseeable future. I won't repeat too many of the details contained therein, leaving that up to individual readers to divine, but the fact of the matter is that the anticipated mass departure from WoW might, just might, end up having some effect on City of Heroes Homecoming. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58017429?utm_source=pocket-newtab As I've noted in a number of previous posts, I have little to no experience in MMPOGs aside from City of Heroes; as Pixie_Knight has articulated, very clearly, the fantasy games seem to experience a plague of repetitive character classes, settings and storylines, and any such experience I want to have, I'll drag out the Castles & Crusades or first-edition AD&D Core books and have a blast doing the pen-and-paper-with-dice bit. I don't know, to what extent, WoW may or may not have either played off previous tropes, created new ones - or both - in the online setting, but the point is that WoW ain't a unique experience now, if it ever was; the revelations about Final Fantasy XIV's phoenix-like rebirth following a disastrous debut indicate that many are migrating toward that online RPG for their sword-and-sorcery entertainment. The reason I'm starting this thread in the first place is that, with the anticipated diaspora from WoW, I think there may be a chance that CoH Homecoming will end up grabbing some of the players who are looking for a gaming experience that veers off the fantasy model. The "legacy" projects that initiated in the wake of CoH's shutdown in November 2012 have, to the best of my knowledge, gone into developmental hiatus, and thus there are no other resources for any who might be interested in trying the superhero genre. I'd be interested in knowing if the Homecoming crew have been informed about these developments, and what plans, if any, they may have made to deal with, or even encourage, a possible influx of homeless WoW children. And what does the population here think about the occurrences at Blizzard Entertainment, and do the people here see the WoW empire disintegrating, Roman style? Might there be a resurgence of interest in CoH that results in not only its maintenance and continuation for an indefinite time to come, but actual software development and technical upgrades? Pleased to know about the gang's reaction here.

Makes me think of a post I read x-years ago on the original CoH forums, Pixie_Knight; an individual was relating about how he and several others had done a Task Force with nothing but Defenders and Controllers on the team. He noted that the surprising thing about it was that nothing could stop or touch therm - sure, the individual missions took an inordinately long time to complete, but no one ever went down. It was like watching a slow-moving steamroller crush everything in its path. This brings to mind the truth that CoH is, ultimately, a defensive game, which draws it into stark contrast to what - at least as I understand it - is the rule for MMPOGs, especially the fantasy-oriented ones: the Scrappers, Blasters and CoV archetypes specializing in offense can finish a scrap pretty damn quickly, but if they're up against the wrong kind of opponents with the wrong power sets...call the hospital EMT staff and have them on standby. I've taken my Storm Summoning/Electrical Blast Defender to 27 with virtually no team-ups; almost every mission and mission arc has been solo. It is definitely possible with him, but he's gotta a) take his time, and b) use real serious tactical intelligence. I imagine the same holds true with a Defender/Controller team writ large, and I can understand why total offense teams are going to end up eating dirt repeatedly if the target is just too heavy on invulnerability/regeneration. The Defenders and Controllers are the roots around which the CoH offensive ATs get to blossom.

Taking a few minutes and veering off the OP topic (more than) a bit, but I just have to state this: Pixie_Knight, I was nodding, eyes wide, from beginning to end while reading your post from yesterday. Your situation and mine - and I suspect thousands of undeclared others - are mirrors of each other in so many respects: CoH as our first (and really only) MMPOG, and realizing and having to come to terms with the fact that the experience had, in fact, become an outright addiction. No, I never missed work - paid or volunteer - because of it, but numerous social and personal commitments (including trying to keep myself in decent physical condition, which I set great store by) ended up suffering greatly. The situation came to an end with the third weekend of February, '08, when I had spent the entire weekend, from Friday afternoon till Sunday midnight, doing nothing but playing the damn game. Nothing else; no stopping except to eat. No fulfilling of commitments to get out to the gym - which I promised myself continually throughout the weekend - and no contact with other humans. I shut the game down on Sunday night and thought, Congratulations. You have to be at work in a few hours and you just f***ed away an entire weekend and have nothing to show for it. Way to be, champ. It wasn't the first time I'd had this thought, but there seemed to be something a little more...earnest, intense and perhaps desperate in it this time. I, gratefully, managed to lay off the game that week and got back to doing other stuff; real stuff, from Monday to Friday. The game became a weekend-only situation, Friday evenings to Sunday afternoon, with a few hours on each day. Getting back into condition showed exactly what sort of cost the CoH situation had taken, and I made a God-honest promise to never let this happen again. Part of the reason this was possible is identical to what you noted about the other online games, particularly fantasy genre ones: they're all essentially interchangeable. I tried D&D Stormreach for one month and then quit out of sheer boredom. Jack Emmert and his crew's skill, insight and sheer depth and love of the superhero genre - and yes, they were working within the technical/software coding limits of the time, but what they pulled off was flat-out amazing - was reflected, I think, in how much the community came together around this game, its Developers and each other. The same applies now to the Homecoming crew and their having taken unknown time, energy, resources with no guarantee of reward, and having applied the Delco batteries and jumper cables, getting the sparks jumping and crying out, "It's alive! It's alive!" Are there things that could be perhaps added on/altered as a consequence of the last eight years? Yeah, but nothing of real note that would change what we already have here. Gone on way too fricking long, and apologies for that, but just wanted to state very clearly, Pixie_Knight, my deepest thanks for what your statement had inspired and recalled from years and situations past. Thank you for your forthrightness and honesty in making a public statement like that, and further thanks for making me - and others, very likely - think about their own situations and how to avoid personal pitfalls and internal weaknesses again.

Just to note that I agree with the OP's opinion, and back up everything people have stated here the big one-ten. Crazyleo is your basic 1000% correct: it's the community from beginning, through the middle, till the end. Today, running with a new alt in the Hollows, a fellow player did a fortune reading, then handed over a mid-size rage insp in a spirit of total gratuity. I can't think of any other game I've ever played - and that hasn't been very many, just to be clear - where that sort of thing would even have been thought of, let alone carried through with. I keep suspecting that it's the genre and nature of the game itself that encourages this kind of interaction - your WoW-type game, at least as far as I've read and been told, is pretty much about what Captain Jack Sparrow uses as his motto: "Take what you can; give nothing back." Really unfortunate that encouraging people to use gaming formats to fulfill this Malthusian doctrine seems to be the choice line of approach for the MMPOG world. This game (CoH side, anyway) is about helping a world, and it's eternally wonderful to see that ideology carried through on a daily basis with other human beings. They, and we, are going to do nice things because they make us feel good. Also, this seemed a good place to note: Made the donation today, in my small (very small, relatively) part to keep the engines churning here. Eternal congratulations and thanks to the Homecoming crew, and hoping that CoH Homecoming has a very long and illustrious lifespan ahead of it.

At 56, hitting 57 in October. I was 39 when City of Heroes first came out; my youngest brother (just turned 33 at the time) had discovered the game and, getting married that August, arranged for his "bachelor party" as a mass CoH game-fest with myself, our other brother (34 for him), and two friends who owned their own software company - we played in their large, studio-style office. The game stretched on for fifteen hours. We made it a point to get together after that on pretty much a weekly basis, all bringing our desktop PCs - and yes, it was a hassle doing the disassembly, loading, transportation, moving into the friends' office, reassembling, then starting the game up - but it was something that we all acknowledged was a driving social force; we loved our superheroes and were prepared to make a load of sacrifices/take on burdens in order to have a game where all the characters looked like Jim Lee/Scott Williams-designed cover art. Like pretty much everyone else here, I mourned the loss of the game, and was unable to find anything that even came close to inspiring the same emotional investment; as noted in a previous thread, I tried DC Heroes Online and was never driven to go any further than designing a character...all of which were based on my CoH alts. The reawakening here has been an absolute joy to discover, and once again, all my thanks to the (as yet unnamed) cast and crew who took it upon themselves to resurrect something that so many people had given up as lost. Hoping CoH will be around, in its current incarnation, when the gang here and myself are well into the fourth quarter-century of our lives, muttering about how the punk kids just don't appreciate classic-style games. Pass over the antacid pills...

GVT, thank you very much for having the temerity and guts to broach a subject like this, and encourage the crew to actually avoid the digital food fights because, well, it's all fun and games until someone actually misses out on having Jello for dessert. What you've brought up - and many appreciations for the in-gaming-studio clarifications - confirms what I suspect many people here have already concluded by implication. Gaming studio executives don't have any awareness of "fun", they don't really care about "fun", they couldn't give a rat's unsanitized posterior about "fun" - what they care about is one thing and one thing only: What will make the game-playing population spend more money. "Fun" becomes an industry code word for "Ways to encourage people to pull out their credit cards and get more stuff in our game, because that's the positivist method we have for determining whether they're continuing to play." In economics, "utility" is defined by "what causes people to spend money". This is as close as economics, as an academic subject, comes to defining "happiness". Happiness, as so many people who have already posted here have stated, is something that utterly defies definition as a categorical term; the more you try to pin it down, the more elusive it becomes. "Fun" is a synonym in this regard, and the only method an existential company has of defining what "fun" is will be measured in terms of how much cash we pulled in this quarter. Your indication, GVT, about how the corporations are trying to "expand", to put it loosely, their terminology for "fun" is a pretty good indication as to how the executive mind functions in situations where the need for a redefinition of the paradigm comes around. They're pulling the officers on the Titanic maneuver; rearrange a few deck chairs so everyone (at least those in first class) have a better view of the ship going vertical. The MMPOG model had its hey-day from roughly 2003-14; after that it's become much like its pen-and-paper RPG cousin - a niche item that can still be profitable if management pays attention to what people are substantiating arguments for. This might lead to "fun"; it might also lead to an ongoing negotiation between management, developers and players that gets everyone on to a much more democratic, egalitarian, even keel where the lines of function may remain intact, but opinions become a much more equal-value commodity. Hoping this sort of discussion continues, GVT and all those others who have posted, because, well, this kind of thing is really educational and...uh,, what's the term...yeah, fun! Shows that MMPOGs ain't just fer having a few beer and hitting the, "Wise up, n00b" button.

Okay; yeah, it did happen, Back In The Day, when one of my mains (MA/SR Scrapper) had the Doc Vahz arc that had become stalled after my guy ended up outleveling the contact. I kept trying the contact as the levels went on, hoping to be able to finish things off one day. Things finally did click and the arc restarted, though maxed out at level 15 or thereabouts (been a while, obviously). My guy basically waltzed through the missions and finally got to the Doc Vahz scrap...and so here it was, a level 45 (again, thereabouts) Scrapper, alone, versus a level 15 AV. The ensuing scrap was pretty much a war of attrition; there was no way Doc Vahz could hit my guy, but a solo character - even level 45 - was taking yea amount of time to take him out. Yet finally it did come to fruition, my guy got the story arc completed - at last - and he had the Souvenir in his collection. I don't anticipate anything like that happening again, but it's a nice "Shake the head, smile, and say 'Remember when...?'" moment.

I honestly find it hard to articulate how much joy and applause this entire event, the individuals and groups it has brought into participation, and the thinking it has inspired has brought me. I look at this sort of thing and it's one indicator that maybe we can start taking steps in the right direction if we've got our sights on something that helps people, including ourselves, to simply have a better life. I do agree with June that one of the primary goals for this sort of thing is that it becomes unnecessary - a, "Huh. Remember when..." topic where those who would have been involved in it can look at each other, as well as those uninvolved with the group, shake their heads and say, "What was all the fuss about?" A character - and a person's - sexuality should (ideally) form about as much basis of conflict for the establishment of their identity as what colour eyes they were born with. Looking forward very much for the spirit of Pride month to continue unabated throughout the year. And to all those who have submitted artwork on this thread: Keep it comin'. 😁

Citizen Razor, thank you for passing that along; I was unaware that there were any servers for CoH aside from this one. While I'm pretty darn content with what we've got on Homecoming, it's nice to know that there are "alternative universes" out there, each with their own point where elements shift in terms of value and effect on the world they're in. Regarding a total "old-school" CoH version...eh, I'm pretty much okay with what we've got here. End use is much more conservative and exhaustion much less common than it was previously? I'll deal with that, especially since it gives less "solo-friendly" Archetypes and builds the chance make it on their own without chopping mission-levels down. Contacts, and "stores" of all types now deal with all variety and origin-type of enhancements on an equal basis? Was kind of nice to have origin-exclusive shops for those in the 12-plus category, but the change is something I consider just a few steps removed from cosmetic. All contacts can now buy and sell salvage, recipes and enhancements? Again, a bit strange, but it doesn't detract from the game for me. SG bases now cost absolute zero to build, furnish and equip? Again, takes a little bit away from SG-loyalty and identification (the original Black Talon, on Virtue, was offered a spot in an SG the moment he finished the tutorial and made it to Atlas plaza; the SG rep informed me that the SG would pay for all enhances, always, as long as I played in SG mode. I agreed immediately and was a loyal, if bottom-of-the-totem-pole, member until the NCSoft shutdown), but it certainly takes away from the SG leaders putting pressure on the members to "Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls" in order to pay for that new teleporter or med-bay. I'll stick with Homecoming for the foreseeable future, and changes the Devs here want to make (if any), will be tolerated with a smile and a shrug until we've got a full accounting of the effects. Best, though, to all other CoH iterations and servers and the populations that choose those particular venues.

DrZeus, I very much appreciate the articulation of your comments. Some I'm nodding,"Yeah, yeah," at, others are "Eh - I get the point," others I would dispute somewhat, though not disagree with entirely. Like yourself, I was a CoH player from year one - August '04 - and saw a number of the changes go through that, in large part, I supported. One thing I do agree with you on is the trend toward abbreviation, though it could be explained, if not excused, largely on the basis of "We're dealing, in the vast majority, with players who did CoH for probably close to half a decade, if not more. If they don't understand the reference, they can request a translation." I don't know if the Homecoming team actually has their strategy set on bringing in new players; if so, a "common abbreviations guide" should be offered on this site for quick reference. Having travel powers available at single-digit levels isn't a major problem, from my viewpoint - although I have pushed myself to wait until at least 12 before getting the core abilities for such (I'd like to duplicate the pre-shutdown experience as much as reasonably possible). Like yourself, I do find the privilege of actually exploring Paragon City's characteristic-heavy zones to be of great value; gives some major appreciation for the time, thought and effort the Devs put into it Back In The Day, and makes it feel like an actual city rather than just Village X. Re the End reduction on powers in general: Well, although I see your argument, it's something that has allowed my Storm Summoner/Electric Blast Defender to get to 16 on his own - although there has been some major patience and tactical considerations involved in such - without loading up on End inspirations as opposed to the always-helpful Defs/Accs (yeah, getting exhausted after a solid minute or so of scrapping is a real-life consequence...but this ain't real life). Otherwise, personally I've felt that the game has maintained its essential beneficial qualities, and whatever's negative can be overcome, generally, with the proper assistance. Otherwise, DrZeus, all welcomes back to Paragon City, and hoping to run into you or one of your alts in the not-too-distant future. All best with the game.

Adding nothing of substance to the point here; just noting that, as many on this site have likely done, back in the days when Homecoming was naught but a dream, I too tried out DCUO after it went free-to-play. I never got any further than designing a character. I won't go into what aspects - and there were many - served as a turn-off for the game's premise, but one thing stood out above all: You had to pick Superman, Wonder Woman or Batman as a mentor. Like those individuals wouldn't have anything better to do with their days. The game-specific points that you've brought up here, UltraAlt, come across for me as little more than in-game colloquialisms, but overall it seems to indicate a game that seems more determined to rank itself as a game about a story than a game in itself. While I wish the DCUO players, Mods and Devs all the best in moving the game forward, what you've listed here points out, just as strongly as anything else I've heard or read, that I made the right decision in deciding to delete it from the hard-drive and just keep buying DC's comics. Thank you for having taken the time to indicate what's happening in another game's backyard, and give us yet more reasons to thank the entire Homecoming team for allowing us back into Paragon City.

I get the image of Hawkins and Billy from Predator doing this. Good second career choice for both of them.

Investing time, care and energy in building a character's bio is, I think, one of the hallmarks that determines this as an RPG and not just a first-person shooter game. Although the 1,023 character limit can restrict things a bit, it also enforces brevity and a get-to-the-point spirit. Every alt I've ever made has a defined story behind them; this allows me to actually start fricking caring about how they interact with their world, and, hopefully, empathizing with other players who have made their own alts just as much a personal item of concern. Black Talon - prime alt - has, from his own background, a particular viewpoint on different villain groups; e.g., as an absolute existentialist, he regards the Tsoo as pseudo-mystical wannabes who replace skill with ritual and can't win a scrap without overwhelming their opponents with sheer numbers. Does this change a damn thing about how the game works for him or any other alt? Not at all - but it means I can use that bio to write an internal story for him before, during and after the missions and keep it interesting, which is part of what keeps me coming back. Although the scope of CoH, at first creation in '04, disallowed the input of personal involvement with particular in-game groups and/or individuals - it could be argued this changed somewhat with the mission architect - I still find that the range of customization in both character appearance and, now, the expression of various powers, gives this game a particular it's-part-of-me aspect that I've found absent from every other MMPOG (which, admittedly, ain't many) I've ever had experience with.

Agreed absolutely. Further comments made by this source - if any - will stick entirely the OP's core topic.

My question: Why can't it be PURPLE? That way we get all the good stuff and don't have to worry about evil - they're always evil, because that's what they have to be - AIs taking control of the world and making us see black cats cross our paths twice. Although, I will say, the side benefit of getting to have Carrie-Anne Moss as our Trick Shot-style permanent sidekick certainly doesn't hurt matters. Actually, having that kind of makes it a case of, "Evil AIs controlling the world and the direction of our lives forever? Meh - could be worse." Lead the way to Zion, oh seductive black-haired, blue-eyed babe...

The Enhancement Diversification - and there's a study in Orwellian language use for you - nerfing had, at best - in my opinion - mixed results. Yeah, it did end up forcing some powers from a total-offense/defense stance into making things a bit less of a steamroller over the bad guys, but at the same time there were and are a number of powers where anything but offense/defense builds ends up becoming a, "Huh. Got all these enhancement slots in the respec that I can't use anymore - guess I'll throw them into powers that don't really need Endurance Reduction or Range enhances and do it anyway." The only power I'd recommend still putting the full six enhancement-stacking on is Hasten - once you get to the SO Recharge enhances, you won't have perma-Hasten, but it's pretty damn close. Back In The Day, I can't count how many times I blessed being able to run Hasten pretty much continually - it rendered any number of extremely long-term Recharge powers, and which already had the full three Recharge enhances stacked into them, into something that could actually be used more than once per mission. Obviously this sort of thing is going to vary considerably from archetype to archetype, and individual build to individual build, but my final word on it: Yeah, I agree fully with the majority opinion here. The vast majority of powers, for any notable game effect, max out at three enhances. I keep wondering if the Homecoming team will take it upon themselves to either reduce or eliminate ED's effects; so far there's no indications of such, but every day, pretty much, brings new surprises from this administration.

Greycat, my thanks. Whatever the behind-the-curtains in-story story of the 5th Column/Council split, it's really nothing more than, at best, a matter of passing interest for me. My friends and relatives and I - Back In The Day - would discuss how the Devs' possible rationale for switching things around was political correctness; I'd argue that, although, yes, the 5th Column does use a number of Germanic titles and military references, this is nothing more than a hold-over from their wanna-be-improved-Nazis image; the group was, is, and always will be indentifiably American, and clearly white-supremacist on top of that. I don't recall seeing a single African American, Asian American, Indigenous or any other non-Western Caucasian group represented in their membership in the eight-plus years I was playing the game. Again, I felt the 5th Column were pretty much a perfect in-game villain group; absolutely despicable, laughable in their over-the-top Nazi-inspired supremacist tactics, and so up-front in their approach that they couldn't help but be self-declared bad guys. Your point about "the 5th going underground and waiting to emerge again", strikes me as a bit out of character for them - there's no way they could hold themselves back from declaring publicly, "We shall conquer all!" unless they'd been reduced to a point where toilet paper spitballs shot out of a straw was about the best weaponry they could put their hands on. Something the Devs at the time grabbed on to as an, "Eh, good enough," explanation as to how things turned out the way they did, I would suppose. In any event, I realize that this is essentially a discussion in a vacuum; there's absolutely nothing I can do, as a player, to influence in-game events aside from passing an argument's thesis on to the Homecoming team. Otherwise, I'm just darned happy being able to put My Boys up against fictional individuals that we're never going to be sitting down with, a table between us, and discuss how we might reach a negotiated truce. The 5th Column has their make-believe hearts set on the conviction that sheer strength and conflict determines who rules the world - fine, I'll be more than happy to be one of those that proves that they're never getting anything worse than a nosebleed from us as we slam their butts into a prison cell. Don't bend over for the soap, guys...

I'd be tempted to state Hover, just because, it's, well, you know, Hover, but I'll leave my reasoning for that for some other time. Meanwhile, I'm going to have to give my double-thumbs up to: Lighting Storm! This power hits the absolute maximum in terms of drama - and it's not just an instantaneous effect, it's a marathon - and when it's activated, you jack the volume up and it sounds like the WORLD is coming to an end. Great time for the Storm Summoning Defender to Hover (see? I told you it's got its pluses) with arms upraised and summon the Wrath of God (Thunderclap, Freezing Rain, whatall) on those who have turned their faces from the path of social responsibility and do the "Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, hey-hey-hey, goodbye," to the villains as they're disintegrated by three single-origin damage bonus enhancement lightning strikes, and the Storm Summoner's buddies clean up the mess (the villains are begging to die painlessly by the end). Can't wait till my boy hits 32 and can pull this one up...sure, he won't be able to use it any major effect for a while, but it's still nice to put on a show with.

Much appreciated, self-teaching lover of learning...uh, Autodidactic Philomath, sorry (the spell-check here doesn't even recognize those words - oh, the limits of digital lexicons...). I get the point about, "Bring the fricking 5th Column back, screwheads!" completely; I believe I voiced an opinion about it or two on the old CoH public forums Back In The Day. Irrespective of the internal story behind the Council/5th Column conflict, from my standpoint, it's pretty much a big "yeah, whatever"; I'm just happy to have a bunch of total sociopathic jerks who aren't afraid to make clear advertisement of their ridiculous viewpoints and, just as delightful, are perfectly happy to have their butts kicked in a person-to-person (although the Vampyrs hardly qualify as such) stand-off to prove how tough they are. Very hopefully get a chance to go back into one of those (as the first comics series confirmed) pre-fabricated bases and scrap ever-increasing levels of imitation supermen, leading up to a chance to show these wanna-be overlords that they can't so much as do the on-the-soapbox thing on the street corner without being hounded out of town on a rail. Thank you again for the information.

Glacier Peak, thank you for the link; it certainly provides some indications as to when this started to occur - the question remaining, in my opinion, anyway, is why? The 5th Column had a clear and absolutely inhuman set of goals that have been exemplified by any number of human war-criminals, individual and cultural alike, over the centuries; the Nazis just happen to be the most modern, successful (at the cost of how many human lives, we may never have an accurate count), and relentlessly self-promoting. I took a course on the origins, philosophy (if you want to call it such), and history of the Nazis in my last year at university, and one thing that struck me was how the upper echelons of the Third Reich was overpopulated with failed artists. I felt that this aspect carried through to the 5th Column as well; the relentless branding of their image on stone, paper, people...it was an ever-present advertising assault, along with whatever militaristic moves they took, and this again was something the real-life Nazis pushed for endlessly. The reason I'm going into this is because the "Council" seemed, to me, to be simply a generic bad-guy group with no real set of identifying concepts, aside from "We're going to take over the world. Why? 'Cuz." If Homecoming has indeed brought back this association of monstrous pseudo-beliefs, I'll be as happy as anyone else to throw the gloves aside and say, "Time to clean house and knock down a few columns." Although some insight into not just when it happened but why would be kind of nice as well.

I did a search to see if someone had introduced this topic at some point; there didn't seem to be any relevant posts on the subject. On the afternoon of Friday, July 2, I had Black Talon zipping around Steel Canyon, looking for appropriate-level Clockwork to take out in order to fulfill a "Go. Hunt. Kill Clockwork," mission. And I happened across some guys standing on the street in a group of about three/four, looking rather Nazi-ish. I stopped for a moment - Black Talon has Super Speed, so he can get within reasonable viewing distance without attracting attention - anticipating that these guys were going to be the Council or somesuch, and I saw the name below the NPC rank titles: 5th Column. I blinked a couple times, trying to make sure my eyes weren't tricking me, but it was truth. Now, I didn't have my guy attempt to take them down - a) too great a level-gap on their side, and b) too many. But I was considering, afterward, how current management may have taken matters into their own hands and decided to resurrect a group that, I felt, exemplified some of the most heinous and reprehensible conduct and attitudes in recorded human history. In other words, damn good villains for anyone to take the fist to. Has anyone else noticed this occurring? Has the 5th Column - and I know that Manticore's origin is specifically tied to them; I was kind of surprised that it hadn't been ret-conned, and a couple of my alts back in the day were the result of this group's depravity as well, which I was thinking might not have relevance anymore - been put back into action as a major villain group that we can scrap on the streets, in missions and in Task-Forces (where we'll get to take on their AVs) as well? If so, what instigated these changes? Whoever did so gets major thumbs-up and calls of approval from me, but the question remains as to why, and over what time period, these alterations were made. No matter what, good to see genuine sons-of-bitches back in action. Have at you.

agentx5, thank you for being incredibly straight-forward and clear on these points; I could not agree more. Frankly, I can't provide any personal evidence or examples to back up your points regarding the extremely hostile nature inherent to other MMPOGs - I can only state that, having heard of that sort of thing being the norm for person-to-person (or, more likely, group-to-person) conduct in a whole slew of other games, this is one reason why CoX is the only MMPOG I've ever played, and probably the only one I ever will. All condolences on your Champions Online experience, although, again, I've heard of so many of these games being turned into micro-transaction fill-the-bank-vault experiences. Wonderful to learn about your comradeship with the population here - and as stated previously, I honestly feel that it's part of the nature of the game itself that inspires people to conduct themselves this way - and hoping to get the chance to run into you on Torchbearer someday. All best.

DoctorDitko, you're not kidding. Having watched the various "legacy" and "successor" projects go through their turns over the last near-eight years, I was really left unsurprised that things were moving at incrementally slower and slower paces for pretty much all involved. The reason, I believe, is not lack of interest or care in what they're doing; it's because everything is on a volunteer basis, and as a consequence people are, as things go on, going to get more and more of their time demanded by work, family, outside previous commitments, unforeseen emergencies, whatall. People volunteering to pick up for someone who had to leave are going to have to catch up with what was already done, deal with possible (in fact likely) late situations on issues x, y and z, and negotiate with the fact that they're trying to fit in with a crew who had already established a dynamic and might not be happy about the New Arrival possibly making their own suggestions and/or demands. Those who successfully resurrected this game already have the infrastructure in place to get things started up and, as last Saturday proved so aptly, have got support coming out the yin-yang to keep matters going. I clapped and did the "Yay!" thing when I finally got the launcher activated and My Boy put in front of Officer Flint, ready to do that tutorial. The original Devs totally outdid themselves with character creation, establishing a totally immersive world and making it something we actually care about. All congratulations and praise on to the current operators, administrators and moderators, who've done everything to allow me, and others, to continue to go "Yay!" and give the thumbs-up when we decide to scrap Lord Recluse (again). And do the, "I - I just got something in my eye..." bit when hearing that Atlas Park music for the nth time...because it was something we had every reason and expectation to believe we were never going to hear in-game again.

I can only back up what countless other people have already stated, and better. My boys have run into some serious difficulties in the early stages of their careers, and the willingness of random population to say, "Sure, I'll lend a hand with that," has given me no end of joy and respect for the human condition. Perhaps it's part of the game itself that provides inspiration for people to conduct themselves as the heroes they've taken the identity of; where the accumulation of xp and/or enhancements, influence, salvage or recipes is simply a sideline to getting to be, if in virtual form only and for a little while, the person they've always wanted to be. Makes me think of the end of Kick-Ass 2, where, despite Justice Forever having been disbanded, that doesn't stop any of the members from continuing their lives as heroes. And every act of charity/good will I witness in this game provides that much more inspiration to return it in Paragon City's world - which I've been able to do, every once in a while.

This is the kind of stuff I find enormously engaging to read, yet at the same time find somewhat frustrating - I keep thinking, Shouldn't we, as players and factors in Paragon City's evolution - and the elements therein - have a chance to influence the outcome with such in-process or impending events? I understand that, as an MMPOG, what applies for one character/group cannot apply for all, obviously, but still, I'd like to have the opportunity for a story-arc (Task-Force or the like) to be established that permits some kind of "We did it!" outcome, not terribly different from the excellent Striga Isle Task-Force. Perhaps something like that is already in the works (Piecemeal's rather cryptic posts seem to hint at such), and this once again indicates the enormous love the community has for this game, and the world it has engendered, and makes it worth every penny we put forward on a monthly basis to keep things running. Hoping to see more dispatches soon.