Lunar Ronin

I've been leading a Praetorian completionist static team on the Indomitable shard. We all did the Precinct 5 tutorial, and all chose Resistance/Calvin Scott. We did every single story arc in Nova Praetoria, Imperial City, and Neutropolis. My character dinged level 20 running Message Man repeatable missions in Neutropolis before getting set to head to First Ward with the rest of the static team. After training from level 19 to level 20, I got a message that I was introduced to Steven Sheridan. Great, as expected. However, I looked at my contacts list, and I found that both Steven Sheridan and Provost Marchand were active contacts. As mentioned above, I had already done all of the Loyalist story arcs, so out of curiosity, I called Provost Marchand. He offered me the The Rift Enclosure mission, even though my character is Resistance. Strange. I didn't accept the mission, and called Steven Sheridan. He too offered me the The Rift Enclosure mission. I did a Message Man repeatable mission, and dinged level 21. Now, I have both Steven Sheridan and Provost Marchand as active contacts, and both are showing that I'm locked into a story arc. Provost Marchand is still offering me the The Rift Enclosure mission. This definitely seems like a bug. I imagine (although am not sure), that the locked story arc for Provost Marchand will go away once my character does cross over to Primal Earth, but that won't be until we finish both Wards. If the Beta Center were up, I'd be tempted to copy the character to Brainstorm and see if I can do The Loyalist version of The Rift Enclosure as a Resistance character. Alas.

I stumbled across a link on a very old City of Heroes website that is still online but hasn't been updated in over fifteen years to something called the City of Heroes Writer's Guild. The domain name is now property of spammers, so I wouldn't advise going there directly. My antivirus lit up like a Christmas tree when I did. However, out of curiosity, I found an archive on the Wayback Machine. There's dozens of City of Heroes screenshots and artwork, and several hundred fan fiction short stories. You can find the screenshots and artwork here and the fan fiction short stories here. I don't recall the website from my time on live, and having just stumbled upon it I thought that I'd share so these stories and art aren't lost to the sands of time.

Where do I begin... Some of this will be very spoilery. Noble Savage wasn't initially a Resistance member. He was a cop. A cop that elected to undergo an experiment to make a super-cop, but it went wrong. Neuron threw him away in the underground, like garbage. You later find him as Noble Savage, and only after you get involved do you set him up with the Resistance. Also, if you're an undercover Loyalist, you get the option to make Noble Savage an undercover Resistance member, secretly working for the Loyalists. Not all Ghouls were Resistance members. Some were, no doubt, but not all and I doubt not even most. Some were just abducted homeless. In the Hatchet story arc, you optionally discover that the Alpha ghoul you tame was originally also a cop, not Resistance. As referenced above, Neuron is a monster. He performs scientific experiments on people (many against their will), and then throws them away in the underground like the Ghouls and Noble Savage if they don't go as planned without any care in the world. Praetor Tilman/Mother Mammaries/Mother Mayhem is also a monster. You discover later that Seers are psychic women, abducted against their will as teenagers, and stripped of their personalities. Part of their souls are literally thrown away like garbage. Mother Mayhem also slowly kills them by slowly feeding off of their psychic energies, which is why you don't see any middle-aged or older Seers running around. On top of that, Mother is also highly mentally unstable. Praetor Duncan is a narcissistic, sociopathic whackjob who keeps a loyal army hooked on Fixadine. Some Resistance are also whackjobs that are more than willing to blow up innocents, yes. Those are the Crusaders, but there is also a faction called Wardens that want to overthrow Emperor Cole with as little innocent bloodshed as possible. I won't even get into the events of the Magisterium Trial and the Issue 24 Praetorian story arcs like Number Six's. Praetor White is ultimately selfish and out for power, but he's sane and can be worked with. Anti-Matter is also sane and can be worked with, he actually seems like the most decent of them all. Praetor Sinclair and Emperor Cole are both control freaks and are somewhere between the others.

Yes. Ghost Falcon posted on the old blue boards in September 2012 (after NCSoft shuttered Paragon Studios), that the idea was deemed unworkable for a multitude of reasons, but didn't go into what they were.

There were ads for the Nike Air Jordan Jeter sneakers, the Nokia N-Gage, and the Babylon A.D. film with Vin Diesel. Ultimately, the in-game advertisements were deemed a failure and NCSoft stopped it after a few months.

Raph Koster, lead developer of Ultima Online, Star Wars: Galaxies, and the upcoming Stars Reach MMORPGs, gave a hour long presentation recently on the evolution of online video gaming. It's quite interesting, IMO.

Welcome to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles! 1. Very, although some archetypes/classes are more suitable for soloing than others. The most solo-friendly archetypes/classes are Brute, Mastermind, Scrapper, Sentinel, Stalker, and Tanker. Others are still soloable, just less so. No raid is necessary. 2. No. You can't change archetype/class, character origin, and primary and secondary power sets, but every ten levels you get a free respec so you can change every thing else. If you need additional respecs, you can buy them with in-game money. 2.5. There are meta builds, yes, but they only matter in advanced mode task/strike forces, which are only regularly ran by particular groups and are a niche activity. Otherwise, you can pretty much play what you'd like. 3. Type /altinvite character. No, there are no advantages to supergroups other than bases. 4. Hero side is pretty easy as it came first. Villain side is a little bit more difficult, but not significantly so. Gold side is a bit more difficult and is only recommended for people with some experience under their belt. Over all, leveling content is actually more difficult than your average modern MMOG, but endgame content is significantly easier than the average modern MMOG. There are raids, but they're optional, and most of them are pretty easy any more. You only get penalized for not try-harding on advanced mode task forces/strike forces, and that's a social penalty, not game mechanics.

That, and I've been seeing others tell people over the past year or so that if they don't want to min-max and speed run, they should leave Excelsior for Everlasting "because RPers don't mind playing with others that aren't min-maxed."

Half true, half not. After the final Rikti pylon is destroyed, you have ten minutes on the clock before the mothership raid ends. Planting the first bomb will extend the timer three minutes for a total of thirteen. If you have fewer than 25 people on a mothership raid league, planting the second bomb spawns U'Kon Gr'ai and adds an additional ten minutes onto the clock for a total of 23 minutes. If there are 25 or more people on a mothership raid league, planting a second bomb adds an additional three minutes for a total of sixteen minutes. If you have 25 or more people on a mothership raid league, planting a third bomb spawns U'Kon Gr'ai and adds an additional ten minutes onto the clock for a total of 26 minutes. Defeating U'Kon Grai adds an additional five minutes onto the clock for a total of either 28 minutes if you have fewer than 25 people on the mothership raid league, or a total of 31 minutes if you have 25 or more people on the mothership raid league.

Gravity Controller or Dominator with a large supply of Ultimate inspirations solves that problem. Just keep Wormholing Rikti from the ramps into the middle of the bowl.

It seems that I doomed the Xbox by buying a Series X console. Sorry about that. From a well known and accurate Xbox leaker, and confirmed by a second well known and accurate Xbox leaker: TL;DR: Microsoft has scrapped plans for a tenth generation Xbox video game console, and is ramping down production of Series S and Series X game consoles. They plan to transition entirely into a cloud based environment, like the Google Stadia of old.

Meanwhile, I managed to procure myself a Xbox Series X console last night, just before its price went up. Woo!

Good point. Wap them with the rolled up newspaper, and then spray them with water. That order is important. Don't want to get the newspaper all wet.

It is amazing how much misinformation about the game still spreads, all these years later. Bionic Flea is correct. And if someone tells you to turn off your stealth aura so the mobs can see you, wap them across the back of the head with a rolled up newspaper, and continue on rocking that stealth aura.

Personal opinion: I'd advise leveling normally and skipping the XP boosters for the first couple of characters, just so you get more exposure to the game and learn it. Unlike post-World of Warcraft MMOGs, City of Heroes is not an "endgame"-oriented MMOG thankfully. It's about the journey. Once you have a couple of characters under your belt and are more familiar with the game, then by all means use the XP boosters. Of course, the ultimate decision is yours, but that's my two cents.