Knightward

As to why it's not Recluse, a lot of the art late in the game was promoting the whole Praetorian Invasion story. The Clockwork is basically a stand-in for Tyrant, what with being States from another dimension, since he doesn't personally cross over to fight.

I remember the old sidekicking system and dying whenever my mentor superspeeded too far ahead. I remember the old noteriety system where you couldn't fine tune it as you can now. The old Hollows, full stop. The Taxibots were saints among players.

Haven't dealt with the forums too much, but I will absolutely jump on the distinction between "I'm a vet therefor I'm automatically right" vs "I'm a vet and I have more data to work with" bandwagon. As far as vets actually in game goes, there's something to be said for what is at least half-remembered about the things that make CoH distinct. For instance, recognizing how the game dances around/laughs at the MMO holy trinity of Tank/DPS/Heals.

Patrol XP that is either lost from debt when you faceplant or negates the debt you already have when you log off, also counts towards debt badges.

That's odd, I'd spoken to those contacts on my hero, went back like 10 levels later and actually did their story arcs, which I drastically outleveled. I think they went from being TFs to just regular story arcs, but that doesn't explain why you can't start them.

I might have used it to pull once or twice on my scrapper when there were no blasters or defenders around.

Ok, after doing an Ouro arc that had my character down to 19, I finally got the Headstrong badge (15-19 debuff). So yeah, this is further confirmation on Eva Destruction's and europa's observations in that it's how the arcs are sorted. How Veracor got those badges I have no idea.

Maybe they sell multiple versions? So far I've just gone for the prestige powers from those vendors rather than, say, the formerly crafted temp powers. I don't see any charges for it on my main, but it does have the ridiculously long recharge time that I remember.

I wasn't awarded the 15-19 personal debuff badge when running a Praetorian arc last night. Will need to try it again with a different story arc in that range to see if it's just Praetorian wonkiness. EDIT: Just did 1 of the 15-19 arcs that had me at level 15, no debuff badge. Will try another that has me at level 19.

You can buy both at the P2W vendors. They aren't cheap, so you need a high level character to buy it/email inf to your alt to buy it. After getting the Pocket D one I noticed you can also get it by getting the Pocket D VIP Gold Club badge, which you now get by hanging out in there for an hour.

Has anyone since figured this out? Still trying to find it!

It might be odd of me to say, but all the back and forth about DFB makes me nostalgic. I wondered if Homecoming could truly feel like the CoH of old, but it's clear now that it does. DOOOOOOOOOOOM has returned.

Yeah, it's the bosses that aren't mages. If memory serves, they show up more frequently redside than blue.

First off I want to jump in on the chorus of "THANK YOU"s! As for powerleveling via whatever means... by and large I'm ok with it, even though I have no interest in doing it myself. The only way it could conceivably annoy me is if I'm on a TF with teammates that don't know what they're doing and as a result make it unbearably long or difficult (which is why I'm not interested in it, by the time my character is high level I want to know what I'm doing playing them). I haven't run into that, so that concern could be totally unfounded. Plus it could happen with people that haven't powerleveled. However, I absolutely get new people getting turned off by the constant DFB/AE farms/whatever-the-next-quick-trick-is requests. Not knowing the slightest bit of programming, would it be possible to set up a chat channel specifically for powerleveling? That way new players won't necessarily hear it 24/7, but it's still clearly there for anyone interested.

You can access old Praetorian arcs through Ouroboros now, so you can earn all the Praetoria-specific badges now regardless of your starting point. As for the achievements, I think they had different names for Praetorian characters, but it's the exact same badge just with a name (and maybe graphic?) change. Like how a number of badges get renamed when switching alignments between hero and villain.

You can even Oro them if your character didn't start in Praetoria!

I've been recreating old characters. I might change the powers for some purely on account of what was available when I made them. Honestly I've been so happy to play CoH again I haven't even considered where I was then vs now, I just want my mains to be where they were when I left off and pick up from there. I saved the builds for a few, the costumes for many, and what I didn't I have screenshots for. All the conceptually interesting characters and the ridiculously silly ones. At some point I'll make genuinely new characters, but right now I'm riding the nostalgia high for all its worth.

Even though I'm terrible at remembering names, there's a few here I recognize! Good to see a few people from the Defenders of Paragon here, what with being in that SG for more years than I can remember. Virtue for life, never did the official forums much. Knightward was my main hero and Owain Venomdrinker my main villain. @Knightward back then and @Knightward now.... once the download finishes. The friend of mine that tipped me off to this is on Torchbearer, so that's where I'll be.