Gulbasaur

I played a storm/water defender and thoroughly enjoyed it. Because of Lightning Storm and, to a lesser extent, Tornado, I will say it's worth going absolutely bananas on recharge with the Storm primary and I say that as someone who usually avoids doing so. Yes, it hammers your endurance, but you can recharge it pretty quickly as well with procs and one of the tertiary powders has a nice endurance recharge power. You're in a constant state of "if I ever stop, I'll die" because you need to push hard on the control but there's something beautiful about getting three lightning clouds out at once and just holding an area hostage. I don't use a single KB>KD IO, which will suprise nobody.

I say "Chilled out missions teams running in X at level Y, anyone welcome" or similar. People like specifics, so giving a location helps get people in because it makes the group feel organised. The words "chilled out" in an LFG description is my cheat code for nicer groups.

*shakes head* Peacebringer nonsense. Glowy eyes glow. I made about a million billion of these while in a zoom meeting and those four were about the only really good ones. It was fun twiddling about with key words, though.

Okay, I gave in. It was unexpectedly difficult to not make Bing generate images I'd describe as a bit slutty. Lots of mankini stuff going on, and it really didn't want to take inspiration from Sunstorm and Moonfire's costumes. Also, it really wanted him to have pierced ears.

It was mentioned at some point by someone on the HC team a while ago that HC are deliberately avoiding doing things that have been released on other servers and preferring to make their own content and powers. It would attract claims of copying, even if it did originate in some form pre-shutdown (Wind Control, Primalist archetype), but also it helps differentiate the servers so they each have their own unique content.

Hasten is a fairly easy slot-in so I can see the appeal. I have to admit that I almost never take it on principle; it's too powerful as a power and I'll always pick interesting over blunt force upgrades. There's also the endurance issue - I've cut it as fine as I can get it without being an endurance hog and Hasten passively makes you burn through more endurance. I do use it on some characters (my storm/water defender is an experiment in how much I can abuse recharge buffs), but it's too much of a dirty choice for my fort.

It's enough for general gameplay. As long as you don't run up to mobs, you should be absolutely fine.

Oh, absolutely. Goodwill towards your fellow players is pretty much what makes or breaks an MMO. The fact that their behaviour is notable speaks quite positively overall for the City Of Heroes/Villains community.

As someone who stopped playing originally in like issue 7, I came onto Homehoming with literally no idea about Invention Origin enhancements, Ouroboros, VEATs, or *gestures vaguely at everything*. I didn't know what I didn't know. That said, I tried not to be weird about it. I did not try to be sober about it.

Honestly? Most of them. I'd definitely run through the First Ward and Night Ward arcs if you haven't already; I really think they're about as good as it gets for storytelling in the game, outside of Dark Astoria (which is also quite good).

I take Provoke because I enjoy tanking and teleport target because it's handy for groups. If you don't want them, pick something you do want. Everyone plays differently.

I usually just stack up the damage ones, to be honest. Musculature etc. Really pick what you think looks good.

Nothing against either. Talos has some cool arcs, particularly. Definitely worth spending time in both places. This is a completely insane thing to say as it shows just how unemployed I was in 2020-2021, but Skyway's roads don't link up in any sensible way and I've never forgiven the zone for that. I think one loops back without joining onto any other roads. I tried to walk from one end of the city to another on only roads and Skyway was such a mess it didn't work.

Don't be silly. They're clearly talking about Dance Dance Revolution.

Sorry, I thought I'd replied to this a few days ago. It's unlikely now. My life is just much busier than it used to be! Redlynne's guide is pretty comprehensive, though.

I am going to ask outright because I think some people would like to know: does the licence agreement require, or indeed permit, HC to defend or protect the licence, for example by requesting other extant servers not affiliated with them to cease and desist operation? While I think it's a good thing that you have successfully protected Homecoming, it would be a great shame to see other smaller servers suffer as a consequence.

That was basically endgame in the very early issues. That and endlessly farming the warwolf map.

In the study of linguistics, the word pidgin has a very specific meaning. I get that the general definition is a bit looser (and that's fine), but we're discussing academic linguistic theories here so it makes sense to use the academic definition. It's more to do with social status than advancement and is quite tightly linked to colonialism and enslavement because of the the nature of how languages interact. With a true pidgin, multiple substrate (low status) languages come into interaction with one superstrate (high status) language. They tend to have very unstable grammar and vocabulary. With Old English and Old Norse, there doesn't seem to have been that kind of social stratification and there's no clear substrate-superstrate system. A language that formed from their contact would be a contact language, rather than a pidgin (or creole, which is a pidgin where the grammar has become systematic, typically around the time that the first generation of children start to speak). So, you could argue that it was a contact language but it meets almost none of the conditions to be considered either a pidgin or a creole, but they're different things by definition. It's a fairly outdated theory that has disproportionately high representation on Wikipedia, which is a problem with Wikipedia generally (although it's otherwise very good for linguistics). In the case of late Old English, the elision of endings (which often contained case and gender information) was likely to do with contact between English dialects, rather than English and Norse. The timeline doesn't add up, the geography doesn't add up (attested changes in areas with no or minimal Old Norse linguistic influence) and the cultural interactions don't meet the criteria to fall under the definition of a pidgin. It might be more accurate to say that grammar changes in English may have been accelerated in some parts of England due to contact with Old Norse speakers, but that's not the same it being a pidgin or creole. There is some more acceptance of it as a "semi-creole", but that's not really an agreed upon idea. There was likely a language continuum going on, but that doesn't mean it was a pidgin or creole (or semi-creole). The Talk page of the Middle English Creole Hypothesis is very interesting and highlights a lot of the issues of the theory.

This theory, sadly, doesn't hold much weight. Partly because pidgin means something *extremely* specific in academic linguistics that Old English and Old Norse contact doesn't even remotely fit the criticia for and partly because the timescale just doesn't match up. The loss of case and gender happened a bit later. People in medieval England moved around a lot for a medieval European society and while dialects coming into contact with one another almost certainly caused the elision, it's not as simple as an Old English and Norse pidgin and, as I said, the timeline doesn't match up with the criteria for a pidgin. It's slightly complicated by the fact that Old Norse speakers left almost no written material in England, but that's more a piece of trivia than anything else. Like I can see why they arrived at that conclusion and if you take the loosest possible definition of *pidgin* then yeah kinda I guess, but it's a fairly niche theory that isn't enormously supported by textual evidence. Tldr: only if you're very loose with your definitions but it's not enormously supported as a theory in its "pure" state

Occasional German speaker with a degree in linguistics and another degree which involved the use of Old English* here - it's arguably the other way round. English used to have grammar that's very, very similar to modern German. German didn't really develop them; English lost them. Or both. It's probably a bit of both because nothing in life, love or linguistics is ever simple. English has a couple of linguistic oddities to it that are easy to overlook if you're a native speaker of the language, particularly when compared with closely related languages. One of them is that it has unusually strict syntax (word order, more or less) for a Germanic language. Another is that is it one of only a handful of languages in its language family to have almost totally lost linguistic gender. The very closely related Scots doesn't have gender, but Frisian (English's next nearest neighbour) does. English and Scots are genderless oddities surrounded by either two- or three-gender systems. Celtic, Romance and most Germanic languages all have gendered nouns. With German specifically, learning which word endings map to which genders helps enormously to the point where it starts to feel natural. That also helps with German plurals which feel quite unpredictable until you realise that it's almost entirely linked to whatever the last syllable is and what gender it is. After that, it's just vibes. * that's one hell of a noun phrase

I remember during the first valentine's day event event when villains and heroes could crossover for the first time, and a villain whispering me on my peacebringer asking how I did that after I transformed.

Kevin Conroy, hands down. Played the character the longest. Brought Batman into the modern era. Portrayed Bruce Wayne in animated media, games and (once) in person. There's a reason that, for a lot of people here (I'm sure), his voice is the voice of Batman. Cinema, games, TV, all of it. He was outstanding. I loved his portrayal. He more or less originated having two distinct voices for Bruce Wayen and Batman. Bales' Batman was cinematic but shows the worst elements of Batman as a flat character. No Batfamily (other than Alfred) and no real human connection other than his disposable girlfriend. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the films, I just think that Bales' perfomance was a bit charmless. So yeah, Conroy's Batman is and, I imagine, always will be the Batman for me.

I'm going to agree with Tidge (as I frequently do, we seem to have very similar favourite playstyles)... while I really wanted it to be good, it just ain't. Part of the reason (in addition to what Tidge says) is that the proc rate of the IO and the proc rate of World of Confusion are actually out of sync, so not every application of WoC actually even has a chance to proc the IO effect (unless this has been changed).

(In fun. Anything that brings us closer to Arachnos ideals is welcome.)

One design thing that floats around in the back of my head is how empty a lot of the early blueside is. It's content for the sake of content. Maps for the sake of maps. So much of it is just there. Atlas Park got a refresh. Galaxy City got destroyed. The Hollows got a revamp. Perez Park has nice worldbuilding but bugger all to do there other than some occasional missions. Ditto Crey's Folly - there's a flippin' shanty town out there with ties to the lore and all you really do is fly over it. Eden is full of very cool design, but apart from the Eden Trial, there really is no reason to visit. The Hive had the Hamidon Raid, and that's about it. Dark Astoria got a very large revamp and so did Faultline. There's just so much that was put out at launch with so little to do there. The post-launch zones of Striga and Croatoa aren't perfect, but they were very solid content releases each with 4 story arcs and a task force relating to the lore of the zone, as well as an additional one in Striga linking to the Kheldian storyline. OH! That's not even counting the Shadow Shard, which have some cool lore but the task forces are the epitome of time-filling exercises. In the early days, you could expect to stretch each one of them over two or three play sessions. Part of me recognises that gameplay norms have changed; the grind has fallen out of fashion in gaming and street-sweeping isn't as popular as it was. The Rogue Isles just feel tighter. Each zone kind of has its own identity. Each zone (more or less) has its own story, although some did get revamps. The Task Forces feel more unique. The landscape feels more unique. The maps kind of follow the Peregrine Island model where there are street-sweeping areas, but not zones. I didn't love City of Villains when it came out, but in hindsight I do see a bump in quality. Part of me has always wanted to write a kind of travellogue guide to the zones. I'm never going to get round to it and I'm not sure how interesting it would be