Bubbawheat

Name suggestions:

Deviant Heroes (in honor of Deviant Art)
Gallery 606
Heroshop (photoshop)

was hoping to come up with a few more, but nothing's coming to me this morning. The first one's my favorite.

Today I ready myself to deal with some Malta in:

Judge, Jury, and Crimson #352363 by @Papa Slade

My contact today is Crimson, although I've personally never ran any of his arcs, I've heard a bit about him and I believe he is known for sending you to some Malta. Today his task is for me to retrieve Technician Naylor who has been working on some portal technology. Even though he is working with Arachnos, he is still just a civilian scientist, right?

So I deliver Naylor to Crimson for "questioning" so I've got some time on my hands, so what better task for Crimson to send me on but to a Malta base for some explosives. Yep, that's about it, just a reason to fight some Malta and snag some explosives. Not sure why he couldn't just pick them up from someplace less annoyingly difficult for many ATs, but there you go.

Now with one scientist in our possession to get some information about Arachnos, we need to eliminate others who have access to the portal research, including the likes of Dr. Creed, Dr. Aeon, Vernon Von Grun, all 'led' by Operative Grillo. Arbiter Sands is also hanging around, but he's not on the list so we can leave him alone if we want to. Not that we wanted to though. The reason why all these scientists are together is that there was a party being held, for some reason. Though besides one lonely party girl at the entrance, and some dancing Arachnos around Sands, it didn't seem like much of a party. I guess that's what you get when you invite a bunch of mad scientists. (though Creed was tricked into wearing a toga - a convenient cover-up for the fact that Creed isn't in the MA)


(Apologies, I was pretty tired when running this arc and have lost a lot more details than usual. Will run it again soon and revise my review.) For the last mission it's time to take out a couple of Paragon City's portal corps technicians, as well as some of the portal corp technology in order to prevent an upcoming disaster - I think. Every part of the explanation was left to the final mission, which I couldn't get to the second time around because Von Grun didn't spawn (annoying bug)

The Arc as an Arc: Crimson's dialog was rather precise and specific. I'm not sure if this is an attempt at recreating Crimson's in-game personality or not so I can't really comment much on that part. The missions were fairly basic, but that's not a bad thing. They also had a good deal of minor flavor dialog which was a helpful touch. I'm not quite sure if Crimson's logic is sound though.

Evil for the Greater Good: This arc has you doing a lot of not just morally ambiguous acts, but just plain bad things. So the evil part is pretty well covered. The greater good wasn't quite as clear the first playthrough, but I will be checking back in on it tomorrow most likely when I'm more awake.

I did enjoy it even with the Malta. Good luck in the... wait, um... good luck on your arc in general!

I've only done a couple transfers. I moved a couple of my little played villains on Liberty to Virtue to start a VG for the Screenshots and Fan Creations forum. I moved my level 50 Mastermind where I misspelled Sentinel as Sentinal and didn't realize it until she was 50, so haven't played her much since, but now she's Scarlet Deviant (in honor of Deviant Art), and I also moved my lowbie Soldier because I think I'll give her more playtime if I can get some easy teams.

Heading on now for anyone that needs an invite, and heading into Forum 606 to see if anyone's there.

edit: have to go for a bit, will be back again a bit later to hopefully shoot out some more invites. (p.s. everyone else can invite too, so will be easier once we get going)

Nice, that turned out great!

Created <Gallery of Rogues> on Virtue villainside. /tell me if you want an invite.

As anyone who's seen my Burnt Matchstick thread knows I'm on practically all the servers, though I have most heroes on Pinnacle and most villains on Liberty. I've been considering finding a narrower range for a home (I also have a couple favorites on Guardian, Triumph, Victory... hey wait a second! I've got a villain that I misspelled and didn't realize until she was 50 and since I found that out, haven't had the urge to play her as much. Now I can transfer her *and* change her name to something that's spelled correctly! Whoo!)

I may transfer someone else to Virtue, though I think I still like Pinnacle and Liberty lots too.

edit: by the way, what global channel does everyone use for Virtue? I found VU2009, but not sure if there's something else people use.

Just a note since I've started getting some requests: I do plan on getting to as many of the Aeon Challenge arcs as I can find, but if you would like me to review yours sooner, send me a PM. I'll try and keep the original post current with my request queue, which is:

Judge, Jury and Crimson" ID #352363 by Papa Slade
The Greater Good - 350877 by ArrowRose
Evil By Inches: # 349967 by Oubliette

Also, this doesn't have to be just my review thread, if anyone else wanted to contribute.

Congratulations, One million eyes was one of my favorites from the Player's Choice awards, and I absolutely look forward to playing it for my own in my thread.

I'm not sure why, but this one really stands out to me. They're all pretty awesome too though.

That sounds like classifications for characters, not arcs. Not every arc is an origin story, in fact most are not. Also, very hard to read without proper line breaks.

The goal is to reward authors who aren't as prolific or well known as some of the favorite authors here. I think total plays across all arcs might be a good measure of popularity, but what's a good magic number?

And the reviews keep flowing, I'm definitely enjoying this. Was going to run PapaSlade's arc, but alt+tabbing wasn't working for me tonight for some reason, but it will be next. Instead, I returned to a favorite author of mine to run PoliceWoman's:

The Destroyer of Worlds #352820 by @PW

This arc is set near the end of World War 2, where superheroes are referred to as "Mystery Men" and the 5th Column is very active. My contact is a general sending me to retrieve objects from a captured submarine. Among them is an unusual yellow powder. The general seems most interested in the powder as he congratulates me on a job well done.

Now apparently something happened while they were working with that... uranium as he called it, and it's up to me to check out the lab and see what's going on. The scientists working on the radioactive material stumbled on creating Shivans while experimenting with a shard from a meteor. I've got to rescue the scientists, shut down the experiment, and destroy the meteorite. (going against my feedback /tell and suggesting it be called "Meteorite shard" since it's much smaller and different looking than the Bloody Bay meteorites we're used to {even though they're incorrectly called meteors in game, meteorites are meteors that have entered the Earth's atmosphere})

Now this "Manhattan Project" has developed an atomic bomb that could end the war, but the 5th Column have struck again and have sabotaged the bomber fleet that were planned on delivering the bomb to its destination. Though the planes look suspiciously like Arachnos flyers... alas I know the MA has nothing else remotely akin to planes yet. So it's up to me to deliver the bomb myself, and detonate it in the middle of Hiroshima, Japan. My transport drops the bomb inertly and leaves so I can detonate it myself, relying on my own $origin superpowers to protect me from the radiation (which, by the way, doesn't work out quite as well with Natural origins) When I arrive, I'm surrounded by a bunch of lowly civilians. Even though I'm only level 16, I feel like I'm level 50 surrounded by these no-powered miscreants. And once the bomb goes off, *wow*, what an explosion, and I'm surrounded by mysterious, cloudlike radiation. Time to check out!

Evil for the greater good: This seems like a pretty unique take on the challenge's premise, using historical facts (quite interesting ones if they are all accurate, which I have no reason to doubt. What little facts I do know about it, I did recognize in the arc) from a very controversial decision - even if it wasn't controversial at the time - to involve the player in the destruction of an entire city to end a massive war. If that's not the definition of evil for the greater good, I don't know what is.

The arc as an arc: And it holds up as an interesting arc on its own as well. The mechanics are solid, and the final mission is very well done that had me literally saying "Now *that* was cool." which doesn't happen very often, especially after as many arcs as I've played.

I enjoyed it (other than the annoyingly high difficulty from the new difficulty settings. On a team of 2 with default settings getting a group with two red-con bosses - or two close together groups with one boss each, still very difficult @lvl 16) Good luck in the contest! (Have to soon figure out what to say after the winners are announced) (too many parentheses in this review, somebody stop me (before I strike again))

This forum has been extremely slow, so I thought I'd bring some discussion into it, as well as something to help me out for next month's Player's Choice Awards - suggested by PoliceWoman and inspired by the new year, it will be dedicated to new and/or lesser known authors (and arcs). So I ask you, what defines a "new author"? Less than 50 plays? Less than 100 plays? Only 1 published arc? Only arcs published within the last 3 months? Someone who doesn't post to this forum?

Submitted some favorites, was never sure about etiquette for gift art (favorite/collect vs. saving and re-posting in my own gallery with proper credit of course)

Review pre-approved by Samuraiko, sorry again for the initial letdown/blowback/negativity/whathaveyou.

My next review is from someone who I've been meaning to play one of her arcs for some time now, and quite well known for her machinima videos, Dark Respite:

For All the Wrong Reasons #351572 by @Samuraiko

My contact today is The Dark Watcher. A very apt choice for a contact, as his arc is favored by many players for being one of the more morally ambiguous arcs in the RWZ (though I may be wrong about this). My task is to investigate the Praetorians, who were beaten back by the Freedom Phalanx, but are still a possible threat to our dimension. My first task is to question said Phalanx about their first encounter with the Praetorians, as well as to escort one Andrea Blake. While the FP are not very forthcoming with any answers to my questions, I later find out that Andrea was actually there to hear the real answers to my questions as she has her own psychic abilities useful to the Dark Watcher.

My next two stops are to retrieve Dominatrix and Anti-Matter. First by kidnapping Domi and using her to lure Anti-Matter into the next trap. Throughout these two arcs, they are portrayed as villainous, but nice touches of sympathy start to eke through here and there. Also, trapping Anti-Matter feels like you're setting up and springing a trap for him, at least as much as possible using the given tools.

Now that we have Anti-Matter, who was the one that we really wanted, as he is the one behind the Praetorian's research into their own Portal technology, we need to get information out of him. Torture is a little bit too far down the path of villainy, but telepathy is not. Still a bit touchy for most heroes, it's my turn to earn a favor from Kalinda, who conveniently is in Longbow custody. Her methods may border on torture, but the Hero's hands are all clean in this, right?

Finally, it's time to head back to Praetoria with the information "retrieved" from Anti-Matter which will allow us to destroy all of his data on portal technology. An unfortunate side effect that is noticed is the other data that is also destroyed, data on being able to release Anti-Matter from being trapped in his containment suit. After all this, we must defeat Tyrant, for some reason, before calling it a job well done.

Evil for the greater good: Unlike all of the other arcs I've played so far, this one forgoes the choice aspect, and instead forces the player into doing shades of evil throughout the arc. Shades that get darker as you progress, though in several cases you don't entirely realize how bad things are until after you do them.

The Arc as an Arc: It holds up quite well as a darkly heroic, or even a neutral arc. I liked the writing throughout, and I thought the story touches added here and there worked well to add punch to the moral ambiguity of the missions themselves.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Good luck in the contest!

I've entered this contest every year for the past three years. Each time with a different character on a different server. Liberty, Pinnacle, and this year Virtue. The only real problem I saw while I was there was the difficulty getting into Pocket D 1.

Why not:






(bio with alternate costume)

More info and shots. And good luck again on the PERC CC!

Pocket D 1 is full, was going to the party early but can't get in. You're coming over to room #2 too, right? (@Bubbawheat aka Burnt Matchstick)

Nah, not really derailing, though it's harder than I thought to drum up any interest at all. Hard to tell how it will go if no one replies to anything.

To play, post on twitter, that's why I posted it here instead of forum games.

I had this idea in my head for a little while, but I thought I would try it out. Twitter seems interesting, but I felt I don't have anything interesting to post (and I know that hasn't stopped lots of twitter-ers). So I thought I'd make a game out of it. Just reply with your answer, and when I get around to it, I'll answer either the first, or the most interesting, or more than one if they don't interfere with each other. Hopefully I'll keep things interesting. (And no, every answer will not be a variation of "I don't understand that", though I'm sure there will be many)

Oh yeah: @Bubbawheat on twitter.

And another unsolicited review in my thread. Must be a lucky day for you.