Captain-Electric

Ha ha ha!

Details about Shiva's origin is available in a couple of good places. A detailed history is available on the official website here. And from Cityoflore.com, a brief synopsis:

But I have my own thoughts as well. The fact that the Ghost Slaying Axe (a veteran reward that only deals very high damage to undead creatures) works on these entities suggests that they are the undead remnants of a massive entity that once made its way across the cosmos, devouring worlds along the way (a good hero named Unionite first informed me about the Ghost Slaying Axe). Or perhaps these creatures aren't "Shivans" at all, but the released souls of countless victims from countless other solar systems. The truth is out there!

The story writers at Paragon Studios are bound to get around to some of this stuff sooner or later. In the interim though, some players should get together and form a community standards consortium, for voting on AE arcs that could be considered acceptable "Official Unofficial Canon", so we can start wrapping up these plot holes.

Try to get a sticky thread, the devs nod of approval, or even a community made website. Set up polls and let the community at large put in their votes, rather than just relying on a committee's biases. Couldn't hurt, and after all, this is one of the reasons they gave us AE in the first place.

Thanks, UberGuy. I cringed at "Dragonball-esque", but ignore my sensibilities, because that explanation helped the origins of power to make way more sense to me than they already did (and they already made quite a bit of sense).

While reading some of that, I remembered flying and super leaping scenes from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", something I haven't seen in several years.

Edit: Something funny. My characters live in Virtue, but I have a character that I play in Freedom with one of my brothers. That character, a normal man, is able to do some extraordinary things. This he owes to the fact that Freedom isn't real. It's a holographic simulation of reality inside a supercomputer in Virtue (one of Dr. Aeon's experiments, perhaps, or Crey's). I realize this may come as a shock to some of you. I'm sorry.

I love a good story, particularly epic and multifaceted ones. After playing a large MMO (prominently featuring internet spaceships), I came over to City of Heroes after reading an article about Issue 14: Mission Architect. I was excited to experience AND participate in the story-telling process (and still am), but soon found myself just as swept up in the game's pre-existing official story arcs. For this past year and a half, leveling and XP has been a tertiary concern, far less important than investigating my way through story arcs and writing my characters into the universe they inhabit (I submit as evidence my first level 50, just a week ago).

But in order to continue to have fun with the game in this way, I increasingly have to rely on non-intuitive workarounds, such as the Paragon Wiki (for catching up on TFs), and even Notepad (for later perusing character bios, which can't be read from your friend list).

I remember being excited about my first task force, expecting a big event that would take days (or weeks!) to unravel, that would reveal major plot details. Instead, I got a confusing two-hour blur of skirmishes, devoid of any meaningful context, punctuated by badgers and XP-obsessed teammates. I love City of Heroes, but I would be lying if I said that wasn't an experience tarnished by disillusionment.

Just recently, I learned about the concept of "static teams", which are teams of characters who meet and play at agreed-upon times. I learned about this concept on the forums, not in-game where the vast majority of players are. The idea of static teams wasn't invented by the development team. A portion of the community simply needed to address an immersion-breaking hole in the game: there is no feature within Team Search to enable the process of forming and tracking static teams, or even finding players who aren't solely obsessed with Pavlovian rewards. This is a problem.

I know someone will be tempted to spoil the story for Scene_EU; please don't! All I'm going to say is, there are some great surprises coming your way if one of your characters goes to work for Vanguard (and if you read through the content associated with those missions).

I'm more interested in your [CENSORED] comment. Though I miss [CENSORED] gritty realism, City of Heroes is simply more engaging for me and many people I've talked to. I played [CENSORED] for years before coming over to City of Heroes a year and a half ago. The lack of personalization in [CENSORED] is one of that game's biggest obstacles keeping science fiction fans from sticking around. However, [CENSORED] will soon (TM) come out with a "walking in stations" style expansion.

My point is that Paragon Studios has a true ace up its sleeve if it plans on also giving us space stations in the near future. Hopefully including space station art for super group bases, such as "rooms with a view". I'm suggesting this for three reasons: First, the community has always reacted favorably to the idea. Secondly, there's nothing wrong with staying competitive, and the sky shouldn't be the limit when it comes to staying head and shoulders above that kind of competition. Thirdly, Paragon Studios can do it better than [CENSORED]. Maybe not in the spirit of gritty sci-fi realism, but CERTAINLY in the spirit of FUN.

You win Captain-Electric's first Annual Scientific Genius Award for Reality Devourers!

Awesome stories Frostdrake and Sam. I just went up against Hro'Dtohz last night for the first time, with a tank that makes a lot of tanks look squishy. Hro'Dtohz wiped the floor with me, he hardly broke a sweat.

You're correct. But I was sort of being tongue-in-cheek.

Seriously though, I see both sides. $8 is not much money for me. And I'm not a big earner, and I pay my own bills. I bought the pack, not because I think it's super-awesome, or to take one for the team (well, maybe a LITTLE for this reason). Mostly I bought it because, uh, just because. I dunno. Which, yeah, puts me in the minority.

So I suspect Paragon Studios will put more stuff in their booster packs in the future. Many MMO subscribers can be weird with money. I know MMO players who blow a lot of money on random stuff like junk food, but get infuriated over the price of a booster pack.

Whatever, man! The disco dance is worth, like, $8 alone!

Just picture my avatar doing the disco dance.

If I were Susan, I'd shove a force bolt up his shiny stretchy [CENSORED].

I'm standing by my Christopher Nolan nod, but if Nolan thought Darron Aronofsky had the right stuff, I'd take his word for it. (To Aronofsky's credit, I probably like The Fountain more than Aronofsky himself does.) That director had my respect at Pi: I was digesting quite a bit of Sarte at the time, and it resonated with me.

Until I saw Noble Savage mention it as a bug, I figured they turned them off on purpose to ease lag for GR. It would be cool if they were programmed to walk AROUND us, or something. Don't get me wrong, all the civilians add to my experience, they help the environment feel more alive. But have you ever seen a nice old civilian lady hobble along and effortlessly push a huge 300-pound cyborg out of her way (while saying "Nice day, isn't it?")? Yeah. I know it's a small complaint, but it doesn't add to my experience.

So the donuts in Praetoria are all laced with super jalapenos, is that what you're saying?

Fully agree with that. Also, after scrolling through the flurry of knee-jerk reactions (mine included), uh, did we just get trolled?