Clave_Dark_5

HA! Wait, no, don't tell me that, I'm already somewhat biased against playing defenders (with only all of one to my name), I don't wanna hear they don't suck.

I'll definitely double check to make sure she's there and all her info's correct, that's a bit mysterious. Sadly I probably won't get a chance to check for a coupla days, depends on how my schedule - and the downtime - goes.

Thanks again!

Fixed.

Starting this somewhat en medias res seemed like the best way to go about it - otherwise the first mish of beating down some CoT would have felt like a flat start to me - I mean, how often do we beat down another cave full of those guys and just yawn?

You are reliving her memories, in her place so to speak. I've received some comments about this being confusing before and even edited the text a bit before you got to it to try and make it more clear without giving the game away (which would be against the spirit of the arc), but obviously this can still be improved. Although, as I said previously in response to one of these comments, a little confusion isn't necessarily a bad thing here.

Oh, there are some sideways puns and morbid humor here and there to be sure, just not an all-out laff-riot like my previous arcs (like The Ghastly Secret Of Dreams) tend to be.

Well, it's probably someone's brain, but who's?

There's a small number of maps in the AE that start out with that tomb (can't recall what they're filed under right now though), which was perfect for this arc as you've deduced. And those foes are called Hydra.

Same thing, yes. The brand Pepto isn't actually made with bismuth subsalicylate anymore, but it was just too good to pass up.

The King is rather tough and was meant to be. Not to lay all the blame at your feet but the arc is set for 41 to 50 and you were running a Defender at 38... I was able to solo the arc on playtesting with a 50 stalker (burst damage helps to be sure) and I think I also made it through with my level 38-or-so Ill/Rad troller, but that's an Ill/Rad troller for you. Considering he did once take down my 50 Kat/Regen scrapper in playtesting, perhaps I should give him another look-over... sorry to hear the woosh-woosh bothered your eyes though, not much I can do about that other than take it off and risk an XP loss - I'll also look into that. If you ever get a chance to run it with another AT or at a higher level let me know how things go.

Huh, she's an Lt. in the set of customs in the last mish (and her bio lays out her story "as much as the arc allows"), I would have thought you'd run into her at least once.

Thanks again for playing, for writing up such an awesome read and for the kind words about the arc. I really hope you keep doing these sorts of reviews, they're always so much fun!

FYI, the last one of these I watched earlier in the week there were only about 300 people, give or take 50 or so. I think I was able to get them to address my pet topic, but I had to spam the question a bit and payed close attention to what I was seeing on screen: "Z's talking... talking... talking... AH! He's looking at his computer screen spam it, SPAM IT!"

Or something like that. I totally understand the whole deal may just not be your thing*, but it's not quite as bad as you imagine it, I think.

*There's so much ad-speak going on and often so little real content that I probably won't bother with any more of them, myself.

This is one reason I think I've not seen anyone I PUG with running the original story arcs since radio/newpapaer missions were added into the game (yes yes yes, I know you players who do must by law of averages be out there, don't bother jumping out of the woodwork to play gotcha, it's silly). They've made it feel penalizing. This may have been discussed when the change first came out, I don't know.

The devs changed this some time back, people had found a way to exploit those Rikti for risk-free XP (yes, exploits existed before AE even existed! )

Hm, looks like I need to be playing my MM more often then, I thought it happened at any level change. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

I seem to recall there was going to be more content added as well.

Well, I haven't seen it in ages and it is a Tom Baker ep, so it can't be all that bad, right? I just mainly recall some bad acting on the part of secondary characters, lots of dull running down corridors segments (probably hard to avoid in a minotaur story anyway) and those costumes....

Still and all, being Doctor Who, I'd gladly sit through it again instead of a LOT of other things, so maybe "trash" was too strong a word for me to use there.

Speaking of, remember this from the teaser trailer for the last half of this season?



From some footage here and there I've already seen shots of the Doctor running around the hotel corridors looking lost... It would be just like Moffat to bring them back for laughs.

I liked the ep but I think your first half/second half critique is pretty accurate, the more I think about it. I liked the pirate ep too, just a bit of silliness thrown in amongst the heavy story arc plotline and the fans went ape... Neither are stand-out stories, but they weren't Horns Of Nimon level trash.

You lost me right there.

Seriously though, good post!

Actually I've started two new toons there. I log into Praetoria, see three to five people on the first two maps (names forgotten) and then go play another toon elsewhere because I find low-level soloing to be really dull. The first toon I started right after the server opened up to American players and I found a fair number of people in Prae and thought "oh, I'll like playing here, there's life." A week or two later, nothing; I'm thinking I saw the initial wave of Americans playing their new alts there and then they left after playing more frequently than I do and out-leveling the place.

My play-time hours are partly the culprit here most likely, but even with people starting new alts, the low levels go by pretty quickly so most people are never in the low levels/zones. I think a lot of players do what they can to PL past at least 12 and continue to rushrushrush to get out their teens anyway. Add to that the "let's play 50s all the time" and it's something of a perfect storm for finding low level zones of any sort a ghost town.

And every vet player will make one new toon, play through said content once and never show their face there again. Still, it will put a newer, fresher face on the lowbie game to help impress new players.

I had totally forgotten about that guy in PoS (lol), I really need to rewatch that one...

There's tons of Farmville-esque app games out there as well that follow this model, my GF plays a lot of them.

Glad to hear it