Dr_Mechano

Thank you for the review and for the letter, I will be getting on to working out the grammatical problems in the arc, they've never really cropped up before and nobody has mentioned them before so unfortunately they've not been caught.

Originally the arc was 5-14, seeing that with the new MA levelling changes I had assumed that the MA would auto-level the Family down from 5 to 1. Obviously it doesn't work like that so I will be putting the level back up from 1 to 5 again.

I'm glad you enjoyed the arc and in my mind a 3 star rating from you is a 4 star rating from others, since you are pretty particular but with good reason (as I said those grammatical errors weren't even caught or mentioned yet).

I'm glad you liked the Characters as well. I tried quite hard to make them seem not quite so overpowering as other Characters I've seen before (they're not author inserts either but original characters for the Arc).

Thanks for your review and your help.

16:31

The television screens around Paragon begun to flicker, breaking into static for a moment before being replaced by the symbol of a metal skull infront of a cog on a black background. Veteran heroes would know this symbol all to well however normally it would be something to rouse them for their slumber in the middle of the night, not in the middle of the afternoon.

The symbol was replaced by the elderly, grey skinned, white bushy bearded, lab coat wearing mad scientist known as Doctor Edward Johnson aka Doctor Mechano. A smile on his face, behind him was a scene recognisable from any 1950's sci fi, tubes bubbling with strangely coloured liquids, a Jacobs Ladder with electricity crackling between it, the Doc was all about the retro look when designing a lab.

"Greetings people of Paragon, how are you? I'm fine thank you incase you're wondering but now on to business..."

"Normally I don't appear during prime-time, the time slot is too expensive," Edward gives a chuckle,"but I think it's only fair that I give any of the new blood who don't crawl in the night a chance to take part in todays fun time exercise."

"I have hidden, within the sewer network, not the abandoned sewer network, that would be silly, with the Hydra, the Rikti and those tentacles....but the regular sewer network filled with Lost and the various other dregs of the criminal hierarchy...anyway rambling, my apology."

"I've hidden a series of explosives, well these aren't your regularly bomb strapped to a barrel of petrol explosives, oh no, these are much more fun...you see having returned from my portal hopping ways to a dimension known as the Virtueverse some time ago, I struck on an idea, why not make this dimension and that one and the same. These bombs will rip open dimensional portals between our world and theirs, of course the portal will be highly unstable and could destroy reality but there's not a big chance of that happening, I mean five percent risk is always worth it."

"Now you've got two hours to find all six of these bombs, don't worry I've clearly labelled an off switch on them for you less intelligent heroes...it's no fun if the ape can't figure out how to get the banana now is it..."

"Well....good luck and you'll hopefully see me in two hours, unless I see you first, in which case, look out!"

Edward gave a big grin and leaned back, spreading his arms wide, "LET THE GAMES BEGIN!"

The television signal returned to static and then back to the regularly programming...

Edward muttered to himself in his lab, "tick tock heroes, tick tock...."

((this is open RP available to everyone, it serves as a forum merger introduction to the mad schemes of Doctor Mechano...feel free to RP amongst yourself as you look for the bombs and please send me a PM when you find one))

Before the forum merger came about I did post a "Differences between EU and US RP forums" hmm me thinks I shall rehash it...just because!

Thread lengths: European RPers, sans the Galaxy Girl thread, tend to prefer shorter, more to the point, RP threads that have a clearly defined begining, middle and end, there's lots more of them for this reason but they rarely get past 30 pages. Advantage is that they never become too unwieldy and are normally related to an ongoing plot which is broken up into several threads, however this can make it harder for new faces to appear in the topic since it's probably already in mid-swing and they may not get a chance to do anything by the time the thread is officially ended.

In contrast American RPers appear to prefer the vast threads which contain a lot of backstory. While this means that these threads are never lost and newcomers can easily get involved due to their being no time limit, however they can imtimidating due to the offputting nature of the size and percieved problem of possibly not knowing enough to get involved (I admit this HAS put me off most of the big threads myself).

Big name Characters: Most of the EU Union community knows each other, very, very well thanks to a smaller pool of RPers, this has allowed some heroes, villains and groups to achieve a big name status within the Unionverse. The Court of the Blood Countess (Vampires, Werewolves, demons etc.) The Gang (Thugs and the Mafia) and The Corporation (Mercenaries and weapons dealers) are probably considered the 'big three' villain groups. Several independants have also become big threats themselves, Dr Mechano (yush me), Big Game (not a threat but a well known womanizing, tiger skin trouser wearing, fun loving mercenary), Battle Unit Omega (unstoppable alien death machine) and Colonel Blitzkrieg (the nicest faschist you're ever likely to meet, a former 5th Column member) along with the various gangs (Mercy Rogues, Freddies Crew (a group of high powered Skuls) and many others).

For example Dr Mechano on the EU is considered a big name villain for his simultaneous attack on three big name hero groups, two hero owned companies and the aformentioned big three villain groups, the attack were harmless pranks but they happened all at the same time, think of him as a not quite so psychotic Joker (it's a feat I'm particularly proud of because it took a hell of a lot of OOC planning to pull off). This along with his many large scale pranks on the city, where he normally addresses the City of Paragon through a Television hack at ungodly hours of the morning (literally I post in the early hours of the morning when doing them, so if it's 3am posting time, it's 3am when the attack happens)

The big name hero groups are the White Cats Abode (currently in in second version), the Unity Vigil and it's subgroup for teenage heroes, the New Vigilants, The Militia and The new Heroes Union. There are quite a few well known Heroes, Tiger White, Zortel, Grav Mistress, Red Commissar, Twilighter, Cindersnap, Richard Huntington (and family), Infinitron (version 2) and many, many others.

While on the US side of things, with so many people and such a wide community, it is obviously vastly harder to become a big player, since there are many others out there also vying for the same spot.

Galaxy girl: The Galaxy Girl thread, if you haven't checked it out yet (it is a bit quiet at the moment thanks to the holidays) is basically considered the premier place for heroes to meet, chat and otherwise relax after a hard days heroing, this was THE longest thread on the EU RP forums due to the fact it's been going for atleast 4 years, if not more (and this was the new version of it!). Pocket D does get RP but it isn't as prevelant as Galaxy Girl and is normally the reserve for villains and the occasional hero to hang out in.

That, my American and European Friends, is the differences I have noticed between EU and NA RP forums...thank you...and good night!

38-50

yes there was farming involved...

...no I don't feel any less achievement I got there using that method...

...yes I am awesomely happy I got to afford all the set IOs I need because of it even at silly DXP prices.

Still missing a couple of IOs to frankenslot a power though.

We've all done it Ashen, infact I am completely guilty of this myself.

I posted a rant about money earnt by City of Heroes not staying with City of Heroes and that it shouldn't be spent on anything else.

However several people pointed out to me that money earnt from other games actually funds CoH and I ended up feeling a bit sheepish and admitting I was being a bit of a fool about the whole thing.

We all get caught up in moments of RAGE!!!! and don't see the woods for the trees.

I do apologise if my post came across as harsh to you Forse it wasn't mean to be.

You're forgetting in WoW that the basic flight paths, from one end of a continent to the other, would take 10 minutes (real time), any flight from Booty Bay (southern end of Azeroth) to the Eastern Plaguelands (northern tip of Lorderan before Burning crusade introduced more) I could literally go make a sandwhich, have a smoke and make a cup of tea, heaven help me if I needed to get somewhere on Kalimdor that was in horde territory.

It would involve a boring 30 minute ride (even on the fast land mounts) to actually get there.

Kalimdor is actually longer than Azeroth/Lorderan meaning the flight time can clock up to 15 minutes from one end of the continent to the other.

That's 15 minutes of utter boredom until Burning Crusade came in and Shattrath got introduced with quick access to all the major capitals.

There's taking your time travelling and then there's a right royal pain in the behind.

Got Amy zon, Invuln/SS Tanker.

Barb Arian (her praetorian counterpart) Axe/SR (unlike her Earth prime version, Barb grew up using only her natural agility and her battle axe to survive).

Just managed to get Cryoember on Virtue..particularly pleased with that one.

Eh Ramsay is an abberation to the norm...

...normal people say it about half as much as he does...we merely have other words to replace it though and depending on the location of the person from within England, slang words to replace those.

However...for some reason I have noticed Americans have a lot of trouble understanding a thick Yorkshire accent, coming from a family where we have a LOT of different accents in the family, namely the Yorkshire accent, the Somerset accent (C sounds more like Z and Cider becomes Zyder) and Liverpudlian means I've learnt to mimic these accents to a decent degree and enjoy the look on you Americans faces when I employ any one of them.

Apparently even my normal south london accent confuses some of you because I constantly got told to slow down when speaking because a South London accent uses a lot of slang terms (such as "ooh can I have a butchers at that?") but we speak fast and clip words, making it ruddy hard for anyone who has studied the English taught in other European schools to understand us and apparently Americans.

Oh and using the term 'swish' resulted in much confusion and some possible romance in the European lounge.

Personally, I've got no idea where Forse is coming from.

However I have been a frequenter of the NA boards for a while now infact I've transplanted news from the EU community to the NA community thanks to both accounts.

Mainly in the guise of the first (very brief summary which was followed later by detailed chat logs) of the Positron Q&A on the EU test server and although it IS stroking my own ego a bit...seem to have been quite quoted as the dude that asked Positron about Power Customisation during that Q&A and got the response "Power customisation wasn't something we could do under Cryptic" which at the time was as ambiguous as ever but now seemed to have foreshadowed Issue 16.

Hell I've even spread the word of the "City of Cute" avatars by Psygon to the NA community, some of which I see spreading more and more.

For me there hasn't been a seperate EU and NA community for a while now, yes I'm using my NA account to log into the boards but that's only so I don't have to be called Dr_Mechano EU, it ruins the flavor of the name in my personal opinion (yes that is highly vain but meh to you people). I've spread things from NA to EU and EU to NA.

While we British normally joke that you Americans don't get sarcasm, it appears with Forse that it may have been the other way around.

Forse, the NA community ISN'T persecuting the EU community. The Lounge was actually something that was asked for by US, the EU community so that we weren't drowned out by the multitude of voices and could remain our own unique little community where almost all the people who posted on the EU boards knew everyone else.

Yes there have been jokes and possibly a friendly little dig here and there, hell even I'm guilty of doing that right back at the NA community, refering them to Yanks on occasions which if I remember correctly people in the south of America find pretty offensive and also saying I wouldn't mind strangling a few with a very, very horrible accent in their sleep (seriously, it's got a British version now tha has spread over here now thanks to that bloody awful woman Catherine Tate and her "am I bovvered?" stupidness for which she needs to be put to the sword...her death shall be quick because she turned out 'alright' in Dr Who but that's the only reason, Her and Sacha Baron Cohen for his truly annoying Ali G character who made being an ***** seem cool to the people he was mocking).

There I think I got the ranting out of my system and some death threats to a British celebrities...words cannot describe the hate I have for those two though but that is something I shall not decided to act upon until my army of the Undead is beating down their doors ready to consume them all, eyeballs first!

Ahem...sorry...Mad scientists do love to run...but look at my Avatar...I'm cute see...

All depends, if you're smashing/lethals based Marauder can be the second toughest Praetorian, if your Psi damage orientated he can be very easy, the reverse is true of Mother Mayhem, Malaise and Black Swan.

For me it was fighting against Dominatrix with my invuln/SS tanker, she actually has innate higher resistance to S/L than any of the other AVs, she doesn't hit hard but boy does she take a long while to wittle down...it's like Reichsman-lite.

I'd just like to point out that there has been explained a reason for the European server lag.

Basically it's also the reason why most people in the British Isles tend to get a better connection to the US servers than they do the EU.

German Internet Infrastructure is, to put it bluntly, poor quality, the traffic has to go through so many different companies areas, jump through so many hoops, that it's force to take a while to reach the server farm in Germany.

Atleast that is what we have been told in the past.

Random idea but..

..everyone suffered massive mapservering...then all of a sudden it cleared up. Around the time it started, a zombie invasion attacked a zone and it cleared up the instant the zombie invasion stopped.

Blame the Undead perhaps?

Also wondering where she is...her EU account hasn't been banned so she should be able to post still on that...

who knows...we may have been lucky :P

heh who knew I'd spark romance with the merest use of the word Swish!

Oh..and what does it mean in San Fransciso or is it a bit too naughty for the boards?

What do you mean the English system of measurement.

Everything is still in miles, yards, feet and inches over here in Britain and it's going to damn well stay that way!

the new forum certainly are swish.

Now my European friends, go mingle, spread the words of our coming as it has been foretold by the horsepeoples of the apocalypses, where lion shall lie with lamb and all that Jazz.

Seriously thought the new forums are very swish.

Yup, welcome to this wonderful world of Americans and Europeans.

We're a strange folk we Europeans but I have made the effort to understand Americans.

1) Don't feed them after Midnight.

2) Don't get water on them at any point.

Think if we follow these two simple rules everything should go just fine.

on a less silly note: It's good that we're all together again and the forums are finally back, even if I did miss out on a KoA costume...damn...

[ QUOTE ]
It's not their fault. They speak English as their primary language. You speak American.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true, what you Americans have done to the English language is terrible, you've butchered it beyond all recognition.

I distinctly remember shouting at Americans while riding on a tube train in London because for some reason pronouncing leicester (Less-Ter) square as Lie-chest-er really drove me mad.

Admittedly the rest of the train laughed and applauded, I probably should feel bad about it but why, oh why, do you lot have one of your many accents where everything ends in a question, IT MAKES ME WANT TO STRANGLE YOU IN YOUR SLEEP!

For some reason the Australia accent that does the same bizzarely has no effect on me.

Oh be warned...we are bringing Golden Girl with us.

So an ex-patriot American returns to wink at you all and post one line posts.

Anyway, must dash,

*activates cloaking device and disguises himself as one random American person from the boards*.

Bah...

What you don't know is we've already infiltrated your organisation...

Yes we British have been here for quite some time, muwahahaha!

*Backstabs someone*

I never really was on your side

*straightens tie*

heh reminds me of the achievements in Team Fortress 2.

Fear Itself: Even the mightiest have trembled in fear of you.

You've managed to cause the following signature characters to tremble in fear;
Heroside version:
Tyrant.
Honoree.
Lord Recluse.
One of the four Patrons.

Villainside version:
Statesman.
Honoree.
Lord Recluse.
One of the four Patrons.
__________________________________________________ __
Dazed and confused: you've been held, slept, confused, stunned and feared in a single mission without a death.

Rasputin: You've been hit by an AVs AoE attack, a Melee attack and a Ranged attack, all within five seconds of each other and lived.

Master of Hokuto No Ken: hit a single enemy with Flurry, Shadow Maul and Sands of Mu, one after the other.

Dodge this!: Killed an NPC before they can even start their dialogue.

Zek's video of the new MA alternate animations

Best farming team I've had has been 5 brutes, 1 kin and 2 Pain Dom Masterminds.

All five brutes were ss/* (myself being SS/Fire, one SS/Elec, one SS/Shields, one SS/Stone and one SS/WP).

Was hilarious to see the mobs disappear after Fulcrum Shift, Shield Charge, Foot stomp, Foot stomp, Foot stomp, Foot stomp, Foot stomp.

An yes Manaic Slammers do hit bloody hard and can mow down anyone unprepared quite easily so I wouldn't say they remove the risk/reward ratio, they may only have 2 attacks but the attacks they do have can muller people quite easily.