Eric Nelson

They're run quite frequently on my server (Victory), both blue and red sides.

You're so right. My feeling is, if people want to do it, they are welcome to -- if that's the way they enjoy the game, more power to 'em. Of course, the devs want to eliminate afk farming as much as possible, and this does about as much as they can feasibly do.

I'm in full agreement with you on that subject. 14 days would be a vast improvement, and still be a significant chunk of time logged out to earn.

Yeah, was pretty cool moving my badge toon onto Test and then seeing all the badge "dings" for Popular, Leader, Medicine Woman, Empath, etc. Glad I worked on all that extra influence-earning over the past few months!

As far as the people who have Empath already, I don't really feel all that bad for them, because virtually everyone who has that badge pre-I16 (and I'll bet it's EVERYONE, but apologies if there's a hardy, dedicated soul out there who actually earned Empath without farming, hard as that is to imagine) used an exploit to farm for it (as did I, when time permitted, since my badge toon is a Scrapper).

As far as Leader goes, my hat is off to those who earned that badge, since you have to actually EARN it (unlike healing, damage, etc., which can be farmed easily while AFK). The prevailing sentiment I've seen amongst those who have earned those top epic badges has been one of graciousness, so I don't think too many of them are upset about these requirement reductions.

Oh yeah, THIS (partially because it's available so freaking early).

With the exception of Ouroboros TFs and AE content, of course.

One note on this for anyone who isn't aware: at level 25 a character can access the Ouroboros zone via anyone's Ouroboros portal, and it's very simple to simply fly/jump/run up and get the exploration badge there that provides the temp power access.

Even though there are other prerequisites for the temp power as M_B points out, I simply use a 25+ alt from my second account, or ask a level 25+ friend/passerby to open an Ouroboros portal and get the exploration badge. Seems easier for me rather than worrying about which souvenirs or other badges grant the temp.

There's simply no game interface that offers that information (or if there is, nobody here seems to be familiar with it). And any "hardcore" categorization would be defined individually by the player -- some people's "hardcore" is probably different than others'.

Would be a neat innovation for something like that to be officially defined (similar to the way that TF difficulty choices exist now) so that a person could create a toon and attempt to do exactly what it sounds like your friend did.

As has been pointed out many (MANY) times before -- this simply isn't true. I'm not going to bother restating the obvious; I doubt it would do any good anyway...

Not "nothing". Certainly (hopefully) not as many of the high-ranked groups as you think are "Prestige farms", and I haven't heard of any current prestige exploits (like the egregious one a few years back) that are being utilized.

I understand your concern, Ironblade, and I agree that the rankings, by themselves, should be taken with a grain of salt. But that's also no reason to dismiss out of hand any group ranked highly. The ranking DOES tell you how active the group is (just not what to attribute that activity level to).

In our case, on Victory server, we are the #1 and #2 ranked (by Prestige totals) SG and VG, respectively, and we are not in any way a Prestige farming operation, nor do we have any SG mode or earning requirements. What we are, simply, is a very large, cohesive and friendly group of casual players that have been very organized for over 5 years now.

I say this to point out that anyone looking for an SG on any server can, I think, use the rankings as one piece of information, and then do the rest of their due diligence (i.e., review the SG/VG's website [if any], speak to member(s) in-game, etc.) to find a group that will fit their playstyle best.

What does Hephaestus use to work on Tuesdi then?

I would agree. I'll run it by our chief CEO and the Federal FBI and see if they agree. Any reports will be in HTML language.

Now I'm off to manage my IRA account.

LMAO! I wonder how many people will catch the joke there?

If by accident, then of course not -- but I was referring to the much more common (I'm sure) case of a toon's name being "genericized" because it was obviously offensive or an infringement.

Understood, and your points are all well-taken, GP. And I completely agree with you about the game's level of customization allowing so many combinations, which is especially true for Khelds. (And I can't really get into WS either, for the same reasons you cite. I finally went ahead and bit the bullet and just PL'd her to 50 in AE so I could be done with it already. )