Lothic

The Devs, in hindsight, probably should have made a level requirement to do anything with AE. If they had made it so you had to be at least level 10 or 20 to even run AE missions then maybe there would be fewer "AE babies" out there. Who knows...

It's all water under the bridge. I'm not sure there's anything at this point worth doing to improve this situation one way or the other. *shrugs*

There have been a few other stories over the years of people accidentally loading into missions or SG bases they shouldn't have. For example there was that classic one of a Brute in Atlas Park that supposedly happened several years ago.

It happened so rarely before the Devs obviously had no automatic way to "fix" it. Now I think there's code in place to automatically put you back in a "safe" place like what happened to you. Otherwise you might have become the first Primal in Praetoria.

Knowing Hollywood as I do I pretty much assume some kind of "historically based action film" staring Shia LeBouf is going to be made eventually. They'll probably (for some strange reason) even attach the words "Indiana Jones" to its title in order to try to get older people to see it. Go figure.

It might even turn out to be a good movie in its own right. But just like Sean Connery is the 'only' James Bond for many people I suspect Shia will never be considered anything more than a questionable replacement at best. *shrugs*

I've been playing various versions of D&D for over 30 years now - I think I have a general grasp of how its classic alignment system works. This is why I was trying to warn against trying to peg these groups with alignments like this in the first place. It's always open to interpretation as to exactly what quality matches what alignment.

I'm not technically questioning your interpretation of the D&D system to determine alignments and I can even see some merits to your arguments. I'm just trying to bridge the gap between the way alignments are strictly used in D&D verses CoH. Try as you might you'll never get this to fit for the satisfaction of everyone. The fact that we seem to disagree on this is case in point.

In order to have the apples of D&D try to match the oranges of CoH I went with the the more basic idea of:

Lawful-Chaotic -> Are they pure about their intentions to follow their moral convictions (Hero/Villain) or are they selfish extremists (Vigilante/Rogue)
Good-Evil -> Are they a "good guy" standing against the tyranny of Cole (Resistance/Hero) or are they loyal to Cole's totalitarian vision (Loyalist/Villain).

You have to be willing to accept that D&D styled alignments aren't going to be able to be applied to a game like CoH 100% directly.

These are pretty cool. I'll probably get a few of them.
It's too bad they decided to cut the ones for Desdemona off at the knees - for some reason that bothers me.
Not a bad idea overall...

Well Paragonwiki highlights a summary of Praetorian badges.

I'm not sure there are any "Praetorian only" Day Job badges so there's no need to stay in Praetoria just to get a Day Job badge. I think the assumption is most Praetorians go to Primal Earth so you'd get them there. Once I19 hits Primals will be able to go to Praetoria so it seems likely there will be a means to travel back and forth whenever we want.

I guess someone could come up with a "all the Day Job badges you -can- get in Praetoria" list but it apparently didn't seem to be a priority. *shrugs*

Yeah I think some of you guys have gotten too hung up on how the definitions of the terms "Loyalist" and "Resistance" apply to what "hero" and "villain" mean in the pre-GR City of Heroes. That's why I suggested you take a step back and realize the subtext what what'd being presented in Praetoria.

Emperor Cole is very much (in terms of classic D&D alignments) a Lawful Evil ruler. Now just because he's "evil" doesn't mean he's out to kill his people and/or be an openly big meany. From his point of view he is bringing order and control to his society. To him keeping everyone under his control and stamping out the Resistance is what will keep his people safe and secure. The "evil" part of it in this case comes from how the totalitarian grip of his hyper police state keeps freedom of thought and expression from having a legitimate place in his perfect utopia. His vision is the only "good" in his world, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Basically Cole is this game's version of an Anti-Christ, Emperor Palpatine or even Adolf Hitler for that matter. This is a classic example of what would happen if the "bad guys" and/or the "redside" ruled the world.

In the pre-GR world of Paragon City/Rogue Isles you have the heroes who represent the status quo of law and order. Heroes react to the actions of villains to keep their (from the heroes' point of view) "evil" schemes from overthrowing the shiny-happy world of Paragon City. Both groups, heroes and villains, see the other side as the "bad guys" and the only real difference is who's in charge so to speak. The heroes (Statesman) in this case are the faction in charge and the villains (Lord Recluse) is the faction in the shadows trying to take over.

So what happens if the roles of heroes and villains were reversed? It's not a question of good and evil because as Steampunkette points out there's really not a good/evil question in dispute here - it's all just shades of gray. What if what we called villains were in charge of the world and they had to work to keep the (from their point of view) "evil" schemes of the underdog heroes from overthrowing the shiny-happy world of Praetoria? You'd have the Praetoria of Going Rogue. Basically Praetoria shows us a world where the villains (called Loyalists) are having to fill the role that heroes played on Primal Earth and heroes (called Resistance) is having to play the roles that villains played. I still argue that if you accept that role-reversal that the purpose and nature of the GR arcs make perfect sense.

Obviously Praetoria is not a 100% exact mirror to Primal Earth and I never really meant to imply that it was.
But it's basic moral/societal structure does mirror Primal Earth in the most fundamental ways that matter.

P.S. Besides there's plenty of in-game evidence for what I'm saying. For example if you look at several badges like Agent of Praetoria and True to the Last you'll see there are two versions of each of those badges. Loyalists get the one that has the red "arachnos spider" villain symbol and the Resistance gets the one that has the "gold star" hero symbol. Obviously the Devs pretty much consider Loyalists to be the villains of Praetaria and the The Resistance to be the heroes of Praetoria.

Actually after six and a half years, multiple different releases/expansions and all the different international organizations involved I think I would have been surprised if all the listed ratings for all these things would have been exactly the same at this point. *shrugs*

That's the basic fallacy of "relying" on these kinds of rating systems as 100% accurate.
At best I would consider them rough guidelines, not fixed in stone classifications.

Just jumping in to say I'm seeing the same problems with the Halloween Tip mission as others here: I completed it and it's stuck with the "Return to Contact" problem.

I also noticed that I managed to get 6 different costume drops within about the first 20 ToT doors I did. Not that I'm actually "complaining" about it but did I just get very lucky with that or are they really supposed to drop that frequently? I simply don't remember them being that easy in previous years and was wondering if their drop rate was messed up somehow. *shrugs*