Megajoule

90s (excuse me, NINETIES!!!): "Okay, so most of the actual comic books on the stands are pretty lame, but at least the cartoons are good to great, cutting out all the $#*& and distilling the characters down to their essence."

10s: "Okay, so most of the actual comic books on the stands are pretty lame, but at least the movies are good to great, cutting out all the &*#$ and distilling the characters down to their essence."

Psi/Psi/Fanservice blapper.

16 50s. Only six of them are, or are ever likely to be, Incarnates.
(For me, it's as much a matter of concept and whether they fit with that level of power as having the time and interest to kit them out.)

Sounds like the OP felt it was important enough, to them, to get the new slot unlocked and filled as soon as possible that they prepared and stocked up ahead of time. Good for you. Whatever makes you happy.

Me, I'm going to be more focused on continuing one character's (solo) progress through the Ward story, and running the Mag trial on another to witness Cole's final defeat. (Didn't do it on beta, so it'll be a nice surprise.) After that, I'll see what I'm in the mood for. Maybe, now that all but one of my characters is 50, I'll finally find inspiration to roll up a new one.

Even on Virtue, I was never able to get enough people redside to spawn the GM. Good thing I didn't have any villains who really needed/wanted the badge.

Da red wunz go fasta.

To quote Henry Jones Sr.,
"Our situation has not improved."

Praise be to (Neo)Splasher and/or AdBlockPlus.

Swamp Bug, one of the very first I teamed with back in the day.
Heroid, who's still around (and posting in this very thread) but I've not seen him in a while.
most of Project Rebirth and/or Sanction Omega.
and my fellow Taxibots - their time may be mostly past, due to changes and improvements to the game, but I'm still proud to have been a part. /salute

I find high prices aesthetically displeasing, in the same sense as meaningless zeroes at the end of ever-higher pinball scores. Like all hyperinflationary currencies, it seems a little ridiculous when you need 10,000 zorkmids to buy a cup of coffee. I wish we could chop a few digits off the end across the board, just to make the numbers easier to handle.

But that's the extent of my moral outrage on this subject these days.

The OP is in the position of someone pulled over for speeding, who's berating the officer writing him a ticket and DEMANDING to know why they didn't pull over any of the other people who are clearly going MUCH faster than he was.

There is no way that this can lead to a satisfactory result, unless the OP's only intent is to vent, complain, and/or whine.

and after putting up with all of that, he's probably not even going to get a roll on the reward table.

Fred Perry's Gold Digger has a sentai team of leprechauns - they started out in tanks, then moved on to a combining mecha ("Vaultron"). I stopped following the title a while back, but I understand they've now moved on to being pirates and ninjas.

My advice to McNum and others: if someone gets ... shirty that you don't have this IO, but you MUST have this IO, you didn't want to play with them anyway.

My request to anyone falling into the latter group: please, identify yourselves promptly when I join the team, so that I can leave it just as quickly and not waste either of our time.

signed,
a proud player of an FF/Energy defender

What Target said. That ship has sailed. From this point on (more like a couple of years back - check your EULAs), you can assume that you won't ever get to "own" any game (if you ever really did). Much the same situation as anything copyrighted after the release of Steamboat Willie. :/

For what it's worth, Steam is one case where my own principles have bowed to practicality and/or convenience.

Like others have said:
OP, you're burned out. Go do something else. Come back later, if you feel like it. If not, look back fondly on those seven years.

Whether or not it was really "free" when the $15-per-month was non-negotiable, consider some of the really "exciting" vet rewards we got:

Boxing gloves.
Greek letters.
or sometimes just a Respec.

ooooooh.

Crafted powers: Only for flavor. (I have some characters who brandish a service revolver, or a bat.) Some of them might start carrying a Resuscitator, though, now that I've been made aware of them.

Safeguard powers: Definitely handy, though not the game-changer that getting (temporary) travel powers at such a low level once was, due to there being other, more permanent options now.
I do the side missions to do them (for badges/accolades), when I remember to bother, not for the powers.

Day Job powers: Also somewhat handy, but I tend to pick day jobs based on character concept rather than raw utility.

lolPvP. I rarely even bother with Shivans or Warburg nukes at this point: at the level they're "needed", we have Incarnate powers now.

Temp powers from missions: I tend to collect these, and may not ever use most of them. They often get put on a tray of their own.

DfB, DiB, Mortimer Kal: Most of my characters who've done these are actually far above the levels where these buffs expire. (I haven't made any new lowbies for a while.)

As for inspirations, I tend to put some (Awaken/Bounce Back, Break Free/Emerge, and Keen Insights for combining) into email for later use, especially since my tray is usually near full of greens, blues, and awaken+break free pairs. (The other colors are spent as they drop, or given away if a teammate can make better use than my current AT.)

Per item #1, I rarely remember/bother to craft enhancement station buffs either. Or do you mean stuff like Items of Power, etc? Never bothered.

Accolades - I generally pick up the Atlas Medallion, Phalanx Reserve and/or Portal Jockey at the appropriate levels. The redside equivalents are still a pain, and I've only really gone after them on one villain.

You've probably heard this already, but since there are so many rednames on this thread, I'll repeat it:

Freebies are nice, but a feature for the Market I'd really like to see is showing if you've already bought a given item. (At present, the only way I know of doing this is attempting to purchase it again.)

Hm. I stand corrected.

All I can say is that one of the things I liked least about WW, back in the dark days before /ah, was that I always seemed to end up next to That One Guy who can't or won't turn off his FWOOSH Fiery Aura, or his SPLUTCH-SPLUTCH-SPLUTCH-SPLUTCH Spine Burst, or his ZUM-ZUM-ZUM Dark Armor, or *howl* his damned pets *howl* that won't shut up *howl* for more than two seconds *howl*...

My thanks, again, to Paragon for letting me avoid all of that (as well as the convenience of doing my own business on the go, rather than having to take a side trip every few missions) with a simple slash command. A small or even large fee isn't going to be enough to make me endure it again.