Ms. Mesmer

A consistent downward trend describes pretty much every subscription-based MMO that isn't WoW or EVE these days. Aion released on September 22 in the US, so Q4 was pretty much its only quarter here. Tough not to see significant gains from a starting point of zero, no? Looking at XFire numbers, I'd suspect to see a somewhat lower figure for even Aion in North America in Q1 2010, it is slipping, though slowly. Again, this is consistent for every subscription-based MMO that isn't WoW or EVE, even Star Trek Online is showing some decline already. It's a worrisome trend, really. If MMOs consistently slide down, with moderate bumps for major content releases and expansions, publishers might be wary of putting their money into future projects.

It's probably as many as any character would realistically be working on at a time, but you can definitely have more. It would take some work, but a level 40-45 Hero could have six normal Paragon City contacts, a Detective in Peregrine Island, whichever normal contact in the RWZ they are working on, Borea, Marcus Valerius, Senator Decimus Aquila, Daedalus, Five contacts in the Shadow Shard, The Pilgrim, Percy Winkley, whichever contact in the Invention tutorial that they have gotten to, and the same for any contact in the Architect tutorial that they might still have open. You'd pretty much have to make an effort to get that many open at once, but that's 21 total, and I might be missing something.

Edit: I was missing something, aside from contacts that are only available during events, DJ Zero, once unlocked, will stay with you and open until you run him out of your current allotment of Defeat Snaptooth missions. So make that up to 22 for the open contacts at 40-45 overachievers.

Most stories of fallen heroes aren't really about complicated moral dilemmas. Most seem to happen because the hero gave in to one or more of the seven deadly sins. King Minos succumbed to greed, Superboy Prime to envy and wrath, and so on. A fall from grace is often just a manifestation of our own baser instincts getting the better of us.

Smurch: We don't have enough information to classify life in Praetoria as a Hobson's choice. We simply don't know how things would play out if Cole were removed from power. There will be a shift in power as a bunch of new superhumans, not directly under his control, from our dimension show up there. Additionally, we have no idea of the true threat that the "tamed" Hamidon would present now. He may not even be capable of rampaging again.

What we're presented with in Praetoria is a villain who, due to some combination of his own nature and the circumstances under which he came to power, decided to essentially kill John Locke in order to deify John Stuart Mill. Cole threw self-determination for the masses out to provide the greatest good for the greatest number. Even if the threat of Praetorian Hamidon has been reduced by his near-complete defeat decades ago, deposing Cole would still have some consequences. Revolutions, even popular ones, often leave things in a precarious state for a time. The survival of the United States was questionable for quite some time after the Treaty of Paris. There were threats from Britain, and possibly other European powers, and threats from within that could have torn apart the young nation. This is the dilemma that we face when choosing whether or not to stand against Cole. Will this world be better off by getting rid of this utilitarian regime that's been built and maintained at the cost of personal freedom for a future of uncertainty (perhaps even a very deadly uncertainty) that at least guarantees basic human rights?

That's nice of you, but you don't usually win at things for second-guessing after a wrong answer. I just put that in because of the puzzle-solver in me.

Based on the description for this mission, the continuity seems to be that we investigate a signal first, then they come to Primal Earth. Those missions aren't given out in any specific order, but Tina should know the designation of Praetorian Earth if you had already done the Praetorian War arc.

This is probably about the same efficiency these days, since Coldblooded was reduced. I'd guess that it takes about 8 runs, which is about the same as splitting up Coldblooded and Weed Whacker with optimal levels for each. It loses in efficiency for each of them, with only one of three possible Boss spawns counting for Weed Whacker, rather than two out of three in a 31-35 mission, and for only having Lieutenant Hordelings, but makes up for it in the crossover of Hellfrosts counting for both. I suppose it mostly depends on what level of villains you have available which you would choose.

I suppose that you could call it that. I mistyped in what you quoted, it was Issue 14 that didn't increment the build version number, not Issue 15. It wasn't so much a case of releasing out of cycle as it was a case of something that was "done" in the same version getting a bunch of new functionality, and being cleaved from Issue 13 for a later release, but called a new issue, anyway. If I'm correct about the old build numbers, Issue 6 wasn't out of order, but rather a pretty standard practice of restarting with a one for a project that had a fundamental overhaul.

I'm fairly positive that KaliMagdalene was the first to 10,000, and thus got to pick the title. It was a fairly tight race between her and Satanic_Hamster, who, if memory serves, claimed he would have had them call it Hamster Hamster Hamster!

Fair enough, but it would be a first for this game to discard a number, unless you count the jump from version 6 to version 11, which I always assumed was one one, rather than eleven, when City of Villains launched. Like you said, though, sometimes a version number doesn't get released with software, and we have had weirdness in builds in the past year, with Issue 15 not incrementing to a new version number when it came out.

If that's so, and I have no reason to doubt you, given that you're Arcanaville, that's two major builds out, meaning there should be an issue 17 before Going Rogue. Of course, they could be sneaky and make Issue 17 just be the common assets for everyone and call Going Rogue Build 1800.

It's only one, perhaps two missions, I forget if the Family one is defeat all. Stephanie has three missions that take place on a ship, and those are the only ship maps that you ever see hero side. It's definitely annoying that at least one is defeat all, especially since it has patrols, but that's about 5-8% of the content there.

The casino, bank lobby, and University offices with basement would make an excellent starting point for more varied maps. Stretch the Casino out, repaint it, and swap the gaming tables for other items and it could be a supermarket or restaurant. Banks could be excellent starts to build into movie theaters or any kind of bureaucratic office, like a Department of Motor Vehicles. The University offices with basement, that you only run into one time in the whole game, could be made into apartment building corridors or dorms, or even <shudders> realistic office buildings. I'd rather not see realistic office buildings because realistic office buildings are incredibly dull. If you've been in three office buildings in your life, you've probably seen everything any office building has to offer.

Oh, and if you are willing to put up with the endurance-fest that is Dr. Quaterfield, that Portal Corp. tech lab gets reused there.

The thing is, you say you want it gone because you're tired of it. Others aren't. Nobody should be asking for content to be removed just because they are personally burnt out on it, it's limiting other peoples' options, and that is selfish. By the same logic that you're using, Frostfire should just be pulled from the game. I mean everyone's done that until they can memorize the map, and he actually is overpowered, unlike Snaptooth, who, even in the Valentine mission can be easily beaten solo by anyone from their teens on with just a little tactical thought.

Most people in here that are blase about this event are saying that it's because there's nothing new to do. That's not a specific complaint about what there is to do being bad, just that it is the same thing again. I actually find both to be interesting missions in their own rights. Both use unique maps, have something to do other than just find target and make it dead, and feature a Boss that doesn't rely on abundant status effects or the dreaded purple triangles to constitute a challenge.

All that said, I would love to see a Candy Keeper type of system for the Valentine Event, just to make it so that you, and anyone else who holds the Snaptooth mission in such low regard, have an alternative. I would also encourage the developers to come up with 3 or 4 other missions for Winter and Valentine's, given in a specific order to avoid the problems with random assignment that can give you 3 Council missions from the Newspaper as your only choices, with only the first being Snaptooth (because of the Toothbreaker badge, which I doubt would ever be put into any kind of buy list for badges) to avoid the tedium of the same thing over and over. As many different themed missions as there are rewards to get from them should be the standard for events. As a sidenote, I'd also be in favor of making Toothbreaker award for a single, or perhaps double, since you would still face him by doing the one mission that he was in in both events, defeat, again, to lessen the tedium of it.

There's room for improvement through addition here. The Pyrrhic choice of just getting rid of something because some don't like it or are bored with it would be both an overreaction and a mistake.