SlickRiptide

I guess they ought to get around to actually putting a promotions tab on that page, then...

While I care a great deal about the story, most of my characters do not, until it effects them in some way. That said, I have a couple of characters whose origins tie into the Rikti War and those characters have very strong feelings about aspects of that whole storyline. Nearly all of them ARE affected in one way or another by the stories they participate in, but they don't end up attached to them, if you see what I'm saying.

So, I'd say it's something I take on a case-by-case basis. It's not a general rule one way or the other. These days, my characters don't even have a personal story most of the time until they reach level 10 and I feel like I'm going to play with them more than once or twice.

Heck, my single greater-than-level-ten villain is just a guy who actually likes being a soldier of Arachnos. He likes being tough and shooting things. He's turning into a Huntsman-style build instead of either of the specializations. I liken him to the Shoveler in the film _Mystery Men_, justifying his hero obsession to his wife: "I like shoveling. I'm good at it!" He couldn't care less about being a Destined One or about The Spider's big plans to rule the world.

I "took a walk" through King's Row tonight and saw that there aren't all that many Longbow around anymore; not like the early days when you couldn't throw a rock without hitting them. The one outside the hospital talking to the security guard was typical, though - "We have to put these punks in King's Row on alert!"

Where the Longbow in Atlas Park and Galaxy City seem to be prototypical superhero types, the Longbow in King's Row have always seemed to be in need of an attitude adjustment in regards to their dealings with the gangs and people of King's Row.

ObPatriotism:

None of my characters have ever been in a position to feel like they were being forced to decide between patriotism or not, except for one who is deliberately characterized as being a bit daft in that department.

From a real-world standpoint, I had an interesting experience here on the forums last year around this time. It was Independence Day and in the spirit of the occasion, I logged into BabelFish and had it translate a greeting into French, along the lines of "In recognition of Independence Day in the United States, I wanted to thank you all [French forum users] for the help that your ancestors gave our ancestors. Without it, we wouldn't have a holiday to celebrate."

I'm sure it sounded like machine-generated French, but the French forumites seemed to enjoy it. It sparked a short but interesting conversation wherein the handful of respondents commented on the fact that while they appreciated the greeting, that they thought it was a bit odd that America has a holiday dedicated, essentially, to patriotism. One or two responded back in English, so we were able to actually talk a bit. :-)

They seemed to feel that this was a bit, um, silly is the wrong word, but i'm not sure what the right word is - not frivolous or amusing, really, but some amalgam of all three that I'm not really popping out of my brain right now. They said that they had no similar holiday and couldn't imagine French or even European people getting much behind a similar patriotic holiday. They felt that something like, say, Bastille Day fell into a different category somehow.

I imagine from this that a foreign player like Sam might have some issues with "playacting" a patriotic character, particularly an American character, given that they don't really "feel" our concept of patriotism quite like we do. That's what I took away from it, anyway.

OTOH, my characters pretty much all are patriots to the extent that they believe in the Constitution and they believe that Longbow is an offense against it, if not an outright violation of it and they treat it accordingly.

That's not THE statue. That's one of the statues flanking the arena. The parking garage structure of the ruined building doesn't match Freedom Corps, there's no war wall behind it, and the scale is all wrong in comparison to the rest of the skyline. The Galaxy Girl statue is taller than 90% of the buildings in Galaxy City. You can see it from clear on the other side of the zone.

Even if the war wall is supposedly knocked down by the meteors, exposing the buildings on the other side, there's no way that's the statue standing in the rotunda behind Freedom Corps.

No, you're right and that was my bad, if you're talking about the Rikti thing. It's old news for many but not for everyone. I assume you didn't mean Mender Silos - If you did, then Positron himself let the cat out of the bag when he hinted rather broadly within the first few days of Ouroboros' existence that Mender Silos is an anagram. That's one I'd consider to be open knowledge.

You're correct, though and I even caught onto that myself in another thread where I was a bit more careful about potential spoilers. I apologize for any spoilage here.

So, what, no wagers? 500 inf, that'll buy a couple of green inspirations and you know how good those taste...

People still talk about Tasha Yar. As Oscar Wilde said, "It is better to be talked about than to be not talked about."

Put another way:

"Will you ride with me, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song – if any be left to sing of us hereafter."

Shocking or not, if the death is worth retelling later, then it will have been a good death. It's up to the devs to make sure that it IS "worth a song".

They've said repeatedly that current subscribers will keep access to any content that they've already unlocked. I see no reason why that would apply differently to vet rewards.

I'm pleased that free players get to "earn" the right to use gated game systems just by hanging around and being good citizens. If they don't want to wait that long, they can always speed it up by purchasing access to higher tiers.

As far as the "cost" of buying your way into the higher tiers - Technically speaking, it doesn't cost anything.

The slide says "One [reward token] for every 1200 cumulative points purchased in the store".

The way I read this is that you spend $15 on points, and you are rewarded with a token. The token is a free bonus; a "but wait, there's more!" thing. If you buy 3600 Paragon Points, then you'll receive three tokens but you will STILL have 3600 Paragon Points in your "wallet".

In essence, if you are stupidly wealthy and you spend 36 x $15 = 14,400 Paragon Points ($540) all at once, then you'll have the reward tokens to unlock tier 9 but you'll also still have the 14,400 Paragon Points to spend on goodies in the store. In essence, you're making a non-refundable pre-payment deposit on store goods and being rewarded for it.

Some people will be really thrilled with that idea. At the least, it means that if you're pretty sure you'd spend that much money anyway that you can choose to do it up front and get extra rewards for doing it.