Sparkly Soldier

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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rubberlad View Post
    Either someone else buys the IP or they don't.
    That hinges on NCSoft selling the IP, which is something they haven't done before. Convincing them to do that is what out focus needs to be on. The moment they publicly announced that CoH was closing, it was a given that they couldn't really pull back and say "just kidding," no matter how much they regretted it afterward. The best plan to save the game as it is now has always been convincing them to sell it rather than just mothball it.
  2. Sparkly Soldier

    Loregasm

    Saved and left unread just in case... oh who am I kidding, I've already read the first three answers just while saving the page. Thank you for posting this! And...

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Positron View Post
    If there is a miracle and somehow CoH is saved, we reserve the right to change any and all answers given in the doc, to maintain suspense and surprise.
    That such a miracle hasn't totally been written off yet in itself gives me hope. If it happens, I'll look forward to each and every answer being a red herring.
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
    NCSoft would also have to do this if the game was being sold too - this statement today doesn't really change anything.
    I was about to say just that too. If the game was being sold, the new company would be starting its subscriptions and billing plans from scratch, so we'd still get this message. Still, hope for the best and prepare for the worst...
  4. On the other hand, maybe we got their attention and they're curious enough to want to consolidate all the feedback and see just how much there really is and what it's saying. The pessimist in me says "it goes to the trash bin," but if I were guessing optimistically, they might have someone reviewing it and reporting to the senior staff the way Zwill said he reviewed and reported back to the devs on threads here when they're making a decision: "there are this many messages, this percentage say this, this percentage say something else, the general response amounts to this." At any rate, they did feel compelled to acknowledge us and offer an official channel for continuing the campaign, when they could have just bullied Tony with a cease and desist letter and called it a day, and that in itself is a step forward.
  5. I'm sure it's just coincidence, but while logging in for a rally the very first NPC line in the chat window was one of the reporters asking "can you tell us what role Arachnos played in this tragedy?" Even the NPC's want answers...
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Atlantea View Post
    I completely understand. I like Champions and DCUO both. But they were always ALTERNATIVES to COH to play when I wanted a change of pace.

    THere is however a VERY IMPORTANT THING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR STARTING GAME EXPERIENCE IN CO.

    (And yes - it's important enough to "yell" in all caps to draw your attention)

    The character creation engine is intentionally HOBBLED on your first character into and through the tutorial. The VAST MAJORITY of the costume choices available are locked down and menued in the way that you describe.

    My advice, should you want to try again:

    DON'T try and recreate one of your characters from COH first thing out of the gate in CO. Instead, choose one of the ATs they give you and stick with the costume they give you and run that character through the tutorial.

    When you exit (level 6-7 likely) STOP THE GAME. Shut it down. REBOOT IT.

    Come back, DELETE your test character, and start again, and the options will have been unlocked for you except for the pieces they've put behind pay and unlock walls, which still means that the character creator is opened up by an order of magnitude and is much more open to use.

    It wasn't like this at launch. I HATE this change for CO because it is doing EXACTLY this sort of thing to new players - making them not want to play the game.

    The game is MUCH better than your initial experience. Take my advice, try it again. Then make your decision.

    And know that I still agree with you that it is not a replacement for City of Heroes. Nothing ever will be. But if all else fails and the worst happens. It's probably the best option we'll have available. That's why I'm working to try and help people make these transitions when this subject comes up.

    I hope this helps you.
    Huh! That's really odd, but I'll give it a try later (I'd heard something about pieces being locked by level 10, but figured they'd only be unlocked per character rather than account). One short-lived but exciting pre-custom hero coming right up!
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Sureshot_Liberty View Post
    I know this doesn't help, but to be fair, the free to play model for CO is more generous than the one for CoH. The only major restriction is on the ability to play freeform...
    But that's the one and only thing I care about. It's the only reason City of Heroes was the first MMO to win me over as a subscriber. I wasn't worried about IO's or Incarnate content or playing as the handful of AT's still locked up, like Kheldians and Masterminds. I just wanted to support the studio that allowed me to create a character straight out of my imagination and go leaping, flying and fighting with powers that looked and even animated the way I wanted. And that's the one thing no other MMO even tries to do.

    I tried to create a character in Champions Online and didn't even get past the character creator: it was just too cumbersome, too bizarrely arbitrary in its behavior (pick a basic costume piece, then pick one of the options below it, you don't like it and... whoops, the basic option has now vanished, start over and try again!) and the archetypes, like most MMOs, pretty much imposed a very specific character concept on you. Maybe freeform powers would be different, but I'm not handing over money sight unseen to find out.

    Then again, I suppose CO at least lets you write a bio. The problem I find in most MMO's is that you don't really get to create a character, you just dress up the character the game gave you. I've been playing The Secret World lately, and I like it, but my character's circumstances, background, social class, even knowledge about the game's setting prior to the game were entirely set by the opening cutscene, and they're pretty restrictive. It's the same as World of Warcraft, Aion or The Old Republic: you can pick a face and a name, but really, you're just Soldier #194284215 in the Great War and everyone treats you like it. I swear to God, if I have one more trainer in an MMO shout at me like a drill sergeant... I guess developers think that the story needs to address the fact that you're just one player among many, but I don't pay $15 a month for the pleasure of some NPC telling me how worthless I am.

    The topic hit it on the head. It's not just a matter of City of Heroes doing it better than other MMO's, it's that it has an entirely different design philosophy than other MMO's and nobody else has followed in its footsteps (maybe Champions does to some extent, but again, not paying money to find out based on the teeth-pulling I went through just trying to make the costume builder cooperate). City of Heroes focuses entirely on building its world while letting your character have any relationship with that world you want. Every other MMO I've tried tells a story about a character that the developers created, and you're playing the role of that character. Which is fine, it's how most fiction works, but it's also what made City of Heroes different.
  8. I don't picture it as an apocalypse so much as my characters will continue their lives and adventures without me. So a conversation like that wouldn't be about the game ending, or even so much for their sake as it would be for mine, a chance to say goodbye to them before letting them scatter off into the sunset. I suppose it could be awkward if they knew I was "God" ("you know, my life has really sucked because you thought it'd be dramatic!" "Erm, yeah, sorry about that... but that's what makes you heroic!"), but I'd prefer that they just think I'm an old friend who stopped by to take them on a night out on the town. We go out, have fun, reminisce about old times until it's almost morning, and I wish them luck on their crazy adventures before leaving again, waving happily until they're out of sight and then sighing a little as I realize that I won't be coming back, that it's truly their world now.
  9. Sparkly Soldier

    Roleplaying SOS

    Here's a free tool that's a big help with saving these stories as PDF's. We use something similar at work, it's got a very good rating on CNET, I scanned the download and it came back clean, and it seems to work well...

    http://thesz.diecru.eu/content/doro.php

    Once it's installed, it works like a printer. Just click the File menu on the browser window as if you're going to print the web page, and you'll see an option for "Doro PDF Writer" alongside any other printers on your computer. "Print" the page to it and it'll create a PDF copy of the page.

    It's not totally perfect: it didn't grab the background colors and image for the forum pages I tested (the one with Penny and Shadowhunter, that is), but it converted the messages and all the images posted within them just fine. And it's free and really, really easy to use, so there's that.

    My original plan was to post a bunch of the longer stories I noticed while browsing the forums, but honestly, I haven't had a chance to read them and, for all I know, I might end up blindly posting things that the authors are embarrassed about and absolutely don't want preserved. And it hardly seems fair to post certain messages entirely on the basis of "I recognized that user's name."

    So instead, here's just the two origin stories I've posted...

    New World Daughter: Homecoming
    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=293110

    Shadow Ecliptic: Promise
    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=294857

    And I'd encourage anyone who wants their stories saved to just go ahead and post them here too. As painful as it is to even say, the forums might not be around much longer. At least this way our stories will still be read and enjoyed by people who cared enough to create, read and save stuff from this thread for exactly that purpose.
  10. Okay, that is just flat-out amazing! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mercedes Lackey! And please, please let there be at least one sane businessman in NCSoft who'll look at her letter and realize the kinds of opportunities that saving CoH would open for them.
  11. My characters are all natives of Paragon's world and tied into the lore too much to migrate them. There's just no way, for instance, that Astorian Shade would ever make sense anywhere except Paragon City with its Astorian lore. The closest I've done is created a sort of elseworlds version of Sparkly Soldier Yuki in The Secret World, as a street-smart teenage demon hunter. She does at least look a lot like Yuki would in jeans and a hoody. I also tried rebuilding her in Champions Online as a test for any other characters, but after a few hours of work I ended up with a character that was just close enough to her to depressingly realize that it's never really going to look like her. Regardless, my characters are woven so much into this setting that any versions in another game would just, at best, be loosely based on them.
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
    You should upgrade to LED. They're much softer than CRTs.
    Confirmed by Zwill: NCSoft to restore game in a scheme to boost replacement monitor sales!
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Positron View Post
    “Didn’t we keep Morbid Curiosity’s Necromantic rod?” she asked.
    God I love some of the character names in this game!

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gec72 View Post
    Yep. As I read this, I kept wondering - old story...or allegory?
    In that case, let's hope this being the story of War Witch's resurrection is also an allegory.

    Anyway, I've always been puzzled at how casually the characters sometimes treat resurrecting each other ("I have a theory that bringing my uncle's dead girlfriend back to life will help make him good again," said Ms. Liberty, "let's do it!"), but that is very true to comic books, and with that said, this was a very, very fun read. Thank you for posting it!
  14. Characters are saved, or at least really really thoroughly documented. Thank you!
  15. Sparkly Soldier

    Farewell

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by .Viridian. View Post
    I started by polishing up the Ongoing Training Missions for the Freedom launch. Shawn Pitman was the one who started those, but when he left I was asked to take the reins. The first arcs is mostly Shawn's, and we were both responsible for parts of the second. The third arc was mostly mine, with some swift assistance from Dr. Aeon as well.

    After that, I started in on Issue 22, where I did the Dark Astoria repeatable missions (Maharaj for villains, Ephram Sha for heroes), and some mid-level storyarcs. My arcs were:

    Collateral Damage - Laura Lockhart (Hero)
    Last Rites - Graham Easton (Hero)
    Destiny Follows - Bane Spider Ruben (Villain)
    What Schemes May Come - Brother Hammond (Villain)

    After I22 launched, I was assigned the second signature storyarc, Pandora's Box. There were five arcs in that set, but only three of them made it to live. The fourth and fifth arcs are on beta, but players needed to get a code from Alpha Wolf to test them, so they're not widely available.
    Whoa, Laura and Graham's arcs are yours? I just ran those two arcs for the first time last week, and they're both incredible! Very well-written, nuanced, I love the morality options you're continually given throughout each of them. Without being too spoilery, I love how the outdoor map mission in Collateral Damage encourages the player to use one particular strategy and then suddenly denies you that tactic, and how later you realize that what happened on that map perfectly symbolizes the antagonist's motives and the problems with them. And on a very different note, I actually laughed out loud when one of Graham's mission briefings had him simply grumbling to himself while my character rolls her eyes and decides to follow a lead on her own. Normally I don't like it when the mission writing assumes too much about my character, but that was totally worth it.

    Also...

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zortel View Post
    I love the mass mook fight in Collateral Damage.
    That too, especially the moment when you open the door. It's such a classic "oh yeah, you and what army... I should really stop saying that" moment.

    And if the third part of the Ongoing Training Missions means the Shining Stars, the dialogue between Twinshot and Proton as you're going through the map and then that final confrontation with the villains, then between that, Graham and Laura, you have just become my favorite writer in the game.

    To present yourself so modestly, you did some absolutely great writing! Thanks for all you did for the game, and here's to hoping we'll somehow get to play through lots more of your stories.
  16. Sorry about taking a few days to post (and for the crazy long message!), but I needed to find a night free to type it all out, and to grab some screenshots. With that in mind, I don't have much in the way of altitis, but I poured a lot of myself into my characters and they all felt a little like children; they had lives of their own, personalities, and I loved watching them grow, develop and surprise me at times with the directions they might take as the game's own arcs helped bring their stories to life. But to pick the favorites, I'll go with the four characters who inspired me to write fanfics of some kind about, whether AE arcs or Roleplaying stories, and tell the stories behind their stories. I'll include links to those threads as well since, if I don't share them now, then when?
    __________

    Yukiko Yoshida, aka Sparkly Soldier Yuki
    Energy/Energy Blaster

    "An angel of justice and heroic resolve, preserving the past and fighting for the future! Legendary radiant... Sparkly Soldier Yuki! Protector of Innocents!"

    "Face sparkly justice, evildoers!"



    Quote:
    Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some get knocked flat on their backs by talking plushy cats from the future. Yukiko Yoshida was an ordinary schoolgirl until Mira, a psychic time traveler from a devastated future, found her projected mind accidentally stuck in the body of Yuki's toy cat. When the bewildered pair came under attack by Mira's alien pursuers, Mira hastily transferred all her remaining psychic energy to Yukiko, where it manifested as the magical girl powers Yuki's always wanted. Remembering that her mentor Seraphea, the future champion of the human resistance, used to joke about receiving her powers from a talking cat, Mira realized that Yukiko is destined to become that heroine. Now Yuki splits her days between fighting evil, learning how to master her newfound powers and worrying about boys.
    Yuki was the second character I made and the first to capture my imagination, and yet she ironically started off as just an offhand example character I made for a friend. We're both fans of Sailor Moon (though she much moreso) and I had trouble convincing her to try City of Heroes since, and I quote, "I don't read comic books." In an attempt to convince her that the character options were far more versatile than just spandex heroes, I quickly put together an homage to Sailor Moon reimagined as a young psychic girl in Paragon City, complete with her own talking cat mentor.

    But something happened: her story started blooming with hardly any effort. Mira leaped out at me as the perfect name for her mentor, and as I read about the Kheldians, the Nictus quickly emerged as the aliens who rule the future Earth, and the nature of the future apocalypse became clearer: a disaster called the Shadow Storm (no relation to the Coming Storm) struck the world, casting it into endless night and reshaping the environment to allow them to possess most of the population. The name Seraphea emerged as Yuki's future self and from there the story just kept building on itself. I wound up publishing my first AE arc as Yuki telling the player about her origin story, with flashbacks to the post-apocaypse, the day she received her powers and her first attempt at fighting crime.

    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=283166

    And Yuki kept growing as a character in my imagination. She embodied everything cheerful, wholesome and idealistic about both the magical-girl genre and Paragon City's own optimistic atmosphere, and more and more details came to mind, from the introductory battle speech she'd have spent all night coming up with (complete with badge and title references) to the attack names she'd shout. I wrote a story about her nearly taking a life and becoming a vigilante after her harrowing journey through First Ward, and began work on two more AE arcs, a trilogy culminating in the final battle of the future war. Three more stories about Yuki as a post-Batallion adult, a hardened but still idealistic Vanguard officer leading a Nictus-hunting team of heroes in an effort to change history, emerged and other details about her life came to mind that I would love to have immortalized in story form, given the chance.

    As for that friend who thought she wouldn't like City of Heroes because she loves anime and "doesn't read comic books?" As a Premium player, she's spent far more money and earned more points than I have as a year-long subscriber... and her main character is a very Silver Age-style mutant with fire powers and a spandex outfit to match.
    __________

    Astorian Shade, birth name unknown

    Necro/Dark Mastermind

    "The fog whispers your name..."




    Quote:
    Atlas Park - December 13th

    "I know we're all stretched thin with the Galaxy City disaster, but the Hellions are a menace. If you know of any heroes who can help with them, anyone at all..."

    "Well, there is one hero... sort of. Dial this number. When you hear a click like someone picking up on the other end, say that you want to see Astorian Shade. You won't hear any answer, but she'll appear by nightfall."

    "But this area code's in Astoria. Won't it be disconnected?"

    "According to the city, it has been for years. Now, you should be safe so long as you're a law-abiding citizen. But she's not very friendly and, well, she's not always a pleasant sight. Nonetheless, I think she can help you."

    "I 'should be' safe? What is she, exactly?"

    "She comes from Dark Astoria. I'm afraid that's all we at MAGI know for sure. Good luck, Detective Habashy."
    Long before I'd actually tried City of Heroes I'd heard about a place in it called "Dark Astoria," mostly from MMO-savvy friends who knew I liked atmospheric horror games like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame. The screenshots had always made me curious, and one of the first things I did upon reaching a survivable level with Yuki was go to Talos Island and find out what exactly lay behind that misty gate to the east. What I found, of course, was a place where superheroes fought Silent Hill... and Silent Hill won. The exploration badges told a fascinating story and I only regretted that there weren't more arcs involving that abandoned, haunted corner of Paragon City.

    And then the news came that Dark Astoria was being revamped for incarnates.

    Even if the revamp turned out to be amazing (and it did), the hauntingly atmospheric Astoria I loved seemed to be going away, and at that point there wasn't any guarantee we'd have an Echo. So, before Issue 22 came out, I vowed to create a character as an homage to the old, foggy Astoria. An idea for a Croatoa-based fairy queen summoner hadn't panned out (the powersets that would have made her feel right at home, Beast Mastery and Nature Affinity, simply didn't exist yet) and the idea crossed my mind of a ghost summoner, a vengeful spirit that summons the undead to her aid. From there her spectral form emerged, and then a human guise to justify her talking to contacts, and then a story.

    The first attempt was just a vaguely poetic explanation of her background and it lasted hardly a week before the much livelier idea of presenting it as a dialogue came to mind. The question then arose of how did MAGI know about her and what's her connection to them, and as the answer grew in my imagination, it became less and less about her and more about Dark Astoria's own background. Eventually it turned into its own AE arc, a murder mystery and sort of introduction to Dark Astoria before the changes that were already being unveiled in beta...

    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=283167

    Her character soon began to grow into something more, and surprised me with how it developed through the story arcs. The most memorable moment was at the end of the Atlas Park arc, when she had to choose what to do with Aaron. I'd anticipated that choice thanks to playing it twice already, and imagined her being spooky and malevolent even as she spared him.

    But when the time came, everything he said about heroes abandoning their duties struck a very deep nerve for her, and as she heard her own vengeful philosophy repeated back to her, she realized how wrong she'd been. And so rather than the threatening taunt I'd anticipated, what came to mind instead was her dispelling her minions, changing back into her human form and then softly and sadly saying "you're wrong" before turning her back on him and walking away to let the police handle things, and then smiling for the first time as a ghost while talking to Matt and his wife.

    She was the one character to really have a narrative climax within the game, that of awakening her dormant incarnate nature, returning to Dark Astoria and challenging Mot itself for the fate of the world. I just hope I can race her through the game fast enough to get there.

    During the first week or so of floating around Atlas Park as a ghost, another player ran up to her, stared for a moment at Shade with her bandaged eyes and oversized axe, and responded with a local "O.O". That may be the best compliment I've received on a character design.
    __________

    Virginia Dare, aka New World Daughter

    Electric/Storm Corrupter

    "Stay thy hand, or else lose it."


    Quote:
    "An eternity seemed to pass within that purgatory before the rift appeared. The elders sent me to learn its secrets, but instead the wind snatched me from the hilltop and flung me into a sky crackling with sulfurous light. I awoke in a place called Salamanca.

    "The ones who found me, the ones who call themselves Midnighters, say that since I was the first born, the magic pulled me back first. They say it has been four hundred years since our settlement was taken by the Red Caps.

    "My mother remains trapped in Croatoa. My father's blood calls out for vengeance. More of the Cabal have begun to appear in Salamanca; perhaps they will be of aid. But whether my sisters choose to fight alongside me or to bar my way, I will free my mother and avenge our family.

    "My name is Virginia Dare. I am Roanoke's last daughter, the last Cabal born under a blue sky. And I will destroy the Red Caps, so that none others share our fate."
    Croatoa was another zone I'd heard all about long before playing the game, and my very first character was a detective from Salamanca. But once I learned of the Cabal, the Roanoke colony's connection to Paragon City, the idea of the real-life Virginia Dare as one of the Cabal seemed too perfect to pass up. To my amazement, the developers hadn't explored that idea at all; I have a theory that Katie Hannon was written as Virginia at one point, but got changed for some reason, perhaps because Marvel's 1602 also used her and the studio just didn't think it'd be worth the headache. At any rate, it did leave "Virginia Dare: Cabal Sorceress" wide open for the players, and as a North Carolina native, the Roanoke story and the story of Virginia Dare held a special significance for me.

    Alas, I spent the next month just trying to think of a fitting name for her. Weird Al certainly didn't do me any favors: it took most of that time just to chase "Dare to Be Stupid" out of my head! Then one day the phrase "new world daughter" popped out of nowhere, and a few hours later Virginia the rogue Cabal sorceress and fledgeling Paragon hero was taking her first step into Atlas Park.

    The background I'd written for her character in the game gradually evolved into a much more detailed story involving her arriving in modern Salamanca and quickly being recruited by Midnight representative Ashley McKnight and MAGI representative Gregor Richardson, and it became the first story I posted in Roleplaying, and the first fanfic I've written in, oh lord, let's just say a few years...

    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=293110

    Veteran powers like the Blackwand and the Blue Wisp Pet really helped bring the image of her as a Cabal witch to life, and, once she returned to Salamanca at level 25 to find the rest of the Cabal running wild and the eternal war threatening innocent people, her story gained a symmetry with the game that just left me amazed at times.

    From her disastrous first fight with a group of Cabal girls as they shouted "how dare you stand in my way" and "you won't take this one from me," to her changing into modern clothes and going by "Ginny, from MAGI" to avoid admitting to Mayor Bower and Skip that she's one of them, to a ferociously epic battle above the rooftops with a Sorceress of the Winds wielding precisely her powersets, the game really seemed to unfold as her story. A seek and destroy mission against the Fir Bolg quickly turned into a stealth mission when she overheard "why is she tormenting us?" and "maybe she's in league with the Red Caps," and was painfully reminded that she used to be their allies and they don't understand why she's turned on them, and the level gap between Skipper and Kelly, from 26 to 30, became a one-woman, forest-sweeping war against the Red Caps.

    I'd looked forward to seeing just how a level 50 character with the Cabal's electric blast and storm summoning powers would play, but for now, I'll be content to just finish Croatoa, run the Katie Hannon Task Force (the battle between Virginia and Mary MacComber would just be so perfect from a story perspective... if agonizing from a gameplay one) and maybe, if time allows, earn the Geas of the Kind Ones accolade so her adventure can come to a proper conclusion.
    __________

    Eric Grayson, aka Shadow Ecliptic
    Warshade

    "Nobody ever picks the easy way..."



    Quote:
    Eric Grayson was just a lowly DATA mechanic until the day the Peacebringers came to Earth. The Nictus sent their own emissary to welcome them: the Kheldian assassin Hibernal Dusk, who possessed Eric and tried to use him to destroy City Hall and the arriving Peacebringer envoys. The attempt failed when Eric regained control and shut down the overloading Longbow portal, but his success came with a high price; by using too much of the Nictus's energy absorbing powers to stave off the explosion, he'd initiated the bonding process. Faced with an inevitable bonding that could drive them both insane, and with Hibernal Dusk's own growing doubts about the Kheldian war, the two willingly merged together into the Warshade Shadow Ecliptic, the incarnation of Eric's promise to show Hibernal Dusk what it means to be human.
    I'd already learned a lot about the Kheldian lore thanks to Yuki's backstory, but it took one friend asking me to make a low-level toon to run through the game at her pace and another friend singing the praises of his newly rolled Peacebringer character to convince me to give the Kheldians a try. Originally I'd intended to simply roll a Peacebringer character I'd written for Yuki's stories, but when every permutation of his name turned out to be taken, I went with a brand new Warshade instead. His look actually came before anything else, and that helped inspire a story that went through several twists and turns before settling into its final form.

    At first I imagined an unwilling bond leading to antagonists sharing the same body, sort of Ash and his evil hand from "Evil Dead 2" starring in a buddy cop movie. That gradually turned into a more dialogue-driven concept of a human and unwilling Nictus as partners, somewhat resembling Light and Ryuk from "Death Note," and then the thought of GLaDOS and Chell crossed my mind. And the moment I imagined the Nictus having a female mental voice, his entire character snapped instantly into place and I spent the rest of the night on a caffeine-fueled typing bender to get the story that had suddenly flashed through my thoughts down on paper. Early the next afternoon, the finished story was posted. In his case, the full fanfic story actually came first, and his character background is a very, very truncated version of it...

    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=294857

    I haven't played him very much, since I was just arriving at Croatoa with NWD at the same time, but playing a Warshade had turned out to be immensely fun, even solo, and Dark Nova's won over even the most jaded WoW fan on the basis of "okay, I've gotta admit that looks really cool." Since his story ends with an appearance by Keith Nance, I guess I'll aim for "Twisted Reflections" as his chance to prove himself once and for all a hero, along with wherever Shadowstar's missions have led him by that point.

    Anyway, those are my four biggie characters and the rambling stories of how they came to be! Here's to hoping the game can be saved somehow - I really want to find out how all their stories end.
  17. As long as we have the same freedom to create characters, not a bit. If anything, it'll be fun to run those characters through different arcs and paths through the game, knowing what I know now.
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by NukeTheLag View Post
    I do find it kind of amusing that the CEO of a company that has nothing to do with CoX is capable of giving an upfront and honest answer, unlike anyone at NCSoft.
    In a way, though, that's a good sign. He could give an answer because he already knew what it was. NCSoft probably isn't saying a word because they don't know what to say yet. It's also encouraging that in their reasons for ditching CoH, they didn't use any phrases that might denigrate the game or its sales, like "due to declining revenue"; that suggests they don't want to poison any potential buyers against the game.
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gorgar View Post
    I expect an undersea moon base.
    Okay, we'll need all you water blasters to aim up...
  20. That really is encouraging - maybe Paragon can become its own publisher and turn City of Heroes into its flagship game. Good luck to all of them, and if there's anything we can do, sign more petitions, write letters to NCSoft, whatever, I hope they'll let us know so we can help make it happen too.
  21. All I can say is, never has a post-apocalyptic dictatorship looked so incredibly beautiful, awe-inspiring and tempting to live in, and the revelations of what madness lay beneath the surface hit all the harder for it. I'm going to miss just roof-hopping around Nova Praetoria and taking in the atmosphere of it all. Thanks for all you did to make it come to life, and here's to hoping we'll get to live out an even bigger vision of yours down the road.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by SnowJackal View Post
    Thing is? It doesn't make sense, to me, that they would buy it given it would put the game in direct competition with DCUO. DCUO does tend to run more populated on Consoles however, the PC version does have a player base, too. Not a HEAVY one but it's there and still chugging along. When I play it, there's always people around! So with that knowledge, I'm taking it with a major grain of salt, a hopeful one, but a grain nevertheless.
    Think of it this way, though. They're in "competition," but no matter which game people are playing, SOE would be the one getting money from them. City of Heroes' fans by and large don't seem to overlap with DCUO's fans: what people like about this game is stuff they can't find in that one, and vice versa. If either SOE or PWE gets this game, they'd immediately double their subscribers and gain a huge market advantage over their remaining superheo MMO competitor. I wouldn't be surprised if any bidding going is mostly between the two of them.
  23. I'm still hoping against hope that somehow you'll be able to make those ideas come to life again, and worrying about being spoiled if so, but the links are bookmarked just in case. I'll look forward to seeing the videos either way, and I've no doubt they'll be gut-wrenchingly awesome to see. Thank you for posting them, and here's to hoping that the story might yet find a way to continue.