Steelclaw

Ways to tell Ossuary slipped in some City of Heroes during his wedding/reception/Wedding night:

* His wife was the only one NOT getting the Level Ding Rush every few minutes.

* His repeated disappointment that no one bought him the Wedding Pack as an appropriate nuptial gift.

* The best man's toast? "Gratz!"

* Macros really help you play with one hand while shaking hands with the other in the reception line.

* Repeated nervous checking of his combat numbers to see if Defense and/or Resistance versus Anullment has popped up.

* Despite multiple attempts, wife will not buy the "but Stephanie Peebles gives the Wedding Ring temp power" as a viable omage to marriage excuse.

* SHE threatened divorce if he didn't get off the computer; shortly after HE threatened it if she didn't turn back on the wi-fi.

* Sister Psyche shows up to commiserate with yet another hero-widow.

* Like her husband, Mrs. Ossuary turns to electronic means of fulfilling a need.

All kidding aside... Congratulations on your marriage! I wish you the best of luck and many, many years of happiness.

Seriously... now that it has been confirmed that Street Justice has a Knee To The Groin attack in it I'm sure everyone will be busy making lists of who they want to lure into a PvP zone...

...and strategies of how to get them there.

A few things I would love to see from the new Knee to the Groin attack:

* A CLANG with no damage, a sad shake of the head from your opponent and you hopping around clutching your knee when used against robotic/metal opponents.

* When used against normal males we HAVE to have the eyes-popping-from-their-sockets animation on the victim. 2 feet for standard hits and 10 feet for a critical hit from a Scrapper.

* Let's face it folks... this one HAS TO BE the stalker's assassin's strike move.

* When used in PvP zones versus a male opponent there should be a voice-over of a six year old girl screaming for her mommy.

* Instead of the Terror Effect usual for Stalker's Assassin's Strike, every male in the area witnessing the Assassinate Groin attack will cringe and clutch themselves protectively for the duration of the usual terror.

* Any female who uses this attack against a male opponent then immediately chains into a Dance Emote to mock them as they crumple to the ground will gain an experience point bonus.

* The animation should include a Babe Ruth "point to the fences" emote just before the attack.

* A new Boss Level opponent in the Knives of Artemis should be created who ONLY uses this attack.

* ANY female opponent who is on the receiving end of a groin attack that misses from a male has a 25% chance of saying "I think you meant to do it THIS WAY!" and reciprocate.

* If a female Carnival of Shadows NPC uses this attack successfully against a male character all other female CoS in the area will throw up the "Field Goal GOOD!" emote.

* Should any male character be sent to the hospital as a result of this move; the female inspiration nurse will laugh and point at them as they exit the building.

* Due to some really twisted power proliferation, Gravity Controllers/Dominators will get a variation of this power making for the most effective single-target hold EVAH!

My question is this:

Upon signing on to the Open Beta will we receive Paragon Points and Rewards EXACTLY the same as though it were going live on the main servers? ie- linked to our actual Veteran time and months since July 1st to accrue points?

Sigh... if I must...

* The Lady Grey and The Pilgrim : The Grey Pilgrim

* Allison King and Angus McQueen : King McQueen

* Sister Psyche and Twilight's Son : Sister Son : Nephew

* Smuggler Jimmie and The Dark Watcher : Jimmie Watcher or the Dark Smuggler

* Technician Naylor and Stella the Mouth : Edited for Content

* Katie's Spirit and Mirror Spirit : Mirrored Spirits

* Infernal and Television : 500 channels and nothing on

* Captain Mako and Henry Peter Wong and Praetorian Henry Peter Wong and Praetor White : Two Wongs Mako White

My friends today we gather here
To give forth praise' resounding cheer
The recipients of our crescendo scream?
Our erstwhile red development team

To those who gave us brutes and tanks
We'd like to give our reverent thanks
For from your sweat soaked, fervent toil
Our heroes grew from fertile soil

You've enriched our lives, e'ery girl and lad
With avatars all spandex clad
Your gift to every gal and guy
A waking chance to finally fly

For each of you ARE Hero-One
For giving us such joy and fun
We gather here to ensure it's said
We love our hero team of red.

In the meantime the reverse has been true in the real world...

I recently had breakfast at the International House of (expletive deleted).

It just wasn't the same...

The wait-staff was friendly tho'...

See... now... in order to actually do this I would have to have access to Ouroboros... since I've deleted and recreated the same characters about a half a dozen times apiece...

Community is definitely up there for me in importance, but when I think of what I would tell people, I am drawn back to what kept me from playing the game when I first started.

I was very interested in CoH when I first heard of it... I am pretty much a super-hero addict and the idea of creating my own totally blew me away. What kept me from buying a box off the shelf was the fact that it was an MMORPG and (at the time anyway) I didn't have any interest in playing with others whatsoever.

So, if I had to sum up what I would tell people about the game in one word it would be: Options.

The archetypes are all balanced so you can play them solo or on a team; as are most of the missions and enemy groups.

The costume creator lets you create a huge percentange of what your mind can come up with and if it doesn't now... wait a while... they're adding stuff to it all the time.

Play for content. Play for socialization. Play for advancement. Play to beat the market. There are so many ways to enjoy this game that you'd practically need a spreadsheet to keep track of them all.

Trust me... I know.

One wonders why exactly they schedule this mid-way through Zwillinger's Ustream...

Moron-icide: What you have committed if you do something incredibly stupid that results in your character's death.

I actually use that one a lot while driving. Any time I see someone run a red light, cut someone off, or other idiot-related driving offenses; I always claim they attempted Moron-icide.

I occasionally read my lists to my Lady-Love if I either felt they were especially funny (in which case they're guaranteed to bomb or be ignored on the forums) or I want a sounding board to see if they are even worth posting.

Inevitably, I realize just how many of these jokes people who don't play can't even begin to comprehend. The players of any given game have their own language in a manner of speaking. With the upcoming influx of new/free players, we need a way to determine who the vets are without having to peek at their badge info.

So, like any good sub-culture, we need to invent our own slang and colloquialisms. I'll start:

* Positron Chic: No matter what level your character; only your first costume slot has ever been used. Referencing Positron's having to wear nothing but his power suit for so many years.

* Fusionette Task Force: You are on a team where one or more players rush onwards to aggro ever increasing numbers of spawns and either dying or leading the back to you.

* Last Dance with Lady Jane: Quitting a Fusionette Task Force out of frustration.

* Doing the Manticore Mambo: Roleplaying reasons for why your character who REALLY IS a pure hero/villain would ever even think of pretending to be the opposite alignment. They weren't REALLY switching sides, they were only spying/infiltrating/invading... just like Manticore did!

* PUG Ugly: Any pick up group with a combination of Archetypes in it that initially makes you cringe. Does not necessarily mean it is a bad or poor-performance group; just an unusual mix.

* Fast Forward Freak: Any player who insists on stealthing/speeding every possible mission in any given Task or Strike Force. Has been known to quit the team if other players want to take it slow.

* Super Mexicano Break: Same thing as a bio-break pause in the game, but player is REALLY not feeling well so this one might take a while.

* Nemesis Judge: Any accusation that a costume contest was rigged.

* The Crimson Horde: Any gathering that lags the system due to an announced Red-Name appearance and the huge crowd of people who show up for it.

* The Spanish Inquisition: Any suprise appearance from a red-name in-game, because no one expects it.

* My Dead Parrot: Any issue that you stringently believe is broken in-game but which the Developers insist is working as intended.

* Channeling Steelclaw: That one guy on the team who WON'T SHUT UP with the jokes and one-liners despite the fact that no one has responded to them for the last six missions and actually have put them on global ignore. Can also refer to someone who dies frequently during battles because they were typing in jokes rather than paying attention to their health bar.

* Anti-Matter Chatter: Any statement or action where one player quits or threatens to quit a team because of another team member they don't like.

* Maxed Sliders: An inappropriate reference to the size of a woman's breasts. Can be used in or out of game. Example: Look at the maxed sliders on HER!

* Package Slider: Used primarily out of game; any email or product you receive that contains the words "natural male enhancment."

* Teen Angst: The stress or frustration felt by a Moderator when someone has violated the Teen rating on the forums.

* Tastes Like Enriche!: Dying face-down in sewer water.

There's a few to start you out. Anyone have any others we can add to the City of Heroes lexicon?

Thanks everyone for the support! I fully plan on being here tormenting YOU with my lists and MYSELF with my tournament for a long time to come.

On a side note; I read some of your responses to my lady-love and she said "Tell them not to encourage you... You spend enough time on that da**ed computer as it is."

...and, in a blatant copy of what Dark Respite did when SHE hit the 48 month mark, I will now list my accomplishments in that time.

* I mass-deleted all my characters and rebooted them 7 times, or almost twice a year.

* I managed to somehow get one hero and one villain to 50th level and then promptly deleted them both off my account once the minimum V/EAT unlock level dropped to 20.

* I have spent nearly as much time creating/maintaining/updating spreadsheets about CoH as I have actually playing the game.

* I have allegedly caused the destruction of, or at least brought about the immediate cleaning of, a number of keyboards and/or monitors.

* I started out on the forums very shy and unwilling to put myself, my ideas or my humor (such as it is) forth for public consumption. I have managed to overcome this handicap somewhat; much to the chagrin of my many detractors.

* Despite valliant effort on my part, I have still, to this day, been unable to make a list so bad it got me perma-banned from the forums.

* I have, to date, used the "Bus Stops with no Busses" joke or variants there-of in 571 different lists.

* I was gold-plated by Avatea a year or so back. In some ways, I suppose I could consider this equivalent to a musician's album "going gold." In which case, I am not retiring until I hit platinum.

* It should be noted, however, that I have not actually RECEIVED my gold-plated claws yet. I'm sure it was just a mix up with the post office.

Like Samuraiko, I would like to point out that one of the things that kept me around the game is the great community we have here. It took me nearly 2 years to finally open my mouth around here, but when I did you all made me feel right at home and glad I bothered to start typing. The Moderators and Community Crew at NCSoft are phenomenal individuals who go beyond the norm in their efforts to make us feel like we're part of a family and not just a bunch of customers who pay a fee for the privelege of playing their game.

So, yeah, I'll be hanging around as long as Nemesis still has plots. I'll see you all in-game... mine will be the Avatar standing there staring into space and not responding because their player just thought up a great list idea that he simply HAD to get started on immediately.

~ Steelclaw

It was bizarre... I got DC'd and thought.. "okay, no problem"... logged back in and was able to get inside my base and run around but couldn't open any of the storage or interact with anything.

I logged out completely and tried to reboot the client when the Launcher said it couldn't find the NCSoft website. I tried to go to the City of Heroes website to see if anyone else was having problems and was told THAT website didn't exist.

Fearing that Cthulu was about to make an appearance at any moment, I even sent an email to Samuraiko (who now probably thinks I'm even crazier than she did before) to see if SHE was having problems.

Of course, Murphy being the kind soul he is, as soon as I hit send on my semi-hysterical email, everything started working again.

That's it.. I'm going back to bed... maybe I can hit reset on the day.

Is it just me or did the entire NCSoft network (website, launcher site, game) just disappear for about 10 minutes?

Not that I'm saying it's not possible I was momentarily diverted to a universe where City of Heroes doesn't exist... but that would be a Cthulu universe and I'm sure I would have noticed other odd things...

Ahem... The various things that flashed through my mind upon reading "Female Only Server"

* Mister Synapse, I assure you that despite my apparent gender short comings I can bring you your steak just as well as any waitress could...

* Dang it, I've looked at these servers until my eyes crossed! I even took one out of the rack, turned it over and examined its underpinnings... how do you tell if it's female or male?

* Bonus points if you read the above and immediately... without a second's hesitation... thought or said "by the I/O ports of course!"

* Wow, look at the motherboard on her...

* Fifteen Minutes After Successfully Creating and Maintaining the Female Only Server: "Well... this sucks... who are we supposed to abuse NOW?!"

* The Slippery Slope: "This was a fine idea until they took the 'female only' part too seriously... I get REALLY tired of fighting Knives of Artemis and Carnival all the time."

* The REALLY Slippery Slope: Gender Unification

• Positron becomes Positronia and complained bitterly about how his.. er... her... armor bound up in the most uncomfortable spots now.
• Statesman becomes Stateswoman
• Lord Recluse becomes Lady Wall-Flower
• Synapse (formerly quite the uber-stud and womanizer) didn't handle the change very well and became Relapse
• Lord Nemesis switched to Mistress Mind-Games (former girlfriend of mine, actually)
• Scirocco became MoodSwing and finally gained acclaim as one of the most dangerous villains EVAH!
• Black Scorpion became Battery Operated and subsequently more reclusive and home-bound than Recluse ever was.
• I was going to write a joke about Captain Mako but there was NO way I could stuff it inside the teen rating structure. That's fine tho'... those of you whose minds are twisted in the same direction mine are have already figured it out.