TonyV

I said it from the beginning, my guesstimate is in the June or July 2010 time frame. I'll be tickled pink if it makes it before then, but realistically speaking, it sounds like they're putting a pretty heavy-duty development effort in, much more than adding some city zones and GUI candy.

Theory o' Tony is also that they're not just adding content and game mechanics, but rewriting (or seriously upgrading) the graphics engine as well. I mean, everything that I've read so far is pointing to that. There's no escaping the fact that if they don't update the graphics engine, the competition is going to beat City of Heroes over the head with that. Whether or not you care for the style of graphics in CO, by the time it comes out, it will look more polished.

I'll be excited to see where this goes.

I watch MSNBC, they have some good shows on there. I like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. But more to the point, in my opinion, their web site is a lot better for a news junkie like me. I think it's much better laid out and easier to get to stuff. Plus I'm also a Bob "Red Tape Chronicles" Sullivan fan.

And, of course, Winda Benedetti (the author of the aforementioned article) is a City of Heroes player.

MSNBC is running an article about how gamers are increasingly becoming creators.

City of Heroes not only gets a mention, but a nice screenshot to boot.

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The new "Mission Architect" expansion for "City of Heroes" gives players the tools to create their own story arcs for other players to experience. Within 24 hours of the launch, players had crafted 3,800 story arcs — more than the game’s developers had, in almost five years time, created for all of "City of Heroes."

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Nifty! It's great to see City of Heroes still making the mainstream media!

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I thought http://wiki.cohtitan.com/ was the url we are suppose to use now.

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Both urls are valid now

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NordBlast is right. Sorry for the confusion, but the wiki.cohtitan.com address was used because when we moved away from Wikia, we didn't have possession of the paragonwiki.com domain name and it still pulled up their site. We got it back around three months later, and since then, both URLs resolve to the exact same server and content. If you make a change in one, it's instantaneously reflected in the other. Both are "official" and valid URLs to access the site; it's completely up to you which one you want to use.

There's an announcement here from when it all happened. Don't worry, though, a bunch of people missed it (I'm not deluding myself into thinking that folks keep up with my third-party site when I barely keep up with the official forums... ), and I still see threads here once in a while asking which one is correct.

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The one not to use is wikia, which I won't even bother linking to.

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SpaceNut is right also. There is another City of Heroes wiki set up over at Wikia. For almost a year, we were affiliated with them and we worked to maintain the wiki there. We had a bit of a falling out, though, primarily over the number, size, and placement of ads, which we felt was interfering with the content. If you Google "coh wiki," that's the one that shows up first, because they engage in various search engine optimization activities and, frankly, I don't because I'd rather be working on the Titan Network.

Besides, hopefully everyone either knows or will find out by word of mouth that the Paragon Wiki is the one that is much better maintained, much more frequently updated, and that has a staff dedicated to improving the quality of the content, not maintaining a profitable bottom line. For the record, the site's resources are paid for out of my pocket. We accept donations, but we don't really push it since I don't want it to be about money, but in having the information you want and need to enjoy the game more. If someone has pull, I'll accept sainthood if offered, though.

<QR>

Stock joke... If you knew, they wouldn't very well be "Lost" now, would they?

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One is the mother of the other. I believe Miss is the mother and Statesman's daughter.

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Yup.

Maiden Justice = Monica Richter, Statesman's wife, who is deceased as of the 1980's
Miss Liberty = Alexis Cole, Statesman's daughter, still alive and presumably well.
Ms. Liberty = Jessica Megan Duncan, Statesman's granddaughter (remember, he ages very slowly), our resident Atlas Park cutie and founder of Longbow (against her mother's disapproval).

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All they would have to do is give the user the options to limit email to:
- Friends
- Global Friends
- SG Members
- Alliance Members
A nice checkbox option beside each of these, and you have control over what you receive.

But I don't think it's going to happen. The spammers have to purchase an account which equals $$$ to the company.

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You do realize that if you couch such a suggestion in an accusation like that, it's a really good way to get ignored by the developer team?

These baseless allegations are a hot, steaming pile of [censored], and I'm really tired of seeing people, even just in passing, accuse NCsoft and/or Paragon Studios of being in collusion with RMT spammers. Anyone who doesn't realize that RMT spam drives more people away from the game than it brings RMTers in is an idiot. Anyone who also doesn't realize that NCsoft/Paragon Studios would rather have satisfied long-term players than an account that is banned after a day due to being charged on a stolen credit card is an idiot.

Get a clue. RMT spammer accounts != $$$. And if NCsoft/Paragon Studios wanted to, there is nothing stopping them from simply going SOE on us and selling the influence directly to us, making a hell of a lot more profit than simply being in silent collusion with disreputable companies. So please take that mindless drivel somewhere else.

As far as I know, they're not broken; there's nothing to "fix."

The problem is that there are griefers who seek out highly-rated arcs and zero- or one-star them to knock them down. I've seen a Hall of Fame arc, and it was really good, but it wasn't on the board very long before someone came along and dragged it back down.

I suspect that this will be an ongoing problem until they either do a better job of finding these griefers (not a trivial task, since there might be some people who genuinely think that a Hall of Fame arc is crap) or change the definition of a Hall of Fame arc so that negative outliers are ignored.

The Taxis (we've expanded beyond robots ) are a service-oriented group. As the others have said, they started out as a bunch of robots teleporting people around in various hard to reach places (or in some cases, hard to get-out-of places), but as travel has gotten easier in the city, they've expanded into other ways of being helpful and fun.

They're especially known for their badge tours, which are (literally) a trip. They teleport heroes around a zone to each of the badge markers and give a little comment about each. Sometimes they cover the history plaques, too. The whole thing takes less than a minute or two. There's one coming up this Friday on Infinity, if you want to check it out. Around 9:00pm Eastern, just pop in and look for pretty much anyone whose name starts with "Taxi" and ask what zone they're covering.

Lately, they've also taken to helping out or even running various events. My roommate Belle recently participated in a PvP event. They have a pick-up group night. They run trials and task forces. (Sign up if you want to go.) They generally try to make the city a lot of fun for other people, and for the most part, I think they succeed marvelously.

They can also often be found hanging around Atlas Park looking for new players and helping them out. Just a few days ago, Belle met up with a new hero who was stuck trying to get to Cimerora because Monty Castanella didn't recognize that he had made the Lost wand and wouldn't clear the mission. She explained how to petition to get a GM and waited around with him until the GM showed up and cleared the mission. I've also seen her explain how the market works, how to craft items, where to find various zones, and so on. The other Taxis are generally just as willing to stop what they're doing and help out whenever needed.

Infinity has the most active group, running several events each week. Their site is cohtaxis.com. Virtue also has a group of them, but I haven't been there lately, so I can't speak to what events they have. They're at taxibots.guildportal.com.

The Infinity Taxis also have a page at the Ouroboros Portal, as does Belle.

I'm in the group myself, and it is a lot of fun. If you see these folks, do be sure to say hi or maybe thanks, as that's the only reward that most of them do what they do for.

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I'm pretty sure that if we had an option to disable email...or at the very least halt all email from anyone not on our friend list, this would screw over the RMT spammers.

I also think that email should be disabled by default for all characters at creation until you turn it on manually. Why make things easy for these turds? What are you thinking devs?

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I guarantee you that RMT spammers would not, in fact, be thwarted. They would move on to more annoying ways of pushing their spam.

There is one way, and one way only, to get rid of all RMT spam permanently. It's even been proven extremely effective in the real world. Roll back the game to pre-Issue 9 days, before we had IO enhancements, Wentworths, recipes, and other such items of value. In those days, about the only thing influence was good for was giving away to newbies or in contests, or trading in at hideous exchange rates for prestige. It's no coincidence that before Issue 9, I don't think I ever received a single RMT spam e-mail or tell, even though all channels for RMT traffic were wide freakin' open. (This was also pre-trial account nerfs.)

Other than taking away the value of what RMT companies are selling, your only option is to get rid of all means of player-to-player communication. E-mail won't cut it. You'll also have to get rid of every single channel. Local, broadcast, team, request, help, arena, everything. Because the root of the problem has diddly to do with e-mail, it is all about there being money to be made off of the stuff they're selling. As long as that holds true, they will find ways to convey their spam to you.

Also, as I've posted before in threads that are exactly like this one, e-mail spam is a minor annoyance at best. No one ever promised you when you signed up that you will never, ever have to deal with minor annoyances. If they were to implement some kind of blocking system or option, it's one more thing that is already on a crowded screen, it is one more moving part that can break (or worse, break something else) during development, it is one more thing that they'd have to test, it's one more thing the developers could be spending time on working on other stuff instead. I'm not saying there is no room for QoL improvements, but there are a ton of others that would make a much more positive impact on the game than this one.

Last, but not least, I use the e-mail system. I know others who use the e-mail system. Global tells are not an acceptable substitute for several reasons, the biggest ones having to do with the lack of persistence and limited length. Just because you don't use a particular feature, just because you think that no one else does, is not a valid reason for getting rid of it or gimping it to the point of being useless, considering that doing so would not solve your particular problem.

I love getting e-mail. Even spam. It lets me know that they still care.

Hey, Rikti need a little R&R now and then, too.

Jennifer, Stan, Mike, and the other Jennifer. The other Jennifer should probably duck...

(I don't know, they're just random character art. Some of them have been recurring, but I don't think they actually have ever been named. Might want to ask over in Manticore's Canon thread.)

In order:

/e laptop
/request_exit_mission 1 [Note: any number will work, but a number is required]
/e whistle

Courtesy of the Paragon Wiki List of Slash Commands and Emotes!

Me likey!

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What the hell? Our maps have Australia in the middle, yes, but they're the same side up as every other map in the world.

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I know that most of them are, but they do make some the other way around. Novelty map or not, I'd still like to have one. Kind of how I'd also like to have a nice wall clock with 24-hour markings on it, where the numbers go from 1 to 24 instead of 1 to 12, and the hour hand moves half as fast as on a normal clock. I saw one a long time ago, but now they're really hard to find.

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It tends to be in June or July, and in July, around middle of the month. Since they don't have the calendar images for anything past April this year, anyone know?

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Until they announce one, don't assume that another one is even going to happen. They aren't guaranteed things.

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This.

I know that some people would have screaming hissies because over the course of time, they have become thought of as some kind of inalienable right (sorry, Kheldians) instead of a little perk, but although I can't cite the source, I distinctly remember a dev at one point posting that having double experience weekends isn't an obligation on their parts, that it could be just a temporary thing.

I'm hoping that now that we have patrol experience, they'll consider that like a permanent "double experience weekend" and not have any more. like Darth_Khasei, I always found the game less enjoyable during double experience weekends, because all the nastiness that's normally not that visible in the game is magnified during that time. (Plus, I get sick of the "I can't log into Freedom, the devs suck!" whiny posts.)

So in short, I'm kind of 50/50 on whether I think they'll ever have a double XP weekend again. I'm 100/0 on whether I don't want them to. I just hope that if they don't, we don't have to put up with years of "waaah!" posts when we do, after all, have patrol experience, after having to put up with "waaah!" posts when they had them.

I would, at some point, however, like to see perhaps a double prestige weekend. Back when we had double XP weekends, I always pushed for those instead. It would make people looking to get a base for small supergroups easier and promote supergroups to hold activities for a weekend. I think that would be much cooler, and unlike double XP weekends, wouldn't affect the game's balance.

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G'day, mate! I love Australians. I don't know why, unless it's because every one I've ever met has been really cool. I hope to make it down there someday to check the place out in person.

I want one of those australo-centric maps to hang on my wall that are "upside-down" relative to the maps that most other people use, the ones where Australia is on the top and kind of U-shaped, but all of the labels on the map are right-side up in that orientation.

Back on-topic, according to the Paragon Wiki:
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During the beta-testing period, Australians coordinated to make this server the "unofficial Australian / New Zealand server." Consequently, Justice commonly sees more players active through until maintenance, as the timezones for New Zealand (UTC+12) and Australia (UTC+10) mean that the maintenance window happens locally around 11:30pm (Sydney time). As such it attracts Australian players for the last 5 hours of activity (6pm-11pm AEST). Because standard maintenance windows are announced by Admin message and a different message is broadcast for Issue and special event releases, Australian players are often the first to experience them.

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If you want to hook up with other Australians in supergroups and such, you might want to post a message down on the Justice forums.

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I work for a drug information company and the FDA has indeed issued warnings concerning aspartame and phenylalanine with regard to a specific (rare) genetic condition and for pregnant women who are not metabolizing phenylalanine well, as high concentrations of phenylalanine can indeed cause brain damage. Again, that's from the FDA labeling, not from hysteria sites.

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You're right, there are some people who can't handle Aspartame because of a genetic condition called phenylketonuria. Most children are screened for it within a day of being born, though, and since phenylalanine is naturally occurring in food, it's unlikely that someone would be unaffected until some random day they drank a Diet Coke. In short, if you have it, you would highly likely known you had it already. The condition has been known since 1934, and its effects on phenylketoneurics has been known since day one of the development of diet sodas that use Aspartame.

Nevertheless, it is true that phenylketoneurics shouldn't consume Aspartame, and I believe that all foods (including Diet Coke) contain warning labels to that effect. This is an exception, though, due to an abnormal condition. It does not affect people without that condition, nor does it cause the condition (which is, as mentioned, genetic).

I just don't like it when stuff like this is misrepresented as being inherently dangerous. Aspartame is perfectly safe to folks who don't have that particular condition.

Primarily Infinity here, but sometimes Virtue as well.

You need to run the Imperious task force. On the last mission, he sends you inside the gates.

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He already seems to have swayed the OP to his way of thinking, so he's done enough damage already.

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If so, that would be a crying shame, because RP is pretty much the most fun you can have in this game.

Look, there's only so much you can do in this game. Sure, there are variations on the theme, but really, is that 1500th kidnapping mission really any different than the 1000th? Not so much. Now, mind you, I still think it's fun, but it's not something that will keep someone playing for years and years.

Every time you roleplay your character, though, you have a different experience. I've never been roleplaying with people and come away from it thinking, "Well, that was boring," because each time, a different story has been told. My character and other characters have advanced. Not just in experience, influence, and "stuff," but in depth, in background, and in personality.

Doing a good job roleplaying an interesting character is a little bit like watching a really satisfying story on television. The difference, of course, is that not only do you have the satisfaction of watching events unfold, but you have the satisfaction of creating the events that unfold. Plus, you don't have to wait until Wednesday nights at 9:00pm in order to find out what happens next.

It's not like this is a new phenomenon. As little kids, we used to play cowboys and indians. Or maybe with Barbie dolls. I personally remember that I was into Superman and Matchbook cars. I could either be found pretending like I was flying through the air or having high-speed car chases with bad guys, making it all up as I went along. When I was a teenager, I got into Star Trek. (Yes, I'm that geeky.) I would write stories with the characters, because I really did enjoy putting myself into the head of Kirk, Spock, and the others and coming up with the cool stuff they'd do when such-and-such a new species would show up. In college, I took an acting class that focused heavily on improvisation, and I thought I was in heaven. This isn't much different, except for the stories being a little more sophisticated and in-depth.

Point is, if you (the reader, not ClawsandEffect, to whom I responded) want to look at the game as simply mashing buttons, then go ahead, I don't care. But don't you dare act like those of us who have figured out that this is so much a deeper and richer experience than what you're using it for are the odd ones. The way I see it, you're like those crazy people who get on the interstate in a Ferrari and drive 50 MPH. You think you're having fun now, but the truth is that you probably wouldn't know fun if it reached up and bit you on the [censored]. You're sitting here in control of a vehicle that is designed to be fun in some very cool ways, and you're just wasting it.

So yeah, go ahead and mash your buttons and pretend like we're the ones who are sad, pathetic, or whatever other derogatory adjective you feel like throwing in; I don't care. (Believe me, if I survived and thrived through being picked on as a Star Trek geek in high school, anything you say to me today is really small potatoes.) I'm having a blast, apparently a lot more fun than you're having, and that's what matters to me.

So remind me again who's pathetic?

Heh, right.

P.S. ERP isn't real RP any more than a porno is a real movie. If you want to do it, I don't care. But don't come here whining about how RPers just want to "cyber" or whatever, and don't come here whining about how RPers caused drama in your little supergroup. That's just stupid and shows that you really don't know what roleplaying is.

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Lately, I've been exercising more and eating a little better. Nothing earth-shattering yet, just a half hour or so on the treadmill and buying decent meats, cheeses, and breads at the grocery store instead of making Wendy's runs, but it's a start.

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I'm really glad to hear you're making a change. That's really the reason I posted at all - if even one person decides to change their habits because of this, or a few people stick with a program they were wavering on, it makes the loss more tolerable to bear.

- KD

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You know, it does kind of make the wheels turn. I wonder if there could be some kind of program started among the gaming community to try to get people to be a little less sedentary? I'm in Atlanta, for example. I wonder how many of my fellow Atlantans would get behind doing something like going out to Stone Mountain once every few weeks, meeting up at a gym, and other such activities? Maybe all of us keep in touch online to share ideas for activities and reports of how it's going?

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Lordy, stay AWAY from vitamin water. That stuff is one of the biggest scams going atm. When you add in all of the undesireable ingredients used in almost every brand of vitamin water, you're almost better off drinking soda. I kid you not.
http://bodyecology.com/08/09/18/why_...erous_scam.php

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This isn't true. The site you're pointing to is selling their own competing line of products, so please don't take anything they say about competitor's products worth a grain of salt. If you check out Coca-Cola's web site, it will claim just the opposite.

So how do you know who to trust? Look at independent testing performed by organizations such as the FDA. They have done extensive scientific testing on Aspartame (Diet Coke), and there's no evidence that it causes the health problems listed. Also, while VitaminWater isn't as healthy to drink as just plain water, there's nothing inherently dangerous in it, either. Worst case scenario, you're consuming calories that you'll need to burn off, which pretty much describes all caloric food and beverages.

Of course, some foods and beverages are better and some are worse for you, but please don't resort to scare tactics. Even eating the worst of foods for you won't kill you, as long as you do it sensibly in the context of an otherwise healthy diet and, most importantly, get enough exercise to keep your body and mind healthy.

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Seriously, if you're finding your CoX character's attractiveness to be an issue either way, then you need to get out more.

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I think that's really funny, that you're so insecure that you can't admit that drawn/rendered characters can be sexy. I suppose that you think that Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Caitlin Fairchild, Black Canary, Psylocke, Rogue, Ms. Marvel, and so many more that I can't name them all are drawn they way they are because of artistic realism? That those inhuman proportions, fishnet stockings, skimpy outfits, arched backs, and *ahem* curvy physiques are all just coincidental?

Or maybe you think that 16-year-old hormone-induced horndogs are the only people who buy comics and appreciate these beyond-ideal characters?

Do I sit here and dwell on the costume creator for hours of prurient fun? No, after a week or two, that's kind of old. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that sometimes while playing, I don't say, "Wow, that's a hottie." (And as it turns out with my particular tastes, it's generally not the skimpy max-chest slider ones.) I don't build shrines to these girls or engage in Weird Science-esque experiments, but not only is it normal to be sexually attracted to some of these characters, it's how they're designed.

I'd say that if you don't read a comic or watch a cartoon and every once in a while think, "Da-yum!", that you're the one who's abnormal. But hey, if that's the case, more power to you.

By the way, Tabula Rasa's Sarah Morrison had a Playboy spread. Last time I checked, Hugh Hefner isn't still living in his parents' basement. (Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind living in Hugh Hefner's basement for a while...)