rian_frostdrake

ok blithly skipping over most of the thread since its a topic that a small and vocal number of posters have been banging on about in about 10 threads now (ok, that im tired of) no, not tired at all with praetoria at all, thanks for asking. it isn't my first choice for a direction of the game, i'd have done the shadow shard myself, but its also better than i thought. i hated praetoria when it was first ingame because it actually was just a dumb bizzarro world and worse, given my preference at the time for soloing and small goup play with some rl friends the "every frikking mission ends with an av fight" used to chap my daintys. then the valentines day patch came around and it was at least mostly playable, if still boring(vintage marauder is still a tough fight for a ma/sr) but as for the story, yeah i did like what they did with it.

the primary problem with bizarro worlds is they are internally underdeveloped. everyone just flips sides and its just assumed that things carry on mostly the same but a bit worse, paretoria at least made an attempt to integrate some of the elements from some of the better sci-fi fascists to make Praetoria at once chilling and yet oddly, if you ignored some stuff that everyday people wouldn't see, you can see why it mostly would work for people. so from that perspective, the amount of fleshing out, as well as the callbacks to fictional greats like minority report and 1984 works for me, it make a bare bones concept into a workable fleshed out reality.

as for the integration of the well? well, as a realist i understand that timelines intersect, and if the endgame a lot of other people wanted came about around the time they were sending out going rogue and the whole praetoria thing, i dont really have a problem with it, video games are video games and you cant just pretend that they work on the same logistics as comic books, any implementation would have ticked of an equally vocal group of people. i currently have 4 incarnates of vastly disparate backgrounds and have yet to really need to take a wrench to the fiction as presented, you adapt this or that and it works seamlessly. and 3 of them are at their rare alpha already just from pugging with my server global channel.

As i see it, the story isnt fully told yet and people are really just jumping off on their own conclusions at the moment, we still havent seen more of the hamidon than a giant carrion creeper vine knocking at the door trying to sell us avon, but i suspect that the story is still building to one of many possible interesting climaxes(given that a dev quote previously suggested that hami would have evolved differently in prae, slight hope for dinosaurs) but i really try to hold off on any full judgment of something till it has completed, have had stories suddenly start to work after a period of meandering("the world ends with you" comes to mind) and some stories crash and burn at the big reveal(grandia 2) so i just go along for the ride, enjoy what i always have enjoyed (making cool costumes and kicking lots of people) and leave the plotting of the game to the developers, because honestly, they are the ones who are going to do the resolution anyhow, and likely have the full thing mapped out for months now.

delicious with sour cream

out of curiosity, i was looking around and noticed that cynthia rothrock is a brunette now and still looks fairly ageless...not saying she was a great actress and she is a bit older, but if we are going for a more mature ww, she still could pass for early 40s, and could easily handle the physicality of the role.

lets not get head of ourselves story wise, you are reading some things into the well story that seem to be attributing a bit too much. the well is a source of power that seems to have some self direction, and it seems to favor cole, thats what we know, i wouldnt make it an ultimate source of power just yet, its just a really strong power. I wouldn't be surprised if the coming storm is a force of equal or greater power.

well, i dont know what will make a successful mmo, the more successful ones i have played were utterly bland and boring, so here's my personal "wouldnt make a red cent, but i want it" list.
1. alternate animations -lots of them, give ranged powers the range that soem were expecting for eminators, head, mouth, fist, palm, choice of a few pistols and wands. basically try to implement all the stuff i have posted in various threads about new animations. pool and some degree of epic customization too.

2. repurpose older zones for new content rather than adding new content. yes this will get me hate male, so would mailing out hundred dollar bills to every subscriber, if there isnt a lore reason or unique feature to an area, and a updated idea comes into mind, like the japanese looking areas to indep port or redoing monster island to have dinosur type monsters and a dense jungle, it gets changed.

3. roll pvp back to issue 12, and LEAVE IT. adding new stuff seldom works, and they adapted to it then, so leave it be.

4. shard revamp, complete total redo of the zones, faultline style. and add segregated zones like in oroboros for vills.

5. costumes. lets face it, its coh;s big pull, dig deep into the jays thread/dave's thread and include new art in EVERY ISSUE. free content for costumes have gotten very anemic for a distressing amount of time, and its really coh's big advantage, particularly over the new guy.

agreed, i am in no hurry. like you i also have less free time than in the past(one reason i have been unable to play on any of the public beta events), so i wont be seeing the upper levels of any of the new stuff any time soon. I'm glad it will be there as it is a new thing to look forward to, but i wont be straining to go at it.

i'm all for more costume slots, they put em up, i have ideas to fill em.

more slots for alts and new players to annoy with my bad jokes? bonus.

i dont know, there is no particular purpose that praetoria would preclude more proliferation . i think you are reading a bit much into what saist is saying. story-wise, the game seems to be doing the praetoria thing for a bit longer, but proliferation was not story related last time, and it never really had an ingame explanation anyhow(and the meta explanation was mostly discarded, for good reason..shudder), so i wouldn't assume that just because of the phrasing. the alternate animations for ranged had nothing to do with praetoria, and they were released in issue 19, so i wouldn't read too much into that comment.

perhaps the too soon (for jetpacks) was to fend off speculation that they would be in issue 20, but they may be a issue 21-22 possibility. That is news that I am quite pleased with myself.