Zombieluvr

Just a funny little tribute to the current status of the game, via another of my favorite (and twice! TWICE!) cancelled comic series, Quantum and Woody:



Don't give up hope!

Thanks for Praetoria, Protean (and everyone else who helped, natch). Praetoria, more than any story or zone in the game, has been by far my favorite of everything. I mean, I loved blueside when I first started playing (it's what hooked me), but I quickly came to prefer redside, because villains are always so much more fun to play and write.

Praetoria, though, is what I wish the game had been since day one, had it had the capability and vision to be so. Shades of grey, morality plays, these are my favorite themes as a reader, a writer, and a roleplayer. Life is nuanced, and layered, and messy. And while I certainly wouldn't want to play a game called Real Life (I'm not very good at it), placed against a backdrop of super powers and the chance to achieve spectacular heights and morose lows, that is the kind of rich fantasy life I want to play in. I want to create for (oh, if only I'd ever gotten off my *** and written those Praetoria AE missions I wanted to write, like "A Connecticut Rikti in Emperor Cole's Court").

So thank you, Protean, for that.

Except for the part where you blew it all up, damn you to hell!

(But not really that last part about Hell. That was just the Charlton Heston in his "good days" in me coming out.)

Registered, voted, posted the following:

Over the last 8 years, City of Heroes has grown well beyond its roots as another MMO- albeit one of the few superheroic themed ones. It has become a community; a network of people engaging in friendships that extend well beyond the computer screen, and into the real world. It is as viable a community as any neighborhood or family or social group that might exist outside our own door. Indeed, in this increasingly technology driven world, often personified by faceless, non-personal interaction, City of Heroes might be among the first of a more sustainable hybrid community- a strange admixture of the virtual and the tangible. As Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." In City of Heroes, all the players are also men and women like everyone else.

Black Pebble mentioned that he proposed the idea of a story arc titled "50 Shades of Crey" to Protean.

Just for fun, and because I've had to endure a few months of listening to all the women in the office swooning over this book (I'm the only guy here), I thought I'd open the forum for speculation on what might have been:

Obviously, it would center around Crey and Dominatrix. Cleared of all charges of crimes against humanity due to her assistance with the Mot business in Dark Astoria, she is subsequently hired on by Crey Corporation as their spokesperson. Crey is trying to redeem their public image after the whole mess with Countess Crey being exposed, and in the vein of another team that has appeared on the scene with the theme of redemption (mild spoilers for I24), Dominatrix is going to be Crey's new face to the world.

Secretly, they really want to pick her brain about her interactions with Diabolique and Mot, for further development of the Revenant Hero project.

... and that's as far as I got. Anyone want to pick it up? We can go in rounds!

Probably a better place. More stable, long term. I'll head over there.

Thanks, GG!

Speaking of Human Interest stories, I don't know for sure how/if it could be played, but what about some kind of comparison between the Paragon City situation vis a vis financial woes and the real life financial viability of many cities out there now (some of which that have had to declare bankruptcy)?

Again, I'm not sure how it could be framed- obviously, we don't want to minimize the real economic struggles of people- but in terms of paralleling the idea of being dispossessed from a community, maybe?

(Just spitballing.)

How about viral videos? Maybe we could try to make some movies either in- or out- of character for CoH to try and showcase the struggle while adding entertainment value?

Hey, gang-

I would absolutely love to help out with some efforts to assist in keeping the lifelines open on our beloved game, aside from the letter writing and petition signing that I've already participated in. I'm thinking something else that could be high profile, such as charity work or the like, but I have to admit, I'm a bit stumped as to what we could do.

I'm more than willing to volunteer my time, help with organization, brainstorming, attendance, etc., if there's anyone else out there in the SoCal area that wants to try and join in (and might have better ideas than I do).

We can even brainstorm here in the forums for as long as we're able.

Anyone want to try and get together and organize something, like a clothing donation drive, or the like, in the name of City of Heroes? Virtual Heroes to Real Heroes.

Don't step in our Corn Flakes, man.

Some ideas on things we can do collectively to help out:

Blue Siders:

Charity work- donating clothing (especially capes!)
Rescuing kittens from trees
Get the word out by discarding your secret identities and wearing your costumes openly

Red Siders:

Rob banks to fund the buyout of the CoH Property
Kidnap the developers and hold them for ransom unless Paragon Studios is reopened

Gold Siders:

Locate a struggling third world nation and oust the ruling regime
Set up a series of private servers and put the people to work on a CoH-based economy for the new country




(But seriously, let's keep up the efforts! )

What else can we do? I know that the Browncoats did a lot of different charitable events and such to try and raise the profile of Firefly/Serenity when it got cancelled, and their efforts to some extent at least did help to get the Serenity movie finally greenlit.

Are there some kind of similar things that we could do?

I really want to do more to help out, but I'm personally at a loss for ideas, sadly.

Grar. Was hoping I might be up to trying to compile this together and create a rough draft document, but after a 7 hour drive in hot weather, I feel I might be too exhausted...

Firefly had the Browncoats, what would be be? Blue, Red, and Gold coats?

(Probably something more Paragon-verse specific. Giant Amoeba coats?)

Wow- those were some interesting tools from the LUA scripting. I'd seen a lot of that in the Beta that I was able to play through*, but seeing how it was done, and what could be done with it in this "behind the scenes" was really cool.

*Lesson to all, the adage "Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today" ain't just whistlin' Dixie.

NNOOOOOO!!!!

You got me.

Positron mentioned that if possible, the devs will do an Ask Anything Q&A session Tuesday. Does anyone think we should try to come up with a list of questions or otherwise organize something so that we can get some real answers to stories, rather than leave the Q&A open to randomness and questions that get asked over and over?

Posi's said that if they still have access Tuesday, they're going to try and do an "Ask Anything" Q&A.

"Faithfully" by Journey has been playing in my mind all weekend.

Thanks for this, Positron, and for everything else.

It's funny you should mention the late, lamented Roger Zelazny, because ever since this whole sudden... thing... happened, I have often remembered him.

I still recall very vividly the day he died, back in 1995, reading about it online while I was working in the residential life office at ASU. It came so suddenly, so without warning, at a time when he had just recently begun releasing new Amber-verse material. I remember feeling a profound sense of loss, that I would never read any more stories* about Corwin, Merlin, et al, and how sad I was that I could never know how their universe would turn out, how the last scenarios in which he had cast them would unfold.

And then, as selfishly sad as I was for myself for this, I thought about how much of a tragedy, a loss it was to the world and to Roger's loved ones, that he was not going to be around for them any longer.

That's pretty much how I felt on Friday, reading about all of this. Any time I start to feel bad for the stories I will not be able to live and relive, all the content present and future that I haven't/willanonhaven't played, how much worse it must be for you and everyone at Paragon Studios to have the rug pulled out from under you, without warning, so suddenly, and at such an inopportune time.

So my heart goes out to all the COH fandom, and to you and the Paragon Studios staff more than anyone, and I thank you for all that you were able to give us in the time you had given to you to do so.

Goodbye, and hello, as always.