AmazingMOO

The Greecian and Greek Mythology reference flies hot and heavy in City of Heroes, both in real-world details and fictional or mythological details.

First of all, Paragon City itself is located in this state....

Oh, I'm sorry. You failed to answer in the form of a question. The correct question was, 'What is Rhode Island'?

Rhode Island was apparently (As in there's really no official record of this) named after the Greek isle of Rhodes. It historically hasn't had a large Greek population, unlike New Jersey or New York State, but it has historically been one of the most intellectual, democratic, and fair members of the United States.

The original Euro population of Rhode Island was primarily made up of those who left other colonies in order to avoid repressive religions, such as the Puritanism prevalent in Massachusetts. It was one of the first of the original 13 colonies to abolish slavery and also one of the first states to extend voting privaleges to those who didn't own land.

The in game references to Grecian lore and Greek Mythology are more pronounced.

The Freedom Phalanx was created by Statesman because he was
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inspired by the shoulder-to-shoulder discipline showed by ancient Greek soldiers in the face of Persian tyranny

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Also note that one of Statesman's greatest nemesis is... ahem... Nemesis, the 'Persian Prince of Automatons'.

His other big nemesis, 'Arachnos', has a masculine version of the name 'Arachne', a mytological figure. Arachne was a mortal woman who challenged Athena to a contest of weaving and won-- with a tapestry that depicted Athena's father Zeus seducing various young women. Athena took offense at her for her presumptiousness and arrogance and cursed her to feel shame and guilt for offending the gods. Arachne suicided in her greif, but Athena took pity on her and changed her into a spider so that she and her descendants could be master weavers for all eternity.

Greece is also credited with some of the earliest creation of the first 'States'-- true sovereign nations-- even if they were town-sized. In the US, we use the 'statesman' to refer to revered politicians, but the word really means something different. It refers to one who is responsible for creating, perserving, or maintaining a country, something that the ancient Greeks would have very much in common with the heroes of Paragon City.

Paragon City-- probably a fictional counterpart to Providence in the same way Gotham corresponds to NYC or Metropolis corresponds to Chicago-- does have a fairly large Greek population. It also has some very prevalent RL Greek influences, such as the various Gyro (pronounced 'yee-row') shops around town.

One of the villan groups in Paragon City, and perhaps the only villan group that is portrayed in a semi-positive light are the Warriors-- who pride themselves on their resemblance to Greek soldiers. One of the major story-lines for 20-30 characters in CoH involves the defection of a Warrior leader to the authorities after the character undergoes a significant test of fortitude and honor. The Warrior leader feels that his group has degenerated too far and no longer stand for the ideals he wants to uphold.

Also, the Warriors are considered simply part of the natural fauna on Striga isle. The various contacts on Striga don't really have any problem with them and the few civilians on Striga don't run from them like they do every where else Warriors appear, like Talos Island and the Hollows.

If you go to the Lighthouse on Striga, you can see the Warriors partying Grecco-roman style with several young women who've come out to admire the strong young men.

It's apparent that-- even in a degenerate state-- the Greek-derived Warriors are the 'natural' super-powered inhabitants of Paragon City.

Several of the Magical Entities that power Magic-based enhancements are Greek (not Roman) Deities, including Zeus and Hermes.

My Conclusion: Regardless of wether or not the Statesman is an incarnation of Zeus, his origin will most likely have to deal with Greek Mythology in a fairly profound sense.

I think that the most likely avenue for Mr. Emmert and the writers at Cryptic to go down is that the Statesman was created by Zeus as an Earthbound, but not mortal container for his powers. He would have more in common with Hurcules (who proved to be immortal) than the deities themselves.

I've never met him, but States sounds like a pretty nice fellow. He's probably just heard the same questions about 180 times so the answers seem trite to him.

If anything, he's acting harried because it's con season right now, so there's a lot of pressure on the MMOG industry in general. E3, Wizardworld, SOE Fanfaire in vegas, etc...

Notice that War_Witch's tag now has her as a 'Cryptic Studios Designer, COV' or something similar.

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Who, incidentally, died from massive facial burns and went on to be a spirit in the last Top Cow comic?

Perhaps the RL Synapse is going to be making the move across the Cryptic cube-farm soon from CoH development to CoV development.

And I too think Foreshadow looks a whole lot like Kyo Kusanagi.

I do my best to avoid message board whining, especially related to balance issues. I came from EQ, and discovered that listening to people constantly complaining about one thing or another was destrimental to my enjoyment of the game.

I come to this message board to read about upcoming events, changes, and specials, offer content suggestions (rather than balance suggestions), and read game-related humour.

One of the things I've noticed about the board that makes it difficult for those interested in posting or reading helpful or informative information is that the pages are extremely short by default. A thread may have 200 posts, but is split into 20 10-message pages. Those who are not logged in don't even have the option to avoid this format.

The 'Official' threads can get even worse since many of them go over even 200 replies since player feedback is requested.

That kind of apparent volume makes people more likely to jump to the end and say 'I didn't want to read everything, but I think X feature suXXors. You should all die. I hate you all!', when some helpful clarification that made the issue being discussed not nearly so inflammatory or controversial.

My suggestion to alleviate this somewhat is to change the default page length from 10 posts to 30 or 40 posts. Longer pages means less hopping back and forth between pages, and slightly longer tempers when searching for that 'reply' button.

Along with lowering the temperature of some discussion, this may also have positive benefits to resource usage on the message board. Hardware-wise, my guess is that this would even alleviate database load somewhat. Sure, four times as much data is returned with every message board related 'SELECT', but queries only happen 1/4th as often and fewer requests are directed to the database at one time.

Also, consider making the 'ignore this poster' button a part of the main discussion page rather than a bottom-of-the-page feature on user profiles. Again, this soothes discussions and keeps them more rational and less retalitory. The poster who gets angry and clicks 'ignore' is less likely to post and say 'I hate you! I hate the devs! You're all stupid! Nobody listens to me! Whaaaaa!'.

I'm a relatively new player, so I thought I'd offer a perspective on that as it relates to blasters. Please take this as a perspective and not a demand.

As to my MMOG experience, I usually like to play the more 'subtle' solo-capable classes. I rarely like to get in and tank. I prefer to send in a pet, kite mobs around, or snipe from a distance.

Accordingly, my first character was an rifle/ice blaster. Due to complete inexperience with power selection and slot selection, she ran out of hunting places PDQ. She couldn't take out a 'typical' group of 3 blues at 12. Mind you, this was with dropped and self-earned enhancements.

I then made an electric/ice blaster. I did a little better with her, but still faced a serious problem of that she could only barely handle a typical group of 3 even cons, let alone the larger groups in hazard zones. Leiutenants and bosses killed her every time, even when she kited her little heart out. I tried her in a few groups, but ran into the problem that, even being very, very frugal with the amount of damage I tried to dish out, she died very quickly. She accumulated a lot of debt, gained little in the way of experience, and the groups she got into broke up when she ran out of self-rezes. Again, this is with self-bought enhancements.

I deleted my devices blaster and rerolled her as a devices/fire blaster. I followed guides to try to find a 'soloable' build out. She could reasonably solo even cons in missions. Hazard zones were undoable unless all the stuff was green. Lieutentants/Bosses had about an even chance to kill her. This was with fairly resonable kiting and careful adherance to 'Best Build' guides.

Then someone gave her a bunch of influence. She was able to buy all DO enhancements. This raised her abilities so she could reasonably survive blue groups in hazard zones. She'd survive maybe 1 white-con lieutenant with the group if it had one. In missions, it translated to being able to do 2 out of 3 with judicious kiting, resting, and careful strategy. She got high enough level that she started encountering mezzers like madness mages and tesla knights. Assuming she was still in blast range, that was pretty much it for her before a death.

Then I changed servers and made a spines/regen scrapper. I made him to be a porcupine type with relatively few buttons to click, since I'm not so good at tanking, and then read that the spines/regen build was relatively powerful.

He could, from the get go, tank any given even con group with dropped enhancements and a fairly careful (but not following a guide) build. In groups with lieutenants or bosses, he holds his own. He only starts getting in trouble if there are a huge number of yellow cons, or there are more than one boss in a group of otherwise white cons. Mezzers are no problem for him, since they only drop his toggles. He takes a hit and is woken up almost immediately after being mezzed and can get his few toggle powers up again almost right away. Against anything lower than whites, his toggles aren't necessary.

Then he got given a bunch of influence, and was able to buy all DOs. This meant that he could reasonably attack groups of yellows with two orange bosses.

On the same server, I decided to make a gravity controller, but abandoned him quickly. I rapidly discovered that wasn't my cup of tea, either.

I made an energy/energy blaster and am enjoying her, but playing her almost solely in missions. No hazard zones for her! At 20, her melee powers seem pretty useless to me, with one or two exceptions of knockback attacks. Why would a range character want to melee if not a last-ditch move to avoid damage?

She's extremely more challenging than my scrapper was, but so far hasn't hit an 'untenable' point where she can't advance any more like the other blasters did.