Agent White

One thing I'd still like to know:

What did the Battallion LOOK like?

I know the Art is property of NCSoft and therefore locked up and out of reach, but even a description would be nice.

Burn the voodoo dolls.

Uh, after de-powering them.


...unlike last time. That was a bit messy. >>

Well wasn't Galaxy closed because SOE was bringing in the new Wars MMO? That's completely different than what's happening here (And please correct me if I'm wrong, I honestly don't know the whole story with Galaxy shutting down)

It depends on how broken it is. Grandville causing more lag is less broken than say, a bug in the SSA which stops the mission from being completed.

It comes down to a matter of resources and profit. Paragon was A) a small studio and B) needed to continually produce items that garnered profit. That's why new content took precedence. Fixing stuff can be a quality of life improvement but more often, stuff like Grandville is more cosmetic than function so it's not high on the list of priorities.

Or worse it's something that was broken by previous developers and left in an unfixed state and the best people to be able to fix it have left. Look at bases and mayhem/safeguard missions. Both things that really needed fixing but just the sheer amount of time to A) Reverse engineer to simply have an understanding of its workings and B) work out how to implement changes/fixes/upgrades without breaking the system (if it was even possible) is pretty high compared to what it would require to just build new things from scratch or that already work within the existing engine and are well documented and understood (costume sets, powers, zones, etc).

And it isn't like they didn't get around to fixing stuff when they could spare five minutes. I mean look at everything that was getting fixed or changed around in Issue 24. The schedule is always tight but you never know when they get to squeak in something.

Yaaaaay.

Actually one thing I slightly think is silly is just how simple they talked about bringing Sister Psyche back. Y'know when it first happened I thought it would be obvious what to do.

Just think about it. Her powers go -nuts-, she's invading every person in Paragon City up until the point of her death.

Why have her mind ride into just -1- person? Why not have her mind fragmented across all of Paragon? It's just totally too ripe to not do something with.

The simplest reason is probably because it's more work than you guys think it is.

It might be easy to 'freeze' VIP status but there's probably no system in place for turning on VIP status en masse, it would probably involve individually turning on each account and since there's nothing but a skeleton crew working on the game to keep it functioning... well, it's not worth any of their time to do that.

Just a guess though.

edit: scooped! Curse you!

There were actually some bits teased out in answers that never got fully explained because there were no direct questions (in the google doc) for it.

Like Hamidon being "Gaia incarnate" is pretty cool, but like what other incarnates were out there? etc.

I agree though that Lady Grey being a sleeper agent would have made no sense, it -sounds- cool but he makes a valid point, there were next to no Supers in the 1800s. She could have just taken over herself or called down the Battalion then.

Citadel being one, on the other hand, is brilliant.

So do we start a separate thread for Part 2 answers? I guess I should have added my questions directly into the google doc instead of hoping they'd get noticed. I mean, I know it was a -monster- thread, and we really appreciate the effort, but it does seem to be still missing a lot of 'big' questions. So.. a part 2?

Still some really awesome stuff, the Sirocco thing would've been fantastic.

I feel bad, the Shining Stars seem to be like the C-list whipping boys for when the villains need some butt monkeys to beat up on.

It's not so much Game Cessation information. It's just saying, hey, VIPs are locked in, and you get points and sub refunds for anything past specific dates, stuff we knew was happening but just didn't have dates for. It's just confirming stuff.

Constant de-pantsing.

Let's see, Non-MMO. Well I finally went back and tried to finish Suikoden II til i realized I'd made it impossible to collect all 108 stars soooo... putting it down again til i feel like restarting from scratch.

Otherwise I started up Suikoden III, I'm on a break from FF13-2 (which... I actually like a hell of a lot more than it's predecessor) and I've been poking at Nostalgia on my DS which is proving to be a cute if utterly generic (with a few unique aspects) JRPG.

Waiting on Borderlands 2, though playing it on my PS3 (and single player). I think Torchlight 2 also drops this week so looking forward to that -finally- coming out (really enjoyed the beta).

Actually now that Borderlands 2 is coming out it kind of makes me want to go back to one and finish up some. I started a game with each character, beat everything (minus the secret boss in Expansion.. 3?) with the Sniper, I think I got to the end of the main game with the Siren? And had only just started the Soldier and Berserker.

Yeah, honestly, it's hard to say without being on the inside.

For all we know, the suits on the other side are only concerned with the bottom line and it's already been written off but no one has had the heart to say or even they haven't been told.

Or it very well could have touched someone that, hey, maybe we are killing something that was working and they're willing to listen to alternatives to a full shut down.

Or it's convinced them that it's worth saving though perhaps they don't want to continue on as the publishers and they may be willing to work out some form of transfer, etc.

Again, it could go a million ways and any number of those could mean what we do is pointless but equally it could very well tip the scales or just aid in the effort. We really don't know until we hear the end of it (Or the new beginning, etc).

At the very least, it has shown the devs how well loved they were and how much we enjoyed the work they gave us. That alone, at least in my book, counts for something because any creator can tell you that it's sometimes enough to just know that someone likes your work and the simple fact is we've written Paragon Studios a forlorn love letter with our efforts. I'm more than certain they understand how well this community appreciated them and what they gave us. So even if, in the end, the game is dead and gone, we can say we touched a few lives and let them know they were important to someone. That's something neither we nor they will forget.

Yeah agreed. And that's one thing that the show is considerably lacking. Antagonists just don't -last- beyond the most basic iconic races like Daleks and Cybermen, but all the big 'named villains' (or even organizations) either die or disappear. No bad guy ever gets to really hang around and the most iconic ones like the Master or Davros are 'too big' to have around casually because they've reached a point where their plans are too dangerous or too big.

I was kind of hoping that Madam Kovarian might end up a recurring villain and there's still a chance for that but I'm kind of expecting it won't be the case. Especially since the most we've got on her is just she's one of the Silence's lackeys and they double cross her.