Balorn

Well, I work Friday night, which is what people seem to be talking about here (unless I'm misinterpreting things), but I'm up for gatherings before or after the event. I don't mind hauling a few other people around, either (room for 3 or 4 besides myself in my car, depending on size).

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Some of my personal favorites include Kerbey Lane

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If you have the M&G on a Friday at Kerbey, you might get your order by Saturday.

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Haha, yeah, the food's good, but the service there isn't always the fastest. Then again, I get spoiled by how good the service is at Trudy's.

Been a while since I went out for barbecue, though. If there's a lunch meetup before the meet and greet, I wouldn't mind the excuse to do so.

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Where exactly is this at btw? I know where Austin is, being a native Texan.

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Dave and Busters in Austin. Here's a map - it's basically on the NW corner of 183 and MoPac. The intersection is a little odd if you're not used to it but if anyone has questions about how to get into that particular corner - it's not always obvious - let me know.

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Since we'll have some extra time to kill, any recommendations from the locals for eating establishments or things to see and do would be most welcome! And if anyone is interested in getting together before the meet 'n greet for lunch or dinner Friday and/or Saturday, please do let me know!

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Some of my personal favorites include Kerbey Lane and Trudy's, both of which have locations within just a few miles of D&B. I'll be at work Friday night, but if there's a pre-meet meetup Saturday I could probably show up.

Barring unforeseen disasters, I'll be at the Austin one again, likely wearing my new hat.

Here are pictures from the Austin one last year at Cyberjocks. Much fun was had by all.

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Oh man, the crossword puzzle will be hard for me... most of the Rikti content I haven't done since I leveled up my first (and only) 50 a few years ago. And I haven't done any Rikti content red-side. Darn this altaholism of mine...

Okay, I got a better picture of the design.

I'd actually love to make hats and shirts with the AT icons (and SG/chest emblems) for people, but I'm not sure Cryptic/NCSoft would be OK with it.

I guess this could qualify as "fan art". I finally got around to actually making the five-archetype embroidered cap I designed a while ago.

Here's a picture, though it's hard to see some of the detail, especially for the tanker. It really does look better than the picture shows. I'll try to get a better picture later, but for now I'm going to bed (I have to go to work in five hours).

Eventually I may also do an embroidered design of one of my characters on a shirt or something, but digitizing a design that complex is a lot more involved.

(In case anyone's curious, I used Embird Studio to digitize the logos, and a Baby Lock EMP6 to do the embroidery on the cap.)

One technical comment on the crossword puzzle: the lettering of the clues was apparently rendered with ClearType turned on. While this is OK for viewing on an LCD at its native resolution, it looks weird on a CRT or if printed on a color printer. To see what I mean, zoom in on the clues in an image editor - one side of the letters is reddish, the other blueish.

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Crossword Puzzles are back, yo! Using the difficulty-o-meter that was discussed a while back, I’d rate this one an 8 out of 10. I’d be impressed beyond words if any one person could do it by themselves with minimal/no research.

Good luck!

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Love the crossword puzzles! They're my favorite part of the scoop.

This one, I managed to get 16 (edit: 18) (edit 2: 19) of them without looking anything up. Some of the others I know I could find if I looked but I'm trying to figure the rest out before I resort to paragonwiki or a forum search.

What I'm missing: 2 across (I know I could find this if I looked), 3 across, 3 down, 13 across, 15 down and 17 across.

Edit: Okay, I think I've got 3 down and across. Unfortunately that didn't help me enough with 13 across so I'm still missing it despite having nearly half the letters filed in.

Edit 2: Finally remembered 2 across. Still missing 13 across, 15 down and 17 across, and really don't have any idea on those.

Edit 3: Finally gave up and did some quick searches for the last three. 15 down I should have got, but I remembered the name wrong and what I misremembered didn't fit. 13 across, I don't think I ever did that mission, which is why I had no clue. 17 across, just wasn't familiar enough to know. Overall though, great puzzle!

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A question that's NOT in the poll that I think would be useful for the devs (even if the results are made hidden from us) would be "what is your least favorite feature of Issue 9?". There's kinda an option for that for the economy, but not the rest.

Also I have mixed feelings about the "New Costumes" option in the second question - I like that they exist, but dislike that they're random drops. Some feel the same as me, others disagree, and both sides feel strongly about their opinion - see the 1800+ post thread in the General forum for reference (also see that thread if you want to continue that discussion, we don't need to bring that whole topic over to this thread too ).

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I have no idea what connection those 2 particular red names have to those costume pieces, and the only server I play on is Victory. (I think I have heard that that server is considered the "roleplay server")

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There was an event (on Test I believe) before the veteran rewards were unlocked for the general populace where they appeared wearing those items. Also, Virtue is generally considered the roleplaying server.

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Well, I got most of the crossword stuff. It seems I'm not having trouble with the same ones as other people here. The clue of a zone name got me 18, but I still can't figure some out. The ones I don't have:

3 down - Crey's Regret
S _ _ A _ S _
I guess I missed a storyline somewhere or something

9 across - Izzy, to her friends
_ _ _ _ _ _ I _
Not a clue

14 down - Why your teammates want you dead
_ _ N _ _ _ _ _ E
"Stupidity" and "Invincible pre-SOs" don't fit, so I have no idea

20 down - A rite of passage for Supers
C _ P _
I have no idea - none of the things I could think of are that short

Edit: Okay, I figured out 20 down. Still don't know the others, though.

Edit 2: Thanks to a few vague hints I got in a PM, I've finished them off! Man, there were some obscure references in there. I loved it!

I've lived in Austin all my life. I've never been to Freebird's. I keep meaning to try it at some point, but never have. Usually if I'm in the mood for Tex-Mex I go to Trudy's.

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... a lousy deku MUD with a graphical interface ...

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That's Diku MUD, not Deku.
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But yeah, back when EQ was new, if you wanted persistant world, real-time massive multiplayer (where "massive" means more than, say, a half dozen people that arrange things in advance), your options were MUDs, UO and EQ. Guess which was the most immersive, despite its flaws. (Admittedly, I never played UO.)

As it's been said, now that there are options, we want a fun game to go along with it. Sure, I had fun with EQ (and MUDs, and DAoC, and so on), but I've had a lot more fun with City Of than any of the others I've played.

Before Co*, I went back to EQ for a month or two here and there between games. Since Co* was released, I haven't left Paragon long enough to let my billing cycle lapse.

OK, one thing I'd like to get cleared up if I can...

Crash Cage - ParagonWiki says her level range is 20-24 and 25-29. I've confirmed, however, that if I did all her missions before 25, she didn't have any more after 25. Can anyone confirm if you don't do her missions before 25, will she still continue offer them in the 25-29 range?

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Very nice, but if you wan't to see the missions each offers try http://cov.nofuture.org.uk/contacts/

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Hm, not bad. Does give some more info, but doesn't highlight which contacts give badges at a glance, groups them a bit differently, and doesn't fit on one page easily when printed. Still useful as an online reference, and I'll probably use both that and the one I made when I'm working on my villains.

One question since ParagonWiki isn't clear on it - who is Seer Marino introduced by? Marshall Brass, Willie Wheeler, or either? For now I'll go with Red Tomax and update my chart to show her introduced by Brass.

So... updated chart here.

And as a bonus, here's a version with PNG transparency added if you want to add your own background color/picture.

No background color because I wanted to be able to print it out.

One other note is that the info in ParagonWiki seemed to indicate the 40+ contacts all referred you to each other. I didn't not that because 1. I don't have a villain that high to confirm it, and 2. it would be a pain to note all the arrows the way they were described anyway. So I went with what seemed most likely.

CoV Contact Flowchart because planning which contacts to choose for badges isn't always easy.

Here's some pictures of the new costume options.

Warning: These are big. These are unresized crops from the costume creator, and I tried to get several angles. You will need to scroll to the right (or resize) for some of these.

Primary color is green, secondary is purple (chosen for contrast against each other, the background, and skin).

Galactic Glasses
Government Glasses
Blast Goggles Up

Floppy ears
Bunny ears
Cat ears
Rat ears
Teddy ears
Wildcat ears

Angelic top/legs
Assassin top/legs
Excess top/legs
Savage top/legs - On this one especially, be sure to scroll all the way to the right to see the detail
Tanker top

Still no "none" option for ears. Plus the ears don't erase the standard human ears; some of them just cover it (this can be good or bad depending on the effect you want).

Hm, am I the only one that read "Officers strap themselves into mechanical combat exoskeletons" and immediately thought of a K11 or K12s? Especially with the next sentence using the term "hard suit" (even though the K11/K12 aren't really hardsuits), I thought it'd be kinda hard not to think of BGC.

News 8's story on the event is now online!

http://www.news8austin.com/content/t...sp?ArID=156166

If you scroll down you can play the video. I'm in it! Well... in the background. For 3 seconds. (1:08, on the right, with the cap.)

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...Unlike the rest of Texas...

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Yeah... I do love living in Austin - I just wish it wasn't surrounded by Texas.

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The Virtue server 'gang' managed to eventually snag a whole row plus a few others and have fun doing pictures and showing off characters.

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<ul type="square">[*]The Virtue server row, getting their picture taken in-game and in person at the same time[*]Virtue group posing for the camera[/list]

OK, my pictures are up at:

http://www.balorn.net/coh/meetgreet/