Beastyle

Ten minutes ago, Detective Jonathan Ghaly's biggest concern was tracking down a suspect in a burglary in Galaxy City. That all changed once the meteors slammed into the city. How does an ordinary PPD detective handle an alien invasion? Read the new Shivan lore to find out!

Avast, me hearties! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and to celebrate this great, grand occassion, there be a new sale in the Paragon Market: the Permanent, account-wide Pirate Costume Power for 600 Paragon Points!

Avast, me hearties! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and to celebrate this great, grand occassion, there be a new sale in the Paragon Market: the Permanent, account-wide Pirate Costume Power for 600 Paragon Points!

The Live European and North American City of Heroes servers will be offline for an extended publish on Tuesday, September 13, 2011.

Start Time: 4:00 a.m. PDT / 7:00 a.m. EDT / 12:00 p.m. BST / 13:00 CEST
Expected Duration: 9 hours
Expected Finish Time: 1:00 p.m. PDT / 4:00 p.m. EDT / 9:00 p.m. BST / 22:00 CEST

This is for the implementation of Issue 21: Convergence and patch notes will be posted after the downtime.

We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience!

Starting up!

I've done some situps and pushups whilst waiting in the queue.

General questions today on Freedom Friday!

I'd like to hear Michael Clark Duncan say, "samoflange."

If this works, if it tastes like Ecto-Cooler...then you have done the forums a great service.

I remember calling Minute Maid a few years back to ask about Ecto-Cooler, which, at the time, had been renamed...then renamed again...then finally discontinued. Sad days. Orange Lavaburst is still around, but it's just not the same.

Bump!

Some of the episodes I would've put on that list (in no particular order):

• See No Evil: A small-time crook gets ahold of an invisibility suit and uses it to commit robberies around Gotham. We find out he has a young daughter from his ex-wife; he intends to steal her back, and use the money so that both of them can live comfortably.

• Tyger, Tyger: A twist on "The Island of Dr. Moreau," a mad scientist kidnaps Catwoman and takes her to his island filled with his genetic experiments. The real focus of this episode is the character Tygrus, one of the experiments, and his relationship with his "father," the scientist.

• Growing Pains: Aka 'The Annie episode.' Robin meets a girl with no memories, and they find that Clayface is chasing her for some reason. The ending to this episode is one of the most powerful in BTAS.

• His Silicon Soul: My favorite Batman episode. One of the HARDAC robots from an earlier episode was programmed to replicate Batman/Bruce Wayne in every way, yet he doesn't know that he's a machine.

'Disgusting' villains, true ones, are few and far between. It's becoming increasingly rare to see villains who are malign for malignancy's sake; vile beings who do vile things simply because they delight in doing them.

More often, you'll find that even villains who do atrocious things are (mis)guided by their desire to do something that they see as good. Among these you'll find those villains who are of the "ends justify the means" mentality, knowing they're doing wrong but hoping that the outcome will outweigh they things they'll do to reach it, or those who are so convinced in their ultimate goal that they don't view their actions as evil.

When it comes to creating villains, I always find that the latter are easier to layer; you can give them a rough motivation and start building upon it: "Why are they working towards this goal?" "What were the precipitating factors that lead them to want to do this?" "How far are they willing to go?" "How do they view themselves?" "How do they view those who are trying to oppose them?" And so on. You could say that these types of villains naturally lend themselves to having more depth of character.

Now, that's not to say that a 'disgusting' villain can't have depth, but it's going to look a lot different. Imagine, as a template, a villain that is completely base, someone that joys in doing awful things because he takes a wicked satisfaction from them. That's always going to be that villain's motivation; the question, "Why are they working towards this goal?" is always going to be "Because they enjoy it." And while you can flesh out from there, you can't stray too far from that core concept that they like doing evil things, because if you do you start falling into the other category. The more sympathetic the reason a 'disgusting' villain glories in doing awful things, the less they become 'disgusting.'

That being said I do enjoy playing around with these types of character concepts. While I enjoy writing villains that have some depth beneath the surface, I also like characters who simply are the way they are, just because. As an example, an idea for a villain I had spawned out of an idea for a piece of dialogue: "I don't need a reason. I just need conviction."

I was on a trial when someone said, "I just felt a mini-quake. My house shook." Pretty soon other people in the league were chiming in that they felt that 'mini-quake' across several states. Hope everyone on the East Coast is alright!

PC gamers take as much pride in their cases as they do in the parts inside. Soon, Antec and NCsoft will be offering exclusive, high-performance cases with beautiful NCsoft artwork from City of Heroes, Guild Wars 2, and Aion.

Drop by Antec booth #152 at PAX Prime from Friday, August 26 to Sunday, August 28 to preview these custom cases, and enter for a chance to win one! Not attending PAX? You can also visit Antec's site and enter to win one of these gorgeous cases*!

*Contest is limited to residents of the United States of America. View full contest rules here.

You can discuss these cases here!

PC gamers take as much pride in their cases as they do in the parts inside. Soon, Antec and NCsoft will be offering exclusive, high-performance cases with beautiful NCsoft artwork from City of Heroes, Guild Wars 2, and Aion.

Drop by Antec booth #152 at PAX Prime from Friday, August 26 to Sunday, August 28 to preview these custom cases, and enter for a chance to win one! Not attending PAX? You can also visit Antec's site and enter to win one of these gorgeous cases*!

*Contest is limited to residents of the United States of America. View full contest rules here.

Round half-helmet.

Magic is rare on Praetorian Earth, and the enigmatic Carnival of Light are among the few who wield it. A group of psychics, mystics, and magic-users, the Carnival of Light is one of the prominent groups you'll encounter in First Ward, the new Praetorian zone coming with Issue 21 and City of Heroes Freedom™. Read a little about them here in this intercepted report from Colonel Vargas of the Direct Urban Strike Team, an opposing group in First Ward that answers to Mother Mayhem.

Discuss the Carnival of Light with the community!

Magic is rare on Praetorian Earth, and the enigmatic Carnival of Light are among the few who wield it. A group of psychics, mystics, and magic-users, the Carnival of Light is one of the prominent groups you'll encounter in First Ward, the new Praetorian zone coming with Issue 21 and City of Heroes Freedom™. Read a little about them here in this intercepted report from Colonel Vargas of the Direct Urban Strike Team, an opposing group in First Ward that answers to Mother Mayhem.

We will be conducting tests on the Beta server and the Training Room tonight, August 19. Testing on the Beta server will begin at 4:30 p.m. PDT (7:30 EDT / 12:30 a.m. BST / 1:30 a.m. CEST), until 6:00 p.m. PDT (9:00 EDT / 2:00 a.m. BST / 3:00 a.m. CEST). This testing is internal and does not require player participation. Please note that this testing may affect play experience on the Beta server; we apologize for any inconvenience.

We will also be running a stress test tonight on the Training Room, and players are encouraged to come out and help us test! We’ll be running Imperious Task Forces, and after testing we’ll be hanging out in Pocket D to give out Olympian Guard costume codes to a few randomly-selected players! Testing on the Training Room will be from 5:00 p.m. PDT (8:00 p.m. EDT / 1:00 a.m. BST / 2:00 a.m. CEST) to 7:00 p.m. PDT (10:00 p.m. EDT / 3:00 a.m. BST / 4:00 a.m. CEST).

Discuss tonight's tests here!

We will be conducting tests on the Beta server and the Training Room tonight, August 19. Testing on the Beta server will begin at 4:30 p.m. PDT (7:30 EDT / 12:30 a.m. BST / 1:30 a.m. CEST), until 6:00 p.m. PDT (9:00 EDT / 2:00 a.m. BST / 3:00 a.m. CEST). This testing is internal and does not require player participation. Please note that this testing may affect play experience on the Beta server; we apologize for any inconvenience.

We will also be running a stress test tonight on the Training Room, and players are encouraged to come out and help us test! We’ll be running Imperious Task Forces, and after testing we’ll be hanging out in Pocket D to give out Olympian Guard costume codes to a few randomly-selected players! Testing on the Training Room will be from 5:00 p.m. PDT (8:00 p.m. EDT / 1:00 a.m. BST / 2:00 a.m. CEST) to 7:00 p.m. PDT (10:00 p.m. EDT / 3:00 a.m. BST / 4:00 a.m. CEST).

Hi folks, we'll be conducting another Stress Test on the Training Room Friday, August 19, 11:00am PDT (2:00pm EDT; 7:00pm BST; 20:00 CEST) to 1:00pm PDT (4:00pm EDT; 9:00pm BST; 22:00 CEST), and again from 5:00pm PDT (8:00pm EDT, 1:00am BST; 02:00 CEST) to 7:00pm PDT (10:00pm EDT; 3:00am BST; 04:00 CEST). We'll be randomly giving out the Olympian Guard costume code, so come run some activities with us and get a chance to receive a code!