Bright

Goodbye, everyone. It's been a fun five years...
And as much as I'm going to miss Palrah, and Nem, and Kestrel and the rest of my crew, I'm going to miss all of you even more.

At this point, I've honestly gotten to do almost everything I wanted...

It would have been nice to have enough time to finish all of the members of my crew who are "in progress" and not quite 50 yet, and to Incarnate-out Anigan (my SJ brute, who I ended up liking much more than I expected to-) but I can live with leaving them all as they are.

My favorites are done... Kestrel can finally wrap Cardinal's summon, making him the true constant companion I always intended him to be. Nemissary has all of his multiple-T4s-in-everything Incarnate toys. Palrah has all of the badges I wanted him to have. I'm at peace where they're concerned.

My only real regret is that I didn't start FRAPSing things until very late in the game. I really wish I'd have had that sooner, and could have "filmed" more of the missions, TFs, trials and monster hunts I took part in over the years. I'd have loved to have them to watch now and later on, just to remember.

I'm a little shocked that the old Iron Man series (Dubbed "Dire Man" by a friend of mine awhile back when one of the Disney spin-off channels was re-running it, reminding us all just how awful it really was-), didn't make the list.

As one of the half dozen people on Earth who actually remembers Force Works and has some affection for that run, Iron Man's first season was just... painful. The second in no way improved it. o_0

Sad to say FCM and I probably won't make it tonight.

Well, half the reason I picked the Jackpot neighborhood of Saint Martial as Kestrel's "home base" was because I liked the look of the old brownstones and the view across the bay of the Giza. Sure, it's a little seedy in places, there are little wailer demons all over the place and some of my neighbors would be goofy anarchists made mostly of metal... But unlike the Shard (my favorite zones in the game-), it's a heck of a lot easier to get around in for someone who lacks her bird-things' wings.

So... yeah. Saint Martial for me.

I don't know any of them well enough for that. I mean, seriously, half of them won't even give me their phone number. <_<

But, in the spirit of fun... I've always been partial to Sunstorm.
'Bit of a thing for well-built guys with white hair and a certain sort of nobility...

A fun "accidental" capture... I was taking screenies of my DP blaster doing the Hail of Bullets animation and happened to hit one during a very brief "camera outside the map" moment.

The result... Rose shooting magic missiles AT THE DARKNESS.

Heh.

In all honesty, if you really like the way City of Heroes plays and the kind of people most of us play it with, you're more likely to absolutely hate Aion and its community than love it. It's a very different game with a very different group of players and social expectations. It's an absolutely obnoxious game on almost every possible level.

... And I say that *AS* an Aion player. (It's my "other MMO". I've been involved with the game off and on since the first NA closed beta-)

Has it improved since launch? In some ways, yes. But it's still an unbalanced grinder with limited character customization, an RNG that actively griefs its own players, a well-established community of twinks, trolls and griefers, kinah-sellers out the wazoo, easily-abused party mechanics, and a lot of other issues that are unlikely ever to be addressed because the NA version is run by a tiny group of people with little to no authority or ability to do it. NA Aion is an after-thought, and tends to be treated by the main Aion devs in Korea as such.... Always has been, always will be.

Plus their cash shop is ludicrous.

Hopefully we'll be able to pull enough people together tonight to get some more unlocks for people.

Like Ironblade, I haven't completely given up hope... but I'm enough of a realist to recognize just how heavily stacked against us the odds are, even when it comes to something like a private server or a hack to make the game run as a stand-alone.

So, if I'm being completely honest about it, with a distinct I have to say No. It's done for. Ghost material. Living impared. An EX-game. We're just not ready to admit it yet, kind'a like that guy in the Monty Python movie...

I think Kestrel is going to miss Saint Martial as much as I will...

Okay, that made me grin... Poor Jimmy, though. 'Poor guy's just doomed.

Grats, dude.... and yeah, a most excellent name choice. ^_^

If our characters and data transfer to the new owners... Throw a party in the Chantry.

If they don't and we all have to start over? ... Well, then it's off to the ruins of Galaxy with new versions of Palrah and Kestrel. 'Best to get as early as start on rebuilding as I can, because it honestly took me *years* to get Kes to the point where she is now (She's not just my one and only dedicated roleplaying toon, she's also my single most expensive, most over-engineered, over-equipted, and over-Incarnated nightmare. ), and a lot of that was financed by Pally and his Enhancement crafting.

Aside from that? Throw money at whoever's running the show (VIP for-EVA, baby), and bug Dr.Aeon to finish that Scirocco arc he was working on.

For my Grey Kestrel and Red Cardinal's sake, I'm glad Scirocco was going to end up not only going hero, but surviving the trip...

Kes and Cardinal (My favorite DB stalker and her Adept partner- My only real roleplay characters) were never really villains. They only stayed rogues rather than going hero themselves out of loyalty to Scir... They absolutely refused to abandon him. So, yeah. 'Makes me grin a little to think of them all finally getting the hell out of that place and on to a better life.

They'll still think it's their job to protect the guy... I doubt anything would change that... But at least they'll get to fight the good fight while they're at it. And that's a most excellent way to end their particular story.

ETA: Not sure I'm as fond of the idea of Lady Grey being a Battalion sleeper agent though... That would have made poor Palrah very sad-panda. He's had a crush on her for years.

Thanks for leading one last one for us, Ukase, and thanks to everyone for making it epic...

We really had a great run tonight. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect Underground for the collection. ^_^

Another possible-refugee from Liberty here...

I've been trying to get a FRAPs video of one good run of each iTrial for my archive collection, and there are just too few of the usual trial runners around at any given time any more to get some of them started. I don't *want* to have to transfer my "filming toon" to another server, but it's really looking like I'm going to have to to get those avi files.

So, yeah...
My peacebringer is probably Virtue or Freedom bound at some point.

Honestly, I'm considering moving one of mine to Virtue for a similar reason.

I want an AVI of each iTrial for my archive collection, and as much as I hate to say it, Liberty's "usual suspects" have been so few and far between lately that I seriously doubt we'd be able to pull together a MoM or a Keyes over here anymore.

Liberty has been pretty quiet, too.

A fair few of the "usual suspects" are still there, doing our thing, but not as many as I'd hoped would stick around. It's made my hope of being able to record one of each of our iTrials pretty much impossible, because there honestly weren't that many of us who did that kind of thing to begin with.

I hate the idea of having to transfer Sola or someone to Virtue or Freedom to get those videos, but as time passes that's looking more and more like what I'm going to have to do if I want them.