Captain_Photon

Aha. Well, however they did it, it's one of the two things I miss about the old forums. The other was the "favorite forums" feature, by which I could set up a sort of LJ-default-view-style pool of the forums I wanted to watch, and so wouldn't have to even bother seeing the ones in which I had no interest listed. It'd be especially handy now that a scad of them are in languages I can't read, but I've spent a while poking around in the config options and if there's a way to replicate it, I've yet to figure out what it is.

(Also, while I almost hate to admit it after the - justified, I think! - kicking I gave UBB at any opportunity, the threaded mode was better there.)

I didn't say that, even by analogy. What I said about the Beetle was that it sold well even to people who knew what crap it was, not only to people who knew what crap it was. It also sold to people who thought it was a great car. They weren't "fooling themselves"; they were wrong, but there's no law against that.

But no, seriously, you're right, the phrasing is a bit wrong. Beetles sold to people who knew they were junk, and also to people who knew they weren't. "Knowing" something like that isn't really an absolute, only something that can be measured proportionally. Taking the stance that people who know something different from what you know are wrong is just rhetoric, and should be evaluated as such, even - hell, especially - when I do it; but it's good for comic effect, if nothing else.

That actually makes it more pointless, not less.

My favorite part of the Wikipedia page on DST in the US:

"Wyoming Senator Michael Enzi advocated the extension from October into November especially to allow children to go trick-or-treating in more daylight."

Assuming that's true (which you can never really do about things on the Wikipedia, but I digress), it demonstrates more clearly than ever that Congress knows nothing about how real life works. I mean, Senator Enzi has clearly failed to grasp the first basic principle about trick-or-treating there.

Well, I suppose one could take the viewpoint that "If you can't think of anything nice to say, shut the f--- up" is a suggestion.

The power sets aren't quite right, anyway; there's no way to make a Fisticuffs/Willpower Scrapper (though you can get close with some of the new alternate Martial Arts animations), nor is there a Drunken Mastery ancillary pool.

This reminds me a little of the "bones" feature in Nethack. Sometimes when a Nethack character dies, the next one will find his corpse on the appropriate dungeon level. You have to fight your previous self's ghost to get his stuff, and it's all cursed, but still.

Oh, pff. I've gotten that one inadvertently. A preponderance of Skulls-bearing scanner missions in the early going, a few expeditions to Perez Park, oh hey, new badge, wonder what it is? Aha!

Bad luck. Bad timing. It happens.

Wow. Irony: Not dead.

Stupid Energy Policy Act of 2005.

You know, that gives me a great idea.

Well, downloading the patches is always free, the game doesn't check who you are until the client is updated and running. As for the rest, the way the press release is phrased, it looks like they're just flipping the bit and making all accounts (less those not "in good standing", which I'm assuming means people who got banned) work until the end of Sunday evening. Looks to me like it's going to happen automagically, from the end user's point of view.

The funny thing about phenomena in pop culture is that they often become and remain phenomena despite an almost complete lack of visible reasons why. Look at the Volkswagen Beetle. It wasn't a good car when it was launched and it never really got any better; by the time it went out of production it was the automotive equivalent of a tarpaper shack. But it was a phenomenon, so they kept making it. People wanted it, and even liked it when they had it, even if they were fully cognizant of what a heap of junk it was. Even today, people buy a new car that's also not very good just because it kind of, if you squint, looks like the old one a little.

And there you have World of Warcraft. Complete rubbish; sells like hotcakes anyway, even to people who are aware it's complete rubbish.

(Extending this metaphor a bit, City of Heroes is the Citroën SM. Interestingly quirky, built on fairly old technology but with a somewhat futuristic design that as many people find offputting as appealing. Doesn't sell nearly as well as the Beetle, but destined someday to be recognized wistfully as one of the classics. )

There's also the small fact that when you get done defeating Lord Recluse in battle, Lord Recluse is still the absolute power in the Isles. You've accomplished nothing; you might as well not have done it.

Ah, the 19th century. Now that was when we had real political discourse.

They used to be stickied at the top of each forum, which was very handy, but apparently someone decided during the cutover to vBulletin that it was a waste of space or something.

Wow! There's a song I haven't heard in a while. Tell us what the War was like, grandpa!

Well, yes, but I can see their point all the same. Even at level 50 there's that sense that you're a strictly-B-list hero in the City of Heroes universe. That, to use the way of things in an established comic universe as a metaphor, you might have your own title, but the next time Geoff Johns writes a 12-issue megacrossover, you're gonna be one of those guys who dies in the big fight scene on page 17 of issue 3.

It gets a little annoying after a while, but sadly I think it's an inevitable part of the cost of doing business. Player characters can't be the superstars of an MMO's universe. The shared world and the need to keep the status quo immune to player input both ensure it. That puts the MMO model a bit at odds with what some people may be expecting from the superhero genre.

IO set bonuses don't only affect the power that the set is slotted into.

I'm... not sure I see that happening, for the simple reason that archetypes don't have those "tweaks" already on purpose. If the game's designers had wanted Scrappers to have combat-capable pets or Blasters to be able to debuff, they'd have built them that way.

I'm okay with that. This is the last thing on the list of stuff this game drew me in by not having that it still doesn't have. The developers have diligently spent the last several years adding everything else from the Lame MMO Cliche List.

They must be in the same unseen districts as all the schools, children, gas stations, buses, and sports facilities.