Chad Gulzow-Man

Despite my disappointment that I will NEVER GET TO PLAY ANY OF THESE, I'm extremely grateful to know what might have been.

Thank you, Codewalker. You dirty, dirty PIGG diver.

For what it's worth, bAss, your costume threads were amazing. You consistently put out top-notch designs showcasing not only the new costume options, but creative ways to fuse them into existing costumes.

Your Dual Pistols user is like 4 out of 5 of my favorite costumes I've ever seen anybody make in this game, ever.

I lucked into a single celebrated costume design with a dude I debuted as Year of the Monkey for the Chinese New Year costume contest. You outdid him with every screenshot you posted. My hat is off to you.

I do regret Mission Architect not living up to its potential--though it obviously had great success in pointing the developers at the writing talents of Sean McCann. I didn't get into the Issue 14 closed beta until the VERY last wave, but I hungrily lapped up every single detail about it I could find in the meantime.

Then, it was released on live! I put a LOT of work into the arc in my signature during beta and published it as soon as I was able to log in. While it's not Shakespeare, I've always been proud of it, and it received pretty good reviews from the people who actually played it. (I also pretty shamelessly tried to get it into the Hall of Fame, back when there was a badge for it... but that's a horse of a different color.)

But the euphoria obviously didn't last long as farm missions cluttered up everything and there was so much negativity from virtually every one of the game's cliques--the devs didn't like the farming, got pissed and started punishing people; the farmers LOVED the farming but hated the heavy-handed punishments; story authors hated that the work they poured their hearts and souls into was disappearing into obscurity due to the sheer number of crap submissions that got in their way; people who wanted to do NON-MA stuff couldn't find teams; etc, etc.

So, like a lot of people, I gave up on the Mission Architect. I loved it for what it was--a way to put a piece of myself in the game for everyone else to see--but I hated it for how others saw it and for the strife it caused the community in general.



I really, truly wish that my arc were still playable. I'd like to run it again with some friends. Sadly, it is borked because I named one of the NPC bosses after my greatest in-game friend, Eric Nelson... and the filter dislikes the name "Lieutenant Nelson."

EDIT: WTF, I just checked, and my arc WORKS AGAIN!!! *_*

Since nothing will come of me saying it now: yes, I have Passport, and no, I've never been on the EU servers. I'm not sure exactly what caused it, but I think it was a fluke related to entering the City of Villains beta code and a Hero Gear Kit code at the same time.

To be honest, I've always had mixed feelings about this, but I have a pretty low self-esteem and having this badge made me feel special. Failing to report my badging advantage has eaten at my conscience, though, and is on a (thankfully short) list of what I consider to be failures of not doing the right thing. I'm sorry if it ever caused anyone grief.

I did not get my 8 year Vet badge.





The only badge(s) I have left to earn are Triple Threat and the resulting Master of Magisterium badge. I currently have 1396, and am hoping to have maxed out at 1398 by the end of the long weekend.

I'm just gonna play whatever game actually looks worth it, same as I always have.

Thing is, CoH is the only MMO that's ever actually been worth it to me.

My VIP time goes until next Summer.

I'm planning on putting a lot of time in between now and the end of November. There are, surprisingly, a lot of old story arcs I haven't played in the 41-50 range... I've actually never done Vernon von Grun's missions! I'm also only about half way through running every 1-20 Praetoria arc on the Brute in my sig.

Not to mention the fact that there's still ONE badge I can still earn between now and then. TRIPLE THREAT (and the resulting Master of Magisterium), I WILL MAKE YOU MY *****!

Keetsie, as much of a thrill as it was to meet everyone, you were my favorite dev to meet at Comic Con last year. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. There was just something kinda magical about listening to you talk so passionately about your work and watching you patrol First Ward, looking for effects bugs when transitioning between the regular areas and the Shadowed Paths.

Hrm... Hopefully that didn't sound creepy. I'm not a stalker. (Well, I PLAY a Stalker...) Though I guess I do have to admit, Leo is a lucky man.

(Also, know that I kept my promise and didn't leak that you accidentally confirmed Staff Fighting to me. Great work on it, though. >_>)

I've been on Victory since the game launched in 2004. Victory is more of a home to me than my actual home, and with one notable exception, the friends I've made here are better than my "real" friends.

I know I'm not the easiest person to get along with, and that I stress out and obsess over minute details (like... 11 straight MoSTF failures... >_>), but the fact that you not only accepted me but continued to invite me to badge teams and TFs even with The World's Squishiest Scrapper™.

(Side Note: How anyone could break a Kat/SR Scrapper is beyond most people; it actually took a notice from Arcanaville to get him rebalanced and rebuilt him back in i20.)

So thanks for putting up with me for that.

Eric Nelson (in game: Stained Glass Scarlet, leader of the Legion of Valor) gets a special mention. He's become like a brother to me over the years. He helped me through a bad break up a few years back, and has always been among the first to answer the call when I needed a team to get a badge. In return, I've done whatever I could to help him, which usually meant pirating his account and getting the ski slope badges and Avoids the Green Stuff on his latest birthday, but I still think he got the raw end of the deal for everything else he had to put up with.

Everyone in Global Shift and Victory Global, you guys are amazing.

Madame Pistachio in particular runs events like no one else ever could--there's a reason she's the most respected person on the Victory server. I'm sorry for the occasional headaches I've caused in the past, but know that I respect the hell out of you, am proud to have worked with you and am very, VERY grateful for the trial badges I never would have gotten without you.

AmazingMOO (@Hamster, the NON-Satanic one), you are one of the most kind-hearted people I've ever met. Even though I haven't always agreed with your point of view, I've loved reading your posts on the forums... you're always so passionate in every argument you make. Plus, you're always throwing together a Katie Hannon TF, and those are just damn fun.

Rod, you're just great. You're the closest thing I think I've ever had to a rival--despite the fact that we're always backing each other up. Always trying to scoop and/or correct each other when posting new info, cracking jokes, etc. Even while scowling at the fact that you've beaten me to the punch over something, I have always appreciated you. (Just quit backing into Arachnos Flyers during MoSTF runs, okay?)

To Valdy, Gin and Mae, I have to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Before I met you--scratch that, before Eric introduced me to you, I was only teaming with a very small group of LoV players and badgers, convinced that I was too weird and that no one else would accept me. But you guys did, with open arms. It's because of you that I went from being "that guy with lots of badges who no one ever sees," like some kind of urban legend, to "oh yeah, Chad, I know him." And earlier, when I said that Ham was one of the most kind-hearted people I've ever met? Mae, you are THE most kind-hearted. (I don't want to get into personal problems, but I hate that you've been having a rough time; no one deserves happiness more than you.)

Grey Pilgrim, though we don't see each other too often in game, it's been an honor sharing a birthday with you.

Serrate, if you're still around to see this, THANK YOU AGAIN for tanking on the MoSTF that finally earned me the badge.

To anyone else whom I haven't named personally, please don't take that as an insult. I've cherished my time on Victory far more than anyone probably should care about a video game, and everyone here has had a hand in shaping it. I thank you all, and honestly, I have no idea where I'm going to go once the lights go off in November, but I hope to see as many of you as possible again in the future.






(And yes, I will even miss SatHam. Even though teaming with him sucks--I've never needed help getting debt on my characters, dude--he's got some great "WTF" image posts on the forums. )

I'm unemployed myself, and money is tight, but I would absolutely make SOME donation...

Jersey Shore got cancelled today, too. I guess something had to balance out the cosmic scales...

http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/08/31/wh...ore-cancelled/




EDIT: LAUGHING MY *** OFF at the way the forum software compacted that link. "wh...ore-cancelled"

It almost did, too.

Not sure why you posted these in the Tech Support forums, but at this point? **** it, go nuts.