I have a Bots/FF Mastermind that I always intended to take Blueside, and I was very tempted to ignore the whole 'villain' thing. Once it turned out that I had to get him to Level 20, I did try for a while to level only by doing Heroic AE missions, but eventually I joined a team, and that all sort of fell apart...
So I formed a new plan. This character had spent a lot of time in the Rogue Isles and ultimately done a lot of questionable things, but I figured that I could essentially roll with that, especially considering Arachnos's rather anarchistic internal structure, and adopt the theory that living in the Rogue Isles for very long pretty much forces you to do bad things just to survive, in a He Who Fights Monsters sort of way. Arachnos might even deliberately encourage it.
He just happened to grow up in the Rogue Isles, then, and he still always wanted to be a hero. He refused to work for Arachnos, so eventually he had to go to ground. Even when you're trying to run and hide, you meet a few people, you make a few friends, you start to see the grey in the black and white, you rationalise and compromise a bit, and pretty soon you're a wannabe hero whose two best friends just *happen* to be Arachnos Crab Spiders. I mean, you have nothing against them personally, right? And if you're just shooting up some Snakes, that's actually defending the public, and where's the harm in that? Sure, pretty soon they're trying to rob banks and asking for your help, but remember, they're your *friends*. A friend is someone you call to help you move, but a real friend is someone you call to help you move a body. Do you really want to abandon a friend?...
So, yeah, he's going to end up with something of a complex past, but he was never intentionally evil for its own sake or for his own benefit. He just ended up wading through far more darkness than he ever thought he'd have to, and became rather darker himself than he ever thought he would while trying to get out from under the thumb of Lord Recluse. And as many people have complained about before, it's actually quite surprising how many CoV mission arcs aren't actually all that villainous...
