Chris_Zuercher

* Why Avatea has taken to wearing a burqa on Wednesdays.

* Why Avatea will not be venturing on camera from this point forward.

** Villains in Paragon City. Make separates of the Paragon City zones with villain missions and NPC heroes trying to stop you. Put NPC villains in hero side zones.

** Wait for archetypes. Players don't choose an archetype right away, but wait until they've gotten their feet wet before training into specialized skills (melee, ranged, defense, control, buff, summon).

** Megapowersets. Instead of having "fire blast" and "fiery melee" and "fiery aura" and "fire control" and "thermal radiation", just have "fire". Of course players will be more effective if they choose powers that fit the archetype they've trained into.

** Instanced PVP: One hero, one villain, one bank. Or jewelry store. Or high-tech lab. Or political target. Or teams of heroes and villains.

Then again, a recent study showed that generally people like stories better when they're told the spoilers in advance.

ZOMG! Awesome! I've been playing this video nearly non-stop since yesterday. Me so excited! Me so excited! Fun fun fun fun! She's so much better than most of the stuff on the radio today.

I'd always assumed that Powers Division had enough influence to either convince people to look the other way with certain recruits or convince Cole that they could better keep a watchful eye on magic users if they had an official role than if they were outlawed outright.

This was one thing (of several) that brought the Green Lantern film down: lack of good villain. Hector Hammond began as actually a sympathetic character, a well-meaning guy who simply lacked ambition and was met with the disapproval of his achiever dad. But a guy who'll never amount to much as a regular guy is still not going to amount to much as a villain no matter what his powers are or how powerful he is. And Parallax was just the same malevolent cloud of ultimate malevolency but no personality we saw in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. It wasn't interesting in those movies and it wasn't interesting in this one either. Even though Parallax was powerful enough to threaten the entire Green Lantern Corps, it still failed as a villain.

Contrast with Lex Luthor and Joker, two villains with no real superpowers but are still regarded as two of the best villains in superhero fiction. It's because they are interesting characters and find ways to make things happen. Luthor may not be able to go toe-to-toe with the Man of Steel, but he can concoct schemes to throw him off-balance and create devices that can put him on a more level footing. The Joker is also adept at hatching schemes that endanger a great many people, and he will cross lines no one else will cross. It's been said that when supervillains want to scare each other around a campfire, they tell each other Joker stories.

Plus they have motivations beyond merely stomping on the good guy. The Joker enjoys the game, wants to sow chaos and prove that civilized life is a lie. Luthor wants to prove his superiority to a man with godlike ability.

On a side note, "bad villains" can become good ones if they play up their badness. I recall a story in the Spider-Man comics where the Gibbon, Kangaroo, Grizzly and Spot joined forces in a "Legion of Losers". It was a story played up for laughs, but it worked quite well.

I'd always wondered how the dispatchers knew how to precisely label each crisis so I knew which one fit my particular fancy at the moment. Truly they are the unsung heroes of Paragon City, tirelessly working to help me know where to get my loot, er, where the fair people of the city need help the most.

At times like this I turn to Senator Vreenak for his expert analysis.

Can't sleep now...Mother Mayhem will get me...

Can't sleep now...Mother Mayhem will get me...

Can't sleep now...Mother Mayhem will get me...

(Great promo, by the way. )

Can't sleep now...Mother Mayhem will get me...

Oooooooooh! Gravity! All this time I thought everybody was talking about the woefully underapprecated gravy control power set. As for me, I'm specifically going to avoid rolling a gravity/time controller just because everybody else will be doing it.

I've already been calling them "freeps". Rhymes with "peeps", which is slang for people.

Hilarious! But two seconds after I surf to another page all I'm going to remember from this is...

Steadfast
Bastion
Pantheon

...or...

Suckas ('cause, you know, it's people paying for a free game)

I'm not sold on the animation, but the fact that it's being produced by Bruce Timm has me interested. Timm's series (Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited) have a tendency to become classics.

Aw! Any sad feelings of EMPulse leaving are overwhelmed with "Yay! Baby!" happy feelings. Congrats!