ConTora

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Issue 10 is a ways out, but it will bring us an update to an old familiar villain group. This group will have their power center altered

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Right, let's list all the villains that have a power centre.

1) The Council
2) ...
3) Er
4) That's it.

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The 5th Column. An old villain group, from before Issue 3. Super-nazis, to put it bluntly. The Council organized a hostile takeover and pretty much forced the 5th Column members to join them or die fighting.

There have been hints during the last year or so that the 5th Column would return. I assume the above is another allusion to that.

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I didn't see anything about an influence bank.

Did I miss it? Will I still need to have another player character to transfer funds to my lowbies?


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Actually, with this, there's less of a need for an inf bank.

You can buy enhs, put them in the storage bin, switch to your lowbie, retrieve the enhs from the storage bin.

Me! Fel made 50 last night! F'course, I'm going in to try out my Kheldian, and Champion's down...

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I'm wondering what people think of the MMO's if you look at them from the perspective of a popular culture phenomenon.

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Not even close to popular consciousness, not in the US anyway. Sure, 5 million WoW accounts and what not, but... only time the media pays attention to MMOGs is when some Korean guy keels over in a cafe, and even then the newsblurb only says "Man Dies From Videogame".

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Is this a good thing or does it mean that the genre has been co-opted by mainstream tourists?

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Social interaction is "the big draw" of MMOGs, the reason people pay $15/mo, the idea that there's hundreds, thousands of live players on the same game at the same time that you can talk to an interact with. So it'd be hard for anyone here to argue against it; if someone doesn't like the idea of playing with others, they'd be better off saving their money and playing single-player RPGs on their platform of choice.

As a sidenote, I dislike the implication that just because something is popular with the masses it's somehow devalued/degraded. Someone who only does things as long as they're "obscure" is as much of a bandwagon-jumper as someone who only does things as long as they're popular.