Dr_MechanoEU

All I can say is...

Squeeeeee!

Saw the advert for the New You program (Necrotech is Dr Mechano's company for those not in the know, specialises in genetic reconstruction, manipulation and 'empowering the common people with super powers through genetic engineering')!

*hugs Bunny*

Very nice advert too, very stylish.

You've just recieved immense power of the reality warping kind and I don't means just locally, you're an A-grade, cosmic level reality warp capable of shaping the very universe to your whim.

Anything you can think of can be popped into existence, you're pretty much a Deity.

Now keeping things on a vastly smaller scale than you current power cosmic enables to, what would you do with Earth?

I don't mean in an end all hunger and suffering kind of way, sure you CAN do that and I think the planet of Earth would be very grateful for that but that's an easy task for you, a mere wave of your universe warping hand and poof! There goes all world hunger, diseases, general human stupidity and other factors, the world is at peace.

So yes, while to be fair that would be pretty high if not the first thing on my agenda list, You've got the rest of FOREVER to do things in, you're an immortal cosmic being, you've got more things you can do with Earth than just that.

Me?

Bam! Mars has an atmosphere breathable to humans.

Bam! It has water, plants, animals and everything else that go with making a planet hospitable.

Bam! It now forms the words 'A Wizard did it' through mountains and gulleys on one side of Mars which are visable from Earth (not by the naked eye but you look at Mars through a telescope, you see that message).

Bam! It's now also populated by a race of sentient Giant Spiders that are quite friendly and want to know why we keep dumping things on their planet, they don't mean to complain but you just drove the Mars Rover through Jesse's kitchen and it's making a mess, perhaps we could talk about this?

The moon would become the giant head from Zardoz, it doesn't do anything special, it's still just a big ball of rock but it's a giant stone head floating in space, looking down on Earth, judging you with it's cold stone eyes.

The Large Hadron collider? When that fired up it actually ripped open a portal in space and time to a Dimension where Kittens become the dominant species (not Cats, Kittens) and live in a society similar to ours though you status is ordained by the size of the hat you wear...

...oh and the Kittens have power armour and eye lasers but don't worry, they're friendly and willing to share Kitten based technology with us.

So now that I've finished screwing around with Earth, instituted the aformentioned changes, made the world at peace, lets say it wasn't me, who hasn't sleep in a long while but sensible you, yes you.

What would you do, would you be benevolent and kind, evil and tyrannical or somewhere inbetween?

The very universe is yours to twist to your whim...

Yeah all but Statesman are either generic heroes or VERY early concept art for signature heroes, BAB for instance is all cyberneticed up which he was during the early concepts but that was later changed to just the gloves.

The Ms. Liberty lookalike is also based on early concept art for her.

Its weird, the splash screen was probably one of the first things made for the game and yet even that early, they didn't spot or bother to fix Statesmans Derp Face.

Also anyone else notice the flesh coloured spandex on the first woman on the left. It took me a while to figure out that she wasn't naked.

Warning Giant Battleship :Spoiler: is approaching, No Refuge!

Thanks to working at Blockbuster means I get to take home DVDs a week before release and for free.

I picked up Sucker Punch, now I really wanted to like this movie, I really did.

I just found it boring. No perhaps boring is the wrong word, unfufilling would be more correct. I wasn't even looking for a deep thought provoking film, just something entertaining. You're looking at someone who enjoyed the frankly ridiculousness of Hobo with a Shotgun as a piece of Grindhouse popcorn entertainment so my standards aren't particularly high here.

I didn't particularly care for any of the characters, I know I'm suppose to but something was off about it and I don't mean in the style of the film off but just plain off. I also found the action sequences kind of hollow, especially the second one called in the animated shorts on the DVD, the Trenches.

The premise, a sort of steam punk meets sci-fi rendition of world war 1 definitely got my (and I presuming other peoples) attention but they ditched the big selling point of the scene (the giant mech) within the first 2-3 minutes of the start of that whole sequence.

I know they're explaining why the big (and presumable expensive to animate) CGI mech is around by having it fight planes up in the sky but it just bugged me that throughout the whole of the trench sequence I just kept wondering why the hell the Mech wasn't just there stomping the crap out of things or why there wasn't more of them! I want to see giant stompy mecha fighting giant clockwork behemoths damnit!

If anyone has seen the animated shorts that are included in the DVD (and I'm assuming since they act as mini-trailers, were available online at some point) to provide backstory to the hallucination/dance action sequences it really made me go.

"Well that story sounds awesome...can I not have that for a film instead of this?"

The last action sequence, Distant Planet (which the girls fail to stop a bomb reaching the city and detonating), actually has an awesome if cliched 'rise of the robots' story. The ones guarding the bomb are part of the poor, being oppressed by the rich in the big city, forced to live in shacks.

It shows them acting, well human, just before the girls arrive (who in this sequence are actually the bad guys) one robot presses a gun into the hands of another. It sighs and watches a little holographic video of its loved one waving goodbye and turns to the door to take aim.

I want to see that movie, I want to see what led up to that point, I want to know more about that world, about that group of robots that have chosen to sacrifice themselves in order to bring their people out of oppression through a truly desperate act.

Infact, go watch any of the animated shorts, they provide at least some flesh to the bare bones of the action sequences and if fully fleshed out, I think any of them would have been a better movie than the disjointed one we ended up with.

It's just, well I wanted to like it, I tried my best to get into it and I found the bordello segments meh, the action sequences hollow and generally just...eh...about the film all round.

If it stuck with one narrative for both the Bordello AND the action parts of the movie I feel it probably could have helped the film flow better, IMO at least.

Anyway, that's my opinion on it, wouldn't mind hearing other peoples, like I said, check out the animated shorts to atleast get a feel of what I mean.

See my mind had done the exact same thing. Prior to rewatching the first episode recently I could have sworn the pilot episode had them meeting up at the amusement park, them talking to each other, us being introduced to the characters and character traits before them hitching a ride on the DnD rollercoaster at the very least.

It's weird how your brain goes "nah...they couldn't just leap straight in like that...even Visionaries had three episodes devoted to the origin story and that only lasted 13 episodes."

Oh and while I remember

Having watched the very first episode recently I really wouldn't call it a proper pilot.

1) You're actually given no introduction as to who is who beyond names, infact you don't find out the Barbarian is the Thiefs little brother until slightly later in the show.

2) They DO introduce the big bad and rival big bad in full however but no more than is explained in the intro (Venger is a force for evil etc. Tiamat is the evil dragon goddess and is actually invulnerable to harm because of this, which would make her a more awesome Big Bad IMO.)

3) At the start of the episode they've already got all their weapons, the intro is actually the story setup for them getting into the world of DnD.

I will also point out that they weren't actually sold in purely for Online gaming.

On another forum it's pointed out (when someone translated the original chinese article) they wracked up and then blew the equivilent of $9000 in the space of about 2 months, most suspect most likely online GAMBLING not MMO play and the Chinese goverment (who are a strange one in that they both hate online gaming AND have it as a large income for their country) are using this to demonize MMOs further against the population.

Perhaps for now the Americans will do like the British space program does, go to a nation with the ability go get into space and go.

"Look we want to go into space but we lack the actual ability to do so. What we'll do is loan you some scientists, pay you for the time and effort in exchange for letting some of our Astronauts hitch a ride."

Which is the arrangement we have at the moment IIRC, it costs substantially less than an actual space program but means we have to hitch rides on other peoples.

Gygax is listed as an Executive Producer and Advisor for the show and apparently did have some hand in it so I wouldn't be surprised if he took the classes from the show and added them later.

The official PnP version of the show was a 3.0 book IIRC, a friend has it sitting around somewhere.

Oh god yes...I didn't mention that since it was a given.

"And lo did the almighty say that thou kids show shalt not have an annoying animal sidekick!"

Having been rewatching the series with a friend this interesting discussion came up.

"If you remade this for todays audience...what would you change?"

Now of course the big diehard fans would cry "nothing!" but it got us to thinking.

1) I'd personally go the old school route on the characters 'classes', Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Thief. Then I'd probably add in Ranger and Cavalier. To make the Fighter and Cavalier different I'd have one focused on Offensive power (probably wielding two swords...because everyone loves dual blade using characters) while the Cavalier would be more Defensive and the groups 'tank' character.

Now the Cleric brings up an interesting problem...mainly in more religious countries obviously and we all know that D&D has a history with the heavily Christian America (heck they don't like characters using Magic as a whole, let alone actively being a conduit for a made up deity). So careful ground would have to be trodden in that regards.

2) Give them proper (but still magical) weapons, it always seemed stupid having the Cavalier running around with JUST a shield. To get around this I'll take an example from a TV show I watched and have the enemies explode in clouds of red smoke when hit with a sword, thus keeping it decidely kid friendly.

3) Story arcs...the old series is very much a 'monster of the week' type deal due to the fact it was designed to be Syndicated heavily, thus was not allowed a proper beginning (mind you the opening does tell you everything you need to know) or a proper end (though that was apparently due to writer squabbling as neither could decide on how to end it and less to do with Syndication).

4) Setting, to be fair I'd probably keep the setting of the original show, other settings are a bit too gruesome for a kids show, Ravenloft, Darksun and Planescape are out, especially Planescape since that just enters into a whole new area of mind screwing.

Anyway that's just my thoughts, you guys ever thought about something like this, taking an old show and seeing if you could 'modernize' it...yes I know most things are a product of their time and should remain unchanged but hey the reboot of the Turtles was pretty damn good.

It does become a kind of chicken and egg question though.

If they could not make money from this powersets...would they have been made in the first place?

I mean if we look at the powersets we've got coming that are confirmed, Beam weapons, Time manipulation, Street Justice and Titan weapons PLUS we've got the rumoured Staff melee set (which if not fake, the animations for could be used as both staff and spear melee).

The only time you saw that amount of powersets was in a paid for expansion which we got once every couple of years OR they were spaced out over a period of many years but free.

So if they couldn't make money, half of these sets probably would have never been made.

Though I have my conspiracy theories on why the sudden switch to the Free 2 Play model (Going Rogue failed to bring in subscriber numbers NCsoft hoped etc.) I won't go into them in great detail here.

The key thing they're going to have to do is to make it so they can make money without appearing to nickle and dime the subscribers, getting this balance right is very delicate.

I'm personally still not sure on the whole Free 2 play thing, I can't decide whether it's a good thing or a bad thing at the moment, I just don't have the data to decide and only time will really tell, as is the way with all things.

Though at this stage I suspect it has become a case of go free 2 play or die within two years mandate came down from NCsoft.

CoH is NCsofts least profitable MMO due to a lack of a Korean audience and in a world where other big MMOs are being released all the time or heck, normal multiplayer games are taking the MMO levelling mechanic, it's a hard fought space to justify the existence of a less than 100,000 sub MMO to a big company like NCsoft who have MMOs with 3 million subscribers or more.

It is a joke my good fellow.. The Vicki costume code was given away at ComicCon and since it's just a costume temp power it works with powers it really shouldn't do.

For high hilarity *adjusts monocle and guffaws*.

Actually I will point out that VEATs are massive endurance hogs, I mean huge, they actually require that Inherent to be somewhat playable during the early days, even with Stamina.

Sadly the man who I would have picked for the voice of Reichsman passed away quite a while ago...

You came here prepared to fight a Madman and instead you found...a GOD?!

Well I gots me my facepalm emote...yayificiations!

I'm honestly surprised they don't just sell these in the NCsoft store, especially when Freedom comes out, either go to the con and get it free or if you can't go to the con, buy it through the store.

Actually my favorite cutscene bombing was an unintentional one and everybody has done it, wether you realised it or not.

Was in the ITF, nobody had flown ahead to trigger the cutscene so it goes off whilst we're in the midst of fighting Nazis.

Now if you look closely during the cutscene you can see yourself mid-fight in the background, you're quite in the distance but it looks awesome. There was a 5th Column all ragdolled into the air from my Knockout Blow, the Martial Arts Scrapper was paused in time just at the point that Eagle's Claw had connected and was in mid-flip.

Really wish I'd screenshotted it.