Dr_MechanoEU

Well there's only one theme tune I could think of Edward singing while he's 'working'.

Whirling around the laboratory, adjusting various dials, chemical mixtures and tesla coils of his 'dream partner' experiments - Weird science

As a side line, the best cartoon theme tune is Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors sooo much better than the Racoons

considering the manual PDF hasn't been updated since release (may be with Issue 8 it might have been updated) and contains quite a bit of incorrect information, I sign this idea wholeheartedly.

Bah you know some of us play both right?

I play WoW because it was my first MMO, because I like the fantasy genre and I was a big fan of the original RTS series. Yes WoW comes across as incredibly grindy, especially when it's for loot or more importaintly, specific loot, it's all about the drop chance and getting lucky.

I use to be a hardcore raider but the fact was I soon found myself simply not enjoying it, it became a second job, something I actually did not look forward to in the slightest, so I made my peace and gave up raiding.

Now pottering around ingame doing my own thing is a lot more fun, sure I don't see the big endgame instances but that's what youtube is for.

Blizzard have taken steps in the right direction (the 10 man and 25 man version of each instance for example) and also about 70% of it's customers are of the Korean or Chinese ilk (for some reason most Asian gamers just love to grind, like everybody to look the same and everything to be very much laid out before them...the exact reasons why City of Heroes bombed over there).

Why do I play both, simple, I enjoy City of Heroes because I can log on, do a bit of PvE, gain 1 or 2 bars and then log off again, soloing with all but the most team orientated ATs is a doddled compared to WoW where teaming is the only way to get any thing of importance done. Elites, the WoW Elite Bosses, can't be solod by the majority of classes whereas in CoX, Elite Bosses are designed that most classes can solo them.

I love the creativity I get through CoH, it's second to none on any other MMO on the market, WoW I do feel like just another grunt in the Alliance.

So, as I said, remember some of us play both.

Mentioned one of my memorable stories in another thread.

Me: Alright, we need to break into this house, should be simple....got your tools on you?
Bob: *Pads himself down* erm...nope.
Me: you...forgot...them?
Bob: Look I was busy oohing and ahhing at the climbing claws, you know I get distracted by shiny pointy things...
Me: *sighs* alright...so how are we going to get in here?
Bob: Look I'll scale the wall and remove the roofing tiles, most of these fancy places have an attic we can drop into without raising an alarm, tie a rope around this can of meat rations, hurl it up to me and I'll tie it off around a rafter while you climb up the side.
[Some climbing and quiet roof tile removal later]
Bob: Ok hurl it up.
[GM] You do realise that if you critically miss I'm going to have you hit him square in the head with you strength 18 hurled can of meat rations right?
Me: ((yeah yeah I know...but it's a 20-1 chance))
[rolling a D20]
[GM]: You hit him square in the head for 1D4 damage, roll for damage.
Me: ((1..thankfully)
[GM]: Ok you've given him a nasty bruise on the forehead
Bob: gah...damn it...watch it you big oaf, ooh I wish we had a cleric along to sort that out...
Me: Look this is all your fault in the first place so stop moaning...
Bob: Just hurl the can'o'spam and be done with it cretin!
[more dice rolling, finally a success]
Bob: Right it's tied off...now you can climb up it.
Me: ((now I know how Batman feels...))

On one of the other adventures. The scene is a group of us are in a country church, thatch roof and all.
Bob: Look if we're going to be dealing with Undead we're getting the holy water...wait...what are you doing?
Alex: I'm writing a note to the priestess apologising for taking the holy water.
Bob: *sigh* you do that, grab the water, me a the oaf are going to look for anything else that might help us.
GM: [you come across a store room]
Bob: Right I'll leave this crate open in a jiffy...
[GM]: as you open the crate yellow spores go everywhere, everyone roll for damage
Me: Gah...it's that yellow mould...needs to be kill with fire! ((hurls torch at the box containing the yellow mould))
[Gm]: Right the torch has successfully taken care of the yellow mould, however if you'd bothered listening to my description of the room, not only was it a wood crate but there's also a banner hanging over it which has now caught fire...
Me: Erm...this doesn't look good...
Bob: Oh hell....
[GM]: Right now the thatch roof has caught fire...
Me and Bob: RUN FOR IT!
Alex: What are you two up t...oh as if you two weren't in enough trouble with enough of the panteon already...
Me: Less blaming more running...

The day after the Priestess approaches the party clutching a burnt piece of parchment with only the word 'sorry' visable on it and giving them all an evil glare...

CURSE YOU GOD OF FATE!

Turns out the delivery van that would have had my WotLK on it got robbed today...

so looks like I will be joining the Dusk Spiders if people are there...

Anyone else get the feeling that now that the merits have been introduced due to the TF length that they wont be fixing any of the long, boring TF anytime soon.

Positron: As the suggestions above.

Synapse: Remove the multiple "defeat alls in power station' missions, they're tedious and boring.

Citadel: Is about right (can be run it about 2 hours at a steady pace), it's mainly tedious because it's all council, all the time but that can't really be helped since it fits the story.

Numia: for the love of all that's holy, remove the numerous 'defeat X in X zone' it's just a waste of time and drags the TF out far longer than it should be (infact Numia may be too quick without it though, bah)!

Manticore: Seriously Hopkins? Lamest end AV in history and a tad anti-climatic for all the chasing around of Countess Crey you do, other than that it seems fine.

Since I haven't done the Shadow Shard TFs and probably never plan to, I can't comment on those.

Ed could be on that list if he still went to GG.

He's CEO of Necrotech industries who produce the ever popular walkie-talkie toaster and now the 'dream partner' production of genetically manipulated beings to provide the perfect partner for a wealthy businessman or crime syndicate (which is what a LOT of his money comes from, people will pay large fees to get their hands on super-powered bodyguards).

His services are currently available and fees are excepted in United States Dollar, Japanese Yen, Gold bars, Diamonds and items of high value which he can sell on at the black market (such as highly prized paintings, ancient relics, magical artifacts and rare comic books, such as Freedom Phalanx Issue 1 in mint condition).

The reason he use to hang around was because it was far easier to hang around a group of heroes than it was a mixed group and also kept him from running into his old Rogue Isles running buddies (fat load of good it did him anyway). Besides, who wants to hang around at work all day making sure those undergraduate mad scientists from Cap Au Uni don't blow themselves up?

oh hush you...

yes more than likely the servers WILL crash (as they did on TBC release) some thirty minutes into the release with everyone and their dog logging on.

My housemate is currently playing the L4D demo, use normal and easy are pretty easy but expert the difficulty ramps up apparently and on release the newest difficulty 'Impossible' will become available.

He's not looking forward to trying those campaigns.

Yeah I was kind of excited about the Mission Architect and then being told.

"That's your lot" for that Issue....

Ouch...seriously...ouch...there has to be a lot more to Issue 14 than JUST that.

I understand that judging from various interviews it seems that Issue 15 looks like not only the only major story Issue (I.E. MAJOR dev created content) that we'll see in a year but I'm holding out hope that it's also the introduction of Power Customisation.

Well I can hope.

ah we used the old 2nd edition DnD rules (the ones that came in a big red box with a dragon on the front, regular DnD not ADnD) the rules were an awful lot simplier before they started focusing on the ADnD version of the rules as being the standard.

Back then Dwarfs and Elves were a class, not a race choice, good old THAC0 was still in play and the levelling was split into several books which introduced things the more experienced a player was (1-5 was dungeon crawling, 6-10 was Outdoors adventures, 11-15 was cities and continents, 16-20 was travelling different planes) and the campaigns had a definitive end (by level 20 you were pretty much godlike and thus had to go on quests to get items of godhood and prove yourself to the current pantheon you had a place amongst them, once you achieved godhood you had the choice of starting a completely new character or manifesting your newfound god into the physical realm but be stripped of all the powers you had gained so you could 'help out ordinary folk' and thus start back at level 1).

I did conceed the point and yowza...that is a massive tailoff over 10k subscribers seem to have gone in the space of a few months.

ah yes...my bad, you said EU and US, well then I conceed it is the lowest figure ever.

Pedant mode:

It's not the lowest figure ever montly access wise but it is for highest concurrent users.

Dec-2004 15,741 124,435 11
Sep-2008 13,443 124,939 15

504 in difference...so we're not quite there just yet.

Oh it could be worse.

Imagine the manager of a bar, the owner of a bar, four of the staff (one of whom I was best man for at his wedding) and myself all into playing D&D. When it came to closing time of a sunday at 2am, by 3am the place was cleaned and we'd sit in a Night Club (not just a pub but a all out night club) after hours playing D&D by candlelight so we didn't cost the club anything on electricity.

One of us making snack runs for pringles, various soft drinks, haribo and Ginsters Pasties and playing till gone 9am.

Or a particularly marathon RP session (using our own homebrewed ruleset with incredibly simple rules) for roughly 15 hours solid.

aye but those guys buying it at midnight have to wait to get home to install it, me come 11:30pm the installiation begins and by 12am, I'm on my sweet way to Northrend.

damn...L4D comes out this week too....damn why is this november particularly heavy on the good games?

no those comments are fair, it can be quite difficult to work you way into the community because the community is incredibly small, there's at most twenty or thirty RPers on union so the community does become fairly close knit.

I started my RP villainside as my namesake thankfully I was taken in by one of the larger RPing VGs (European Villanous Immortality League) sadly things kind of fell apart and decided to find my RP heroside.

Thanks to my character having been an outgoing mad scientist with one community plot under his belt, not to mention the harrassing of various heroes (namely Britannic) I was already well known heroside which helped ease me in, though it did still take a good couple of weeks before I could truly feel at home on heroes.

This happens to us Vets with new characters, unless the character is already well known it can be tough to break in.

Not to mention the crowd can be a tad xenophobic, we've had more than our fair share of people that seemed like good RPers turn out to be incredibly annoying (name begins with a V and looks like a rabbit) and godmod which breeds xenophobia of new people just incase.

My namesake vary rarely (now that he's returned to his villainous ways) sees ingame RP and is more resigned to forum RP (he can't turn up at GG due to his arrest warrants and the Corporation wont take him because he's far to high profile now for their mercenary outfit).

I would but sadly today is WotLK release day (for me...muwahaha peons having to wait till 12am to get it...I can procure my copy at 8:30pm...fear me and my job perks!) so will be absent today and probably from CoH for a while but rest assured, I will remain subbed and pop in when I've had enough of Elves, Dwarfs and Undead.

An interesting quote in that

[ QUOTE ]
"But I will say that there are things coming, some of which we have been hinting at, or maybe even flat out denying was even possible, for a long time."

[/ QUOTE ]

Power customisation anyone?

Damn you GR for posting the tidbit i was going to post in full :P

yup, never got a rude tell myself either.

If I get a tell and I'm not interested in teaming I usually respond, "no thanks I'm good right now but good luck" which normally gets an 'ok, you too'.

Though I have had a tactical tell in PvP before. A tell saying, "Behind you" came up, I stopped to reply "huh?" at which point the stalker that sent it AS'd me...can't believe I fell for it and personally found it quite clever.

blah double post

Try explaining LARP to someone who hasn't got a clue what that means...oh boy do you get odd looks.

"So you dress up in a costume, use foam weapons and then spend a day hitting people with them while pretending to be a caveman down Chislehurst caves?"

and deathly silence follows...

bah yes...sorry did miss the point there.

It really does all depend on which MMO you RP in, City of Heroes it seems more acceptable simply because people can imagine it to harkening back to being a child and imaging yourself being a superhero. I'm quite comfortable telling people I RP in city of heroes because it seems a lot more socially acceptable.

World of Warcraft, Age of Conan and Warhammer online it remains inherently geeky because it's the whole sword and sorcery stuff and carries with it the hangover from peoples views of RPing with DnD, it's the same genre and thus carries with it all the stereotypes that follow.

When I tell people 'I play a mad scientist in City of Villains' most people seem to except that but if you told them 'I play an Elf in World of Warcraft' it seems to still carry that stigma with it.

to be fair there are a fair share of RP based stories that me and a few friends have (such as a thief forgetting to buy their thieves tools at the start thus having to break into a house by having him scale the side of the building with climbing claws, remove tiles from the roof, me throw up a can of spam (meat rations really) with a rope wrapped around it, him fasten me off then me Adam West batman it up the side of the building. All this could have been circumvented if he'd remembered to buy the tools and just lockpicked the front door.)

Plus several jokes that don't make sense unless you know the story behind them.

CoX

To be fair 99% of the time, most people in CoX will leave RPers alone to do their thing but there is that 1% who just like to be idiots and try to ruin it, these are the same people who give PvPers a bad name by acting immaturely and generally being douchebags in PvP zones (though the EU PvP community is so small that it's pretty rare indeed to see it).

Though on Virtue apparently a vastly bigger number of people RP since it is thier unofficial RP server.

WoW

In WoW which I tend to do 'MMO for Counterstrike kiddies' (doesn't mean I don't enjoy playing it but I avoid the official forums like the plague and teaming is more a matter of 'we have to' rather than CoX which seems far more solo friendly) it seems that more people will go out of their way to roll on RP servers, ignore the RP policy and go about making RPers lives hell but then that MMO has 11 million subscribers, you're going to get a higher idiot>RPer ratio anyway.

Oddly I never RPed in WoW though have been on two non-rp servers (Khadgar and then Hellscream) but I do have a lowbie on an RP server to see what it was like. Most of the RP on specific servers is kept private and within guilds, no open RP exists (or it's very rare to see) because it's just not worth the hastle.

WAR
The situation was different, considering Games Workshop table-top miniatures game is already inherently geeky most people on the RP servers;

a) Don't mind people RPing even if they're not into it (Though quite why the rolled on an RP server even if that's not they're thing eludes me).

b) Play a greenskin and it just seems to become a second nature to switch to orkish mode.

c) Are actively into RP anyway.

As a Bright Wizard on one of the RP servers even had a party of people RPing while we were retake battlefield objectives.

Age of Conan:

Rolled on an RP server and experienced exactly one instance of open RP but then I didn't stick around long enough to really explore it (AoC really just didn't click with me and at launch it was a really bloody awful game, bugs everywhere and such).

Anyway...that's my views on the socially acceptable state of RP across several MMOs.

Bah there's a reason Dr Mechanos page is out of date!

Firstly because it's now resigned to 'character history' with his name change (I would change the hero article from Sword of Redemption to Darkness redeemed but have no idea).

Second point, Ed has already been on the front page (infact he was there for about two-three weeks), I'd rather hog the space again.