Behind the Mask By Teldon

Couples that Play Together TechSpider & Mistress Arachnae Freedom Server So how long have you two been together? TechSpider: This July it will be 11 years together, but 10 years married. Mistress Arachnae: Too long! Where do you two live at? TS: Hollister, MO. MA: Outside Branson, south of Springfield. TS: Note - Branson is a tourist destination, by the way. TS: She grew up here, I'm originally from southeast Kansas. Do you have any kids either two legged or four legged? TS: Three daughters, ages 8, 5, and 1 years old. MA: The 8 year old begs to learn to play, too. TS: Yeah I set her up with a toon on guardian I think. MA: She uses the third computer. What do you five do for fun when you are not playing the game? TS: Play the game. MA: Going out. We have three amusement parks here and a water park. TS: Yeah that too. Though I work 50 hours a week, so not much time for me sadly. What do you two do for a living? TS: I manage a Wendy's in Branson. MA: Management for Wal-Mart. TS: She's been with wally world for 7.5 years. TS: I've been with Wendy's for 2 months so far, but I'm opening a new store on Monday. So, how did you two get interested in this game? TS: I was playing SWG, EWWWWWW!, for 3 years, then heard about this super hero MMO and got in the COH closed beta. I got hooked and have been here since. MA: I hated these games, so I didn't start until later. TS: Yeah, she's got like 28 months now. MA: He got me on his account, and then I got hooked, and I reached 50 before him! TS: Yeah, I hate that. She did it like two days before me. MA: Yeah, but before you did. TS: I still only have one 50 hero, but I own 2 accounts, and she owns one. MA: I only have six characters. TS: I have about 27. I suffer from altitis.

How do your play styles complement each other? MA: I like to play what's fun. The MM was because I liked to be away from the fight, but now I'm all about brutes. I'm gung-ho, and all about badges. I like to play the game, but I love a power level session also. I love the whole way to play the game and ALL the content! TS: Together, we usually play archetypes that compliment, or contrast, it works well that way. So who is the better player? TS: I say I am, I know more about the game and its workings, but she probably plays more than I do. MA: No, I play smarter. TS: Yeah, well, that too. My blaster is known for dying every 5 minutes. MA: Yeah, your blapper. So what has been your favorite thing in the game so far? TS: Hmmmm, I love my Mastermind. I always find myself leveling something, then getting bored, and I log in Tech just to run around and kill. Gotta love the bots! MA: Learning to play a stone brute. It scared me at first, but now I like to get in there and take down the bad, oops, good guys. What do hope they will add to the game? TS: I want the ability to recolor and/or redo sections of the bots/pets. Like we can do with costumes, arms, legs, and such - I want that with pets. Gotta have a flame paint job on my Assault Bot. MA: More levels. I got to 50 and no where to go, I want more end game content. TS: Then I would have more chance to die on my blaster, WOOT! So what do you think the future holds for you two? TS: I'm awaiting STO and maybe giving Champi- a chance, but for real life, we have many years left, and getting the girls into comics, and gaming. MA: I just want to relax, and this game and watching Reality TV work well for me. Maybe not other games, but you never know. Three years ago I didn't think I would log in and game nightly. TS: *evil laugh* Thats my fault! Well I wish you two the very best and hope that all your years together have you smile more then anything else! TS: Thanks Teldon, I appreciate it! MA: Yes, thanks much. Others should try this together. Its actually fun! Here is a link to a series of comics by Tech Spider.

Food & Recipes

Candy Candy Candy! By MistressNoire Everyone has heard of the Candyman, I am sure! No, not the scary one found in the movies. The one that brings all the sweets we all love! Here are some homemade candy recipes I found! Enjoy! Hard Candies INGREDIENTS 3 3/4 cups white sugar 1 1/2 cups light corn syrup 1 cup water 1 tablespoon orange, or other flavored extract 1/2 teaspoon food coloring (optional) 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar for dusting DIRECTIONS In a medium saucepan, stir together the white sugar, corn syrup, and water. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until sugar dissolves, then bring to a boil. Without stirring, heat to 300 to 310 degrees F (149 to 154 degrees C), or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms hard, brittle threads. Remove from heat and stir in flavored extract and food coloring, if desired. Pour onto a greased cookie sheet, and dust the top with confectioners' sugar. Let cool, and break into pieces. Store in an airtight container. Candy Cane Fudge INGREDIENTS 2 (10 ounce) packages vanilla baking chips 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract 1 1/2 cups crushed candy canes 1 dash red or green food coloring DIRECTIONS Line an 8 inch square baking pan with aluminum foil, and grease the foil. Combine the vanilla chips and sweetened condensed milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir frequently until almost melted, remove from heat and continue to stir until smooth. When chips are completely melted, stir in the peppermint extract, food coloring, and candy canes. Spread evenly in the bottom of the prepared pan. Chill for 2 hours, then cut into squares. Chocolate Peppermint Candies INGREDIENTS 3/4 cup sweetened condensed milk 1 1/2 teaspoons peppermint extract 4 cups confectioners' sugar 3 cups semisweet chocolate chips 2 teaspoons shortening DIRECTIONS In a bowl, combine milk and extract. Stir in 3-1/2 to 4 cups confectioners' sugar to form a stiff dough. Turn onto a surface sprinkled lightly with confectioners' sugar. Knead in enough remaining sugar to form a dough that is very stiff and no longer sticky. Shape into 1-in. balls. Place on a waxed paper-lined baking sheet. Flatten into 1-1/2-in. circles. Let dry 1 hour. Turn and let dry 1 hour longer. Melt chocolate chips and shortening in a double boiler or microwave-safe bowl; cool slightly. Dip patties in chocolate mixture and place on waxed paper to harden. Again, enjoy! See you next week! Mistress Noire

Base Showcase By Bonker
The League of Extraordinarily Well-Dressed Gentlepersons
Who is your base designer and who are your supergroup leaders? Our base is designed by @Rendbite, and the SG leaders are Dr. Feelgoode, Alexandre, and Eloquent Conjuror. Which server is your base on, and is it a Hero or Villain SG/VG? Heroside, Triumph server When was your supergroup established? October 2007 How many players are in your supergroup? We only have a couple dozen players in our SG, with half of them forming our core group. What is the approximate value of your base? We've earned 11.6 million prestige so far, and sunk it all into our base’s decorating and upkeep! How much time do you spend working on your base? How much time have you invested so far? Let's just say that when Doc says, "Guess what I did!" folks say "Decorated the base?" What is your favorite base item? Least favorite? My favorite item is probably the tech inspiration collector, and my least favorite item is the bilious green fainting couch. What is your favorite thing about base editing? Least favorite? I really like the color choices we have for lighting. I have two things I dislike...the lack of spatial controls (i.e. rotation, vertical) and that my video card doesn't support the secondary colors, so I have to rely on other folks to show me what colors are going where! What is the highest thing on your wish-list for new base items? Spatial controls or better storage permissions, it's a close tie. If you could give just one piece of advice to a new base editor, what would it be? Think. Think, think, think! If you have an idea, use resources to figure out how to make it happen. The forums, coalition bases, and just asking around for people who are willing to give you a tour to get inspiration! Also kick your SGmates regularly to make sure they're in SG mode. Anything else you'd like to add about your SG, your base or the base system in general? I couldn't have gotten this SG so far without the help of my friends in game. I never believed I'd get so far so fast! Thanks most to Alex, Eli, Genie, Mac, Soup, Electric, and Eloquent. To all of my SG members: thanks!

Market Watch

Finding a Bargain By Smurphy Everyone likes to find a good deal. Everyone wants to buy things cheap. I'm going to use the economic concept of "Equilibrium Price" and apply it to City of Heroes to describe a way to find items on the market at bargain prices. Equilibrium Price (EP) is where the number of buyers willing and able to purchase something at a certain price is the same as the number of sellers willing and able to sell at the same price. Luck of the Gambler: Increase Recharge/Defense is one of or perhaps the most expensive single item in the game. The number of players willing and able to buy at a price of 100 is vastly greater than the number of players willing and able to sell at 100. Conversely, the number of players willing and able to buy at 1 billion is vastly lower than the number of people willing and able to sell at 1 billion. Somewhere between 100 and 1 billion is EP. At 100 there are more buyers, at 1 billion more sellers. The point where the buyers and sellers are even is EP. EP is always changing and almost impossible to know for sure. However, having a general understanding of where EP may be can greatly help bargain hunters. The closer you can come to identifying EP the better at finding deals you will become. Here is how I apply the concept of EP to the CoH markets. First I take a simple line graph of possible prices. Then I picture buyers and sellers. I throw them all in the graph in my mind. Where they overlap, sales occur and these buyers and sellers are "satisfied" and move off my graph. Only players with outstanding bids remain. If more players come in and set reserve prices under 30, sales instantly occur. This concept is "supply goes up, price goes down." If more players come in and set bid prices over 30, sales occur instantly. This concept is "demand goes up, price goes up." Following the fluctuations in the rates is what causes prices to change over time. The rates are always changing. As I've stated before, EP is where the rate of buyers at a certain price equals the rate of sellers at that same price. Application of EP to items in City of Heroes. Deific Weapon: from 4/29/08 Somewhere between 1.6M and 2.1M is the Equilibrium Price. Where exactly? I do not know. The important thing to understand is if you buy below EP you have found a bargain! If you end up not wanting the item you bought below EP you can certainly and surely resell the item at EP for a profit. Knowing where EP is can help you save money on each and every purchase. Some items are much more complicated than Deific Weapons. Some items have few sellers or few buyers. One needs to soak in the last 5 History, the number of buyers, the number of sellers AND one's own personal knowledge to make an accurate estimation of EP. Luck of the Gambler: 7.5% Recharge Speed level 27 Recipe from 4/29 Here, the rate of people willing to pay 75M is HIGHER than the rate of people willing to sell at 75M. How do I know this? 1) Lots of outstanding bids. No outstanding listed items. That is one factor that indicates more people want to buy at a certain price than sell at a certain price. However this is not the sole factor nor always an accurate indicator. 2) I ask people. Often I go around and ask people about items I don't have. "Would you be willing to sell me an LotG for 75M?" "Would you be willing to buy an LotG from me for 75M?" Try it out sometime. More people are willing to pay 75M than sell at 75M. Thus the rate of demand is higher than the rate of supply. So the equilibrium price must be somewhere higher. So I ask again... "How about 85M?" "How about 100M?" The last 5 shows prices ranging from 15-75M. However, EP is likely on the high end of this range. EP price may even be higher than this range. Efficacy Adapter: Rech/Acc level 50 Recipe 4/29 Here the number of people willing to sell is higher than the number of people willing to buy. Though the last 5 shows prices from 100k-125k the EP is likely much lower. You can likely buy this item in a reasonable time period for far less than the last 5 indicates. The concept of Equilibrium Price is very nerdy. However, knowing where EP is can save you the Infamy or Influence that you worked so hard to earn. Find EP. Save Inf. Kill Skuls.

Fashion

Cleanup! Costume Aisle! By Hex Girl This game has gone through multiple graphics upgrades and with them our costume pieces have started to look better and better. There is just one problem with this: the older pieces haven't been updated to match them. This week I will touch base on a few 'flaws' that the general CoX population would like to have fixed so they can look as fabulous as our wonderful costume creator JLove. (Did I mention he was super sexy?) First off, we have some tops and patterns that are a little out of date when it comes to pixel size. These are easily spotted when paired up with newer pieces. In this image, the highlighted area shows the rough ridges of one of our original tops for females. Some patterns don't line up correctly and frankly never have. While some are worse than others, and some you can deal with because they are more obscure, there are some that are less ignorable. In this image, the highlighted areas show where the patterns meet but do not line up. In some cases, the pattern once was fine, but somewhere along the line it got messed up. In this image the highlighted area shows a jumbled bunch of lines that used to look correct. While patterns not lining up correctly may be annoying, having the pattern not even make it all the way around a part of the body looks even worse. In this image within the highlighted area you can see that this particular pattern on a huge build doesn't even make it all the way around the arms. There have been a few character model updates through the issues, to smooth things out and make pieces fit better. Some of these are a big improvement, but were not carried over to all pieces of the same style. In this image you can see our newer Bikini Bottom vs on of the originals. Notice the shape of the upper leg where the arrow is pointing. The first one is nicely rounded while the second (the older one) goes flat and makes the point above the knee even more prominent. One major complaint from players with female characters is how 'Tops with Skin' and 'Bottoms with Skin' don't match up nicely with the regular 'Tight' for tops and 'Bottoms'. You can see where the arrow is pointing, the color difference between a 'Tops with Skin' and a regular tights bottom, without a belt, this just looks odd. On top of this, you'll notice that regardless of what skin color is in use, the 'Tops with Skin' shows through a pinkish flesh tone. Both of these things are rather annoying when trying to put together a costume with mixed pieces. This last one has been brought up on occasion and is one of my personal beefs. The 'Tiger' Pattern. While the pattern is nice the way it is, a second version of it would be desirable for those of us that don't want the 'haze' or 'bleed through' of the stripes color. This 'haze' between the stripes gives a character the appearance of being dirty depending on the color used, and can be very annoying when using it on the face or clothing as an actual pattern, and not because your character actually is a tiger of some sort.

Community

Fan Fiction Spotlight Presented by Mr_Grey [u]Life Outside the Big City[u] by Really_Big_Bang Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 --From Life Outside the Big City, Part 2-- I am writing this letter to address some rumors that have been floating around about me. Yes, it is true, last weekend, renowned villain sidekick and Bone Snapper junior member Kid Bang actually managed to do something heroic. He stormed across the island of St. Martial and stopped complete chaos from tearing about this fragile island. For reasons unknown, fighting had broken out in the area between several different factions. The Family were getting fried by Freakshow. Ancestor spirits were locked in combat with Nerva Spectres high above the city. And something had gotten the Devouring Earth worked up into a frenzy! I actually saw a Tree of Life running right down Recluse Avenue! ... But, everyone knows you don't go and have an out and out street brawl in St. Martial. The island is already a hot bed of supernatural activity, and those big obelisks you see around the Golden Giza? They ain't just for decoration. The obelisks are the only things keeping the demons from chowing down on John and Jane Q. St. Martial. And these thugs weren't paying all that much attention to what was being caught in the crossfire. Now, me personally? I've had enough problems with demons over the years, so I single-handedly went out and stopped the war myself. I risked life and limb to save the good people of St. Martial! The whole island owes the safety of their souls and plasma TVs to me! I'm expecting a check in the mail any day from the ungrateful bums who live there. Not all fan fiction need be about heroes, nor does it have to be completely unique to that character. Does a certain in-game story arc ring true to you in some way? Does it inspire you to say "Now, what would my character really think about this situation?" So many times throughout the game, our characters are slung about as tools or weapons, furthering the goals of others who almost never seem to leave the same spots we always find them. This is true for both heroes and villains. When the mission or arc is done, we're given a token for our efforts and told to move along. Well, what if our character doesn't like moving along? What if they have a beef with how they might wind up portrayed at the end of the arc? Really_Big_Bang actually explores that some when he explains the aftermath of his characters' adventures against the machinations of Vivacious Verandi or the minor deception of the Slot Machine in the second and third parts of his story. The first part, however, is an origin story that does a pretty decent job of getting into a young thug's motivations for wanting to be a super villain. Sometimes, it's the attitude and thrill that winds up selling the little monster, and they never see any reason to look back. They're having too much fun.

Point / Counterpoint By Bowfling This is the fifteenth in a series of By Popular Request articles, which reviews commonly requested player suggestions that have strong positive support, and reviews the implications and considerations that would need to be considered if these suggestions were to be implemented. This week’s subject – New I12 features There are a number of new features added with I12 that have previously requested by players on the forums. The ability to convert inspirations was added. Now you can convert 3 of a kind into a different inspiration of the same strength. The number of power bars, and the ways they can be shown on the screen was increased. We can now have up to 8 power bars, and can change their shape and location. The number of slots being used and total number of slots is now shown in the consignment house. We also have the level of a mission indicated in the mission info. Players can now rate and make notes about other players. And perhaps most interesting for game play, leveling up will fill both the health and endurance bars, and activate high level inspiration effects on the character. In addition, low level characters receive a boost to their base to-hit value, making lower level attacks more likely to hit their target. Each of these features was requested by players, which shows that the developers will consider ideas suggested on the forums, if they deem them worthwhile to add. So keep generating new ideas and filling the idea and suggestion forum, which you can find here. Virs Impavida by Peng-Peng Flame Enchantress by BragaDoom

Those Who Can't Do By Hostile_V Some people accuse me of not being evil enough. Now, that's a downright crock but there are some... good apples. Incompetence isn't uncommon, but sometimes some people just stand out. And sometimes we just have to stand up and acknowledge the idiocy out there, which I'd like to do now. This is just a shout-out to some of the unluckiest suckers to ever consider themselves villains, ripped from the police blotters of the Rogue Isles. Attempted Robbery: On a quiet Wednesday, an armed robber waltzed into the Atlas Park bank. According to police testimony, the robber fired off his gun, hit a civilian and then wandered into the bathroom where he was arrested by the police two hours later. Upon questioning, they realized the man was blind and thought he had psychic powers that let him see his surroundings. Obviously, he was wrong, and he was sentenced to six months in the Zig. Indecent Exposure: Longbow arrested the Stalker Blunt Edge for public nudity last Thursday. Of course, Edge had a few things to say about himself. "All my costumes were getting cleaned, but I'm a Stalker. I'm like invisible. I figured 'why not just invade the base naked? They're not gonna see me!' I guess I was wrong." Yes. Yes you were. Blunt was given nine months in the Zig, and put on the top of the priority list for all laundromats and cleaning companies. *facepalm* Negligence: Mastermind Kaptain Krazy was captured by Social Services after one of his henchmen filed a complaint. The ex-Marine complained that they hadn't been fed in weeks, and were constantly being abused by KK. "That crazy (expletive deleted) would throw us at ANYTHING that moved! You ever try to aim a gun when you haven't eaten in five days? You can't!" An investigation proved that he hadn't fed them and that he was actually mistreating the mercenaries. Kaptain Krazy is serving a two year sentence, and must attend mandatory therapy sessions every week. Disturbing the Peace: In perhaps the smartest thing the Freakshow have ever done, they got a Corrupter arrested for a noise complaint. The Corrupter, Siouxie the Banshee, and her team were raiding a Freakshow warehouse connected to another. Aware of the chaos, their neighbors pretended to be an elderly couple and complained about the noise generated from the warehouse. The police quickly and promptly arrested the entire eight-man team and held them in jail until a trial. In an interview, Siouxie said "The whole thing was a load of (Hey kids! Fill in the swear!). Since when do the cops listen to Freakshow! This is some ignorant (bad word)." Luckily, she got a slap on the wrist and quickly returned to the scene and beat up her accusers. Perseverance FTW. Public Intoxication: Famous drunken Brute Da Boozer was arrested, yet again, for being drunk and disorderly in public. He was arrested amidst screams of "Imma kill you (yet another bad word) pigs! I'll gut ya and eat ya bones!". Because of the fact he gets his powers from magical liquor, he was put through rehab. Now, he no longer wears the mantle of Da Boozer, and it seems the lessons have stuck. Or not, seeing as how new villain Lethal Smashing Dude (LSD for short) is now on the streets, screaming about rainbows and exploding pancake bears. Well, some people never learn. So remember kids, try to be evil in a clean way. Just kill all who get in your path and rob a few banks, and you should be set. Homicidal mania is the clear path to victory. Happy fun disclaimer time! I'm sorry if I used your name, and I in no way intend to demean your character. I have nothing against people who can't see, except Daredevil. Come on, you're just a cheap cop-out. Anyway, I apologize if I offend and please don't yell at me. Lord knows I can't afford to lose all three of my faithful readers.

SuperTeams! By TopDoc I'm here today to talk about SuperTeams. Now I don't mean a team made up of Supers, which pretty much applies to every team in CoX. A SuperTeam is more like a professional sports team. A SuperTeam can roll over mobs that regular teams find challenging. It's often quite different from the way most people play CoX mainly due to the different builds and tactics. In a SuperTeam, the emphasis is on the team. Usually someone puts together a SuperTeam by figuring out what ATs and powersets work particularly well together, then convincing a lot of people to try it. You need a lot of people in order to achieve critical mass, so that on scheduled nights (or every night) you can put together big teams. You need big teams because most SuperTeams are based on stacked buffs and AoEs. Of course a SuperTeam can also be a single group of 8 people who follow the design and play together. My first SuperTeam was Buffer Overrun back in '04, and I put it together when I realized that Radiation Emission Defenders and Controllers had some pretty amazing buffs and debuffs. A team of 8 level 2 Rad Defenders could all cast Accelerate Metabolism and go to town. They could run around at near Super Speed, they recovered END far faster than they could spend it, their attacks did massive damage, and everything (including Accelerate Metabolism) recharged really fast. Stacked Radiation Infection and Enervating Field reduce mob damage by 99%, both by reducing base ToHit from 50% to 5% (a 90% reduction), and by reducing damage by 90% (from a normal 100% to debuff capped 10%). Those debuffs also made mobs VERY easy to hit (-250% Defense) and damage (attacks did 3.4 times as much). I've made several SuperTeams since then. The Tank Mages started when Sonic Defenders were added to the game. It was all Defenders and consisted of 2 Sonics, 2 FFs, and 4 Kinetics. I've done Tankers (Stone/Fire and Ice/Fire, with Kins to support), Scrappers (Spines/Dark with Emps for support), Khelds (Any Kheld, any Support), Frads (Fire/Rad Controllers), Corruptors (mostly Rads), Masterminds (fell apart due to lag), and Dominators (6 Doms and 2 Kins for perma-Domination). Many other people have run SuperTeams, as there are a lot of interesting combinations that work well. Designing a SuperTeam isn't easy. After picking a theme, you need to figure out what sort of offense and defense you start with and what needs to be augmented. You need to figure out how the team will manage agro, what sort of Controls it has, and what sort of status protection it needs. For speed, you need to take into account Healing and END Recovery. It's a complex balancing act that usually involves picking 2 builds. That's because there are the human concerns. You don't want a SuperTeam with more than 2 builds or it'll be hard to form and maintain teams with the proper power mix and level range. You don't want a SuperTeam that requires 5 people to get rolling, or again it'll be hard to form teams. You can get around some of these concerns if you only have a single team that plans to meet at scheduled times, but you better be able to run while missing one or two people. RL happens. In general, the more time you put into planning the team, the better it works out. Most SuperTeams have non-standard builds because they're designed to provide team buffs and work together as a team. Spines/Dark Scrappers are notorious for using END, but my Spines/Darks took expensive Leadership toggles rather than Fitness. But that's because 2-3 Emps could alternate Recovery Aura and keep those blue bars full. Leadership is a staple of many SuperTeams as the stacked buffs are just overpowering. Capped Defense is also key, as it keeps even squishies alive when they're facing masses of orange, red, and purple mobs. Blazing Imp came up with using Team Teleport during the Tank Mages to keep everyone together and in range of Leadership and the many Dispersion Bubbles, and it's still common in SuperTeams today. Running a SuperTeam is about as hard as designing one, but I doubt if any of you want to hear about that. The key thing is getting everyone to stick to the plan. Why? A SuperTeam isn't a roll of the dice. A SuperTeam is an organized group of people all working together and following the same plan. Log in, LFT, and there's a good chance you'll be in a team and playing within minutes. You know the powers everyone will have, and you know how they work because you level from 1 to 50 in basically the same team. People come and go, but the play experience remains the same. Next week: The VEAT SuperTeam

Continued from page 1 The standards we adhere to today, almost unconsciously, were set in that day. Nihilaa used the power of Illusion and Empathy to create what is now a required build. One team had an “Ace” in the hole, only to be trumped once loading into the Siege map. Scrappers harnessing the powers of Darkness rushed in to get quick kills. As with anything, games change and people change. The introduction of Villain archetypes, zone play and changes to various powers and slotting brought an upheaval to the PvP scene. Some teams left for other pursuits while Stalkers were holy terrors in Siren’s Call and elsewhere. Other teams emerged and made their names. The Silver Age (Issues 6-8) As stated, innovation and playing on the edge have always been a part of high end play. Issue 6 saw the much-argued Enhancement Diversification lower the value of Hamidon Origin enhancements to SO levels. The first Test PvP League saw play during this period which featured the power of Rad/Psi builds. Along Came a Spider saw a slew of power changes as well. Players were given 25% more defense in PvP, Enhancements gradually lost efficiency after multiple slottings and, combined with the Hamidon Origin change caused a huge uproar on the CoH forums and ingame. PvP wise, much hubbub was created over targeting macros (eventually eliminated) the use of Tier 3 inspirations in matches and caging. The Sonic Resonance powerset, introduced earlier though not adapted early on, would later become a gold standard with Fire Blast being improved by the developers. Vengeance Stacking was a fairly common practice and was perfected by groups such as NDX. While this power is meant to be used only a single times, groups at the time practiced gathering on a dead teammate, sometimes before matches even started, to give themselves an insurmountable kill count advantage. These were the final days of Penance and HVND. Freaks of Legend started practicing very hard while groups such as Old School, Velocity and Justice for All League continued their strong play. Groups didn’t practice as regularly as we do now, but Freaks of Legend dedicated practice nights and improved enough to defeat Penance and HVND. Issue 7, Grandvlle (affectionately known to some as Lagville), brought Patron Power Pools to villains. Much maligned by many as being inferior to the hero ancillary pools, Villain epics essentially gave level 50 characters an armor buff, web grenades and a pet. Still, Villains started coming on strong. One archetype in particular proved to be the bane of zones (Stalkers, take a bow) and were a small reason the "two-shot code" was introduced. Additonally, Sturdy inspirations gave resistance to Teleport Foe. Issue 7 also saw the waning of "Toggle drop" powers. Back in the day, people used Brawl and other abilities to drop toggles, leading to quick defeats. Defense also applied to taunt powers, whereas previously Taunt worked about half the time. These changes, along with improvements to the Fire Blast set, saw Sonic Defenders see play in the Arena. Meanwhile, Villain groups started getting organized and stabilizing their own line-ups. Though many of the old school (excuse the pun) groups were moving on, Arena play endured despite incredibly unstable terminals. It became a running joke that matches were often over by the 9:00 mark, and not because of an overwhelming defeat count. Outside of all these upheavals, Terpman generously dedicated a large amount of time to stabilizing a duel ladder on Test Server. Though I’ve never personally been a huge dueler (mostly due to my affinity to playing support), it’s important to give credit to those Ice/EM Tankers, Rad/Psi Defenders and various other high-end heroes and villains with toned reflexes and tweaked builds. These issues also saw the formalizing of the Hero and Villain ladders on Test Server. Whereas players were perfecting their craft long before some of us even tried our PvP training wheels, matches could be a long time coming in organized play. The formation of a parallel Villain ladder brought more and more players into organized play on Test Server. While many no doubt found the faster pace a big adjustment from zone play, those that had been honing their skills became a force to be reckoned with. These issues saw the emergence of Velocity, Justice for All League, Old School Legends, VORI (Villains of the Rogue Isles), Renegades and a slew of other groups making their niche in the Training Room. We are creative. We find discarded objects and fashion them into greater improvements. Strange winds blow in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, allowing villains and heroes to share powers once thought unaccessible. Despite the time spent crafting powers and art, it comes down to two things: fun and the community. The Bronze Age (Issues 9-present) Issue 9: Breakthrough, changed the game as few systems have. The arrival of the Invention System allowed players to alter their character’s benefits to health, endurance, damage, resistances to various forms of attack and so on. When Issue 9 launched, there was a lot of confusion, speculation and ultimately comprehension. Fire Blast/Energy Manipulation Blasters became killing machines in the vein of the old Ice/EMs piloted by Blazin' Blue. The added damage, however, made the Developers scale back Blaster unresisted damage from 30% to 10%. This reduction brought Sonic Defenders to the forefront, further cutting back incoming damage. Scores dropped dramatically from the old days. A 10-minute match ending 5-3 or 8-6 is not uncommon these days, making split second buff and attack decisions the norm. Even so, some of the high-end matches have been incredible tense. Velocity’s final match against Victory Reborn was close, tense and not without a little drama. All the ingredients for a fun time. The much-maligned Arena crashes now mostly a thing of the past, power tweaks are making PvP an evolving experience. Of late, Phase powers cannot be queued except after downtime, Cage powers have suppression and Power Boost’s bonuses have been scaled back. However, new powersets such as Psychic Blast for Blasters, Cold Domination for Defenders, Thermal Radiation for Controllers promise to alter strategies as we speak. Colds are already seeing play in practices at the moment. Statesman Cover by Juggertha The most dramatic change, however, seems to be that Confuse now makes its target only affect teammates. This makes Mind Controllers, Illusion Controllers and Mind Dominators extremely lethal in duels and a great nuisance in organized team play. Test Arena PvP is in a state of flux. Some players and even groups are leaving the game for other interests or the world behind the screen, while the new issue blues have done funny things to power representation. Many PvPers remain, however. Why? Speaking for myself, I’ll refer to a match Integrity had vs. PCJL (Pingu City Justice League). They had a well-practiced Storm team, we had a run & gun team. Loading into Atlas Park, they turtled on the globe while we stood ground on City Hall. 9:00 mark, nothing. 8:00 mark, nothing. 7:00 mark, nothing. 6:00 mark, nothing. Down to the final minute, where all hell broke loose. We traded kills and then sneaked another kill while we were racing across the Atlas plaza, phasing and healing within a second of our lives. We won, but it was so tense, so fun, that we remember it to this day. In the end, PvP is all about the memories. Hope to get farmed by you soon in zones and Arena! (This article would have been impossible without contributions and feedback from many in the PvP community. In no particular order, thanks to: perilX, AJAX, black_barrier, Rystorm, Psypunk, Labrynth, NotPutzing, F-22 Major, Dumok and many others.)

The City Scoop

Test PvP Through the Sands of Time. By Neuronia King v Flag by KingChrono There was a time when giants walked Paragon City. Not Devouring Earth monsters or Council Mekmen, but players whose blood raced as fast as the ice blasts they threw from their palms. It was a time of great upheavals, where players could remove themselves from play for entire matches, stack powers to make themselves invincible and rivalries were bitter and unforgiving. This was a time that belonged to groups with names such as Tribute, HVND, Lion’s Den, Sitting Ducks, Lords of the Dead, Freaks of Legend, Hell Raisers, Penance and countless others. This was the Golden Age of Arena PvP. Scores were a little higher than they are now: Freaks vs. JAL (Golden Age) Arena PvP has clearly delineated itself into the Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze Age. The Golden Age (Issues 4-6): Organized PvP, both on live and Test servers, originated during this period. We had Tribute as the pioneers of Arena PvP. While most teams at the time threw together whichever Heroes of the City people had, Tribute clued in that you needed a balance of offense, support and disruption. Bear in mind that at the time, there were no Invention Origins but that Hamidon Origins were much more powerful than they are now. Tribute had a memorable match vs. HVND’s “Turtle” team (more on this later) which consisted of Storms, bubblers and some support and offense. To highlight the point that lineups weren’t as static as they are now, Rystorm handled a Spines/Regen Scrapper on offense. At the time, Impale’s range was huge and Instant Healing was incredible making a Regen Scrapper a very hard mark to kill. Also of note is that 20-minute matches were the gold standard at the time. While that might seem an onerous amount of time these days, teams often had more than eight players, leading to some epic 16 vs. 16 action. Managing inspirations, buffs and targeting over a 20-minute period called for nerves of steel. Early Villain teams appeared at this time, including FoL, Lords of the Dead, Original Sin, Jagged Legion and Bedlam. Freaks had an impressive 57-0 record vs. other villain teams that ended when the Villain Ladder was formed and they faced VORI. Those villain teams fielded a Brute as well as a bevy of Corruptors, including Cold, Sonic and Thermals. Though there were few teams taking Arena play seriously, there were many duels and people throwing their hats in the ring to prove they could best their friends or rivals. Stories of Earth/Emp Controllers dueling Dark Armor Scrappers abound. As well, matches were server vs. server more than supergroup vs. supergroup. Nowadays, teams are pretty quiet on the boards but at the time, the braggadocio was epic. Our greatest ability is that to adapt and innovate. Whether in common or complex situations, we try new things and use them to our advantage when they work consistently. So it is in PvP in the City of Heroes and Villains. The warriors loaded into the enclave. Not much had filtered out about their plan and their opponents were surprised to see several Storm Summoning and Force Field heroes. They took position and, hidden behind an impenetrable wall of winds, waited for victory. Continued on page 2

Vol. 2, Issue 1 May 30th, 2008 This Issue: SuperTeams! Those Who Can't Do Community FanFiction Spotlight Point / Counterpoint Fashion Market Watch Base Showcase: The League of Extraordinarily Well-Dressed Gentlepersons Food & Recipes Behind the Mask: TechSpider & Mistress Arachnae Classifieds Comic and Staff Upcoming Events May 31st: Infinity: Imperious SF Triumph: Fusion Force Four Feline Fellowship celebrates 4 years June 1st: Justice: 100 Million Influence PVP Battle Royale Victory: 4th Anniversary Hall of Justice/Hall of Doom Event Virtue: Lilith's Halloween Party in June June 7th: Freedom: High Roller Costume Contest

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Okay. Now that i figured out how to do a UBC or whatever its called (not that forum savvy so I apologize) I will post a direct link here.
Justice-Knights Comic here!

This should be a direct link so you wont get music when you open up the first page.

Thank you.

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Thank you for sharing I have sent this around to the team, great work.

Ex

Thread marked as saved, whatever you do, don't do an Admin broadcast on Liberty calling folks to Pocket D, or you will see what a swarm of blue names looking like killer bee's really does look like.

Ex

This announcement is to notify the Community that the North American Official Message Boards will be unavailable starting at 9:30 AM Central (10:30 AM Eastern) tomorrow morning.

The estimated down time will be approximately 3 hours.

If you have threads you would like to be kept through this process please make sure to make a recent post or contact someone on the moderator team to mark the thread to be saved.

Any questions please don't hesitate to PM Lighthouse or Ex Libris.

Regards,

Ex Libris

Roster marked as saved, team added to list. 5/27/08 GLHF!

Ex

This thread has been marked to save, but also some content has had to be removed so please keep the forum rules in mind when posting to this forum.

Otherwise it is an awesome collaboration.

Ex

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[*]Base plot usage could be improved. (LINK)



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This link is missing, do we know where it is?

Ex

Thread marked to save, stickied, and forwarded to the team internally.

Regards,

Ex

Please reference this thread now!

This thread has been locked and removed from sticky status, although is still marked for archiving.

Please make new suggestions to the link provided so we can keep an updated version.

Regards,

Ex

Sticky by community request, when the topic see's its demise please notify and I will unstick.

Ex

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Our first power in the secondary which we are forced to take is a pointless 3% resistance to Sm/Le, while widows is a nice 7.5% defense to melee.....something worth taking.

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That Wolf Spider Armor also grants you auto mez protection. That by itself makes Soldiers superior to the blueside EAT, in my eyes That said, I would not complain if the base resistance in the auto armors for Soldiers was increased a bit. After all, NPC Soldiers have considerably more resistance to s/l.

Folks any bugs you are encountering please make sure you take the time to post them in Sexy Jay's Costume Bug List

That way he sees them for sure.

Oh and make sure to let him know how ugly he is!

He likes that.

Ex

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I ran into an odd problem with the saved chat options last night.

I use an extra tab in the chat pane that defaults to my SG's global channel. I saved the chat settings on an existing character, then loaded them on a new character. The extra tab showed up, with all the right channels listed, but with no default set. It looks like the save isn't capturing the channel default, at least for custom tabs.

Has anyone else seen this problem?

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Yes, when I saved the chat options with a level 50 and then created a new character, all my chat tabs were present and named correctly but the global channels weren't correctly populated. Probably a bug, but even if it was the /chatsave option spared me from several minutes of annoying chat window manipulations.

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I just want to add that not only do villains get Darrin Wade's arc from 20-30, but it's, IMO, the best arc in I12 on both sides. In fact I'd say it's one of the best arcs in the game.

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Yes, Darrin Wade's arc is very cool, and has a pretty interesting twist at the end if you read the conclusion text.

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How do we redeem our free slots? Mine aren't showing up anywhere...!

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Ok when your logged on and looking at the character select screen. The very bottom slot should either have a dollar sign in it or an arrow. If it is an arrow then you have unassigned slots and can assign them by clicking on that slot. If it is a dollar sign then you need to click on the big dollar sign on the right side of the screen to buy more slots.

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Hmm... I'm not getting any option for any free slots. Oh noooooo!! Halp!

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If the options for free slots or purchased slots that you haven't used yet is showing up that is due to the internal server connection.

We are looking at this system right now and pushing to bolster, under normal circumstances it will be fine, considering everyone is getting new slots today it's being a tad over worked right now.

Ex

Jay's Costume Bug Fix Thread.

Please post Costume Bugs to this new thread!

Thank you,

Ex Libris

Optional Character Slots Purchases
<ul type="square">[*] Players can now purchase optional character slots on each server with a one-time fee, and not an addition to your monthly subscription fee.[*] Players can have up to 36 slots perserver.[*] Purchases of a single character slot may be allocated to any single server of your choice, subject to the maximum server limit. [*] Purchases of multiple slots may be allocated to any single server or split between multiple servers of your choice, subject to the maximum server limit.[*] For a limited time, all accounts that log into the Live Servers will receive 2 free Character Slots. This is for a *Limited* time only.[*] For every 12 month cumulative period that an account has been subscribed, players will receive1 free slot.[/list]
With Issue 12 we answered a long awaited call from you our players. We'd love to know your feedback on the Additional Character Slots!