Heraclea

Given the choice between losing everything and starting over, and losing everything and not starting over, I will pick the one that involves starting over.

Currently:

18 on Victory. (8 are tankers)
2 on Champion (1 is a tanker)
1 on Virtue (tanker)
1 on Freedom (tanker)

There are several ATs I never played to 50: Kheldians, mastermind, stalker, corruptor. Don't think I ever got a Kheldian past 20. I have one on Victory that's level 10, and I trotted him out every Christmas to buy slow resistance IOs.

But I do love my tankers.

The other MMO that's held my attention is Age of Conan. I played it at launch; there was a content drought in the higher levels. Came back with the medieval China expansion and have played since.

It is of course based on Conan the Barbarian, and as such it's the closest thing to a sword and sandal MMO out there, and that's always been where my characters have come from. At least there are no elves, dwarves, or twi'leks.

It doesn't have all that good a community; PvP was important to the game from the start and causes the usual problems. But it doesn't have annoyances of other games like gear repair costs either. Melee combat is quite engaging. There is a good multipet class if that interests you. 6 person instances and 24-person raids.

If you hated Dual Blades or masterminds you probably won't like it.

A parting mechanical question. Oddly, very few of my old line characters ever respecced for inherent Stamina. It had been a part of every build for so long that I never felt the need for three more slotless powers. A handful of characters did it, if I could see a use for it. Most didn't.

At any rate: it seems to me that inherent Stamina has made Willpower much less strikingly attractive for Tankers than it used to be. You remember I was always a fan of the set and wrote several guides for it, including one evaluating the tanker secondaries through i19 as to how well they helped Willpower tankers hold aggro.

Inherent Stamina reduced the chief advantage of Willpower, I'm afraid. If you've been here a while you know my opinion of the endurance mechanic. It made 1-20 a slog and 20+ where the game began. Now that's happily been changed, and every character has access to an +recovery power before level 20.

So what is the continuing justification of making the taunt duration in Willpower so short? The set is not so overwhelmingly strong that I think it needs such a significant penalty now.

Now that I think of it, I was one of several players instrumental in getting the taunt duration on ported sets for tankers fixed.

Now that Fitness is inherent, Willpower is a lot less attractive for tankers than it used to be. I wonder if there was ever any plan to remove the aggro penalty from Willpower.

1./ What, exactly, was Malta after in Cimerora?

2./ The sibyls on the ITF mention Phoebas, who is apparently their deity. Is 'Phoebas' simply a spelling variation of Phoebus Apollo? If not, who is Phoebas?

3./ How was Daedalus able to make use of Malta tech?

4./ Apart from being the scene of Fifth Column and Malta activity, how does the future history of Cimerora relate to Paragon City? Why was this particular ancient village a target?

5./ Was there ever a plan to actually unleash Burkholder's giant robot on Paragon City?

(I could swear that during the very first weeks I was playing the game, I saw a Titan-sized 5th Column Mech Man in King's Row. This may have been a part of the Issue 3 event. It was not a Paladin, that much I know. It may have been a bug; IIRC if the game tried to spawn an NPC that it couldn't find, it often spawned a Mech Man.)

Yes, I would.

Very enjoyable TT run this evening. Finished the ITF, ran some radios, moved Ekphobippe from 47 to 49. Assuming I am able I hope to be back with her in October and make her my twelfth level 50 tanker.

Thanks again to all who have made this a tradition. I know I haven't been all that regular in attendance among the community, but I really do appreciate it.

This is her very first costume:

This is what I wrote:

I am writing to appeal to you to keep City of Heroes alive in some form. I subscribed to the game in December 2004 and my subscription has not ever lapsed. No other game has given me as much creative pleasure to play, because no other game features its character creator, large number of character slots, and fast pace of gameplay.

If NCsoft no longer desires the game as a part of its product roster in light of its financial situation, please allow someone to purchase Paragon Studios or the game's IP for further development.

Wow. You were a worse altaholic than me.

Making a graphical catalog myself, starting with my tanker mains.

(Since we have been given leave to speak of other games)

Have you taken a character concept with you to some other game? Tried to make your character there resemble your City original?

Heraclea has had an extensive career in other games. She predates the game by several years; I had originally created her in connection with an old DOS game called Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures. She is a flexible concept; her original intent was to be a female counterpart to the male muscleman heroes of low budget Italian sword and sandal movies, something I obsess about more than is healthy. Her longest running other dimensional self lives in Age of Conan.

Betsy Ross was probably the character I had the most fun on. I didn't even intend to play the character that long; she started out as a joke for a Fourth of July costume contest.

I have no idea how she ended up a spines/WP scrapper, but the combination was particularly awesome. She was my go to character for recipe farming and my principal marketeer. Most of her fortune is gone.



Her final build:

This is just a gallery I made of all my level 50 tankers on Victory. While I played both male and female characters, my personal RP canon and my in game preferences guaranteed that just about all of my tankers would be women. Did not like the original Taunt animation and sound effect for male characters, I'm afraid.

In the end, Omphale replaced Heraclea as my main tanker. Inv/Dark Melee remains my favorite combination.

I have been on Unleashed for some time. It is probably the best way for those who care to stay in touch with me.

I've been sick at heart throughout the last weekend over the announcement. I will be here at least until my VIP status runs out in a couple weeks. Praying that a white knight comes to rescue the game and its community.

I lost interest after the Incarnate stuff started to be the chief development focus; mostly because I had more than 20 level 50s and a long grind on all of them seemed daunting. So I haven't played much over the last year. I am regretting that gravely now.

The tanker AT is my favorite character type in any game anywhere. No other game makes tanks this much fun to play. Of the 23 level 50s I will be leaving behind, 11 are tankers.

And the greatest thing about this game is its community. I will miss you all. Rangle, Acemace, Witty, Hyperstrike, Ice Knight, Arcanaville, Grey Pilgrim, Iron Vixen..... I remember Iron Vixen; do you? I am active on Westley's Unleashed site; that's the best way to get a hold of me.

The world may die. We will be the ones left standing to see it end.

I am playing Age of Conan, which had a very rough start but has matured into a fairly polished MMO. Played it briefly at launch, more intensively over the past two years or so.

Cameras and I don't get along. This is the most recent picture I can find, and it's about eight or nine years old.

For me it's this one, from a long discussion about Statesman's style of tanking. I know there were earlier ones, since my forum account dates to almost a year before this, but this is the oldest I can find.

What is yours?

I'll have to make a series of these, there are so many.

I'll begin with the obvious.



Heraclea began as a fairly transparent homage to Wonder Woman. The character became the head of my family of characters. She is an Inv/SS tanker, and the first character I made. On Victory for her whole career. Rolled on Dec. 24, 2004, the day I got the game.

I remember getting the "Retrieve the Jewel of Hera from the Circle of Thorns" mission for the character on the first or second day I played the game and thinking, 'Wow, this game is just for me'.

The lore of New Colchis took off from Heraclea and eventually went a direction away from the Wonder Woman lore that is at its basis, though she still is a hero who was raised on an island of Amazon women. Heraclea existed prior to the game; she was created as part of a planned but never finished Daughters of Hercules adventure for a game even older than this that I sometimes still play, called Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures.

Born to a family senatorial rank, Heraclea expected to play a conventional role through the cursus honorum, a cycle of civic, military, and religious duties to which New Colchians of her rank and stature were accustomed. Her world was changed when, as a result of natural rambunctiousness, she accidentally broke a sacred urn in the temple of Minerva.

As punishment, she was removed from her temple duties and made a gladiator. It was here that she found her true mission and purpose in life. She proved far more proficient at gladiating than at being a priestess, and rose quickly to the top ranks of the gladiators of New Colchis. She proved proficient at fighting wild beasts and mythological monsters; in the course of these combats, she lost an eye. Still, she liked being a gladiator, and chose to continue to compete in the games, craving excitement.

When the Jewel of Hera was stolen by the Circle of Thorns, games were decreed to choose a champion to track down the thieves and retrieve the sacred gem. Heraclea won this contest, and as such became the first of the amazons of New Colchis to publicly enter the ranks of Paragon City's heroes. Once there, she saw a society with problems, that in her view could use instruction from a superior culture. She chose to remain there to teach the women of Paragon City their natural precedence.

I am a founding member and custodian of a very old supergroup, founded in 2005. In early '06 the original founder left for WoW and left me in charge. I started playing WoW later in '06 but kept the group going.

There are characters who haven't logged in for 2,400+ days on the roster. I remember these players. I hope some of them log in again.

Age of Conan started to interest me at about that time as well, so that's where I put in the time I had to play. I'm afraid for that game, too.