Lazarillo

I find myself sympathizing, for the most part. I haven't given up on Old Republic yet, just because I haven't seen all the storylines, and I've been enjoying those. But once I'm done with those, that's probably it for me. The sad thing is, no MMO gives the sorts of creation options that made this one so fun...so why bother? Granted, neither do any single player games that I'm aware of, but still, if what's the point of an MMO if I can't play 50 different, unique characters?

NC says "seriously, guys, we don't care, we never did, but can we stop pretending we do now?". This doesn't come as much of a surprise. NCSoft's mind was made up months before the announcement was made anyway. It should be kept in mind that just because it was a surprise to us (and our devs) doesn't mean it wasn't the product of much corporate dartboard-ing for months in advance.

As I mentioned in the other topic, I really liked the idea that Lady Grey was a sleeper agent. I would've liked to see that twist. I'd also been hoping for the "maybe" they talked about with Tyrant taking over his Primal counterpart's role.

Neat stuff. Posi, just let me say that regardless of what anyone else thinks, I think the Lady Gray betrayal would've been keen.

A few ideas that I posted back in the golden days to differentiate them from other alien invaders, like the Rikti or the Nictus, all of which I still would've loved to see:

• The Battalion are silly. They're over-the-top hokey stereotypes of pop culture: pirates with peg-legs and parrots, or perhaps rugged-looking space cowboys who all look like clones of John Wayne. Or maybe just junk food mascots expanded to one hundred feet tall. Regardless, despite the fact that their appearances look like something people would never take seriously, they're just as nasty a threat as has always been promised.
• The Battalion are a fakeout. They'd last for one issue, maybe less, before it was revealed the real threat was stemming from the mass numbers of Incarnates freshly minted in preparation for their coming. The real "Coming Storm" was actually not the aliens themselves, but the Incarnate war between McDreamy and Poppa Smurf.
• The Battalion are doppelgangers. Since they've spent their history crossing space/time to devour Wells of other races and realms of possibility, they had cast off their physical forms and simply took the form of "strength". In order to represent this, enemies and even Arch-Villains in raids against them would share the appearance with players in the League fighting them.

I always thought these were kind of neat ideas, and was pretty sure the ones that actually appeared would be kind of generic and disappointing. I admit I would've taken generic to "never getting to appear, though". But yeah, those were my thoughts.

***

Not for just me personally, but the Supergroup I used to run with before most folks left, the Wolf-Pack, made a theme team called the First Responders. A group with backstories all based on police/fire/EMS, with power themes based on fire and ice, and snazzy uniforms! It was always neat to see a bunch of folks in color coded trench coats setting fire to injustice! We had several teams over the years, but the First Repsonders were our original, and they definitely stood out the most.

***

As for me, my first level 50 villain was back in i7, he was an Electric/Electric Brute. My favorite part of that combo, at the time especially, was the sweet and delicious effortless beatdowns he was able to put up against even large groups of Malta Operatives. Well, at one point, I'm running with a PuG in one of those lab rooms with the two-floor catwalk, ya'll know the one, that tends to spawn three groups of enemies rather tightly, making it really, really easy to over-enage. Which we did. And this was still in that dark time after GDN and before IOs.

Well the whole team, minus me, wiped there, and I just kept fighting. Some of it luck, some of it stubbornness, and some of it being the combination of digital inspirations and actual inspiration of one of my teammates yelling, "Go Zaragoza, go!" We were right by the elevators, and I could've bailed at any time, but with that, I was determined. The seven others hit the hospital and ran back while I popped Power Surge. When they got back, I had almost, but not quite, finished the group. Power Surge did its standard fizzle, but thanks to the perfectly timed return, I managed to get sweet delicious healing at just the right time.

It's one of the most memorable playing moments for me, not simply because I got to kick some tail (I did!), but because I stood the odds, stood up for my team on account of their inspiration, to that final moment when the cavalry came down. It was a real feeling of "hells yeah, SUPER he---roohhh, VILLAIN!!".

I'm going to second Energy Melee. I never got to play it myself, but it was the one I saw that most impressed me.

Without a doubt. My approach to this game (or any other MMO for that matter) has for quite some time has been "something I can play the way I like, but can team too, if I'm in the mood". A single-player version of the game wouldn't be a whole lot different from the way I normally play anyway.

I've bounced between here and The Old Republic a bit all of this year. I'll probably bounce back that way again at some point. Though I don't see it holding my attention for as long as this game has. So in the longer term, "where I'm going" is probably "back to consoles".

I might try "outside" at some point, too. I've heard it can be nice.

My VIP account actually went off yesterday, for completely unrelated (budget related) reasons. I was always planning to come back again, though. I could never seem to break away completely. Suffice to say, I did not actually expect anything like this, for obvious reasons. Since I can't post in the news discussion thread, I just want to say thanks, to everyone I've been able to know in game and out, and to everyone who's made it happen.

I'm not going to pretend I've always agreed with every turn this game has taken, heck, certain things have been deeply disappointing. But nothing so disappointing as today's news.

I wish the absolute best to everyone at Paragon.

The thing that gets me isn't the cheesecake (we know by now what our Devs...like, thank you Mother Mayhem), but it's belts. The belts! Okay, fine, bare Penny's midriff, sure, but tighten a bunch of leather (or worse, maybe they're metal!?) belts straight across it.

Ouch.

Higher damage. Give me a decent damage blast set with mez protection, and any other defensive powers are just gravy.

I am a little surprised that there isn't going to be any proliferation of powersets or APPs this time around (because it seemed like with all the tweaks, part of the intent was to "set it up"), but I'm also completely not surprised because damn has the powers team been busy. It's nice after i23 and its "absolutely nothing that interests me" to see i24 and its "everything looks pretty neat to me".

Hmm, perhaps the Battallion will make use of Doppelgangers? It'd make sense, I suppose, if they eat Wells, then as a result of them trying to eat Earth's, they get our characters? And so the raid bosses end up being...someone on our team?

That could be an interesting approach...

Interesting spot for the M-Dog. I really liked the way they revamped his character for i18...it's nice to see that he'll (hopefully) be getting a little more love.