Lothic

They might as well name that movie "Independence Day 2".
Sounds like it'd be just as god-awful regardless.

I'm thinking at this point Bill might be the only vampire who even has a clue that blood from people like Sookie has that effect on vampires. One would think if that was "common vampire knowledge" that the vamps would be after Sookie-type people all the time and would openly talk about it amongst themselves. The idea that "Sookie blood" can allow vamps to become daywalkers was never mentioned in the books so where that goes is completely up to what the TV producers come up with.
Actually the Holly character from the books was a waitress at Merlotte's from the very beginning and was closer to Sookie's age. Basically the TV producers decided to hold off introducing her until now and decided to make her a bit older with older kids. But based on how she knew Arlene was pregnant just by looking at her it seems that "what" she is in the books is still going to be the case in the TV show. I won't spoil that in case it's not obvious yet.
Based on how bad Sookie cut her face I'll bet the TV show is going to keep having her come back sort of as a semi-insane Joker to Sookie's Batman - a nemesis that just never completely goes away. It's hard to say what's going to happen to Debbie because in the books she came to Sookie's house alone to attack Sookie and instead of a long catfight Sookie basically managed to shotgun blast Debbie in the face. Obviously the TV producers wanted her character last a little longer than that.

Well Buffy has been referenced not only in the True Blood TV show but in the books as well.
IIRC in one book Sookie actually gets Eric to watch some Buffy and he thinks it's hilarious.

But yeah calling True Blood "Buffy with nudity" is not extremely too far off the mark...

That's -exactly- why it'll never happen. Some people might be able to afford it, other people might not.
It would instantly create yet another "unlevel playing field" as far as badging goes.

In fact Positron has gone as far as to openly mock anyone who would like to buy badges along these lines. Back when there was talk of getting a badge related to server transfers Positron joked that he'd name such a badge the "I paid real money for this badge" badge just to poke fun.

Again I wouldn't have much heartache about "paying" for other badges myself but I understand quite clearly why it's something that'll likely never happen again.

Yeah I think most people would consider "doing stances like they did flyposes" would be the less desirable outcome of this. I was just trying to point out that even if they are like flyposes then it wouldn't be impossible to use them, just cumbersome, and would pretty much require people to set up some keybinds for them to make them viable.

I wouldn't think a GUI to set these things would be that big a deal.
They could always add another drop-down menu for them hanging off the costume selection pop-up. *shrugs*

Well if these "stances" turn out to be idle equivalents of the flypose emotes that would be a bit of a letdown.

On the other hand I still use flyposes bound to keybinds to this day and it wouldn't be incredibly difficult to set up new keybinds if needed. It would just be a bit cumbersome is all...

While I'm not against the idea of new badges from any source I think it would be very unlikely if we ever got another badge via a retail booster again. The Devs apparently caught a lot of flack for offering "badges you had to pay for" like the Pocket D VIP badge. That will likely be the only one of its kind that we'll ever see here. *shrugs*

To be clear I wasn't really directly saying I liked/disliked the appearance of Ninja Run. I was just stressing the idea that its appearance and functionality very closely resembles a travel power in CO called Acrobatics. The fact that we got both Ninja Run and Walk about a month after CO went live will always remain incredibly "suspicious" to me.

My main point is that I like the idea of stances in general and I strongly suspect what motivated our Devs to give us (something) called stances here was prompted by their appearance in CO. It doesn't really bother me in the least if this game "borrows" a few things from other games like that. I'm just hoping that whatever version of that we get here is at least as good or better.

Well the TV show has made it clear that Sookie's immediate family is all potentially "different" the same way she's different. So suspecting Jason may be "gifted" in some way is not exactly a show spoiler at this point. Unfortunately (in the books) Jason shares a resemblance to another special relative that's sort of a bad thing for him. It'll be interesting if the TV show explores that in detail.
Since Lafayette got a grand total of about a half a page mention in the books and was killed off like you said the TV show is really free to evolve him in any direction they want.

Interesting: I only knew Debbie to be a Werefox in the books.
Of course I only recently bought and read the first 9 paperbacks within the last year. (thanks to interest in the show)
Maybe the latest printed editions cleared up the continuity error about this?

Either way this doesn't seem to be matching what she is on the TV show.

Making him the "big bad" of the season has turned out to be a pretty good move so far.
Same.
Yeah her "hypocrite-ism" didn't really surprise me at all. Like a typical politician she says one thing in "public" and acts completely differently in private. It did provide insight that the whole "Authority" thing is clearly using the Vampire Rights movement as a cover to advance their less that happy-shiny agenda.
I agree they pulled this plotline from the later books just to give Jason more to do here. I'm just not really satisfied with the whole reworking of the "Hotshot" storyline in general. So far most of the TV show's "reimaginings" of the books have been handled pretty well so I'll give it a chance that it'll work out.
Yeah I'm not really liking the darker tone with Sam and his brother either. Obviously it's going to come to a point where the two of them are going turn on each other with the likely result that Sam's brother will either be killed or at least sent away in some form or fashion. I also don't really like the "Calvin Norris as a bad guy" angle either but as I said before I still have faith the TV producers will make it work somehow.

If you think about it the TV show has already apparently redefined Debbie Pelt as far as this goes. In the book it's established that she's one type of thing but in the TV show they've apparently simplified that into making her the same kind of thing as all her friends, if you know what I mean. Maybe they're planning on "simplifying" the Hotshot folks too in the same way. *shrugs*

Well fair enough. Some of the CO stances were better looking than others.

I have to assume that if that's the kind of thing we're getting here that the graphic artistry of our Devs here will make our version of the stances look better regardless.

Yeah I'm kind of amazed they don't have these "turned on" in the beta right now whatever they are.
I'm hoping they're going to work...

One of the very few things that Champions Online managed to do well was their idle stances. Basically they're the kinds of things that you select and "happens every time [you] stop and stand still for a few seconds" automatically like you were talking about. These would be cool if that's what we're getting in this game.

On the other hand these might just turn out to be like the flyposes were. In that case they're simply going to be emotes that you manually have to start every time you stand still. If that's what we're getting then their usefulness is going to be drastically limited.

Here's hoping that (like Ninja Run itself) this new stance feature is going to be another obvious ripoff of that other game.

If I seriously wanted to create a version of what Sookie is in this game I'd probably use a human-form Peacebringer to do it.

Well yeah the show has been teasing the whole "What is Sookie?" thing quite a bit. Different characters have actually been asking that question pretty much throughout the entire series. But even though I could spoil it right now (since the books explained what Sookie is years ago) the TV show itself has dropped so many hints now that I'd think the short list of what she could be is pretty short.

Just think about it. According to the show as of last night:

1) We know vampires exist.
2) We know werewolves exist.
3) We know shifters (weres that aren't strictly wolves) exist.
4) We know other magical immortals (like Maenads) exist.
5) We know there seems to be a garden-like "alternate world" where both Sookie and Bill have seen elven-like 'magical' people.
6) We know both Sookie and Bill have seen Claudine there, who used the same "light blast" power Sookie has used.
7) We know that Claudine cares for Sookie, claims to have protected her in the past, and worries that someone will "take her light".
8) We know Sookie's grandfather apparently had a famous "sixth sense".
9) We know Sookie's little cousin Hunter apparently has the same mind-reading power Sookie has.
and so on...

So if we know all this stuff exists why wouldn't it be possible for other classic "fantasy" creatures to exist? And not only why couldn't they exist but why couldn't Sookie be related to them? I guess if you still don't have a vague idea at this point then once you do find out you're just going to have to have a "D'oh! Of course that's what she is!" moment. Have fun.

P.S. It turns out that the type of thing Sookie is just happens to be almost like catnip for vampires blood-wise. Vampires typically have a very hard time resisting the smell/taste of her kind of "no blood type" blood. That basically explains why most of the vamps in the show are fascinated with her.

Thanks for offering to organize these MoTF runs.

My main Loth (a Fire/Rad Controller) still needs to do a MoITF, a MoLGTF and a MoKHAN so you can sign me up for those.
I managed a MoSTF a while ago so I'd probably just take a break during that one.

Good luck to everyone involved!

Actually if you want to get really picky about it there never were technically two "separate" games when CoV started.
It was all an account management trick.

The Issue 6 patch also included everything related to CoV whether you paid for it or not. There was never two separate clients downloaded on you computer. The code for both was always combined into one package as far as your computer was concerned.

The only way CoH and CoV was ever considered two different things was in the way you paid for it. You either only paid for CoH access, only paid for CoV access or you paid for both via which "game(s)" you bought. That's why it was relatively simple for the Devs to eventually "merge" CoH and CoV together. They didn't have to do a single thing game code wise. All they had to do was merge our accounts together to give everyone access to both sides.

The same thing will happen with Going Rogue. The Issue 18 download will include all the code related to Going Rogue. The only thing that buying Going Rogue will do is enable you to access it. Eventually they will "merge" Going Rogue into the general game by simply doing away with the check to see if you paid for it separately.

I would almost consider this as a "backwards victory" for those who advocate the ideal that a single character ought to be able to earn every badge if they want to.

Consider it this way: If the Devs ever decided the only way to PREVENT people from getting all the badges was to pull a major backstab with a bunch of retroactive staying true badges then they would have realized that their quaint "badging is a journey" concept was so desperately out of touch that they were forced to do something stupid just to prove their shortsighted point. It would be a reactionary F-U to us just because they wouldn't like people playing the game the "wrong" way, whatever that is.

Fortunately I really don't see them doing that regardless of what Position has specifically said about it. Over the history of this game the Devs have generally moved towards the goal of making many previously unobtainable badges earnable again. This includes Isolator, old event badges and now Power Liberator. Heck, the entire Going Rogue Crossover system is probably the greatest example of opening up new badges to be earned. Even though they may generally prefer the "badging is a journey" playstyle the Devs have a proven track record of also making us silly badgers happy for the most part as well.