Memphis_Bill

Can't do Thursday (working evenings) but will definitely try to be there for one of them Saturday!

Hmmmmm.

- Trying to get through the old Hollows.

- Doing so, seeing a Spectral Demon Lord for the first time on my (much lower, very new, first) character at a distance and deciding "Um... big, nasty looking floating skeleton thing - I think I'll go over this way instead."

- Getting used to getting around the hollows - sure, the edge may take longer, but I *don't get stuck in the gulch!*

- Getting stuck on my Fire tank (lowbie still) between two sorcs with Hurricane running. Amusing to watch, not so much to be....

- First Shard TF. "Everything's black..." Didn't finish, only had 3 characters left at the end... way back when.

- Seeing my first PB in Nova in the Hollows. "Ooh... what's that?"

- Rolling my first PB, a continuation of my first 50, elec/elec blaster. Rerunning missions. "Hi, Envoy, remember me? Mez? Pfft. Dwarf." Have loved Khelds - esp. Peacebringers, since.

- Multiple teams of heroes fighting Lusca. Often.

- End-of-beta-PVP. Masses in... where were we, siren's? Oh, the lag....

- PVP in Siren's Call in general.

- My PB and our running "grudge" with a Stalker, peek-a-boo. "Oh, look at the cute little stalker." (Had to read her bio to know that. We got along.)

- First PVP fight... PB vs a brute. Caught me at a meteor. I changed to Dwarf. His reaction - "Mommy....." Guess he hadn't seen that before - kind of fought to a standstill.

- My MA/Regen Stalker vs a Stone tank... that was a long fight, but even his friends kept telling him "She (my stalker) has you, you're dead, just give up already."

- Same stalker, one loudmouth DA scrapper... who couldn't fight. Go after him, he'd hide in a Stormy's hurricane.... until his team got sick of him and abandoned him. I don't think he got to rez before someone re-stomped him.

- More PVPRP... kinda. One SG-mate (who.... well, let's just say wasn't well liked) on his Ice 'troller.... same one that kept putting Frostbite on Earthquake and the like. Me... on my stalker. His team basically didn't help - less so seeing the fairly obvious "villain side of the same SG" and stuff being said, RP-related... but not really... in broadcast/local to him. And someone from the Kheld group just sitting back and watching... OK, maybe not nice, but it was a *real* stress reliever.

- Yes, more PVP. Namely, fun (pre-inventions) with my En/en Brute... like having people try to TP Foe her repeatedly over an hour and *just not getting* it wasn't going to happen. Or having someone broadcast "Look out for Feliney Assault... her stuns are brutal." (Slotted for duration.) Or being called "that <censored> stalker!" more than once... on that same brute.

- My Fire/Kin Corruptor, another corr and (I believe) a dom holding Siren's Call all by our lonesome against something lke 3:1 odds... eventually, more heroes, so we got overwhelmed, but we really held out a long time.

- Stalkers thinking my PB was an easy kill... not in dwarf, fella.

- Holding off a team of villains on my PB for several minutes... yeah, getting slowly whittled down, but still, lasted longer than I thought.

- Seeing Croatoa in beta. "Hey... they're fighting each other... and they're actually dying!" - then wondering if that was going to be an exploit.

- Successfully having zero Fir Bolg escapes in "that mission."

- "Defending the henge" by just Wormholing a Fiend across the map... repeatedly.

- Cuppathon.

- "I have.... how much debt? 37 is how far away?"

- Going from 0 to 1.1 million debt in one hami raid. Of course... 50, so who cared.

- Getting thanked out of the blue by a redname for the work I was putting into the set of MA tutorials in the guides section during beta.

- Getting recognized in game by other players when I'm on (or mention) one of my versions of MB.

- Never having that recognition be negative. ("Oh, you're HIM, why you so-and-so...." )

- The HBSS. The LoC. RO.

- Everyone. Especially having such awesome devs.

Well, if it's one of mine, just go through either of my threads and it should say who did it.

Older thread
Newer (2012) thread

OK, first things first, since I see these on the login screen (and yeah... 8 slots... I remember being amazed at getting 12...) - I posted these origin bits elsewhere, I'm sure someone else can clean them up nicely. (I can't without losing chunks or color, in most instances.)











As for screenies, I've got an entire album I put up when I found my first month of screenshots. But among them:

First shot first



2/26/2005, 17:26 apparently is when I took my first screenshot

Little skipping around - Life (or death) pre-ragdoll:


Really think he looks better in later costume:



And it's weird seeing her without her cape

Not sure when/where I tracked these down, but found on (another) old CD... and since people were asking...

Note, you can (probably....) turn the colored background transparent with some editing software. I'm just posting as-found.

Yeah, had to leave that in after the "too far! Back! Too far! Back!"

Had a few to finish bringing up to 50. Had a water def and blaster I was (still will be, I'm sure0 having fun with.

Waiting for bio and radiation armor to see if either would be a "better fit" for MB.

*sigh*

So, as part of settling in after a move, I'm going through... stuff. Lots of stuff. Including CDs with old data.

... such as old COH screenshots.

And chat logs. (Yes, I do tend to log stuff... habit since in game stuff leads to writing.)

I find some of my newb comments to (and from!) friends at the time rather amusing after all these years... ahh, the awe the Zig inspired...

Here's a system exchange that should bring back memories... or maybe shudders:

04-15-2005 22:19:42 [Team]Kamre: <color #010101>sk therra for most happy time
04-15-2005 22:19:55 <bgcolor red><color white>I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
04-15-2005 22:20:42 My mentor is assisting me again.
04-15-2005 22:20:44 <bgcolor red><color white>I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
04-15-2005 22:21:21 My mentor is assisting me again.
04-15-2005 22:21:27 <bgcolor yellow>I'm getting a little too far from my mentor.
04-15-2005 22:21:28 <bgcolor red><color white>I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
04-15-2005 22:21:40 My mentor is assisting me again.
04-15-2005 22:21:42 <bgcolor yellow>I'm getting a little too far from my mentor.
04-15-2005 22:21:43 <bgcolor red><color white>I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
04-15-2005 22:21:45 My mentor is assisting me again.
04-15-2005 22:21:48 [NPC]Chief Smasher: You're a waste of a life.



04-15-2005 22:28:50 <bgcolor yellow>I'm getting a little too far from my mentor.
04-15-2005 22:28:51 <bgcolor red><color white>I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!
04-15-2005 22:28:55 [Team]Therra Arcson: <color #ff9b6b><bgcolor #01541f>Main problem being that one of Snow's jumps takes her out of SK range.
04-15-2005 22:29:27 My mentor is assisting me again.


Important stuff to know:

04-15-2005 02:40:28 [Broadcast]Song: <color #010101><bgcolor #0101ff>anyone know the location of science SO's?

Old suggestions... and complaints:

04-15-2005 02:41:30 [Local]Rocuryu: <color #ffff01><bgcolor #0101ff>my only thing is they should have random events, like evasions and bank robbers to keep the game spontaneous
04-15-2005 02:41:48 [Local]Rocuryu: <color #ffff01><bgcolor #0101ff>but its just an idea ^_^
04-15-2005 02:41:51 [Local]Therra Arcson: <color #ff9b6b><bgcolor #01541f>Yeah, that'd be nice... something besides "dodge someone else's ambush."
04-15-2005 02:41:59 [Local]Rocuryu: <color #ffff01><bgcolor #0101ff>lol
04-15-2005 02:42:08 [Local]Agent Snow: <color #ffffff><bgcolor #010101>yeah, i haven't seen any bank robberies
04-15-2005 02:42:11 [Local]Therra Arcson: <color #ff9b6b><bgcolor #01541f>Since they tend to be 10-20 levels higher than me, so far!
04-15-2005 02:42:23 [Local]Rocuryu: <color #ffff01><bgcolor #0101ff>tell me about it. i have a blaste alt and she has nothing but debt because of those

Obviously Issue 4:


04-15-2005 02:54:14 [Local]Nanomi Flux: <color #ffffff><bgcolor #ff0101>can't wait to se you at the arena
04-15-2005 02:54:24 [Local]Therra Arcson: <color #ff9b6b><bgcolor #01541f>She does great. I die and watch.

Fascinating things coming up a few levels away:

04-15-2005 18:53:26 [Tell]Kamre: you're gonna love getting to level 25, you get to do your title again and you get a new row of inspirations

... and stuff to avoid for now:


04-15-2005 18:55:45 [Tell]Kamre: have you been to brickstown before?
04-15-2005 18:56:19 [Tell]-->Kamre: Yeah. As I recall, poked in to look around, and ran right back out. Little too big for me.
04-15-2005 18:56:56 [Tell]Kamre: i ended up on a team that took me there today, there's a huge prison there where you fight inmates

.... ok, I could be whiny.


04-15-2005 22:00:46 [Tell]-->Agent Snow: Which badge?
04-15-2005 22:01:13 [Tell]Agent Snow: Keeper of Secrets
04-15-2005 22:01:21 [Tell]-->Agent Snow: What's that one for?
04-15-2005 22:01:28 [Tell]Kamre: hehe did snow tell you what you JUST missed?
04-15-2005 22:01:31 [Tell]Agent Snow: We killed Adamastor
04-15-2005 22:01:42 [Tell]Agent Snow: a twenty foot zombie
04-15-2005 22:01:58 [Tell]-->Agent Snow: *whine* Right in line with my character, too.....

Debt actually mattering and being a topic of conversation:


04-15-2005 22:08:37 [Team]Kamre: <color #010101>i was kidding about the totems lol
04-15-2005 22:08:42 [Team]Agent Snow: <color #ffffff><bgcolor #010101>only if they hit you...
04-15-2005 22:08:56 [Team]Kamre: <color #010101>i'd rather do something easy i'm already in debt through my next level
04-15-2005 22:09:20 [Team]Therra Arcson: <color #ff9b6b><bgcolor #01541f>I've only got two bubbbles worth to work through

Mah Noobiness again, heh:

04-15-2005 22:11:53 [Team]Therra Arcson: <color #ff9b6b><bgcolor #01541f>Saw my first warwolf today


And some things just don't change:


04-15-2005 23:12:34 [Team]Agent Snow: <color #ffffff><bgcolor #010101>at least we aren't wasting infl on our costume colors today... yet

LOL.


No, really, LOL.


Because if I don't, I have to assume the OP is serious. And likely off their meds.

I... don't recall ever being able to drag and drop a macro to someone else, to be honest. Though I also can't say I'd tried very often, either.

Hmm. Have to check CIT.

34 according to that, but it's obviously out of date, as I see at least two that are 50 that are listed as in their 30s. And one not listed at all, somehow... so, 37 total. At 300-ish characters, better than 1/10 of them. Which... is better than I thought.

Did "One of every AT to 50" (Soldier and Widow counting as 1 each.) Tried one of each control set... got there, then we got electric (mid 30s) and dark, so obviously I need to work on those again!

... even if it's not a "real" position, you were just given free reign to work on one thing - what would it have been?

For me... epic ATs. Let me work on them, get resources assigned to really make them take off, etc. I'd say one a year would have gotten out. Maybe year and a half.

For instance:

Avilans - yeah, the flying AT, axed because they figured out how to give us wings. I'd have brought them back (with some unique attacks that made use of flying/wings.) They'd have had their own starting "zones," of sorts - like Praetoria - that anyone could visit, but would be exploring their lore more directly than other ATs could have gotten - they're fighting to defend (or take over, perhaps) their home. Want a "land of the lost" area? This would be it.

Coralax: Yep. Get them as an EAT, with a coralax civil war, perhaps, some of the shapers having gone mad. Hello, underwater zone - and glowing, underwater cities.

Blood of the Black Stream - Out of the city? Out of the continent - this would take you to Egypt, both ancient and modern, as you figure out who they were and just what's actually going on now with Gadzul Oil - and how deep their influence really spreads. (And do something nifty with the eye of horus made of oil in Oakes.)

That I'm aware of?

Graphics changes.

LONG fight to get Sonic Dispersion shield graphics changed (and not just me, I just made it a point to keep making noise about it) so that people wouldn't quit playing because it kicked their migranes off.

And a short thread, by comparison, that was immediately picked up on by Tunnel Rat when Barrier looked to be doing the same thing.

Though I still get warm fuzzies when I think of having a redname thank me for writing the AE tutorials (still in guides... probably fairly out of date) while that was in beta.

Yeah, I'd go for "Can we get all the Kheld lore?" too...

1. How, given that the Kheldians are extragalactic to begin with and have the ability to move... fairly quickly, can Twilight Son actually be the "last" Kheldian?
1a. Or is he the "last" as in "last he knows of" or "last in the galaxy?" (The latter still being a bit of a stretch, given the simple *size* of the galaxy, but still possible, I suppose.)

2. Were there any plans to go back and beef up the VEAT stories? Especially the latter half - which do, still, feel rushed to me.

2a. Or even, potentially, plans for each "branch" of the VEATs to have their own stories explored? (Difficult given dual/triple builds, I know.)

3. How do Khelds reproduce, given they're energy beings - splitting? Something similar to a cyst? Do they actually have something like gender other than what they take on from hosts?

4. Was Shadowstar a Warshade before coming to Earth, or did she undergo a change of heart sometime during her stay?

5. Blood of the Black Stream - how much backstory/basis IS there/was there in the lore bible? (Yes, I *am* still on about that!) Aside from "existing in ancient egypt" and being some technomagic mix (which makes me wonder about any ties to the Nictus/Warshades.)

6. We had a CCG, which at one point had mention made of possibly giving in-game benefits, though I don't believe that was ever actually implemented. Was the introduction of super packs in the form they were a nod to that or just coincidence? (Does anyone even remember that first part?)

7. "Science lord." Any actual tie to canon or just something made up for the comic?

8. Do Peacebringers use anything similar to Cysts for anything?
8a. If a Warshade (or group) created cysts, could a PB use them, or would it be harmful?

9. Would the Kheldians original homeworld still exist, and as anything other than a ruin? (Given the whole "genocidal war" of the Nictus.)
9a. I keep picturing any sort of "cities" they'd natively have as almost crystalline... would they even have "cities" as we'd think of them?

10. Were there any plans to have us visit the Rikti homeworld? Could we have visited the Kheldian homeworld? Ouro back to the "golden age" of the Mu and /or Orenbanga? Anything looking possible to go underwater to see the Coralax cities, or was that still "just can't make it look right?"

11. AE: What do you think could have been done better? There was a lot of potential in it - if money and other resources werent' an issue, what would you have liked to do? Not just in terms of "adding stuff to the system," but would you have (say) had arcs vetted by people before publication to find exploits, to categorize, etc? (IE, "farms are fine, but they're going into the farming tab, here's a PVP-enabled arc, it goes into the PVP tab, that one's heavily exploitive, reject and patch" that sort of thing.)

12. Did you *really* not roll your eyes at the whole end-of-VEAT-arc meta-speech by Statesman needing to somehow shoehorn in an explanation for power proliferation? Did you ever want to just yahk that out and redo it? (Sorry, but that was just *painful.*)

13. Kheld arcs again - the Nictus start making plans to make the Earth a new Nictus homeworld, yet they'd been here since ancient egypt if not earlier. Were we basically, given nuclear power, etc. just hitting a point where the Nictus could kick plans into high gear because of our technological level? (Otherwise... why not just take over earlier, with less resistance?)

However...

They bought the IP, built an office, hired the devs and expanded *years* ago. I don't believe, quite frankly, that PS was in the red - otherwise, why let them start a new "secret project" that, itself, would be quite some time before ever seeing a return?

TR, by comparison, crashed and burned fairly fast, so you can't really use that for comparison.

I think the Corporate Masters, frankly, decided to dump the one game that (a) was only making 2-3% of the money - steadily, yes, but only 2-3% and (b) had no actual Asian presence.

<--- MB. Freshly re-wisconsinited.

I'd show the artwork of Therra in Aion... but Photobucket is undergoing site maintenance. Blah.

She's also showed up in The Old Republic - gunslinger.
Starship captain in STO.
LOTRO - what do they call it, ranger? Not particularly similar, honestly.
APB - don't recall. But everyone shoots everyone there.

Was planning, at some point, to get a piece commissioned with the various versions. Still might, for those I have pics of.

MOre used to Muad being from Victory... 's where we played, at least.

Character I'm used to seeing him on: Acoustic Delusions:



... dont' know that we have demofiles of him or anything, fairly simple costume though. Have to try to recreate.