Neuronia

KGB & Hardpunchers challenge Freakinasty. Let us know when is good for you.

Loving Praetoria.

The new tutorial is miles ahead of the basic game; it's more immersive and branches you off to your career path early on. Praetoria itself is very shiny (especially the corridors) and sprawling. The arcs are all well-written and engrossing.

Tried the Cathedral of Pain with a semi-pick-up group and couldn't complete it, but that looks like lots of fun too. Not a lot of crashes or lag, which was fantastic.

Sweet, bring my Rad/Therm next time.

Nites ftw.

Play the game with a level 20+ alt.
You will get a "tip" as a drop.
Complete enough of these "tip" missions and you'll do a "Morality" mission which will move you one step closer to the other side. Once you've fully switched, you'll be a Villain or Hero.

I just spent over 2,000,000 on a Temporal Tracer, that's like diet ebil!

Someone stop me before I overspend again!

(mixes Crantini, gets ready for the madness)

If it's anything like the last time they did this, you'll get 6 per X period of days and so on. Check every few days to see if your transfer counter 're-ups'.

Live already? Time to faceplant into Praetoria!

Level 29 eh...get yourself an extra level and get someone to run a Katie Hannon or a Manticore, those are both quick and fun.

Once you get your sea legs, run an Eden trial. You won't regret it!

Amateur Prediction Hour:

i)Common and Uncommon Salvage will be dirt cheap, talking 5-1,000 influence cheap as there will be a glut of these on the Market.

ii)Rare salvage used in purples and high ends will spike to the 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 level them drop back to around 1,500,000 to 2,000,000. Mid-level rares will gain supply as player roll a ton of new alts.

iii)Increased demand for melee sets send Kinetic Combat, Crushing Impacts, Mako's Bites et al. on a large spike for the first three weeks to a month. I expect to see Kin Combat triples to sell for hundreds of millions over a short period.

iv)Many sought after Pool C will drop to the 45,000,000 to 75,000,000 range. Canny Villain/Hero Merit earners will likely grab their share of LOTG 7.5 and so on and sell them; both sides supply means more of these will be on the Market. There will be some crazy mavericks that spend spend spend but after a few weeks prices will stabilize to a new equilibrium. I'm calling 80,000,000 for LOTGs, about 55,000,000 for Miracles and some level 30 or so items (Shield Break Proc, Eradications) hovering at high levels as people tend not to produce many of these.

v)Expect more Karma KB, Steadfasts and so on to hit the Markets as lowbie content in Praetoria is run.

vi)Purples will likely be a madhouse. All those villain players with purses meet the hero players and spending sprees cause happy marketers/sellers. I'm expecting to see some Apocs and Ragnaroks and so on around 300,000,000 to 500,000,000 for a short time then dropping to around the 200,000,000 range.

vii)Respec recipes won't be worth much...but will be in a month or two when people decide they don't like their current builds for new alts. Expect these to be around 110,000,000 or so.

viii)I expect...oddball bids on stuff. A friend of mine collects those Titan Origins and wants them in our villain base for fun. He'll likely drop 50 million on a bunch of them. Some hold and sleep sets will rise because of Electric Control, as well as Recharge Intensives and Soulbounds.

ix)Players will complain that stuff is two expensive and we'll explain how to make money, be ignored and the Devs will make a kludge fix.

x)My Warshade will continue to power up, casually and under the radar.

Five more days before my new Mastermind heads to Paragon City...gah I cannot wait!

The new zones look pretty nice, hopefully there are some cool missions and nooks and crannies in there to explore.

Gratz Junior and Omega on your Nucs and millions.

XFunk graciously donated his 20 mil and a Positron Blast proc to Scarlett Jo Blastin, a level 6 Blaster in Kings Row

Lots of fun all!

Heh.

We used to "defeat" Sally 11 times or something crazy, and there were a bunch of rabid environmentalists with a "Save Sally" campaign. I saved her alright...for dinner with a nice teriyaki and garlic marinade, yum yum.

And it took 10,000 Rikti monkeys for the badge, not to mention farming Mary MacComber for Single Origin enhancers because we were all dirt poor.

Who can forget walking around fields of angry Pumicites to get to your mission door in the Hollows, only to hospital back to Atlas Park?

Back then Hami wasn't some immobile slug (well, it was immobile) it got angry at you and shot a zillion yellow beach balls if you didn't pay proper homage.
LRSF? They offered a year sub to a team that could beat that thing!

Don't get me started on the giant monsters plaguing Paragon City, we used to form teams to fight Lusca and we liked it! We loved the debt too! I remember getting a good 5-6 bars of debt and being stalled at level 26 forever, until some Fire/Fire Tanker took me to Peregrine Island and told me to bubble him so he could herd Freakshow for hours.

Hydra Trial? Pfft. More like a Hydra picnic with level 50s having everything be grey to them, farming that thing for recipes. Of course, that was AFTER Kraken stopped giving good experience rewards. Oh, the good old days of Kraken farming.

Ouroboros? Heh. I remember when you had to pay to get the Fortune Teller mission, it was that easy to level past it. Not to mention origin powers and Containment...man what a slog it was back in the day not having that extra kick of damage.

Defiance? Pffffffffft. The good old days had Blasters falling from flight ceiling in Siren's Call then exploding villains left and right, when they weren't teleported into game geometry.

Heh, kids these days with their brand new starting zone. We had to beg the Devs for Galaxy City and jetpacks at level 6? Are you kidding me? We WALKED to the train, WALKED to Kings Row then WALKED to the end of Kings Row to talk to Paula Dempsey then WALKED back to the Hollows to talk to David Wincott then WALKED back to Paula. We were FIT heroes back then. And no one complained, no one was talking about AE either. We rescued homeless people from the Lost and LIKED IT. Then we shut down a gang war between the Skulls and Hellions and LIKED IT.

We didn't have a train going to Founders' Falls either. We didn't have the fancy schmancy Faultline. Faultline was a cesspool of Vahzilok that you were sent to in order to test your mettle. Donut shop? You were lucky to get out of there alive! You were a changed woman/man/alien being after a few days in Faultline.

Don't even get me started on your precious little Willpower and Shield Tankers. Back then you went Granite or Invuln or you went home. Fire Tankers? Fire SCRAPPERS is what they were called and they were Veng bait. We slotted Veng with Membranes we got after a long slog against Hamidon and we had Taunt because we knew it was a design decision to give us the damned power. Aggro caps? Pfffffffft. we herded rooms to corners then had that dangnabbit Energy Blaster Nova and we moved to the next spawn.

You think PvP is bad now? Try spending almost an entire match inside a Sonic Cage or Detention Field. Yeah, you spent so much time in a cage you had newspaper lining the bottom of your field of vision. Of course, back then Stalkers killed people solo. Ice Tankers had Hibernate and Phase and EM did something beside locking you in animation for hours. Heh. Kinetics Speed Boost and IR made you move better and faster too.

You kids these days with your AE, your Rikti War Zone and your Pocket D. We had Paragon Dance Party and we didn't tell you where it was. We had the Crash Site and used it for respecs and farming. We told stories and RPd our own adventure through syncing story arcs. Those were the days. We couldn't drop missions either, so we had to PLAY THE CONTENT. Dangnabbit I remember the first Positron I joined, no one knew what they were doing and it took seven hours. You call the new Positron a Task Force? Heh. Back then teams were made at the Rollister mission; THAT tested a hero's mettle.

Don't even get me started on influence. We traded 9,999 at a time then 99,999 at a time then...AND WE LIKED IT. We were careful with our influence and spent it parsimoniously. We farmed for excess inf to buy Hamis. None of this newfangled Market where you can sell your drops. We were happy when we got a level 23 Nectanobo's Stone, that was valuable! Kids these days have no sense of value, vendoring training origins, heh.

World's gone straight to hell and I'm not talking the Abyss zone or even Abyss the contact, wherever she is. I'm talking knee-deep in debt because they nerfed Fire Imps to produce only THREE imps and they made MY Forcefield bubbles so weak I'm only invited because people pity me or like me. Then they gave those newfangled Sonic shields out, don't get me started on perma-domination or even those sneaky Stalker guys stealthing newspaper missions.

Newspaper missions? We never even had those. We stalled around level 35 or so and liked it! It let us see the scenery, like Crey's Folly and Eden and the Abandoned Sewers a bit later. Oh, we didn't have quick escape powers like an Ouroboros Portal or base transporter either. WE GORRAM WALKED OUT OF THE SEWERS. KNEE DEEP IN HYDRA SPAWN AND RIKTI SONNY!

You think you have nice costumes now? We were happy to have the basic model with color tinting and a cape at level 20. We had to fight to get those capes too, and not Rikti but the playerbase and RPers and realists and easymoders...lucky to have capes at all.

Booster packs? You kids might as well call them booster SEATS for how much easier they've made the game for you. Back in the day we sidekicked to our Fire Tanker or Spine Regen friends and hoped to goodness we made it alive from the boat in PI to Portal Corp, seeing you could break sidekick range.

Tips? Here's a tip for ya sonny!

Play the gorram game for once in your life and stop bellyaching because your catgirl can't get pompoms for her cheerleading outfit. Be grateful you even have tails available at all. I remember back in the day we talked in broadcast because global channels didn't exist. Now you have TEN global channels. That's like having TEN TELEPHONES. Back in my day we had our global friend list and it had 20 spots on it. AND IT MADE US BETTER PLAYERS.

You kids and your Praetoria. When we wanted to make a villain we just made our next costume black with a blackity black aura. And when we mischose powers we slogged through wave after wave of lethal Sky Raiders and Freakshow and Rikti. Freespecs? The Devs hated us and we were lucky to get inspiration drops. Speaking of inspirations, we saved up all out tier 3s for big fights. We didn't just spend excess Merits on them.

Don't get me started on Kins, Fulcrum Shift was garbage back then, you were laughed at if you weren't a Fire/Fire Tanker or a Spine/Regen or a Spine/Dark or a...you get the point.

Heh.
You kids don't know how good you have it here.