Olantern

Close. The magic group is actually Hellions->Outcasts->Warriors, which is why you'll see the odd Warrior spawn in the Hollows, talking to Hellions or Outcasts. There are a number of arcs about the Tsoo trying to take the Warriors' place, though, because everyone, but everyone, likes to beat up on the Warriors.

Same. In fact, I wrote an arc that does this. It's #175660, "The Heart of Talos, for you Warrior fans out there. Unfortunately, the Grant Cover power doesn't seem to be working for enemies, which takes a lot of the challenge out of shield-using enemies. (It certainly does work for Cimerorans, who have it built in.) Incidentally, I suspect that part of the reason nothing more has been done with the Warriors is that Cimerorans are, mechanically, much like what higher-level or updated Warriors would be.

I'd like to see a bit more done with the Legacy Chain. Their background is one of the most interesting in the game, but in missions in which they appear, they're little more than a low-level, magical version of Longbow. Perhaps for this reason, they, too, have spawned a number of AE arcs, including one Dev's Choice ("Whole Sale Soul Sale," I think), and my own #193451, "The Key and the Chain," which features the underused Banished Pantheon, too (note to lore pedants: that arc takes place before the Cap au Diable Strike Force).

I'd also like to see a bit more use of Rularuu, more as a background force than an enemy group. I'd really enjoy it if you'd go through, say, thirty levels of hearing the occasional invocation or mention of Rularuu, only to run into his trippy minions in the 40's. Preferably in some well-written stories, rather that the series of one-off missions and interminable i2 Task Forces we have now. It's sad to think that Rularuu are better used in CoV, where they appear in just a few missions (but are referenced by a lower-level contact), than in CoH, where they have four whole zones dedicated to them. (I also have a longstanding desire to see one Rularuu enemy show up in a low-level mission about Hellions biting off more than they can chew . . . hmmm)

Nemesis has exactly the opposite problem. He's used as an explanation for seemingly everything in the background material, but the actual faction is fairly uninteresting. Even its archvillain looks just like a regular boss. (Yes, I do realize that's the idea.) The thing I find strangest is that, while it's called the "Nemesis Army," we rarely see it do any of the things an army of villains would normally do. Additionally, Nemesis enemies are fairly limited in nature. Putting aside automata, we have two kinds of mechanical bosses, Jaeger, and, mostly, a gazillion ranks of guys wearing pickelhaubs that are all nearly the same to fight. Wouldn't something based on a 19th century army have cavalry (cue Flying Nemesis Horsie image), artillery, skirmishers. . . the list goes on. Additionally, Nemesis needs some straightforward brute force to counterbalance all that plotting. With all that in mind, when I decided to write a "challenge" arc to test my knowledge of AE mechanics, I used Nemesis. (It's arc #255713, "Urban Renewal," for those who can't get enough Nemesis. No AV's, but can get away from you easily if you're not careful. Additionally, the final mission is often buggy, refusing to spawn chained objectives. I don't generally recommend this arc unless you're interested in AE mechanics or really, really like fighting Nemesis.)

I'd also like to see more done with the Coralax. I suspect this group has suffered from being connnected with a scrapped Epic Archetype; I imagine there's a whole backstory out there (or even several) that's never been polished up for release. Coralax, incidentally, are another group that vanishes inexplicably at higher levels, despite the fact that they're fairly challenging, as low-level enemies go. Interesting Coralax trivia: all Coralax emit an irritating, whining hum at all times. Stand next to one without using any powers and listen.

***
EDIT:

How could I forget? One thing I'd really, really like to see is more use of unique bosses in regular arcs. Not necessarily Elite Bosses or AV's; just unique characters. We get one every five levels in our Safeguard and Mayhem missions, and that's about it. In existing arcs, the only examples I can think of are the Civic Squad (a special case, since they spawn as a group of bosses), the Midnighter characters in Darrin Wade's arc, and a couple of incidental CoV characters like Romulus the Warshade. I, for one, know that I'd be much more likely to do, say, "Bonefire" for the 15th time if I ran into some interesting-looking Skulls and Hellion bosses with unique dialogue during the course of it.

So, does this mean that if we're not running Ultra Mode (my video card couldn't take it, for instance), our Valkyrie and Cyborg pieces will no longer be shiny? That's disappointing.

Of course, it might not mean that at all.

Some early descriptions of CoV implied that it was originally meant to be like this.

***

I'm not adding to the real thread because everyone knows O'lanterns are not funny.

I believe it's being delayed; something about a problem with the ice cream interface when the monitor overheats.

Pointless trivia sidetrack: In the Commemorative History Booklet that came with my Clue: 50th Anniversary Edition, I discovered that the victim in the original, UK version was (and still is) Dr. Black. I'd always assumed it was Mr. Boddy everywhere. At least it resolved the question of why there isn't a Dr. Black piece in the game, which had bothered me for years.

And I Suggest that it was BaB, in Comics and Hero/Villain Culture, with the Recolored Pipe Wrench.

Does this mean that if a character slots the Miracle IO set, it has a chance to summon Troy Hickman?

I leave whether this would make the set more or less popular as an exercise for the reader.

Similarly, I once walked up to a plaque to touch it, then realized I could read it without doing so.

When I worked in Washington, D.C., I'd see a lot of protestors on the streets and feel I was overlooking something. After a while, I realized that I was looking for the giant, ghostly miner in their midst.

Okay, since you asked, /threadjack:

"Reefie" is an ice blast/mental manipulation blaster. Guppy Gal is a defender with the "reverse" of his sets, cold domination/psychic blast. Reefwarden has his powers recolored in various shades of blue and aqua, and Guppy has several different power "looks," but both characters predate power customization. I suppose a bit more explanation is in order to explain the "aquatic" connection.

Reefwarden was created around i12 release. I had been thinking for a long time of doing an Aquaman/Sub-Mariner type character, only not lame and with a better costume. I'd just leveled a scrapper to 50, so I was a bit tired of that, but I wanted to stick with a damage AT, so I figured on making him a blaster. For a long time, I thought about making him Electrical Blast, like the aquatic Man-o-War from the old(ish) Freedom Force games, but I already had an electric blaster. I considered Energy, too, which I've often heard was originally designed as "water blast," but I decided the knockback would be too much of a hassle if I wanted to use melee attacks, too. Knowing psychic blast was coming to blasters, I considered that, too, but I wasn't impressed with what I was hearing from beta, and I didn't want to jump on the psy/mental bandwagon, either. Ultimately, I settled on ice, figuring it was a form of water.

Mental manipulation, on the other hand, was an obvious choice. What's the thing that immediately leaps to mind about Aquaman and his various parodies over the years? For me, it's radiating those "thought waves" rings from his head and summoning a whale or something. For Reefwarden, I took this idea and made it more direct, and, I think, slightly more believable. His bio explains that he can interact with the ancestral, fishlike part of the brain of any living creature, causing a variety of mental effects. Though it's not a powerset effect, I also gave him the ability to incorporate the attributes of any aquatic creature into his own body, which enables him to make himself resemble a humanoid clownfish (his preferred costume), a sea slug, or a killer whale, as well as his blue-skinned "normal" form. Reefwarden is a Natural hero, while Guppy Gal is a Mutant with similar powers. (Her costumes include her superhero outfit, an electric eel, an angelfish, a purple tropical fish, and a really impressive starfish.)

Other powersets that might work well for aquatic heroes are spines (I've seen some nice crystalline ones recolored to look like coral), the various Earth/Stone sets (also recolorable to look like coral), Dark Blast (you can make it look fairly watery, though you have to ignore the skulls), Broadsword using the Thorn Sword (it looks kind of coral-like to me), and, possibly, Fiery Aura. "Fire, to represent water?" I hear you cry. Yes; I've found that Bright Flames colored greyish-white look a lot like steam. The same is true, though less so, for Energy Aura.

/unthreadjack. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

I really, really started to like my aquatic guy, Reefwarden, when one of my longtime SG-mates liked him so much that she made his young sidekick, Guppy Gal.

"The golden secret of eternal bliss, $target, is to stop doing that." I played with that character once and still use this phrase routinely in my actual life. (Try it; it applies in more situations than you might think! )

***

Nearly all my characters have fairly involved backstories, but I get more invested in some than others. I loved Djinniman, my first character, from the get-go. I started really enjoying Kid Eros when I started thinking not just about where his powers came from but about how he'd act as a hero, which eventually became the first Kid Eros comic story. The Knight of Gears, my broadsword/shield scrapper, was one of the few to get his "come-alive" moment from just being really, really effective at defeating enemies.

Finallly, my favorite "come-alive" story relates to my first i16 character, Sidereal Knight (radiation/energy blaster). His bio gives him a family connection to the Legacy Chain (Legacy of Light, natch) but explains that he is the black sheep of his family, who always preferred science and tried to stay as far away from magic as possible. Of course, he had to become a magic-using hero in spite of himself, but I always had him wear street clothes and thought of him as being kind of resentful. In his upper 20's, I ran him through one of my AE arcs about the Legacy Chain and the Banished Pantheon. After that arc, I had him switch for the first time to his Legacy Chain costume. That really brought the character to life. Like the ones I listed above, he eventually reached 50.

To expand on this a bit, I deduce from the fairly sketchy facts we're given in the article that the gold farmers were charged with a criminal violation of a Korean statute meant to regulate online gambling. This would explain why "skill" or "luck" were relevant. Note, too, the professor's comments stating that this wouldn't affect online poker. I read the article as stating that the court held that buying virtual goods and reselling them for a profit doesn't violate . . . whatever this statute says.

As Heraclea and EvilGeko note, this is a completely separate legal issue from the contractual ones governing a game's EULA and anything it might have to say about RMT. The Korean case involves what crime, if any, the state can charge an RMT'er with, while the EULA terms banning the use of RMT services (and thus any suit based on them) govern the relationship between a user and a provider. Different parties are involved in each case.

All this "special" Rikti invasion stuff has sounded like server-merge talk to me. After all, the last time a mothership showed up, the server on which it appeared shut down, right?

I'm not a roleplayer, but I enjoy playing that arc with my SG-mates and doing appropriate dialogue, such as:

(On seeing the enemies for the first time): My god, they appear to be some sort of bikini-clad samurai vampiresses from outer space! Clad in bikinis!

(When playing one of my inventor-type characters): As a man of science, I cannot admit the existence of such creatures, yet I believe that there are some things that SCIENCE ITSELF cannot explain! One of them may be these "bikini-clad samurai vampiresses from outer space!"

And, best of all, an exchange between me (playing one of my blasters) and "Dod," a very bouncy friend (playing the blaster's teenaged sidekick, which makes it funnier):

Her, upon finishing the arc: Yay! We won!

Me: Yes, but for how long, Dod? FOR HOW LONG?!!? Dun-dun-DUN!