Olantern

I don't know if there's any more to the actual marketing department than Ross The Marketing Guy. I suspect there are also marketing/advertising people who work directly for NCSoft rather than for Paragon Studios, and some of their efforts probably go toward City of Heroes.

Aside from its being small, though, the issue isn't so much that there's no advertising for the game as that it's pursued a marketing strategy of "retain subscriptions" rather than "bring in new people and let churn happen." The emphasis on reactivation and referral programs, veteran rewards, and everything promoted through the official website reflects this. The release of the Architect Edition was the first major outreach to nonsubscribers in a long, long time.

Supposedly, this game does extremely well with retaining subscribers, so it's difficult to fault the marketing department's strategy from that point of view.

There actually are a number of places where Coralax spawn out in the water and will pop up to get you, but only if you're of a level to aggro them. The spawn point I've noticed the most often is south of the Pit in Sharkhead Isle.

That's the real reason she does that "mind-riding" thing where she basically swipes another person's body: as the loading screen note about her points out, she doesn't age while she's doing that. She'll probably feel like resting up the ol' corpse for a while again pretty soon.

If I were a well-endowed woman in Paragon City, I'd be looking over my shoulder in terror right now. Not that that would protect you from a telepathic attack, of course. :P

From The Five Minute Iliad's introduction to its version of Ulysses: "While Ulysses is not so difficult a novel as Finnegan's Wake, this is akin to saying that a bullet between the eyes is not so difficult as half a dozen hand grenades up one's [self-censored]."

I am officially required to mention this any time some brings up James Joyce novels, which seems to happen distressingly often in my life.

Same! It's short for "Jack O'lantern."

I used to have a variation, "Mister O," on my license plate.

Wasn't there originally going to be a mechanic involving swimming from island to island? I remember that in an early discussion of the Rogue Isles, one dev (Jack Emmert?) said that one way to get from place to place was "plain old swimming." More recently, another dev (Back Alley Brawler, I think) explained that there were originally going to be sharks surrounding the Isles that would attack swimmers. This is why he's appeared on Test a couple of times as a shark.

Personally, I agree that Hades is generally portrayed as the most down-to-earth (your groan here) of the Olympians. The idea of Hades as a villain is very much a modern, not an ancient, idea. He spends all but one day a year in his grey, sunless realm, watching over the shades, while the rest of the family is off gallivanting around, turning themselves and/or their romantic partners into bears, ilex trees, insects, snakes, or some combination thereof. He's like the one brother in a family of celebrities who decides to become an accountant and spends all his time at the office while the rest of the family is off wrecking Hummers and having stories about them printed in the tabloids. I guess this befits the oldest and therefore the most "mature" of the Olympians.

However, this isn't the only interpretation of the "Persephone Among the Dead" story. There's another that fits the savage, dangerous warrior society of early Dark Age Greece that produced it very aptly. I won't discuss it here since the auto-censoring would render my rendition incomprehensible, but you can probably find it on the internet someplace. (Incidentally, it's used to good effect in the "WebMage" series of novels by Kelly McCullough, which, despite having kind of a goofy premise, contain some excellent characterizations of the various Olympians.) Let it suffice to say that it reflects VERY badly on the Lord of the Dead.

This is definitely the spin (your second groan here) put on things in The Web of Arachnos. One interesting idea for an alternate dimension, instead of having it ruled by yet another Evil Statesman or Nemesis Variant, would be to have Stefan Richter transformed into some completely different kind of monstrous form. In fact, one of several possible origins mentioned in my Arachnos Widow's bio is that he comes from a dimension where the organization ruling the Rogue Isles is called "Skorpios" and based on scorpions rather than spiders. (Yes, I know scorpions are technically arachnids, too.)

I'm more surprised that Statesman isn't based on some character from the first generation of Greek deities than that Recluse is based on Tartarus.

Here, here! It's especially confusing that The Web of Arachnos states that Zeus, the guy of whom Statesman is an incarnate, was himself of an incarnate of Cronos. Does that mean Tartarus was a "real" person, too, and, if so, whose incarnate was he?

It doesn't help matters that CoX lore is pretty inconsistent in its treatment of the gods of mythology. Sometimes, as in the novel, they're described as mere super-powered humans of the past. Other times, as in the missions and background related to the contact Daedalus of Cimerora or in Adamastor's bio information (it mentions the nymph/goddess Thetis), they seem to be powerful, supernatural beings, as they are in the myths. And still other times, they're identified with the inhuman, Dr. Strange-like god-entities associated with the Mu and CoT lore. For instance, "Hequat," goddess of the Mu and a promoter of magic, sounds a lot like "Hecate," a Greek goddess of dubious reputation also heavily associated with magic. "Ermeeth," who taught magic and other arts to the Oranbegans, sounds a lot like "Hermes," the Olympian who taught humans a variety of arts. I imagine this is all summarized in several, mutually contradictory sections of the Official Story Bible.

Also, just to muddle things further, yet another Greek creation myth has three primordial gods/concepts all spontaneously appear at once: Tartarus, Gaea (the earth; more often spelled "Gaia" these days, same deity), and, interestingly, Eros (love, who's normally considered one of the "youngest" of the Greek gods).

There's already an arc someplace where Pseudolus is the contact.

I don't know what he was thinking, either, but this is the one comment I hear from every single person I've spoken with who tried CoH/V and didn't like it- "The penalties for dying are way too high, and leveling is way too slow." When one of them compared the penalties for dying unfavorably with World of Warcraft, I asked him was so bad about dying in CoX. He said that debt was too harsh a penalty; having to replace equipment and run to your corpse was "much lighter."

I didn't really have a response to that.

To my surprise, you're the first person who's mentioned the problem of "Isn't Tarikoss a villain?" My thought as I was writing the arc was that yes, it takes place before his betrayal of the Legacy Chain, which is why Aurelius is so surpised by what happens. (In fact, I meant to imply, for those who follow the lore closely, that it IS that betrayal.) On the other hand, I think I mentioned in one of Bocor's clues something about Tarikoss and a demon. I believe I included that just to be on the safe side, in case I'd misread the background on Tarikoss.

Any suggestions on how to demonstrate the timing without making things obvious or alluding to events that haven't happened yet?

All quoted for truth and emphasis.

The Dictionary of the Khazars is one of my favorite works of fiction. In fact, I'm not sure it even qualifies as "inconclusive." Pavic wraps up most of his points eventually. You just have to look for them.

If you haven't read the Dictionary of the Khazars, go find it now. I'll wait . . .

(In an unrelated matter, where are the tags to insert italics and whatnot on the new fora?)