Remidi

This game has truly amazing variety and flexibility. No character is locked into one role or function. For example, my main is an empathy/energy blast defender. See that energy blast part? It means my emp doesn't have to stand around waiting for someone to buff or heal. I've spent a lot of solo time on her, and it's crazy fun to send mobs flying with her blasts. I don't think I could stand playing one of those MMOs where you have to play "I am an X and nothing else" characters.

And welcome to the game! Once you're hooked, you'll never look back.

Here's my wild speculation - when we see the destroyed Ouroboros, it has a lot of tentacles surrounding it, but on Praetoria we only see one. So. The Incarnate Hamidon shows the Hamidons of other dimensions how to evolve, and they all join together to attack the menders so they can rule all of time and space.

You guys aren't alone. I've had tons of crashes since I19, but my other games seem to be fine. Very mystifying.

People not cleaning up their spawns used to really bother me. But now it seems they despawn so quick that it's not a big deal. And they're not really any different from ordinary street mobs, except easier to spot. Yeah, I've rounded a corner and run into them, but I've done the same thing with pretty much all the other mob types. How is smacking into a group of snow beasts because I wasn't being careful enough any different than smacking into a group of trolls or hellions?

And like others have pointed out, I've had purples leap out into my face. I'm not going to stand there and have one of my squishies pounded into the ground by snowies conning purple. He who fights and runs away and all that.

The main reason I stopped complaining, though, was the time one of my alts was flying all over a zone I'd never hunted in before getting more and more frustrated because I couldn't find any presents. Just as I was about to run off to consult the wiki and vidiots, someone started leaving their spawns. This let me see where the spawn sites were, and before long I was clicking away on glowies.

My main's name is just a stylized version of the word 'remedy', and is pronounced the same.

I loved it. I could so see my husband doing something like this (if there had been MMOs 24 years ago). Congrats to the happy couple!

The only alt I've been concerned with pulling out IOs is my main, an emp/energy. That is the only toon that I have two builds on. One was a solo build with the fitness pool, and the other a team build with heavy slotting in the ally buffs and no fitness pool. With fitness being inherent, I have worked out a build that does what I want for both team and solo. But that means I have to try to remove IOs from one build to make room for different sets, and pop them out of the other to combine what I have. It's some interesting juggling.

I'm only going to need both respecs on one alt. My emp/energy main has two builds - one for solo play and one for teams. Since one build included the Fitness pool (already respeced out in preparation), I'll be able to combine the two builds. So one respec will be to get all the powers and slots arranged in one build, and the second to pop out some of the best enhancements from the other.

I suppose my answer is 'it depends'.

If I'm playing something like Left For Dead, I don't need a deep inner meaning for why the other characters are shooting zombies. But in a game where I'm creating a character, i.e. a fictional person, then I want the other characters in the game to be people, too.

To clarify, if something is well-written, you get the feeling that the characters you encounter existed before you met them, and will go on with their lives after you move on. I don't need to know every single solitary thing about them, but they need to feel *real* So the level of detail that I need is whatever is required to create that feeling of realism.

As someone recently invited not to return to their place of employment, all my best wishes to the people laid off. And I'll miss BaB so much. I loved reading his posts, and always felt that he really cared about the fanbase. The game has truly suffered a loss.

I'm sorry for everyone who was laid off, and I really hate to see BaB go. He was one of the nicest, most responsive devs here. He'll be missed.

The one I'm really waiting for is customizing epic pool powers. I have a character that has a dark theme, but the epic powers that suit her best are bright sparkly white. It looks... very odd when she turns on her res aura.

I always stick out a bad team until the end of a mission. I'm usually pretty tolerant, and don't expect everyone to be an expert player or everything to go smoothly. So I usually only bail on a team if A- I really do need to go for some RL reason, or B- someone is being a royal jerk and it's getting on my nerves.

And I've never bailed on a TF, but once I did accidentally-on purpose DC during one. For some odd reason, since it had never happened before and hasn't since, every time the ff controller bubbled my character, it went into freeze frame mode. It was worse than a Rikti raid on Talos Hill on my old computer. I asked him politely not to bubble me and why, but he kept doing it anyway. When I asked the team leader to say something, she said, "He can't be expected to keep track of one person. And some of his bubbles cover the group." I said I knew that, and had asked him to warn me when he was going to fire one. Instead, he ran up to stand beside me when he did. If he hadn't had a short attention span, I never would have been able to keep up with the group at all.

Now, all that would have been annoying enough, but I was playing one of my empaths, and the same team leader who knew I was stuck in lala land most of the time started complaining that I wasn't keeping up with buffs and heals. No kidding. Luckily, I had an SG mate on the team, and we were on AIM at the same time. After making sure she was loaded up on green inspirations, I told her to let me know when everything went all to heck. When she gave the word, I chirped, "Sorry, guys. I'm going to try a restart and see if it fixes it." I got back to the TF to find it standing around waiting for most of them to come back from the hospital. Including my friend, but she said the screams when I left made it worth it. And luckily, it did fix the problem so I could play normally.

The very first thing I did was change all my electric alts to have their powers look like real lightning - white with the palest yellow for the accent color. I never liked the weird colored electric powers. All my other changes were mostly for fun rather than fitting a theme.

I'm enjoying Praetoria very much, because it's interesting to have missions and arcs that really make me think.

I do disagree with some things that have been said about the Wardens. I don't think their opposition to the Crusaders' extremism is just 'concern over PR'. I think it's just a recognition that for a revolution to truly succeed, you have to win the hearts and minds of the populace. And you simply can't do that by presenting the argument as "Our mass murderers are better than their mass murderers."

And did anyone besides me fall in love with Tunnel Rat? Obviously scared out of her wits by what she's doing, but still doing what she feels is the right thing. When we were given the mission to rescue her, I loaded up on red inspirations, made sure all my enhancements were maxed out, and went on a rampage of destruction.

I always find it amusing when people say that nobody would join an old game like CoH. Two weeks before GR came out, a coworker asked me a bunch of questions about CoH. He had tried several MMOs, and wanted to find one he could play with his grandson without having to swear a blood oath to spend every waking moment raiding with some guild just to be able to accomplish anything. He wanted something casual-friendly.

I gave him a trial referral, and after a few day's play he signed up for two accounts - one for him, and one for his wife who saw it and wanted in on the fun. His son got an account for his grandson. So that's three new accounts on an 'old dying game'.

It's interesting that so many people are saying they'll take more leadership, when I'll be taking less. Right now my emp/energy has two builds, solo and team. The solo build has the fitness pool, because I find I burn through end much faster when I'm fighting, and the other doesn't. By cutting the fitness pool, I found that the combined powers of the two builds is only one power too many. After going over the benefits of IO sets, etc., I decided to eliminate Assault. I thought about cutting Vengeance, but Assault doesn't take any sets, and I can put a LotG recharge in Vengeance.

And people wonder why I usually play with the sound off.

What I really want is a market interface for SG/VG bases so I can escape all the yahoos who think I need to have a ton of shields on me while I'm buying and selling. I'd have my peace and quiet without inconveniencing people who don't mind inconveniencing others.