ScottyB

All I can think of now is Mender Silos shouting, "Scaring the little girl!?"

"I have an important temporal event to Mend yesterday morning at 9 o'clock! And I FORBID YOU to fly us into some whistle-stop pocket dimension! You hear me!?"

"Would you please be quiet? You're scaring Flower Knight."

Your first contact in the tutorial is Officer Flint, who you have to talk to. The first thing he says to you is: Also, the Contaminated as per their official writeup: And the first thing in the description for all of the Contaminated if you want to examine them: They're not exactly innocents, and hardly defenseless seeing as plenty of them have guns and knives (probably illegal, unregistered firearms, to boot!) Don't do drugs! Sure, they'll make your eyes glow and you can quote Big Trouble In Little China, but some hero will beat you up.

Anyways, the Outbreak tutorial is being replaced, so I don't know what the point of justifying it was.

I don't think that's exactly fair.

What difference does it make if the Longbow are expecting BAB the Phalanx Member or BAB the Respected Hero? He's Back Alley Brawler. His purpose in the story is to be a hero with a reputation visiting the Isles and getting an Arachnos welcome for his trouble. The purpose of the mission is, "When heroes come here, YOU happen."

I guess I kind of look at mission arcs like episodes, and the best episodes in a series are often also ones that stand on their own - you can show them to someone who knows nothing of the lore, and they'll still enjoy it for its own merits. If you catch glimpses of content in this manner, how do you know if something is a continuity error or if you missed a few episodes that changed something? If a story is good, it explains what's necessary for its own self, so you know what everyone's role is for this story, regardless of what you missed or what the writers forgot.

I'm not a button masher. I just think mood and overall message are more important than details. I say, don't worry about it - but, because a good story is good in spite of inaccuracies. Not because grinding levels is "where it's really at."

Not to start on a critical note but...

*points mitten-hand at the fences*

Mistake? Sounds like your standard fare when it comes to evil mirror universes. (Then again, what makes it squicky might go over the heads of those who don't know the family tree of the characters they're mirrors of.)

I am such a simpleton in Anti-Matter's presence that I laughed at that.

(Truth: I laughed. Out loud. I'm sure it's not exactly "new material" but I hadn't heard that one before... I'm not big on cooking jokes.)

The Longbow in the base talk about being excited to meet BAB, so he must be the visiting Phalanx member, right? There's no mention of any other signature characters in the arc.

Then again, the souvenir for the arc is Back Alley Brawler's mask. I see shades. But I don't see a mask as part of his costume... unless the final mission has him in an alternate costume.

Well. You could make a habit of crafting the hammer temp power.

They gave a specific time for it to start. (6PM for me in Chicago, I think.)

But I might as well try. Doesn't take very long to load, I've got the beta client on my SSD.

Not everything will be accountwide. The market overview page explicitly mentions that dual/team inspirations are character-specific. The enhancement tray expansions and purchased costume slots are account-wide.

Powers like ninja run are currently account-wide and so I expect they'd continue to work that way. The teaser image of the store has a costume item on it, and the description mentions it unlocks for all characters. The dual inspiration in the picture, however, doesn't mention whether or not it's for one character (we know from the detailed overview that's how it'll be, though). When in doubt, it'd be better to assume it's character-specific and ask before buying. Hopefully some kind of legend will be available to quickly, visually tell account-wide and character-specific items apart.

We've seen no indication that it's marketing/legal that has the issue; Zwill said "Customer Service nightmares", with Customer Service capitalized like the department that handles missing account items. When certificates/vouchers went live, global services had to be taken down for emergency maintenance later that day, so I'd be more inclined to believe they want to get the core of Freedom up first before worrying about additional parts. (I've been accused of being an optimist, though.)

But we've just got that one line on the issue, so we don't know one way or the other. I'm all for trying to get them to discuss it a bit more. Then we can target our expositions on the real issues against it.

Customer Service probably means the people who have to take care of booster codes not being applied to accounts and emails with attachments being lost. They probably don't want to have too much going on at once. First let them make sure the store is working properly for primary customers. Then worry about adding functionality that involves multiple accounts.

It's a shame though - I'd love to run at least one costume contest where the prize is a store gift. I'm too impatient to marketeer or grind alignment merits to award PvP IOs, but spending $10 to reward a fellow player's creativity is more appealing to me (and heck: cheaper) than buying someone a drink.

Doctor_Gemini already addressed that Zwill was responding to two topics, and topic #2 was more character slots which Positron apparently liked.

It adds an element of planning to your incarnate build. When you choose a component you have that component, which can only be used in certain recipes. You can't just build up a reserve of Incarnate Components and then spend your way through a random tree. You have to know which abilities you want, which determines which components you choose. This becomes more pressing when it comes to rare and very rare components: they're either created from a large reserve of Empyrean Merits, or are a rare reward. Your selection becomes a commitment with consequences.

Whether or not build-planning and inventory-preparation is something one finds fun varies from person to person, though. It's kind of old-school. (Anyone remember when the grand-daddy of RPGs required specific components for each and every spell?)

Empyrean Merits are heavily time-gated and can buy rare and very rare components outright, as well as the Ascension Radiance armor, purple and PvP IOs, and can be turned into thread vouchers with higher value than A-merits.

Admittedly, Astral Merits do seem more superfluous. Everything in the Astral store could be bought with threads (Astral price multiplied by 4). Alternatively, every thread-based component could be bought with Astral Merits (thread price divided by 4 - and they're all priced at multiples of 4 already!) However, with no way to turn threads into Astrals, threads are only good for the crafting aspect of the Incarnate system and on their own are awarded randomly. Astrals are awarded consistently for specific actions during a trial and have a store. Perhaps the next set of slots will have a new basic component (let's just call them Incarnate Sparks to have something to visualize) but the trials awarding sparks will still award Astral and Empyrean Merits, too. In that case, Astrals would be more than just the bundles of threads they are now. Playing the old trials would slowly earn a still-useful currency; maybe you want to play something else for a change of pace, or help out a group that's still working on the first 5 slots. Being able to earn Astral Merits would enable players to play old content without feeling like they're not earning anything useful. Hopefully that's the reason for doing it that way! Otherwise there's not much reason to have both threads and Astrals.

I would have thought Arbiters would be more clever, like bringing their grandparents to the present and "sending" them to "brilliant" doctor via the medical transporter?

"Gramps, I thought I killed you! Why do you look so young? Did I always have tentacles..?"

That's because of: [link] I'd love to see a villain take over a hospital and use the hospital beds to mutate wounded heroes. (And I'm surprised it's never been an issue on the Rogue Isles.)