Steelclaw

I am almost positive this conversation took place at some point over the past two years or so...

Marketing Drone 1: So, did you see the latest numbers from subscriptions?

Marketing Drone 2: I don’t look at anything until at least my 5th cup of coffee. Why? What’d they say?

Marketing Drone 1: New subscribers are fading fast; and some of the old subscriptions are beginning to fall off as well.

Marketing Drone 2: Crud. Well, it was good while it lasted; better submit my resume to the Evil Empire.

Drone 1: Now, now… let’s not be hasty. No need to jump ship quite yet. Anyway, I thought you still had your eye on that one over in Q&A.

Drone 2: You will not refer to the immaculate goddess as ‘that one!’

Drone 1: Yeah… sure… Aaaaanyway… There’s no reason why we can’t keep gainfully employed right here for years to come.

Drone 2: But you just said…

Drone 1: Ah, sit back upon the seat of knowledge Grasshopper, and learn from the Master.

Drone 2: I’m not a grasshopper, I’m a drone. Grasshoppers don’t have drones… at least I don’t think they do… they’re all like independent and non-droney-like.

Drone 1: Focus. Foooocus. Drink your coffee and just listen, capiche?

Drone 2: Sluuuuurp.

Drone 1: Good. Now, we make money off of subscriptions whether they’re new or old. So it doesn’t matter if we have an influx of fresh players or not. We just need to make sure a minimum number of players keep sending their money our way, right?

Drone 2: (Slurp-swallow) Right.

Drone 1: Excellent! So we could try to target new players but that costs a LOT of money in advertising, so we are losing up front with no real guarantee of return. Instead of getting in new players, we should focus on keeping the old ones. It costs less up front and has a better chance of success… provided we target the RIGHT players.

Drone 2: (Adding more sugar to his coffee) Okay, makes sense as far as it goes, but how do we tell which players are the right ones?

Drone 1: Easy, we need the most die-hard, the most easy-to-please, the players who thrive on mindless, repetitive activity and never get bored.

Drone 2: We need drones? Sorry to tell you, but I already get my subscription to the game for free.

Drone 1: No, no, no… We need grinders. We need to come up with a system that naturally attracts grind gamers.

Drone 2: Grinders? Good lord, why?

Drone 1: Because grinders never give up. Something in their mental make up triggers an endorphin surge when they do the same thing… over and over and over again. My cousin is a grinder… he played this one RPG where you could farm one room of monsters in a loop. It was a 10th level part early in the game, but by the time he left it he was 83rd level. He wanted to keep going until he maxed out at 100 but his wife told him she’d break the disk in two if she had to watch him kill the same monsters one more time.

Drone 2: That is seriously twisted. Dude needs to get a life.

Drone 1: No! Dude most certainly does NOT need to get a life… Dude needs to come play OUR game.

Drone 2: Yeah, but other than getting purple recipes or merits, there really aren’t that many grind opportunities in the game.

Drone 1: So we make one! We make some sort of content that will make you able to increase your character’s power but in order to do so you have to get a certain number of invention drops or some such thing.

Drone 2: Make it just for 50th level characters, that way it seems exclusive and will make newer players at least one want to stay with it long enough to get their character to that level and see what all the fuss is about.

Drone 1: Awesome idea!

Drone 2: Yeah, the coffee must finally be kicking in.

Drone 1: You’ll have to grind to get access to the new powers. You’ll have to grind to make them stronger. You’ll have to grind to change them if you decide you want to try a different one of those available.

Drone 2: All this talk of grinding is making me want another cup of coffee. We can come up with missions for them to do so they can earn the items of power.

Drone 1: No… not missions… Trials.

Drone 2: Trials? Why trials? I thought research showed the players don’t like having their options limited to ONLY being on teams. They want a choice of running solo as well.

Drone 1: Don’t you remember one of the cardinal lessons from Business Marketing 101?

Drone 2: I never took Business Marketing 101… I was a theater major.

Drone 1: A theater major? Really? Is that why you and Zwillinger were doing that West Side Story dance fight re-enactment in the break room?

Drone 2: That wasn’t a re-enactment. That’s how theater majors fight. That Prima Donna tried to take the last donut.

Drone 1: I think we’re getting off track here. We don’t want to cater to the solo crowd. One of the things that keeps people coming back to an MMORPG is the feeling of community. They make friends when they team. They feel more like they belong when they team. Solo players are fickle and don’t have that sense of commitment that team players do. You may feel comfortable quitting a game… but you’re a lot less likely to quit a group of people who’ve become friends and companions.

Drone 2: That’s so brilliant it’s almost evil.

Drone 1: That’s marketing.

Drone 2: Okay, so we have a pretty good idea here. How are we going to get the big-wigs to listen to it? We’re only drones after all.

Drone 1: How much extra cash do you have on you?

Drone 2: I dunno, about twenty bucks I guess. Why, are we going to bribe someone?

Drone 1: In a manner of speaking. I have twenty myself. I think that’s enough…

Drone 2: Enough for what? Forty bucks is a rather pitiful bribe.

Drone 1: Enough to take Black Pebble out to lunch. He’ll listen to just about anything if someone else is paying for the grub.

Tips for new players...

* When the Vahzilok squats... he is NOT offering you a piggy back ride.

* You CAN run a 1st level Mastermind in Paragon... just choose a female with the least amount of clothes possible and consider the perv players who follow you around to be your pets.

* Badges = Heroin.

* Six slotting Brawl is like putting a spiked collar on a miniature french poodle.

* It doesn't matter what your archetype is... until you learn what you're doing you're squishy.

* Friends don't let friends do AE farms.

* The voices offering to sell you influence for real money are not real... seek counselling.

* There's this great thing called Incarnate powers. You don't need to worry about getting them right now... you just need to know that's why you're all alone in Atlas.

* Every time you kill steal from a street sweeping player Lord Nemesis plots to kick a puppy.

* Praetoria: Entertaining Bi-Polar players since 2010.

* RELAX: No matter what you do... no matter how you play the game... there's someone out there who will adamantly swear you're doing it the wrong way.

The one thing that sticks out in my mind from when I started playing isn't really all that goofy but I swear I can't go to Kings Row without remembering it.

I was convinced that whatever a contact told you to do you had to go do immediately in order for the game to progress. So, when Azuria told me to go talk to a contact in Kings Row when I hit 5th level... I went immediately.

Once I figured out how exactly to GET to KR, I saw the star in the Nav pointing towards the police station and ran across the street from the train station... jumped the fence... and landed square in the middle of four 7th level Vahzilok.

After a short grisly death scene I seem to remember inventing swear words on the spot.

Slainsteel... for some reason I can't quite define... your name disturbs me... greatly.

Going against the grain and shocking several people who didn't think I was capable of such things... I shall endeavor to offer a few "serious" ideas...

* Rikti Triumphant : The Rikti have won the war. They patrol the streets of Earth searching for pockets of humanity to put through the transformation process. There are some Human Sympathizers among the Rikti who help hide and arm the human resistance. Many humans still undergoing the transformation (ie- the Lost) are also fighting the Rikti Overlords by willingly losing their humanity to become spies among the enemy.

* The Great Love-In : Vanessa DeVore did not find the mask in 2000, but instead in 1965. When the Peaceniks and Hippies became prevalent some three or four years later DeVore found a culture of people perfectly suited for enslavement. She began to flavor her offerings of unrestrained debauchery with promises of world-wide love and peace. Her message caught on like wild-fire and soon an entire generation seemed to be under her control. You couldn't walk down the street of any town in America without seeing at least a few of those masks looking back at you. That generation bred another and her influence began to spread beyond America's borders.

* Legendary Beasts : The powers of this dimension did not come directly from the Well of Furies. The Well did not believe humans capable of properly managing their powers in early times, so instead infused certain animals with power thus creating Pheonix, Sphinx, Unicorns and other powerfully magic creatures. It also created its own beings that were pure magic like the Faeries, Goblins and other humanoid creatures. These creatures had their own secret war between Order and Chaos for eons before disaster struck.

The human named Leonardo DaVinci, who was ever interested in first causes and understanding how things worked, began to study the origins of these magical beings' powers. He built a machine, part magic and part science, that successfully divested a Pheonix of its power and bestowed them upon DaVinci himself. Though DaVinci was wise and knew better than to tamper further with the delicate balance of things, so he decided to destroy the machine.

However, his contemporary, a painter and architect known as Raphael, had been steeped in the ideaology and politics of the aristocracy for years and believed the machine finally offered humanity the chance to rid itself of the disruptive presence of the magical creatures. Raphael arrived with a platoon of armed guards and took the machine by force. DaVinci was a man of learning and peace and did not use his powers over fire to defend himself. He was stabbed through the heart by an over-zealous soldier and burst into flames, becoming a pile of ash.

Raphael took the machine to his own workshop and soon captured a creature known as a Qilin, or Ki-Rin as the japanese called them. As he was absorbing the powers of this creature, DaVinci was being raised by the woman whom had found him, a wee babe crying in the middle of a pile of ashes.

The creatures they absorbed were both immortal and their battle has raged across the centuries. Today there are few, if any, actual Legendary Beasts left. Raphael and DaVinci both have used their respective machines to increase the numbers of their armies. The traits of magic are a genetically recessive trait and pass from parent to child; so their numbers have grown. The world is teetering on the brink of all-out war between the Raphaelists, the Vitruvians and a slowly growing group of unpowered humans who wish to wipe out all the magical creatures; the Puritans.

More...

* Ew Hairball Dimension - Marcus and Stephan, due to typographical error, drink from the Well of the Furries and suddenly everyone in the world is some kind of human-animal hybrid. Mynx is out of the hero racket, but is able to make a name for herself during the change as a Transition Counsellor.

* Limbo Dimension - Everyone is actually undead here, existing in a state of undeath until exorcised. The only exception to this being Warm Widow; whose strange medical condition (heart beating, breathing, generating body temperature) has the morticians of that world flummoxed.

* Last Dimension Ever Made - The Last Dimension ever to be brought into existence by the Great Creator. They led a very happy, varied and prosperous life right up until the other dimensions found out about them. Since it was verifiable that they came last; they were threatened with an infinite number of law suits for Copyright and Intellectual Property infractions. Today every inhabitant of this dimension has the first name of Generic and a number for a last name.

As an aside I once played a Dungeons and Dragons campaign where all the monsters were made out of food. There were Gummy Were-Bears, Dough-plegangers and the like. The boss creature of the whole thing was made entirely of meat sewn together and animated; he had a squid for a head. His name...? The Mind Filet-er.

If I must...

* Fast Food Dimension: Where all the heroes and villains are actually greasy food items. Positron didn't set well at all. Captain Mako came with a side of tartar sauce. As for Synapse... well... I've NEVER had food go through me so fast.

* Reset Button Dimension: Where respecs are free, plentiful and can even change Archetype and powersets. No origin story is safe. Nothing... and I mean NOTHING... is canon... You can keep reusing the same heroes and villains but in completely different, unrelated situations over and over again! Come to think of it... I believe the Marvel Universe is set here.

* Oooops Dimension: "Yeah... We're the Globulinten alien race from Epsilon Red over in the Omega quadrant? Umm... we were travelling through your galaxy about trillion or so years ago and Bob here had to use the can. We landed on your planet and bigfoot Bob stepped on this little fish-thing that was crawling up the beach. So... no humans... you have something to say for yourself, Bob?" Bob: "Yeah... my bad."

* Rikti Dimension: Lost: mutating into monsters. Monsters: pink and short. Human ships: invading sporadically. Invasion correlation: after runs on downed ship in human war zone.

* Steelclaw Dimension: It was a pretty cool place to be... right up until the moment Portal Corps made the first portal... then everyone on the planet moved out. The last pilgrim leaving the world reported their former-leader's last words to be "Was it something I said?"

How to know if you're a real RP'er...

* You not only won't play your character again after they die; you have created a priest character on every server to perform the burial service/eulogy.

* You know the "statistics" of your character's body parts that are normally ALWAYS covered by costume.

* Your spouse has found you standing in the computer room giving a speech to the press while following the Loyalist fame arc in Praetoria.

* When your favorite hero goes rogue you begin getting anxious; when they finally complete the last mission and turn complete villain you burst into tears, scream "I just don't know you anymore!" at the screen and run from the room.

* After a romantic evening spent drinking in Pocket D, flying side-by-side through the Shadow Shard followed by an in-game proposal atop the Atlas Statue where you first met... you get in an argument with your real-life husband about why he can't be more like Captain Stupendulous.

* You spent more time on writing your vows for your in-game wedding than for your real one.

* You begin including the actions of your favorite villain character in your weekly trip to church for confessions.

* Your significant other plays the game too... and you both consider spandex to be a form of lingerie.

* You refuse to put the bib on the baby for feeding until they perform the Cape Mission.

* You have several alts which you RP so deeply you have, for all intents and purposes, Functional Multiple Personality Disorder.

Up for grabs for anyone who wants them... I have NOT checked to see if these have been taken on any servers so good luck.


"I heard the entire Council base was taken out by _______"

* A Mere Infant

* The Runs

* The Barbaric Hamster

* A Clogged Toilet

* A Bad Burrito

* The Health Inspector

* A Friendly Kiss

* A Rabid Chipmunk

* A Loose Speedo

* Nearsightedness

* The Proctologist

* The Blind Dentist

* A Forum Post

Ladies and gentleman, we have a problem. There is a void... an emptiness which has not yet been filled.

Those of you who have watched the UStreams from Paragon Studios know what I'm talking about. The timid and wild Q&A guy who sits behind Zwillinger during the broadcasts. He's part of this community now and yet he does not have a Red Name. We need to resolve this.

Now, I know the names that immediately spring to mind for someone sharing a cubicle with Zwillinger... Poor Ba**ard, Unlucky, Dying Inside... but let's try to be a bit more positive about this!

Since it's a List... I'll start us out:

* The Arbiter Formerly Known as the Arbiter Formerly Unknown.

* Arbiter Assassin's Strike (to keep Z on his toes)

* Operative Superlative

* Arbiter Adequate

* Toxic Inspiration

* Archon Andon Andon

* Split Infinity

* The Freak-taur

* Buckshot Heckion

* Arbiter Embalmed

* or... if you prefer... Arbiter Squat-Boom

* Tipping Mu

* Pink Ink Man

* A Churl Named Tsoo

* Arbiter AFK

* Arbiter Unspiration

* The Anti-Zwillinger

So we have a 12 hour down time tomorrow so they can merge the servers and bring Europe and North America together in gleeful togetherness.

Here are a few announcements we'd probably rather not hear.

* Positron has announced he has to completely re-tool the Incarnate system; but that's okay because all characters over 10th level were accidentally deleted anyway.

* A Developer practical joke on the French server got a little out of hand... until we can resolve the issue, just ignore all the Mimes.

* Follow Up: The trouble shooting team has come up with a work-around... all Mimes are now targetable.

* Follow Up by Arcanaville: After datamining I have determined that the "trapped inside a box" provides the Mimes with 45.32% defense vs all. The "ran into a wall" provides 63.33% defense vs all but not if you are on the same side of the wall as the Mime.

* There has been a language crash so none of the servers are displaying the proper language. Until we are able to resolve this we have provided a handy-dandy translation guide so you can still play despite the language barrier. Click the link for Ig-pay Atin-Lay or-fay Ummies-Day.

* Unfortunately computers are very specific and generally obey the letter of the law rather than the intent. Our instructions to the system were to allow our North American and European customers collective access to the game. We are negotiating with the system to re-admit our Asian, South American, Australlian and African customers at this time.

* Follow Up: We would like to take this opportunity to apologize to deep ice core researcher Doctor Kevin Hannison. In our previous announcement we were unaware that someone in Antarctica was playing our game.

* Follow Up: We have fixed the isolationist issue in the servers by defining the player base as "the planet earth." The problem has been resolved. Thank you for your patience.

* Follow Up: We would like to apologize to our fans on the International Space Station, but we are unable to convince the server AI that the Planet Earth includes objects in orbit. It would have included the moon in that definition and we are not quite ready for that.

* Follow Up: Despite 1,433 conspiracy-theory-scented posts to the contrary, the last announcement was NOT a veiled hint that a Moon Base will be included in the next issue or even ANY future issue. Jeez people.

See.. I wouldn't have gone with a badge as enticement... you only really get the badgers...

If I were in charge of trying to get every possible person on line to jam the server until it screams... hmmm....

1) Quadruple XP, influence, prestige and normal drop chances during the event.

2) 50th level characters will have incarnate salvage drop about the same rate as uncommon salvage for lower level characters.

People just might call in sick to work for this kind of incentive.

I love it!

The only thing similar to this I ever considered was making a hero character named Parking Meter so that during a Safeguard you'd get something like this.

Hellion Buckshot has defeated Parking Meter.
Parking Meter: No! My Brother! Prepare to be avenged!
Parking Meter has defeated Hellion Buckshot.

I also considered creating a character named Mah Authoritah so I could one day change all his powers around and then claim in Broadcast:

"I have respec'd Mah Authoritah!"

Zwillinger asked me to provide a weekly Top Ten list to read during the broadcasts...


Ummm... not sure that sort of thing should be preserved for posterity. I think it might corrode the servers.

On the other hand, since the rootword of posterity seems to be posterior... that might be appropriate after all.

Actually I would love to read a Praetorian version of the story too.

Just her efforts to get up to the orbiting space station to see Anti-Matter in the first place would be interesting.

I think it's multiple issues, actually.

The player population stays pretty static. No huge increases but no major losses either.

The popular concept for "improvement" is "expansion" which gave us City of Villains, Praetoria and a plethora of new zones since the game first came out. Indeed, the last few Issues have been new Trials and tasks and the next one has been announced to have a new zone as it's focal point.

The problem is that if you keep increasing the number of things players can do and the number of places they can be, then the population will automatically begin to seem less because that same number of players is stretched thinner and thinner.

Then you run into the problem of "ooh SHINY!" where you get a glut of people all trying the newest content before they get bored with it and begin looking for something else to play with.

Since the new shinies in question are pretty much all concentrated in 50th level character range, the early level stuff has become a ghost town. When the Devs were turning out new power sets and archetypes it was the exact opposite; there were hundreds of first level Demon Summoners and Dual Pistols characters looking for teams.

I am not against the Weekly Strike Forces for one reason; they encourage 50th level characters to organize or join TF teams. I don't have a 50(yet) but I've run my existing characters through more TFs over the past few weeks than my entire game time prior to that. I've been having pretty good luck with it so far, even on the lower population servers.

In another thread (which shall remain nameless) Dark_Respite suggested that Sister Psyche, upon finding herself in mortal peril, hitched a psychic ride on her husband for a while. It got me to thinking what sort of mental conversations might arise if ol' SP were to hitch on to various people about the game...

The initial name is the person she's hitched a ride with... the quote after it is from Sister Psyche herself.

* Manticore: "Hun... I was just wandering around in your memories and found this door... it's locked, bolted, welded, bricked up and has a small army of guards surrounding it... is there something you're not telling me?"

* Clockwork King: "Ugh... when you built this thing... urp... couldn't you have... oh lord... couldn't you have secured the danged brain somehow... ulp... all this bobbing and swaying... oof... is making me seasick!"

* Lord Nemesis: "Holy crap... It'd take me years.. no decades... to review and unravel all these plots... any chance you have a Cliff Notes version?"

* Captain Castillo: "Shut up... shut up... shut up... Shut Up... SHUT UP!!"

* Ghost Widow: "Wow... you know... I hadn't thought about it... but I guess I shouldn't be surprised you'd really be into Jim Morrison... what do you mean he comes over on Thursdays?"

* Statesman: "Nope, no personality here... maybe over in this corner... huh... not there either... for the love of... there's gotta be some in here somewhere..."

* Synapse: "Okay, see... that one's going to cost you 1,000 brain cells.. yeah, doesn't feel that good does it? Are you getting the point yet? Apparently not... let's double it then... I told you, bud, fellow hero or not you keep sneaking into my memories of me in the shower or with Manticore and it'll cost ya..."

* Swan: "You know the really ironic part of all this? This little piggy back ride fulfills one of my husband's fantasies... well... the letter of fantasy if not the spirit..."

* Captain Mako: "It's sitting right there! Right on top of the napkin! Eugh! Stop that! Just pick up the fork and knife... and for goodness sake let it die before you start... oh, that's disgusting!"

* Silver Mantis: "You know, I hate to admit it, but you're right... this IS kind of exciting... ooh... go pick a fight with him... the 50th level Tanker with the huge hammer..."

* Fusionette: "Ack! No! Stop that... just follow the hero who's rescuing you! AAAUUGHH! Darn it all, I just hooked a ride with you... I'm not ready to jump again so ... crud."

* Mirror Spirit: "Well... Well... this... this... is... is... interesting... interesting..."

* Azuria: "They're on the counter in the kitchen. No, really... they're on the counter... stop looking on your bedside table.. they're on the kitchen counter... no... no not the coffee table... counter... kitchen... read my thoughts... NO, I don't think you need to get a hero to help retrieve them!"

* Dark_Respite: "Hey... she has videos she hasn't published? Huh... she won't mind if I take a peek... what the heck? 'Manticore and Sister Psyche: The Honeymoon'?! Okay, that's it.... time for Excedrin Headache 2000!"

* Emperor Cole: "It's not all about YOU, you know... no really... it isn't... I don't care what your friends say... it's NOT all about you... oh for the love of... can I get put back in Castillo's head please?"

* Samuel Towe: "Listen I... no I'm not interrupting you... I just wanted to... fine... (time passes)... are you done? No... I'm not interrupting you... I wanted to agree with you... oh for... do you have to give a ten paragraph soliloquy EVERY time you have a point to make? I only said it looked like rain!!"

* Zwillinger: "Yeah, I gotta agree with you on that one... publically acknowledging Steelclaw in any way really was a bad idea."

* Chase Arcanum: "My goodness... okay... I'm just going to lock a few of these doors here until I can vacate the premesis... thank goodness I can memory purge myself... no no.. I don't need any help... you just sit there in the bad boy chair until I'm done..."

* Golden Girl: "Yes, I do see how your hair moves when you turn your head quickly... what's your point?"

* Steelclaw: "My favorite movie is Pretty Woman, Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood, Steel Magnolias... argh... no... only one favorite... try again... my favorite ice cream is Rocky Road, Caramel Sutra, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough... DANG IT! FINE! My name begins with the letter S... rrrrrrgghhh... I... S... you twit! Now you've got ME doing it!"