Steelclaw

In appreciation for everyone who actually went to the store and BOUGHT the album rather than download a PIRATED COPY from the internet... I have included a Bonus Track with the CD release!

(Of course, I know one of you will just upload it to the internet and then it too will be pirated... but hey... whatchagonnado?)

Bonus Track: DEVIL WENT DOWN TO PARAGON

http://www.singsnap.com/snap/r/ad8309b4e

(As a side note: This one was the hardest one to record yet since it goes back and forth from talking to singing and there isn't much background music to help guide during some parts. So, once I FINALLY got all the way through it without having to start over I figured the mistakes were minor enough to just let slide. Any-who... hope you enjoy!)

Great... now we have to set up a government and leadership.

Hmmm... I vote for the first ever Jester-ocracy.... just sayin'...

Ouroboros has been bought out by Starbucks. When this becomes public your Ouro portal will present you with a perky barista who will sell you a special inspiration that temporarily boosts your endurance recovery AND the recharge times of your powers.

The Dev team will use this opportunity to lay another easter egg as the NPC sales people with the inspirations will strongly resemble certain ladies from Questionable Content.

These are my favorite of my efforts:

Assisted Afterlife (dual blades/willpower brute)

Emilio Sandiego was only 8 years old when his grandfather asked him to kill him. The old man was in the final, agonizing stages of a terminal illness. He was bedridden and reliant upon life support to keep him breathing. He had begged his son to pull the plug but Emilio's father had refused and argued with the doctors to try stronger pain medication. When his grandfather asked him to set him free, Emilio listened, hearing the beloved old man's desperation and desire to be released from the pain of life. Emilio agreed then watched in fascination as the doctors and nurses scurried like ants to reverse what he had done. But all in vain; death had been triumphant and his grandfather's expression was one of peace. From that moment on Emilio found his life's work; to free as many as he could from the pain of life... to assist them as he had his grandfather.

Surgeon's Canvas (martial arts/regen stalker)

Had she once had a name? She assumed she had, though she could no longer remember it. That had been before the doctor. That had been before her... changes. She did not know if her skin had always been so albino pale and surely she had not always had so many teeth or such a long jaw. Her blood was yellow and that couldn't be right. Then there was the matter of her lower body; where her thick white skin only appeared in patches showing the dark red meat of the muscle beneath to be seen. As though she weren't quite... finished yet. She didn't look like the other humans she saw, though she was assured she had been born one. But the doctor told her she was beautiful; that she was his living work of art.

Sphere Factor (force field/energy defender)

Jimmy Edwards was a life-long hero fanatic. He obsessed over every little thing having to do with super heroes, from their powers to success rate versus bad guys and whatever he could find out about their personal lives as well. The more outrageous the costume, the more flamboyant their style, the more he loved them. He amused all his friends with his antics as he spouted cliched hero quips in a voice that sounded straight out of a 40's super hero serial reel. As in most things, Jimmy was a late bloomer. When his mutant powers finally manifested themselves at the age of 17, Jimmy was completely ecstatic. He was not put out in the least bit that his force field powers were mostly defensive in nature. He would finally be able to work with the heroes he had always read about. That is, if they could tolerate his fan-boy nature.

Shackled Eternity (dark/dark stalker)

Natalia Maravena was born in the poor sections of Moscow in the early 1800's. Forced to watch her mother starve herself so the children could eat; Natalia grew terrified that such was her destiny as well. One day, while begging for coins on the street, hunger gnawing at her belly, Natalia was approached by an old gnarled woman. The woman introduced herself as Baba and lured the young girl back to her hut. The hut was a wondrous magical thing that danced and ran on huge bird-like legs. Baba Yaga asked Natalia what was her fondest wish to which the child immediately replied that she wanted to be rich, beautiful and never hungry. The Russian witch put the girl in contact with demons who sealed the pact with blood. The remainder of Natalia's mortal days were spent in luxury and debauchery as she, through a series of luck and well placed marriages grew phenomenally wealthy. However, when she died her soul became Hell's plaything.

Psychaotic (mind/psychic dominator)

Angela Manderlake was born gifted with powerful psychic abilities. In most cases this would have resulted in her family sending her to a special school to learn to control them, but they were devoutly religious and believed ardently that gifts from the Most Holy should not be touched by man. So she grew up knowing the worst of human thought. She watched her own family, heard their mouths denounce others as being unholy and impure, condemning them for their sin. She knew their thoughts and the hypocrisy of their ridicule of others. She felt little but disdain for most members of her family except for her mother, whom she loved beyond all else. But even her beloved mother was subject to this disease of contradiction. So, Angela decided to "fix" her. She forced her mother's thoughts onto the paths of righteousness turning her inadvertantly into a lobotomized zombie. That had been when Angela was eight years old. Things have not improved since that time.

Arctic Armageddon (cold/cold corruptor)

Danielle Williams' mutant powers first manifested themselves at birth; or during birth to be more accurate. As her mother's contractions hit they immediately numbed then frost began to gather upon the curved peak of her stomach. Her mother's death profoundly affected Dani's father, who never forgave his daughter for the death of his wife. She would never know which father he would be next; cruel and abusive, cold and distant or those rare occasions when he would shower her with affection. One time he went too far and Dani ended up in the hospital at the age of fifteen. Two days after her return home they found her father dead in their apartment. His eyes had been frozen solid and the words "Snow Blind" carved into his forehead.

Champion: All characters are from a book I once wrote (and never published) and all are heroes.

Freedom: All villain characters. All are members of a sicillian mob family known as La Vedova Di Mafia (the Widow's Mafia). La Bella Mafia is their leader.

Guardian: All Heroes. Every character is a member of a special division of the Paragon Police Department known as Iron Corps. The initial costume slot of every character is "in uniform." Later slots are for street clothes.

Infinity: Villains. The two oldest characters are Lord Gravenheart and Blood Priestess. They are both black magic (necromancy and conjuration respectively) practitioners. All others on this server are golems and summoned/enslaved demons who serve the first two.

Justice: Heroes. All characters are followers/clerics of a pantheon of forgotten gods called the Bellagothians (also from my book.)

Liberty: Villains. Mercenary group out for money and more money.

Pinnacle: Heroes. All-Female supergroup known as the Valkyrie Vanguard. Led by Mistress Monolith, an orphan mutant who was raised in a foster program specifically created for super-powered children. Now she is all grown up and helping other girls with similar situations.

Protector: Heroes. Ultimate Technology is a group of scientists and technologists who use their skills to fight crime... at least most of them... some just use villains as handy guinea pigs to test their theories on.

Triumph: Villains. The Nakatori Yakuza Clan. The Clan is currently at a point of stasis as the two sisters who lead it fight over whether to cling to the old ways (magic and honor) or change to modern techniques (science and enforced loyalty through drug addiction).

Victory: Heroes. RP Reality: A group of heroes gathered together by a mysterious being known only as The Guide. They do not know The Guide's true purpose, as he only appears to them in dreams and speaks only obliquely about his plans. Actual Reality: My old AD&D characters given a CoH facelift.

Virtue: Villains. Yeah, these are the bad guys from that book I wrote. They basically exist to destroy all the heroes on the Champion server. Which really sucks for them since I don't think cross-server, same account PvP is in the works any time soon.

Steelclaw Studios is proud (actually they were forced to do this since I'm the president and owner) to present Steelclaw's first ever parody album...

The Jester's Genesis

This is the project I've been hinting (if something so blatant as posting it in my signature can be refered to as a "hint") at for the last few months. The links below lead to five different songs I've massacred... er... parodied.

Before you listen a few brief notes: First, I am not a singer... I am an idiot... er... that is... I'm an entertainer. I don't claim to have a good voice, but I do have a half-decent character voice. So don't go into this expecting golden tones... more like brass... DENTED brass.

Also, the microphone I used for this little effort is the "phone head-set microphone" type. This means it picked up every breath, hiccup and .. yes.. mistake I made. I apologize for this. If people like this enough to warrant making a second album then I'll try to find a better mike.

I used SingSnap.com for karaoke songs. Since I could not afford to pay for a membership at this time ($66 for six months), I did not get access to their full song list. So, what you see below is what they offered free. I have a huge list of songs I want to make but won't be able to until I have the GOLD membership.

First Track: Soul Trapped Gem

This was the first effort I made and, quite frankly, the worst. Or, at least, the one that lacks any real personality. Still, it's only my first album so I figured I could include it as the dudd.

http://www.singsnap.com/snap/r/c1ecbd32

Second Track: Alt-O-Holic Rhapsody

I loved writing this one and was looking forward to recording it... then I discovered it was WAY out of my octave comfort zone. I re-recorded with more of a character voice than a singing voice and this is what came out.

http://www.singsnap.com/snap/r/ac96c94ee

Third Track: Day Job Recruiter

The main problem I had with this one was the darned Karaoke version had back ground singers singing the chorus. Please try to ignore them as I didn't have the tech (or know-how) to remove them from the final version.

http://www.singsnap.com/snap/r/ad8e4c64e

Fourth Track: Me Love Be a Troll

Same problem here as with Day Job Recruiter, the darned back-ground singers. Hope they didn't interfere too much. I had a lot of fun singing this one because it was ALL character voice.

http://www.singsnap.com/snap/r/aa76d680e

Final Track: What a Wonderful World as sung by Westin Phipps

Yes, that's right, this is how I imagine Westin Phipps would sing the famous Louis Armstrong song. Needless to say this one is also done "in character."

http://www.singsnap.com/snap/r/b6bd8172e

Well, I hope you all enjoyed them. If response is positive I would love to come out with future albums. If no one seems interested or I get too many complaints of my voice destroying computer speakers, causing cats to yowl in pain, or weakening the foundations of homes, then I will quietly quit my parody career and go back to list-making.

In any case, welcome to the album release party. Enjoy the complimentary cookies and please feel free to participate in the Nude Hamidon Wrestling going on in the back room.

You people are missing the point entirely.

ANY AT and powerset combination can defeat Superman in City of Heroes.

A Defender who only took the mandatory initial secondary power and never slotted it beyond one and then only for Endurance Reduction could take him.

It's easy:

1) See Superman.

2) Send Petition to GM.

3) Superman is Generic'd.

4) Eat delicious celebratory cookie.

1. Are you male or female?

(checks) Male... no wait... yes, definitely male

2. What ATs do you mostly play, and for what reason(s)?

All ATs. My tournament rules more or less require it. I love challenging myself and playing every AT while rating said performance is one way to do that.

3. Redside, blueside, purpleside, or any combination of the above?

Both, evenly spread.

4. What are your favorite story arcs?

Strangely enough, the Billie Heck mafia arc is one of my favorites, although I almost NEVER imagine the story line in my head the way it actually goes. In my head my characters are taking out the family leaders to advance their own agendas.

Hero side my favorite is likely the entire Faultline (all four contacts) arcs. Mostly because I get a kick out of fighting Lost and Arachnos. That and the Sky Raiders boss is a kick, not to mention Arbiter Elvis.

5. What makes you like this game?

Nothing MAKES me like this game. It's not like Posi is standing behind me with a gun. (checks just to make sure) Nah, I like this game because I have always geeked out on superheroes and this is the perfect place to express that.

6. What other games do you play?

There are other games?

7. How long have you been playing?

Playing with what? Oh! Er, sorry, mind wandered a bit. I've been playing for around 3 years now.

8. How many alts do you have, what is the average level range, and how many are level 50?

Not the question to ask me since I delete and re-create so often. As of right now I have 11 characters between 15th and 23rd level. No 50s... but thanks for rubbing that in.

9. Do you bother with softcaps, set bonuses, and all that numerical stuff? What difficulty settings to you normally use?

Oh yes... I bother with numbers... lots and lots of numbers. Enough to fill about a bajillion spreadsheets.

Difficulty settings are set on a character by character basis. For my stronger characters it starts at 2 man team with bosses at 12th level and adds challenges as the character gets more powerful.

Funniest loading screen tips I've never seen...

* Everything is a Developer's plot.

* For a good time call 1-800-War-Wich.

* Did you know violating copyright laws by making a tribute character can get you a free costume/name change?

* Emperor Cole is leader of the Praetorian dimension. He maintains his rule by shipping all super-powered beings off-world when they reach level 20.

* Want to create a tank-mage? Create a Tank and team with a Blaster.

* Mentioning WoW in chat is against ToS.

* Do not stare directly at Blue Steel. You have been warned.

* Architect Entertainment: You can't do that.... yet. Unless you want to upload pron into your mission... if that's the case you'll be waiting a LONG time for that Yet to come around.

* Welcome to Paragon City where it is perfectly acceptable to use assault rifles, fire, pistols, bladed weapons and brute force to punish such crimes as loitering and jay walking.

* No, Ultra Mode graphics does NOT include "jiggle" physics. Stop asking.

* In Mayhem Missions practically everything you can see is targetable. Take THAT you tab-targeting ba***rds!

You may need professional help if...

* You consider the total NPC villain population of any given Hazard Zone and your first thought is "Well, I've got 'em outnumbered..."

* For you, a 404: File Not Found error means you have 404 characters and no idea which account/server the one you want to play is on.

* You can't watch television, listen to the radio, or even look outside without getting an idea for a new character.

* Icon has a life insurance policy on you since your death would lead to a significant loss of income for them.

* You have several emails from NCSoft Support wanting to know if you actually meant to have that many accounts.

* You walk into your living room to find several people there for an intervention; and two of them are from the Dev Team.

* You once tried to write a novel but chapter one introduced more new characters than the whole of War and Peace.

* You can't remember making the skeleton covered in cobwebs and moldering clothes and realize only then just how long it's been since you last played him.

* One server is filled with nothing but first level characters because the costume creator kept giving you ideas for the NEXT new character while still creating the current one.

* For some reason being around real people suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder makes you feel right at home.

* The Moderators officially changed your Forum Name to Sybil.

* You single-handedly inspired the marketting departments "Buy 3 Accounts Get One Free!" promotion.

* Some people could Dual Box a character from each of their accounts on one computer... Not even a Cray Computer could accomplish that for you.

* You bought 14 computers and put them all in your office so you could flood costume contests.

* None of your characters are high enough level to use Fly and only half of them could manage hover.

* For you, End Game Content is when your bank account finally bottoms out from all the monthly CoH charges.

* In honor of your efforts the Devs create a new city zone populated entirely with nothing but your characters... this is announced as "Issue 33: City of Bob"

* You make tribute characters of all your family and friends... and see the tributes more often than the real people.

* Marvel and DC sue you to stop making characters since you're using up all the good ideas.

* You meet a real person on a blind date, sniff and say "I could make better."

* You like those speed dating things... since 5 minutes is about as much time as you can dedicate to one person anyway.

Zombie Apocalypse MMO with real-time infestation/spread of disease.

Make it so.

You will need one deck of cards with Jokers removed.

Your contact has given you a mission... one of those that makes your fingers start to itch to write a rant post in the forums. Defeat all enemies, click 5 glowies and lead the hostage to the door. Oh, and did I mention that it's timed?

Yeah, one of THOSE missions.

You have 3 rounds to complete each of these objectives.

Game Play:

Cards are played to the four Foundation piles according to suit.

Clubs are the minions and Lt spawns on the map. Defeating them will satisfy the Defeat All portion of your mission objectives. Pairs totalling 13 can be moved to the foundation. That is 8 & 5, Ace(1) and Queen(12), Jack(11) and Deuce(2), etc. The King of Clubs is equal to 13 all on its own so it can go to the clubs foundation stack as soon as it appears. (Likely the king is that minion who wandered away from their spawn far enough for you to gank him without anyone else noticing.)

Diamonds are the glowies. You only need to find 5 of them: the 10, J, Q, K and Ace. However, you can not move any other diamonds to the foundation until ALL FIVE glowies are found. Once all glowies are in the foundation, the remaining diamonds may be placed in it as they appear.

Spades indicate the mission Boss. The Boss must be battled from max hit points down to defeat. In other words, spades must go to the foundation Ace first then in descending order (K,Q,J,10, etc) down to the 2. Once the deuce has been played to the spade foundation the Boss is defeated.

Hearts symbolize the hostage and their progress from the rescue point back to the door. They are played to the foundation from Ace to deuce in descending order. HOWEVER, the hostage is under the protection of the mission Boss. NO HEART may be played to the foundation until the Boss is defeated. In other words, the Heart Foundation may not be started until the Spades pile is complete.

The game is played in three rounds (symbolizing the mission timer). The first round has five Tableau piles. Gameplay starts by dealing five cards face up to the tableau.

Once cards are dealt to the Tableau they can only be moved from their pile in two cases:

1) The card can be played to the appropriate suit Foundation stack in the manner described above or...

2) If a Tableau stack has been emptied completely due to play to the Foundation, the top card of another tableau pile may be moved to fill it.

Cards are turned over one at a time from the stock pile and played to either the Foundation or the Tableau. Once all cards have been played from the stock pile collect up all the Tableau cards and shuffle them, start the next round. First round has five tableau piles, 2nd round has four while the 3rd round has only three tableau stacks.

If by the end of the third round you have not been able to place all cards in their appropriate foundation, mission Fails! No experience bonus, no inf bonus, you don't even get a copy of our home game.

All cards into the Foundation on the first round: Card Shark badge, purple recipe drop, 24 reward merits, experience bonus +25%, influence bonus +50%

All cards to the Foundation on the 2nd round: Solitaire Standing badge, yellow set recipe drop, 10 reward merits, normal experience, normal influence reward.

All cards to the Foundation during the 3rd round: Also Participated badge, Interrupt Time recipe drop, 0 reward merits, half normal experience, half normal influence.

Strategies:

* Clubs are going to be your worst nightmare. You need to spread them around to keep your options open for matches. Do not keep these all to one pile.

* Unless you're missing cards from your deck (you can decide for yourself if this is a metaphor or not) you will complete the Diamonds objective during the first round. Since this is true you might want to consider putting all your low value diamonds in one pile so when the five have been found you can empty the pile quickly.

* During the first round don't worry so much about hearts, concentrate on keeping your spades in some semblance of order in the Tableau stacks. Also try hard not to put spades and hearts in the same piles or else a heart will end up blocking a necessary spade.

VARIATIONS:

The PUG Variation: Deal the initial five tablea cards but instead of turning the cards up one at a time from the stock pile, turn them up three at a time to a discard pile. Only the top card may be played from the discard to the tableau at any given time. Yeah, PUGS are like that sometimes.

Task Force Variation: Two decks of cards mixed in together. 10 Glowies for diamonds (both sets of 10 thru Ace) played to Diamonds Foundation before other diamonds can be played. One pile for Clubs matches. Two bosses (two spade foundation piles which can be built simultaneously). Two hostages to rescue (Ace to deuce descending order, two stacks, each starting when one boss has been defeated.) Round one has six Tableau stacks, round 2 has five piles and round 3 has four.

See? THIS is what happens when I'm away from the forums for a while... D_R comes out with another masterwork of art and video-excellence!

Hmmm... maybe I should leave more often then?

Announcing the newest of Steelclaw Stu... er... Paragon Studios' marvelous booster packs: The Forum Freaks Super Booster!

This Booster will provide you with no in-game powers or changes, but is instead intended to enhance your Forums experience a hundred fold! Just look at the marvelous benefits you'll receive with your purchase:

* The Time Crawl Power: Do eventss always seem to be moving too fast for you to keep up? Well now you'll never have to worry about that again! Activate the new Time Crawl Power and suddenly the Dev team will announce a fantastic new expansion or hint at some incredible, long-awaited, addition to the game you love. Just watch as time slows to an agonizing crawl as you wait for tidbits and crumbs of information! Feel like a lame snail in the Arctic Circle as you struggle desperately to reach the release date! Whenever THAT is.

* Billy Goats Gruff Armor: This toggle power will render you resistant to trolling here on the forums. That's right, you can read those posts with abandon, never feeling that urge to call the poster an idiot or to scoff at their ill-conceived arguments. However, in an effort to maintain forum balance, this power has the new Whiplash functionality. So, while you can safely read any troll post, your personal fury bar will build up behind-the-scenes. Should the BGGA Toggle ever drop you will find yourself in complete Troll-Rage and will blast the first even slightly disagreeable post you read... THAT will teach those ba***rds to bad-mouth the five layer cake cave!!

* Emoticons are now Emot-I-Cans!: Fully animated smileys are now available for your posting pleasure! Watch your detractors writhe with jealousy as you hit them with the "roll-eyes-pat-on-the-head-condescending-smirk" smiley... Express your anger with the "shake-fist-flip-bird-spew-obscenities-while-stomping-enemy-avatar-flat" smiley. Yes, nearly every emotional outburst is available right at your fingertips! Please Note: Inflammatory posts are against the ToS; use of these Emoticons in such a manner is grounds for account cancellation.

* Forum Stealth Mode: We here and Paragon Studios understand that many of our dedicated players access the forums at their workplace and play the game when home. In an effort to accomodate those workplace commandos who look at the web page while deep within enemy territory, we proudly announce the Forum Stealth Mode. Purchase of the Booster Pack will add the option to run the Forum in Stealth Mode. Checking the appropriate box will render the web page to appear identicle to a standard office document. Use the radio buttons to choose Word, Excel, or E-Mail appearance. From a distance it will look like you're actually doing work! You'll only get caught if they are right behind you reading over your shoulder!

* The Thread Lock Temp Power: Ever wish you were a Moderator? Now you can be! This temp power allows you to lock any thread you find objectionable. The recharge time on this power is one week, so choose your targets carefully. Is there someone you absolutely can not stand? Perhaps they think they're funny when they're not. Maybe they continuously flood the forums with useless, meaningless joke posts. Maybe they constantly waste everyone's time with silliness or recycled City of Heroes jokes. Well, now you can put a stop to it! Now you can finally....


THIS POST HAS BEEN LOCKED BY TEMP MODERATOR 663.

The following story is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real places, people or events is entirely coincidental.

Heh.



In the Beginning the Devs created a small game and saw that it was good.

They populated the game with zones, lighting effects and various MOBs. Yet without players the game was not all it could be. Since this was a gathering place they referred to it as the Den. Since it was electronic in nature it became known as the E-Den.

Yet, without players the E-Den seemed rather dull; so the Devs brought in two Beta Testers. The Beta Testers were told to enjoy the E-Den and try out all the various features of the game. The place was intended to be a paradise without any real violence or intense conflict. Some claim it was the Alpha version of The Sims.

The Devs had only one rule for the Beta Testing of the E-Den; don’t look at the PIGG files.

Sure enough, a Dev from a competing software company approached one of the Beta Testers and she went all “Industrial Spy” on E-Den. So, the Devs kicked the Beta Testers out and sealed up the E-Den with a powerful AngelSword Firewall.

The next game the Devs came out with wasn’t nearly so cheery. They decided that paradise as a game model was actually pretty boring, so decided to go with a hard-scrabble survival version. They titled the game Free Will and, giving in to the begging and pleading, they let the original Beta Testers back into it as well as a few of their relatives.

It wasn’t long until a character named CandyCain began to send PM after PM to the Devs demanding a PvP system. It seemed he had a beef against WillingAndAbel and was frustrated by his inability to waste him. Some of the Devs were against they idea of introducing PvP into their game, but others pointed out the game was called Free Will and setting up restrictive rules would make them the target of ironic jokes from sarcastic game reviewers.

CandyCain ganked W.A.A. within five minutes of PvP system installation. The Devs felt a little nervous about him going on a killing spree so they compromised and created a PvP Zone known as Nod and suggested he go there to satisfy his mass murdering impulses.

Free Will was enormously popular. It swelled out until nearly every one on the planet had at least one Free Will character. Unfortunately, the Devs had established a bad precedent by giving in to the PvPers on the basis of “you should be able to do whatever you want in a game called Free Will.” Soon every pervert, sadist and freak was demanding a zone for their particular fetish.

The Devs realized the game had gone to hell and decided drastic measures were required. They searched through the mess and found a few loyal players who were at least somewhat normal. They contacted these players and then loaded their characters onto a portable Ark Drive. Once the Ark Drive was secure the Devs ran a Flood Purge Re-Format program on the Servers.

The next version of the game was Free Will: Consequences. It was marketed as an expansion on the original but since you couldn’t play the game without it, people knew it was really more like Free Will 2.

The players weren’t quite as thrilled by Free Will: Consequences. They were still allowed to do what they wanted, but now the Devs would arbitrarily punish them for some actions. The player base began to get frustrated since it seemed that the Devs were punishing, not by a standard set of rules but whenever the whim took them.

The players elected a representative named Mo who accepted the solo mission and ascended the path to speak two the Devs. This was not much fun since the path was on a mountain that was in a travel suppression zone.

Mo conferred with the Devs for some time then came back with a list of Ten Terms of Service.

The same people who had demanded the rules now complained they were too restrictive.

There arose from among the players a small number who called themselves the Prophet Guild and their dark assurances that the game was DOOOOM-ed managed to scare a few people but for the most part the game continued on normally. One of the Prophets even leaked information about a future version of the game called Apocalypse, but without hard evidence and with the Devs denying everything, he was soon put on global ignore.

Things settled down in the game. The T.O.S. seemed to satisfy everyone and the atrocities lessened somewhat.

More recently a new Dev was hired to lead the Development Team. He was announced to the player base as having the initials J.C. It remains to be seen if he has a major impact on upcoming game changes or not.

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAA...

OOh... that was great! Makes me wish I had any talent what-so-ever at creating videos...

Bravo, sir!

“Is this microphone working? Ah, excellent. My name is Professor S. Claw and I would like to thank you all for attending my seminar on Tactical Planning to Prevent Heroic Incursion and Subsequent Incarceration. In this workshop we shall be covering the things you, as low level enemy types, should be doing every time you set up a base of operations, whether it is in a chic office building or a network of caves.

“The first thing you will want to do is ensure the front door is guarded, both externally and internally at all times. An unguarded entrance is to a hero what a girl with no curfew is to her prom date. I would also strongly advise setting up an alarm system that triggers the moment the door is opened. Surely, all of you can see how foolish it would be to not only leave the front door unguarded, but to actually give the heroes a fifty or sixty yard cushion in which to organize, buff and summon pets.

“Gentlemen, if you’re going to do something like that you may as well put all your glowies just outside the door.

“Speaking of which; I strongly advise doing something about the placement and detection of your loot. The watch word I want you all to memorize is camouflage! People, if your hideout is in a cave a desk with a computer on it is likely to be noticed. Likewise, your average office building with computers and desks will not often sport an ancient stone altar covered in magical runes. Camouflage people! The moment you put your Liquid Computer, Oxygen Destroyer, Vault Buster or what-have-you into a container that container is going to glow and make that annoying Waa-waa sound.

“Camouflage! You want to confuse the heck out of those heroes?! Get a sound system or even just a boombox; put one in EVERY room of your base! Don’t have it playing music, though… You hear me Hellions?! NO MUSIC! Instead… have every blessed one of ‘em looping that Waa-waa noise. If your invading heroes aren’t petitioning within the first ten minutes of the mission, I’ll eat my hat. As for the glowing aspect of your new containment spot; no worries… I suggest replacing every normal lightbulb in your base with strobe lights.

“Between the lights and the sounds you MAY experience some minor headache discomfort. In such event I strongly advise Advil Ibuprofin products; a company which I have recently purchased stock.

“Ahem, moving right along…

“I am aware that some of you use the methods of patrols and pre-determined ambushes to get a tactical advantage over incursions. These practices are archaic and out-dated. You may get some heroes with them but overall you will find they do nothing more than give more xp to the ones you’re trying to kill. And the last thing you need is some hero level dinging while in your mission. No, instead I suggest using a two pronged method to hero elimination; Stacking and Macking.

“Stacking is simply assuming that every hero that enters your mission is on an eight man team. Macking takes it one step further and assumes that team wants enemies at +4 their normal level. What’s that? You claim that’s cheating? You’re freaking villains! Start acting like it! You don’t seem to mind if a -4 level hero wanders into the wrong part of town when you’re out on the streets… so why should this bother you?

“And if you REALLY want to make a hero feel loved, make sure that every one of your men has a communicator. I don’t care if they’re walkie-talkies or Bluetooth headsets. When one of your men sees a hero he immediately sounds an alarm and gives his coordinates. None of this ‘no worries, guys… I got this one’ bull pucky. This isn’t about scoring rep cred by being the one to take down Captain Frankfurter the first level beef-bean burrito blaster. This is about protecting your base! I don’t care how well slotted he is; a low level tank WILL go down if an entire mission map attacks him at once.

“If you can’t afford a communication system then do the next best thing… put all your men in one room; preferably the room with the thing they’re in there for in the first place. Speaking of resource allocation, try not to be completely bone-headed (no offense to you Skulls) about how you set up your teams. It’s all well and good to put out a large team of minions together but if every last one of them is blind as a bat and dumb as a pile of bricks, yes Vahzilok I’m looking at you, then you MAY just want to seed a few actual LIVING minions in with every spawn. Oh, and another thing, Vahzilok, so long as we’re on the subject, how about strapping those explosive devices to an ENTRANCE DOOR or an ELEVATOR instead of ONE OF YOUR OWN FREAKING MEN!?

“Just sayin’…

“Now, on to the subject of kidnap victims… If you are kidnapping a person for the purposes of killing them… Then… Just…. KILL THEM! Don’t invite them up for tea and a nice spot of conversation pip-pip cheerio and all that rot. Oh, Reginald, we ARE going to kill you old chap, but there’s no need to be beastly about all this spot of bad business. Please, tell us all about the wife and family first, has Reggie Jr. got that scholarship to Princeton yet?

“Kill them. KILL THEM! Don’t even bother bringing them back to your base; slaughter ‘em in the street! If you’re bringing them in for interrogation then get on with it! Answer this… have any of you… any of you at all… ever had a hero burst in on you with your victim strapped to a chair with most of his fingers missing and/or broken? How about doped up on sodium pentathol? No? Tied up or bound in any way at all? Have any of your victims ever suffered so much as a nasty paper cut?

“Sad. It’s plain grade-A sad that you call yourselves villains. I’ve got news for you people; kidnap victims generally won’t give you the information you want if the worst threat you can level at them is to stop asking politely. But hey, it’s a teen rated game so the worst language they can expect is an occasional ‘darn it all’…

“But say the heroes aren’t there to rescue someone or to find a glowing piece of something Azuria, let’s face it, really should have been guarding better. What if they’re there to take down your leader? I have one small suggestion… simple really… I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it yourself. Have every leader… every last one… be Arch-Villain level. That’s it… Every Bone Daddy, every Darned… excuse me… Damned… be a full-out AV. Why not? Why be just a boss or, even worse, a measly Lieutenant? Wait, you say that the difficulty settings the heroes choose determine how strong your leaders are?

“Let me get this straight… you’re going to have a weak leader because the heroes ASKED you to?

“Ahem… Villain… a noun… A cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel. Nope, I don’t see ‘pansy’ anywhere in that description.

“Finally, my last piece of advice for the evening. If you can’t afford a communication system… If you can’t bring yourself to torture your abductees, hide your loot more effectively or even front load all your men into the entry room… If you don’t listen to a single other thing I have suggested tonight… then please… for the love of evil… listen to this…

“Buy a police radio.

“They sell them cheap at Radio Shack, people! You can KNOW when the heroes are likely to show up on your doorstep! If you hear your names mentioned on the police band you know you have a one in three shot of having a visitor sometime in the near future. You don’t want to fight the heroes? You don’t want to cheat to win over them? Leave! You’ll have advance warning they’re on their way! Just evacuate the whole map! Go next door and laugh your collective hineys off when the heroes come out of the warehouse you were just in scratching their heads and hoping to get the Bug Hunter badge.

“I would like to thank you all for your time. It has been a pleasure speaking here tonight and it is my firmly held belief that if you adhere to the guidelines I have suggested we won’t see another single hero reach 10th level for the remaining existence of the game. Thank you and good night.”

Professor S. Claw leaves the podium to stony silence, looking a bit put-out at the lack of response from the crowd. The silence continues for a few minutes until one Skull reaches up to pull the IPod earpiece from his ear.

“Is he done?” he asks, looking around. “I wasn’t listening… anyone got some notes I can copy down for my boss?”

A Vahzilok blinks and pulls out his ear piece as well. “Nope, I didn’t… I was listening to my Christian Rock collection.”

One by one the others all confirm that they were all listening to their music and/or texting friends during the entire presentation.

“Didn’t ANYONE think to take notes?”

A Troll raises his hand, forgetting to pull it back down once he was speaking. “Me tell Gronk to take notes. Me tell Gronk to not listen to music.”

Gronk stands up. “Gronk no listen to music. Gronk listen to man. Man not good to listen to. Gronk’s head hurt now.”

The original Skull rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, sucks being you. Did you write down everything he said?”

“Gronk write it all.”

“Great!” Several of them clap Gronk on the back with wide smiles. “So what do your notes say?”

“Me no know,” Gronk says, holding up the paper to peer at it. “Gronk no can read.”

Having gone this route a few times myself I shall give you the following advice:

1) Supergroup started at level 10 with 20,000 sign-on prestige. Don't plan on being able to build a small workshop until you reach around 15th to 17th level. Forget the Enhancement Racks. At 95,000 a pop they aren't worth it. Besides, you won't be keeping any enhancements you aren't able to slot immediately anyway if you're lucky. On the other hand you WILL want as many salvage racks as you can cram.

2) I don't know your play-style but you MAY want to consider going almost exclusively solo. The salvage drops are more frequent that way. Also, if you team too much you will tend to out-level your recipes before you have an opportunity to build them and use them well. Take it slow, max out your salvage rewards.

3) The one bad side-effect of the no-Wentworth's rule is going to be cash flow. Selling choice recipes and rare salvage items is a GREAT way of getting income. You will feel actual physical pain the first time you get a Deific Weapon or Soulbound Armor and realize you can only sell it at a store for 5,000 inf. You will feel a pinch in the pocket book, I guarantee it. You don't realize how much of a money-maker WW is until you don't have it.

I wish you all the luck in the world! As a person who is into the whole "make-up-self-imposed-rules-just-for-the-heck-of-it" I respect your endeavor!

I'm embarassed I didn't know...

... that was a dude; seriously, man... I thought you had my back.

... Sister Psyche gets ticked when you call her a Cougar.

... Swan hates it when you refer to the twins as "plumage."

... that doing the Lotus Sit while in hover at the nine o'clock position to Miss Liberty in Atlas will allow you to instantly gain a level every time you type in "Howzaboutadrinkypoo" in broadcast. (Now everyone run to Atlas to see who actually tries it.)

... about Nemesis... my Mom... and that lost weekend in the Alps... but at least now I know why he refers to me as "his little sub-plot."

... about the weather controller who had a mentally-challenged yet beautiful little girl... whom he called his "Hazy Sunshine."

... the Atlas Statue was sponsored by the Paragon City Chiropractic Practitioners Society.

... that the superhero Minotaur had a young and short boy as his sidekick known only as Mini-Taur.

... that Wretch isn't really his name... they just asked him the question while he was listening to a Justin Beiber CD and that was the sound he made.

... about Captain Mako's obsessive bottle nosed dolphin phobia.

... Black Scorpion's armor? Compensating. Definitely compensating.

... that even though Positron can now safely get out of his armor he never had the automatic internal scrubbers and bathers removed. I'm even more embarassed when I approach him and he has that dreamy, far-away smile on his face.

... Mastermind zombies don't swing that way.

... Zombie Apocalypse zombies DO.

... Synapse doesn't wear any underwear under his spandex suit.... and he likes to run really REALLY fast.

... Coyote only offers Galaxy City as an option as a means of tormenting Back Alley Brawler.

... that Croatoan and Pocket D War Witch are two alternate reality versions and the Croatoa War Witch isn't a holographic attempt to "mail it in."