tpull

Gah! I went away and got married and had a son, and just when I come back, the game goes away! I literally kept paying just to maintain my characters since I loved the game so much. Now I'm more upset that the forums are going away. This was the ideal place to see so many cool people, read funny posts, and pick up on all my favorite subjects in the news. I have ZERO idea where to go now to duplicate this experience.

But I do want to say thanks for the fun I had, and a big hug for everyone who played around in here. I think I'm gonna log in and play until they pull the cord.

-TP

Just read one of the links above which led to this article:
http://www.tcj.com/jim-shooter-our-n...1994/?pid=3185

"I once told Shooter that he wasn't robbing me. He was robbing my grandkids," Kirby said. "I love them. They are beautiful kids, and if I got my artwork back, they would own it."

This in particular was not even involving copyright, just the return of his original art to him, since Marvel was withholding it and admitting to only having 88 pages instead of the 8000+ Kirby did for them. But it shows from his own mouth the fact that he felt as I have described, and certainly believed his family had a much higher place in "deserving" the effort of his labors than Marvel.

-TP

I guess my biggest reply is that I'm always confused when someone works to provide for his family, and even if you're an artist, you still want to make enough money to leave something behind for them. Copyright is just about the only way to do that, unless you have a royalty contract with the big bosses, as has become the custom. I'm confused when people act like the family doesn't "deserve" any of the fruits of that labor. Is the company more "deserving" the millions from all of his creations than the guy's own flesh and blood? Nobody at the company now even worked there when Kirby was there, so how do they have any kind of purer claim on the rewards from the moral standpoint when people are insulting the family?

Regardless of how the ultimate legal ruling decides things, all I'm trying to say is that the law was changed, the family was encouraged by the law to see what, if anything, they were owed, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of their actions. And I certainly know that Jack Kirby would have wanted any fruits of his labors to go to his family, that was why he cashed their checks at the time, so he could provide for his loved ones. any fanboys that are scared their DC universe would be forever altered if they "lost" Superman, that's really not a legitimate reason to try to convince people that the company has some legal or moral edge in this court battle. The company absolutely does not have any great moral beacon it can point to with regard to being a legitimate heir to the creative talent of Kirby, who helped create the foundation for all these $100 million movies that Marvel is reaping the benefits, while the family, the ones Jack was working for, receive zero. I suspect the appeal to a higher court might lead to a reversal, depending on how strong the family can present the evidence of the existence of certain characters and plots before Marvel bought them from Kirby.

-TP

There are a lot of assumptions being made in these comments, and many of them are wrong. I'm not sure if any of these corrections will change someone's opinion, but for the record:

1. "Kirby pitched ideas but never worked on anything unless Marvel gave him the green light."

Absolutely not true. Kirby brought several things to Marvel he had already created, and Marvel passed on them. Some characters currently at Dc might have ended up at Marvel early on if marvel had given the green light.

2. "Now here's the kicker, all these comic book creations were created by people under the exact same condition. They had a contract. They weren't forced to sign it."

Again, not true. The artists were paid by check, and the "contract" was on the back of the check, so they had to sign the check to cash it, and the comic companies said that the signing of the check also meant they agreed to the conditions they wrote on the back of the checks. I don't think any other industry got away with this, and the companies stopped doing it later, but there's definitely some room for legal discussion on the propriety of that, and if you can hold the artist to the "legal contract" he "signed freely."

3. "If you use company time or resources then the company is entitled to a share or the whole thing depending on how good their lawyers are. Company reasources can include any training you might have recieved while working for the company or any potential training you could have recieved if you have open access to the learning materials."

Except on Jack Kirby's case, he didn't work at Marvel. He worked at home, in his basement. He never got any kind of "training" associated with his job. I'm not sure on this point, but I have heard that he paid for all his own art supplies too, which means he worked at home, created stuff on his own dime, and came in to Marvel to submit it. That's a large part of the reason this was not a clear-cut case as with, say, all the CrossgGen artists, who had contracts, came to work, used company supplies, and worked together in an office environment receiving assignments. Things were a little bit different in the '50s and '60s.

The final point I would make is that the families aren't necessarily greedier than the company, and the company definitely wasn't an angel in their business practices, so it's weird to see an entire family thrown into the gates of hell, while a large corporation is upheld as the epitome of goodness. The family didn't do this until Sonny Bono got his law passed through Congress which allowed for them to attempt to take back all of the copyrights for which they had a legitimate claim. I don't see how people following what the law allows (and even encourages them) to do can be automatically classified as greedy jerks. It's a complicated legal issue, and I would say the heirs have (at least) every bit as much claim as a faceless corporation. I'm not sure how I would rule on the issue, but I'm certainly not going to make any assumptions about the character of the Kirby family. Jack Kirby was an awesome guy, and I would tend to think he had a pretty good family, if going by Jack was any way to make an initial assessment of things. But this part is definitely in the opinion area, and separate from thee straight facts of all the other stuff above.

-TP

Update from Brent Anderson: Stolen Art Update: The stolen pages of Green Lantern: Legacy are pp. 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 18, 20, 21, 24, 30-36, 38-40, 42-46, 48, 51-57, 60 & 67-70 . All other pages between pp. 1-70 sold prior to Monday July 25, 2011 are “safe” pages. Please forward this update to comic shops and art collectors. Thanks!

Aye, it actually happened while they were at the zoo, but the title added a little context as well.

Per Brent:
"Yes, it wasn't "geek" crooks. I believe it was an opportunistic smash and grab by someone looking for money or jewelry, not comics art. (They stole all of our dirty clothes and toiletries! Probably for the luggage they were in.) They even left three Itoya portfolios of art in the car. If they wanted the art, they would have taken those, too. They didn't know what was in the slip case around the other four. They took the case. The more light we shed on the stolen art the more unsellable it becomes. Unfortunately, the more unsellable, the more likely it is to be disposed of. An anonymous drop-off of the art somewhere it would be discovered by a knowledgeable person is the best outcome, or in finding the work at a flea market there for a quick, cheap sale, just to get rid of it. Anyone living in the greater San Diego area who enjoys frequenting flea markets, garage and rummage sales, can visit as many of them as they can this coming weekend and on into the end of summer. The sooner the better. If you find any and/or all of the art, buy it and call the police. (619-744-9500) Tell them you have a lead on case #11-029140. In this way we may just get the art back!"

-TP

From Brent Eric Anderson on FB: "My car was broken into at the San Diego Zoo today and the following original art was stolen."

Full list:50 pages from Astro City Vols. 1 & 2 & Local Heroes;

Astro City: Dark Age Books 1 (#s 1-4), 2 (#s 1-4) & 3 (#s 1-4) (50 pages).

Green Lantern: Legacy approx. 45 pages between pages 1-45;

Green Lantern Silver Age Special (approx. 4 pages);

GL/Plastic Man team-up special (approx. 8 pages);

Rising Stars #s 15-24 (approx. 48 pages)”

Basically keep an eye out on ebay, craigslist, etc. for any sudden bonanza of art put up for sale, and if there are any contacts at local stores near San Diego, make sure they have a heads-up in case someone approaches them with a page or more.

-TP

Thank you, kind sir!

Entry 150

I must look a site, perched at my computer with my legs to either side above the keyboard, on the desk to keep them elevated after foot surgery. I’m walking around better and everything seems to be healing fine, but it makes it awkward to play the game too much. And here I thought I’d be getting in three solid weeks of playing time! My arms go around my legs and under to hit the keyboard buttons, and I load Spirit of Paragon. I’ve been reading my entire collection of Conan the Barbarian, and I have pretty much all of Marvel’s version into the early 200s, before it went south, so have a hankerin’ to swing some swords and try to decapitate people. Why no, comics don’t make people violent, why do you ask?

It takes a little while to get into the groove, because ever since the server upgrade, I tend to have a lot of rubber-banding, but for all I know that’s just my computer. The next few missions are mostly going to talk to people, deliver this item, etc. After trying to call my other contacts and getting the same type of missions, I resign myself to courier duty for fifteen minutes, running back and forth across the zones to get them cleared off my board. It’s times like these that I want the grind to disappear and the game to move faster, and I SO want my Super Speed now! Those kinds of days make your brain start conjuring visions of an issue update that allows you to start a character off at level 14. The feeling fades away soon enough, but that is one of the drawbacks of an MMO like this: in other types of games, the action can be fairly constant and exciting. Here, after you’ve played the game and gotten a level 50 character, you can only run around at lower levels so many times before you have second thoughts about how much longer to continue playing.

I wait a couple minutes for the feeling to pass, and jump into some new missions that call for something a little more strenuous than just delivering a message. I play a game with my sword fighter, doing a Typhoon’s Edge attack that takes out two Clocks simultaneously. Awesome! Spirit of Paragon is slightly more fun than some other characters precisely because of the different effects you can create with the combination attacks, but when I add in the games I usually play with Martial Master, it’s a ton of fun. That’s where I attack the villains and get each of them down to low health, then see how many I can finish off at once with an AoE attack. It’s very handy when facing certain Nemesis opponents to prevent their bonus upon dying from having any effect. As always, time passes to quickly, and I leave trying to calculate when I will ever be able to spend enough time in one sitting to truly satisfy me, yet at the same time realizing that many other things in life are worth it when they keep me away.

You know, I played my Stalkers very briefly, but the missions I ran went very smoothly. I hadn't considered the buff too much because they are low levels, so I just figured the level of difficulty wasn't that much of a challenge. But the missions did go quick...

Entry 149

The next day is about the same, but I manage to log on, and that in itself is a minor victory these days. On Triumph server, Klarion is trying to get to the right part of Perez Park to get at some Skulls. I use my Jump-Pack to skip along the trees… and miss-time the final jump, falling inside the wall. Purple Clocks clean my clock in two seconds. Hmm, I must be a little rusty. I do what I do with several other characters, and position him at the best place to start his next mission, sign off, and sign on another hero. Ooh, I get a blind invite; it’s been a while since I got one of those! The last one on Triumph server is Rebreather Man, and he gets to use his guns on a timed mission, just because I want to actually play a little bit, rather than just log in-and-out a bunch of characters. He gets sent to the hospital once, too. Meh, tends to happen at the lower levels, especially when you run up against higher-con foes.

The next day covers most of the rest of my heroes and villains, all except for Freedom server, which is pack-full of server activity. I take out a couple of the characters for a quick spin, my tank, Grand Champion handles well, and he looks imposing as he switches between his mace, the Ghost Axe of the Undead, and the Nemesis Staff. Some of it is not so fun, as I realize I spend more time running from place to place at this level than actually doing missions.

Ekato is my Ninja Blade Assassin on the villain side, inspiring fear in his black garments and mouth shroud. I haven’t used his weapons in a while, and they seem cool. Yet another reason I like to have multiple characters; it’s hard to get bored when you can sample almost any power at any second. He makes short work of some snake men and levels up, allowing me to experience the glut of inspirations that accompany a leveling. That was a fun idea! It adds another small element of the game for me to play, as I will try to time my leveling up against superior foes, so I can recreate those comic book scenes where the hero is fighting against impossible odds, but gathers all of his strength in one final rally, to come back and win it all. We’ve all read it countless times, this bonus helps us to live it (so to speak).

Next up is Good Sport, my Trick Archery Defender, who happens to be in the Hollows, which now has new contacts and a redesign. I take the first new mission and get it done with a few minutes to spare, and that has used up my allotted time for the day. Just a few more characters to log in for the Entertainment badge, and then I can focus on just one of them and run several missions in a row.

Entry 148

Oh wow, real life kills all my plans again. Foot surgery in real life to remove some broken bone fragments has me at home with my feet elevated for three weeks, not able to move around much. By the time I hobble to the computer and find a way to prop myself up while still taking care with my feet, and Issue 12 has been released! No playing today, I let it download the new upgrade and check everything out. Ah, but the next day, I start to cycle through ALL of my characters. I start on Victory Server with Debt Leader, and choose a Shield Pet from the rewards. It’s been almost five months since I played this character, so I start off a little clumsily, hitting the wrong numbers, and stopping to refresh myself on what all the powers like Radiation Infection can do. I clear a warehouse, nearly going through all my Endurance several times. Radiation really eats up your energy!

I can’t resist trying to play a mission for each character, so I know this will take more than the measly hour I have to spare today, but tomorrow is another story. I even log in characters from my nephews and nieces, just in case there’s a danger of their name being taken. I forget whether it depends on how long the player logs in, or how long since each character has been logged in. It’s a mixed blessing, being away from the game for so long, because it’s not too boring to log in to all the different zones, with different characters at different levels, and run to the different missions listening to the neighborhood music.

I go hunting down some weapons that the Council have with my Warshade, level 5 Brane, and the first crate I open has canned vegetables. Really? The Council goons have to subsist on canned vegetables? I hope they at least get a good dental plan.. Stupid Quantums send me to the hospital twice. Grr! I’m about to log off when I realize I’m under attack, so I move and take out some more council goons who have decided they aren’t going to let me just take their weapons and leave without a say-so on their part. Meh, they don’t get much of a say-so before they fall to the pavement. I log off again for real this time, two servers down, and nine more to visit!

Entry 147

Has it really been a month since I had time to play the game? How depressing! The Spirit of Paragon is the choice today, maybe because I recently saw the trailer for the next Indiana Jones movie, and I feel like a bit of swashbuckling. My first mission is in a cave, and I get stuck a couple of times. The graphics make it look like I get caught on my top hat! After that I can get a bank mission, and I tackle it solo. No telling what will happen to tear me away from the game these days, no sense starting a group if I have to end it in ten minutes.

The AI of the villains is more fun these days, and when I knock out a Clockwork, he dangles from his mechanical ankle off of a fire escape. Then a gang member comes running up and jumps over me while I’m battling his compadre. He jumps on to said fire escape, and when I knock him out next, he gets caught by HIS ankle, and awkwardly slides down. Hilarious.

The character chat is amusing too, as one guy runs by saying, “Get a load of this loot. My fence is gonna name a boat after me!” His partner looks like he's sitting on a box, maybe even playing with a musical instrument, but he pulls a shotgun on me fast enough when I step up to him. A short space away, after what seems like the fourth time I’ve had to stop to Rest, a flying clock tries to hide in a tree. I shoot him with my Throwing Knives, and he drops out of the tree like a dead sparrow in real life from my air gun.

My girlfriend comes in from doing me a favor and tries to pull a trick on me. See, my car has an auto-lock, and every thirty seconds it activates. She tries to tell me that she forgot and left the keys in the car with the windows up, and it locked, so the keys are stuck in there. I keep on playing the game, and as I talk to her and tell her I don’t believe her, I level up! 13, woo hoo! In the meantime, I let her know that she’s hiding her left hand, and that means she’s holding the keys. Nice try. I love her, but she needs to practice to get better at being sneaky. I keep playing, nonchalantly. Heh.

I level up, not really planning too much on where I place my new enhancement slots. I tend not to bother slotting them until level 15 anyway. The next mission has Trolls, and I use my Nemesis Staff on him exactly as he throws a chunk of sewer rock at me, knocking us both on our collective keisters at the same time. The weird thing lately is that, on these radio missions, when I click on a glowie it tells me I have a clue, but there’s nothing there. When did that bug start? Maybe I’ll send a bug report next time I’m on. Gah, who knows when that will be? Sooner, I mentally vow. Sooner!

Entry 146

Who to play, who to play…? I meander through the different servers, not feeling like playing the vast majority of them; most are levels 6-15, and with Ouroboros, Martial Master is in that range too. Back to Freedom server, and Ultra Meltdown comes out for a shakedown flight! I have done a Respec on this character more than any others, so it takes a couple seconds to make sure I remember which powers I settled on for him by level 29. He’s got a little debt on him, so I decide to see what I can do to pay it off. ‘Cause that’s the kind of armored hero I am!

I try to make the most of the couple of hours I have, spending a few minutes running around town, and then mopping up a bunch of “arrest 30 of type x” missions. It would take too much effort to hunt down the right xp, so I just run up and down Independence Port, strafing any villain type hapless enough to be in my way. Much of the content at this level is not too interesting, so after I clear the mission board once, I switch to Radio missions. With as much content as they have, some of the storylines and Contacts could be condensed. If the Devs made a book series that had all of these storylines in story format, I would so buy it. As it is, tonight feels a little like a chore, just mopping up some lower level goons to get the missions clear for some real meat. I wanted to play a higher-level character that had more power choices, but it takes a while before I can get a more interesting mission.

The Freakshow provide a somewhat more exciting challenge, what with their ability to stun me and put me to sleep. I super-speed through one mission and take out the boss and a couple guards, but the next one is a “defeat all,” so to mix it up, I go take out the boss first, and then pretend to be on clean-up detail, working my way from the inside out. When the game fails to provide variety, make your own! In the old days, I might have gotten knocked out a time or two, but the hit-and-run, snipe-and-blast tactics seem to have become ingrained in me, no matter how long I leave my Blasters in cold virtual server storage.

As busy as I am, I tend to fall behind my own desired schedule, with issue updates coming faster than I can keep up. Ah, to have six hours at a pop again! Even with that, I still have some idea that the Devs would be well-suited to take the mid-point levels where some of the missions are obvious repetitious slogs and change them up a bit. With Radio missions, there is little need for many of the others. The biggest need is for newer players to have a reason to explore a new zone for them, such as Terra Volta. Instead of forcing them to do a “defeat 30,” why not have a couple more way-station missions, or a courier mission that takes you to/through an interesting location on the map? Or you could incorporate the plaques into an optional mission, and set the plaques as waypoints on a history lesson one of the Contacts sends you to complete.

If it sounds like I am looking for some mission variety besides street sweeps, it’s because I am! There has got to be a couple other choices that can lure players across the zones to help them become more familiar, without them all being fight missions, or even necessarily for xp. The missions could be flagged at the Contact before you choose them, so players who only want to fight would know to choose the second mission option, and just leave the pesky exploration/courier mission untouched, or vice versa, in case the player wants a break from button mashing. Bonuses of mission-only clothing articles, or even the meaningless souvenirs could spark some of us to go spend some time on them, just because it’s different.

I’m hoping that the Devs will come to a phase where they realize that zone redesigns are fun, new zones are great (!), but that some of the earlier stuff they did for missions in the slog levels (as I call them) desperately needs an update. I am very pleased with all of the attention the lower levels have gotten, from Hollows to Striga and Croatoa. It’s not that I’m looking for changes to the maps or the graphics even, just that some of the less-fulfilling stories and overly-repetitive missions be updated with something more interesting. I hope I didn’t repeat myself too much…

Entry 145

Martial Master hasn’t had enough “screen” time lately, so I put him in Ouroboros, making sure my settings are on Heroic. I may want to do a “strongman” sometime and run on Invincible, but only if I’m dying for a hard challenge with few powers. I tend to want to do the really challenging stuff when I have a little more than just Thunder Kick. I try for the Trolls story arc with zero defeats and only thirty minutes, and make it all in under the wire. Phew! I wasn’t sure how things would go at first, since it seems to take my zones a long time to load. Running back and forth for some of these missions, I see that Atlas is packed tonight. Anyway, I happily take note of my All For One, One For All and Gold Medalist badges.

Next, I select a Skulls/Clock mission, where inspirations cannot be used. Wow, am I slow! It takes me a few minutes to get to the mission, and even though I didn’t set a time limit on it, the mission happens to come with an hour time limit anyway. I enter in king’s Row, take out a few Clocks, and have to rest immediately. Then the next batch of Clocks goes down, but my power hasn’t recharged yet. For others it can be a big pain; for me, it means I have time to type things up before I go on!

I’m actually back to the stage where I switch off my Sprint to save on endurance, and man, do I feel like a turtle. It’s a good thing I’m doing these low-level missions now, because I really want things to pick up after this! I don’t get any badge for this mission, nor for the next, the ‘save the mystic’ mission, wherein I also selected not to have my enhancements count. I figure it’s because these are badge missions instead of full story arcs, but it takes a call to Red Haven to find out why they are not starred off my ‘to-do’ list back in Ouroboros. There’s a bug still on them?!? Weird.

I noticed something lately, playing both CoH and running through my Warcraft III for the first time in years: I’m a packrat! I always took too much time to figure out which item to leave behind and make room for in my inventory, just like I don’t want to sell all of my Salvage or Recipes when I get them. What if they’re rare? What if I can go use them? I’m a packrat in real life, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the habit followed me into game life. Still, I think I need to practice better materials management in both worlds.

It’s been more than two hours already, and it flew by like ten minutes. I run along King’s Row, intimately familiar with the music, and when I get back to Atlas, that majestic introductory type music sounds off as I run and fall off a wall. Yes, there’s nothing so cool as mistiming a jump, and listening to the grandiose music when you fall into a dumpster, and run out amid the trash…

Entry 144

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon, and for a change I don’t have any chores, appointments and all the rest of that real life stuff. The Spirit of Paragon goes out on patrol, wading into the sewers, of course, to take out a bunch of Clockwork. How DO they keep this sewer gunk from clogging up their parts?

I notice I’m stopping to heal a lot, and using the Nemesis Staff and Sands of Mu quite often. At level 11, the recharge rate is slow, and Endurance fades fast. I have no clue how I stomached the pace without the temp powers from the Veteran Rewards. It seems inconceivable, but I know I sat through it, waiting for one of my powers to recharge. I complete the mission and level up to 12 at the same time. Ah, timing, gotta love it. The Jump Pack and the Flying I earned from the Safeguard mission have also been helpful, but I tend to want Super Speed on almost every character, so Hasten it is. Is it bad that I can’t break myself from that choice?

I decide to counter the reduced difficulty that has been put in place with the latest update, where it takes less experience to level up, and debt is reduced, by skipping some of the mobs in the missions. My attempt goes awry, as I take on a couple bad guys while two goons I skipped catch up to me. I gobble greens down, but my luck runs out, because I’m whiffing a ton, and my Endurance runs out! Well, that’s one way to keep from leveling too fast! Things continue in the same vein for the next hour, as I jump into one mob after the next, barely pausing to rest, and generally taking on more than I can chew. Only one more hospital trip, though.

I also notice my whiffs more than I used to. This is a byproduct of the combo attacks from Dual Blades. On any other power setting, there is no big consequence to missing your opponent, but with Dual Blades, if you miss with your first strike, you don’t want to use your other two powers. That’s how I roll, anyway (That's right, I said it!). I switch to the temp powers and then try my first strike again. If you miss on the second or third combo strike, you do not get the benefit of the bonus effect, and that happens more times than I would like to admit. My other characters, I might miss here and there, but I take notice of Dual Blade misses to a much higher degree. Hmm, not too far from doing Positron’s task force…

Gasp! You're reading at work?!? Oooh, I'm tellin' your boss! (Unless you're your own boss. In which case you already know.) Thanks for the kind words, that's what gets me pumped to write more!

Entry 143

I link up with Red Haven and his wife, who are playing Granite Haven and Revigrof, respectively. We hit up the intro missions to Ouroboros, and just have some fun palling around for a while, when we catch wind of a Shadow Shard task force. Oboy! I have heard tales of how long these can take, but I announce that as long as I get a food break, I can last. We go join the party for Faathim the Kind. We start with eight members of course, and that almost never lasts. I have prepared for this by teaming with Red Haven’s son earlier and getting my jetpack from the first Safeguard mission. Plus, I have a valid reason to use my Assemble the Team power. Awesome! Truth be told, everyone else except me had Fly, so it wasn’t useful more than twice, but I was glad I finally got to use it to save time for a group.

Coalstone was our tank, and he was great at it. Red Haven held back a little sometimes, so if I wasn’t auto-following Red, I was auto-following Coalstone, who was just as fast on a map, a big help for directionally-challenged Scrappers. As a result, I tended to jump into each battle two seconds after Coalstone, leaving it for the rest of the group to catch up to us. Red’s wife has switched to CMeNOt, a controller, and MurderOne Alien is a level 50 Peacebringer who originally started the TF. We teleport to different places in the Shard, most of which are new to me. All this time, my main character has been without flight, and there has always been something else to do besides go exploring.

The Shard is beautiful. Nice music, unsettled mysteries, and some places have level 50+ enemies, so now I know where to go if I want some mindless keypad number-crunching battles. I still have some phrases hotkeyed, and occasionally I think I’m typing a message, but I’m not. I explain that I have the keyboard equivalent of Tourette’s Syndrome, and we definitely need a computer equivalent name for that disease.

The group moves fast and well together, and if things get tricky, I trigger Elude or retreat for a few seconds to remove agro. Only once during a mission do I get cornered by a purple-con Gunslinger. I usually need a green or two to get me through a battle like that, but I have none! Gah. Another time, a Controller teleports me apart from the main group, so I pop Elude and jump into the middle of a mob standing between the two of us and everybody else. I announce how odes of glory will be written about this day, as I single-handedly hold off the forces of evil to save a teammate. Red and his wife tell me to dream on, as the rest of the group finds the last mob and joins me in finishing them off.

My game play is fine when in the shard itself, but I experience lag like no other when we have to zone back to other places. I shut down Herostats, as one of the missions is almost over by the time I get to it. I can only hope it was something local, and not representative of how the new servers handle a heavy load. I lose mapserver connection two or three times for the night. In a Train mission, we locate three objects and leave the team, while Red Haven and I go off to find the fourth. Each one has a mob around it to be cleared, so as Red starts, I catch up to him with my jetpack and join the fight. “Mind if I drop in?” I type, sure that he catches the corny pun of me falling out of the sky, and I know he’s just shaking his head at his computer, fighting not to grin as he doesn’t bother responding, simply smashing enemy after enemy like the sturdy worker he always is. I chuckle to myself and help him, even though he doesn’t really need any help. This is all just to speed things up.

We lose two Controllers along the way, but Qulator and CMeNot are both with us, and the six of us proceed to the final mission, ready to take out Lunaru. Task Force Lamune to the rescue! Except Coalstone dies just outside the Storm Palace, and does not show up for ten or so minutes. People are talking about packing it in for the night, but I demand to enter and at least take a look around. Elementals galore, and Lunaru himself, protected by an inner circle. We reconnoiter the area, and discuss it real quick: we will try once, and if we wipe, we will call it a night.

So five intrepid, shaking heroes go forth, no tank in sight, as Red Haven starts drawing the attention of the elementals one or two at a time. We dispatch the outer ring of enemies, and regroup. We succeed, and go to take out the inner ring of defenders, as Lunaru starts to take us out one by one. I flip Elude on, but it’s no use. The others fall, and I’m halfway dead, so I retreat, with Lunaru coming slowly after me. At the entrance to the mission, I use my Assemble the Team power again to summon the corpses of all of my friends. Lunaru fires a couple of potshots at me until he loses interest and wanders away. Madness! We have a self-rez, then everyone else is brought back, and we want to try one more time. My Elude is not fully recharged, but everyone else is ready, so we jump in full speed. I eat every candy I have, and the entire team goes to town. We get him!!!!

Here’s the cool part: Coalstone was able to log back on from his disconnect just before we took Lunaru out. He doesn’t get a reward, but he does earn the badge, which relieves all of us, for all his hard work he put into things. I am distracted by his reappearance and the joy of an unexpected win that I take an Enhancement for a reward instead of a Recipe. Doh! Make a note to myself for next time. The team exits the mission, everyone making global friends and such, talking about what a great group it was, and how it’s one of the best people have experienced in a long time, etc. Red Haven drops off the edge and heads back, and I pop Elude and jump into a bunch of Brutes, figuring I’ll wake up in a hospital soon enough. The rest of the team follows me! We have already disassembled at this point, but the Brutes can’t touch us, and I just play for a few more minutes until eventually Coalstone asks if I’m ever going to ‘port out of here. The others have finally called it a night, so I chuckle and trigger the Ouroboros portal. It took us six hours, seventeen minutes. Now I’m hungry for the other Shard task forces.