Operation Stop, Drop, and Roll - 1 to 50 Over 2xXP Weekend

It's been over 6 months in the making, but it's finally here. Seven other Livejournal/City people and I are about to embark on a historic journey. (Okay, so it's not so historic, but I'm excited and have been watching Back to the Future.) Back in January, after the last 2xXP weekend, I recruited seven friends to help me with an experiment when double XP rolled around again.

The plan is to have a full, 8-man team at level one on Friday morning and have all 8 toons be 50 before the end of the weekend. We will be running as many Strike Forces as possible, entirely ignoring AE, and running as few papers as are necessary.

Formally known as Operation: Stop, Drop, and Roll, we are a team of 3 Dominators (Stop), 3 Shield Brutes (Drop), and 2 KinCorrs (Roll). We hope that this team makeup means that we will be able to tear through just about anything the game can throw our way.

Informally, we are the Candy Monsters 2xXPeriment, as our character theme is Candy Monsters. Over the course of the past 6 months, we brainstormed over 20 themes and then put them to a vote among ourselves. Candy Monsters was the theme that came out on top and now we consist of The ButterscotchBehemoth, The Wint O Green Wendigo, The Caramel Cockatrice, The SuckerSmashin Sphinx, Nougat Nefertiti, The Bubblegum Boogie Man, Sour Apple Succubus, Red Hot Imperial, and our 9th-player-in-spirit, The Big Rock Candy Golem.

If you're interested, I am Live Blogging the entire run through Twitter.
http://twitter.com/covcandymonster will have the updates and #2xXP will be the hashtag for the weekend if you want to add to the Twitter Double XP funtimes.

See you in the game!

I applaud the effort being put into this, and I hope you reach your goal.

But don't you feel even the least little bit cheesed that while you're planning all this out, somebody is using the AE to go from 1-50 in a fraction of the time due to double XP applying there as well?

Thank you We came up with our individual names.
- Nougat Nefirtiti

I am so jealous! That sounds like so much fun!

HA, have fun with this, sounds like a blast.

Those are some fantastic names. The Big Rock Candy Golem, heh.

I am honored to be part of this experiment. :]

I've been recording bits and pieces of our adventure, I'll be making an AMV once we're done.

-KWS, aka Sour Apple Succubus

Good luck you guys. Hope you meet or get very close to your goals.

CrashTofu, you and your friends, are full of win.

Bubblegum Boogie Man is ready to boogie for day two!

See you all in an hour!

I prefer operation Stop, Drop, Shut em down, Open up shop.

bloody great names though, wish you luck!

now, I'm hungry.

Candy Monsters, eh? I know you guys said you wouldn't use AE, but let's just say you might enjoy arc 2595, The Extadine Lab, given your theme.

I've been thinking about it, and I'm now sad that the color palette for Earth Armor customization is going to be muted earth tones. "The Big Rock Candy Golem" demands the use of bright, light blue!

Hmm ... if they're Ice Armor, though, they should still be good to go!

As you could glean from the Twitter feed, we didn't quite make it all the way to 50. However, none of us feel that badly about not making it because we sure had fun, we never grinded, we never farmed, we never went against the spirit of the experiment.

Anyone can hit 50. We wanted to see if we could do it in three days without getting bored and without resorting to "cheap" tricks.

We did 5 strike forces and were sometimes over the level cap and not earning XP. We finished them anyway. We took breaks when we needed them. We slept an adequate amount. We had fun. Since the fun was the point and was also the reason we didn't make it, I can't say we failed. We achieved the bigger of the two goals.

AMV finished and posted here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=2072078

Now that was brilliance. (And yes, Triumph is a great server - was my original home before I also adopted Justice.) Wish I could have come along on this, but I'm glad you guys had a fantastic time (and LOVED the Twitter feeds).

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite