Tyrant background

That is a spooky thought.... and disturbingly accurate.

That sounds like a great idea and you should make an AE arc based on it, but it is nowhere near the official story of Praetorian Earth.

Which is too bad because we're denied the chance to see Recluse as a good guy. Would have been interesting.

I respectfully disagree. Up to now, the way that Praetorian earth has been written, the Praetorians are nothing more than an amalgamation of DC's "Crime Society of America" of Earth-3, both in the fact that they are doppelgangers of the most powerful group of heroes in the prime dimension and that they are otherdimensional in origin, and Marvel's Squadron Supreme, in that the most powerful team of superheroes ended up taking over the world.

There are differences between the Praetorians and each of the groups I mentioned, which is why I said they are an amalgamation of the two.

This is not to say that the Praetorians are conceptually bad and I sincerely hope that they improve the execution of their stories in the upcoming expansion. However, up until now, the primary arcs in which these characters appear in the canon storyline are undeveloped at best and downright bad at worst.

Any narrative is only as good as its execution and there is nothing inherently more sophisticated about the Freedom Phalanx taking over the world versus the Freedom Phalanx defending the world. There are only our own biases about the simplicity of morality. Thus far, the stories themselves have not been particularly sophisticated and other than our imaginations, those are the only official things we have to judge the Praetorians by.

We can hope they will eventually achieve what you suggest, but they are in no way near there yet.

Have you READ the new bios for them? They are clearly THERE now! We're just waiting for it go to live/beta!

Thus far, unless I am just looking in the wrong place, I've seen one bio for one character associated with the Praetorians. Tyrant himself. And it was posted yesterday. Considering the even if you consider Hero-Con to be the point at which GR was to have been announced, you're still talking about a period of months to produce about 2-3 pages worth of text.

There are also 2 bios for characters completely unassociated with any Praetorian content in the past. That means they had the luxury of creating their bios from whole cloth. So basically, thus far, after months of lead time, the 'revamp' of the Praetorians consists solely of a rather sketchily detailed historical biography of Tyrant himself.

That sort of output doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me.

I was hoping they'd let us make them part of Pretoria. A Widow ends up being a Seer. The Solders end up being part of the Praetorian Guard, etc. Give them their own arcs. And have them eventually leaving and deciding to join the local closest approximation(Arachnos) Or give it up and be a hero. I'd likely give them their own non-arachnos costume bits and let the rest get unlocked later.

As for the Kheldians. I could see them being locked up underground, used as slave labor or maybe just stuck in giant tubes to be drained to help fuel the city. Breaking out and joining the rebellion or helping the State toss their former friends/family into the fire.

At least, that was my thought... I guess if they want each side to have it's own Epic classes, that's cool too

you've seen only the information that they want us to see Think its safe to say that they wont leave the entire expansion lore/bios/mission txts etc to the very last minute

Well, as I said initially, I hope that they execute the narrative well. I guess the question is whether I've really seen anything thus far to offer me anything more than that hope. Unfortunately, the answer right now is no.

The writing in this game has always been uneven, ranging from very good, (the Rikti war arcs, Oh Wretched Man, The Hammer of the World, etc), to very bad, (most everything produced in the first couple of years). If you look at the last couple of years, however, ever since the changeover to NCSoft, the best way to describe the content writing of this game is 'strangely absent.'

Meaning that there just isn't that much to judge them by since then, which sort of feeds my trepidation and my concern that, as far as storyline goes, we might just be at a point at which Tyrant's bio just may be all that they actually have at this point because they are concentrating so much on the graphical upgrade and the game mechanics portion of the expansion.

In reality, the history of Praetoria is the technologically easiest portion of the expansion to produce and giving us some of that history a page at a time over a period of months is not exactly a labor-intensive activity, but they haven't done it. It wouldn't have a huge impact on the actual gameplay of the expansion either, because knowing, say, what Bobcat's bio is will not really affect how the stories from 1-20 play out for the player's character.

In fact, it would also be a smart thing to do, because doing it would quiet some of the rumblings from the crowd concerning rumors that the expansion is going to be delayed or even cancelled. In the absence of anything new, people will invent their own news. And 99% of the time, the news they invent will not be good news.

The company could easily quell that 'news making' and keep their fan base satisfied that things are moving forward unless there is just nothing there to give us right now.

The people working on the story are not the same people working on graphics or game mechanics. They have a team of writers who have been working on the story. So I wouldn't worry.

Why does nobody pay attention to me?

Our Ghost Widow is DEAD! A flipping ghost!
For that matter, so is War Witch.

What says that Praetorian Recluse isn't an active ghost?
I have yet to see anything that says otherwise.

There's nothing said otherwise. But in all the discussion about the Resistance and whatnot, no mention of Recluse is made (though they do mention Belladona Vetrano as a part of the Resistance, which was Ghost Widow's name before she died). And when we asked what Praetorian Recluse is up to, they told us that Marcus killed Stephan at the Well. Full Stop.

It doesn't mean he is, either. Not every dead person is hanging around as a super hero (or hanging around at all) in the CoH universe. Thousands of heroes died during the First Rikti War, but you don't see them crowding Atlas Park, do you?

Besides, I think they said that Marcus killed Stephan before Stephan drank from the Well, so Stephan would have never gotten his powers. Both War Witch and Ghost Widow were super people before death.

Standing around dressed in skintight leather?

Gyah! *scrubs brain*


Eeeeeevilllllllll

No - they said Tyrant killed the Praetorian Recluse.

Gotta say that I think that's a bad idea to flat out say "There's no Recluse or Nemesis in Praetoria."

Someday Hero 1 or his successors may have a great idea for an event where we free the Praetorian Recluse from his imprisonment and someone on the forums will pipe up and say, "But Back in 2009/2010 you told us he was dead! The Devs are big fat liars!"

Never write yourself into a corner in a Comic or comic based game...

IMO, Manti did that in his Fodder for the Canon thread when he flat out said that the COV hero Warshade Romulus had no connection to the Romulus from The Imperious TF.

In one stroke he turned a potentially fascinating concept for the game-- that a major bad guy in the distant past becomes a good guy in the present-- into a case of "oh they're just too Nictus-related guys who happened to use the same name." Blah.

There is no such thing as a corner in comics. As soon as the corner becomes inconvenient, it gets obliterated by an energy weapon.