Yet another pop culture reference appears in COH...

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

It's a reference to the three main stars of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog - Felicia Day, Neil Patrick Harris, and Nathan Fillion.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

I loved that blog.

Ditto.

Have the DVD here at my work desk-- we occasionally have to indoctrinate newcomers to our particular form of madness with a video lunchbreak.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Nah. We'd generic-lawyer ya back from oblivion. Character personalities aren't trademarked. The names aren't a total match, so there's no worry there, and the appearances are nowhere close. There are many more homage references that are more overt and apparent on all three of those-- like every one of the PPD radio mission contacts. (They also wouldn't meet the need for generic'ing, for that matter, but they're closer to it than any of the Oban: Star Racer crew)

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

fixed

I love all three of them! Harris is well, NPH, who can't love him. Fillion voice-acted one of my fave tv superheroes and Felicia Day is plain awesome. I actually got a signed copy of Season 1 and 2 from Amy Okuda and her at a convention. On another note, I still have to watch Dr. Horrible's sing-along-blog. And not just because Brad Swaile told me it was my mission.

No, but you're not allowed to use real people names. Even if you are said real people. For example, neither Troy Hickman nor Mercedes Lackey could make a character named Troy Hickman or Mercedes Lackey, even though they are Troy Hickman and Mercedes Lackey.

http://help.ncsoft.com/cgi-bin/ncsof...hp?p_faqid=910


Is there a newer one? This one says you can't use "Names referring to another person in-game." but nothing about using your own name.


And positron's example are just LAST NAMES. While we recognize WHO they're referencing by the combination and proximity of them, they're not individually-identifying. There are plenty of others with that last name.

Pattern recognition alone isn't enough to generic something.

Heck, my last name appears as one of the operatives rescued in Kalinda's second story arc. Doesn't mean it was named after me. (Be cool if it was...)


EDIT: Also, Troy Hickman's a bad example. Well... yeah... he is... but also a bad example for your argument. He's got a bunch of Hickman avatar:


from his blog

/me ponders what AT Mercedes Hickman should be...

That doesn't really seem to make sense, though, since almost any name other than stuff like "Lizard-Man" or "Varpo the Power Cowboy" are going to be SOMEONE'S name. If I call my new blaster Dave Johnson, I've used a name shared by thousands, but I'm pretty sure it would never be genericed.

fixed

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Agreed.

It's not that I mind the occasional homage, but having a lot of pointedly out-of-place looking names that come from something obscure and don't fit the pattern the gameworld establishes bothers me.

Now, the three in the OP don't look so bad to me: those are all perfectly normal last names that happen to coincide with some semi-obscure thing I'm unacquainted with. (Don't look at me like that. If I have a computer, an internet connection, and free time, I could be playing CoX, after all.)

The ones from Gaussian's arc start to look odd after the second mission or so, when it becomes obvious there's a reference afoot that I'm too stoopid to get--I've yet to hear of anyone outside of a fantasy RPG with a name like Ceres or Grool. Those insertions are jarring and destructive to what is otherwise a pretty taut story about the dangers of fanaticism. "The Bane of the Heart"--one of my favorite stories in the game--suffers from a similar blight. Names like "Zapan" and "Nova" pick at the gravity of what is supposed to be an emotionally gripping story by violating the integrity of the established universe's patterns.

But it's okay, because they're names someone else thought of first that refer to something some people just aren't 1337 enough to know about!

These things can be made to work, though. "Lk'Onik" probably could've used a different name, but it's a clever enough pun. Besides, maybe he chose his "Earth name" himself, referencing his own terse nature. Dra'Gon and the Horsemen are both references to parts of the European "cypher" (to borrow Mass Effect's word for "basic cultural knowledge") that's been passed on to America. As such, those words are used to deliberately invoke armageddon.

Normally, I try not to complain too much. But I think the game as a whole would be better served keeping the silly references and such to newspaper and scanner missions--one-offs that we aren't supposed to be seriously engaged in anyway.

Newton: I observed Mercury's perihelion moving 43 arc-seconds per century more than it should. Is this WAI? --Einstein

Wow, that is awesome! O.o