Unionverse and Issue 19

This should probably have asked sooner, but oh well!

What are people planning for the wider Union RP-verse with regards to the I19 storyline?

We have 2 new task forces, which depict widepread invasion from Praetoria and affecting a few zones in CoH/V. However, NOTHING is happeing to the actual zones themselves, and there are no zone events for it at all. It's ONLY happening within the instanced maps inside the task forces.

So what does that mean to the wider verse? Do we treat it as happened and RP accordingly, like we did for the second Rikti war? At least then, the devs helped us out by making it game wide, but this isn't game wide at ALL...

So what do we do?

For me, I tihnk we should treat it much like how we handled the Rikti. A verse wide incident, possibly all out war, with Praetoria; but I have a few worries. The main one being that i20 is the earliest we might actually see anything in the zones to depict it... Maybe.

Tricky one. I haven't run the new TFs personally so I don't know the exact nature of the events we'll be dealing with.

I know I'm not the only person whose RP Praetorian character(s) are still making their way through the Praetoria story and haven't yet arrived in Primal. Would an open state of war between Primal and Praetoria affect these characters? Would they even be allowed in, especially if they're hesitant to abandon their loyalist allegiances?

Tentatively, and from a position of ignorance, I'd suggest acknowledging that there's been an increase in skirmishes between the two worlds, but all-out war hasn't yet arrived and the Praetorian people are being kept in the dark. Of course, events in the TFs may make that position seem frankly unbelievable, but then, if we assume all the TFs have "already happened", a lot of things get weird.

I'd say on par with the Rikti War. I'd also assume that more depth to the Invasion is gonna happen at a late date, so treating it as an ongoing event is probably the best course of action.

As to Praets coming to Primal; whoever said they had to be allowed? The Isles for one still has lax security on the borders.
I think people will have figured out that Resistance sympathisers aren against the Invasion, or at least that data should have filtered back through via Vanguard and others.

My only active Praet gets away with actually being a Primal who nipped over there, and yhas only just twigged that theres something bad in the air (or the water )

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Personally I'd go for some kind of vauage initial/scout/testing attack of somekind, somthing that happened but we don't really go into the details of.

Also this would open up multiple runs of said TFs, as it's just another batch of scouting/testing attacks from Preatoria, best of all worlds I'd say there.

That or a meatgrinder on the portal border, as it were. The Praetorians push, Primals push back, just stopping it from spilling over into Earth proper outside of the contact zones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Where do we stand on battle damage to the affected zones? In the TF, two Paragon City zones are war-damaged, but the damage is only for the instanced maps and does not carry over for normal maps.

Which, IMO, is -really- lazy of Paragon Studios and a slip into bad habits of old. If they have the art, why not patch it into the zones, at least for an issue or so?

Yeah, kind of a bummer that

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I have to agree it's lazy and it leaves me a little bothered since one of my characters lives in King's and is Praetorian.

I think I'd prefer the option of 'tension is increasing and heavily armed Praetorian incursions have begun,' at least until there's more detail on exactly how Primal forces are reacting to the situation.

Really not sure how to treat it on my characters, the majority live in Kings Row. Which is the other zone being affected? (Or is that SPOILERS territory still?)

I'm leaning towards it not happening as a literal event until zone events occur. Until then...

I agree that acknowledging that there have been more skirmishes with the Praetorians is a good thing. As the invasions are occurring in the TFs and not in the outside world, we can probably accept that there are attempts at invading going on around us but ones that get fought off by Paragon’s heroes. We already have precedent for the Praetorians appearing in our world from some of the random missions given out from level 45-50.

Therefore, I think it’ll be ok to say that invasion attempts are being made in the same way that we semi-acknowledge the Rikti when they decide to hit us with a bombing raid. Not a permanent IC event, but one that goes on in the background. Each RP TF attempt can be a character taking part in repelling the invasion but not necessarily being solely responsible for turning the tide.

As for the other side of things, I don’t expect the exit from Praetoria to change. The game has our journeys from 1 – 50 as quite linear so to a level 20 character just leaving Praetoria, the war effort is only just building up whereas to a level 50 character about to embark on the Apex TF, the war has begun. However, as someone who finds the forced exit from Praetoria both clunky and immersion breaking, I rarely acknowledge it as an event, having my characters leave Praetoria for their own means. Certainly for my Praetorian Loyalist, when she leaves, it will be to aid the war against Primal Earth, not to fight against it.

(As a side note, I really do hope there is a chance to aid the war effort for Loyalists who have crossed over. It’s kind of a shame that for a Loyalist that has crossed over, both new TFs are about repelling the invasion and not about aiding it. I’m hoping the new 20-30 arcs might help that situation a little…)

Even though several of my characters live in Kings Row, I actually would have loved to have seen a Battle Damaged Kings Row, complete with low level Praetorian enemies here and there. Would show some kind of storyline progression, as the ingame story goes on Kings Row could be rebuilt and retaken.

Unlike the Rikti invasion where that is obvious evidence that we are at war (they bomb the crap out of things, REALLY hard to ignore that) the two new taskforces may have a wrecked Kings Row but outside of it everything is back to normal...a real kind of disconnect which is a shame.

I suspect it was a time limitation more than anything...that and the devs hate mucking around with old zones...for whatever reason they give.

Yep ...until there is some in-game event like Rikti raids, or a new/revamped zome like the RWZ, the Cole invasion is something lurking in the background, optional to reference or just ignore as most treat any otherfaction.

i do feel the Devs missed the chance of recycling a zone such as Boomtown, which apart for a tiny number of arc missions no ever really visits..heck they could have kept the same map and just added some "invader" mobs for flavour...

Actually, the more I hear about this, the worse it gets.

I got a mail last night which stated that our heroes were facing off against the invading forces because the Freedom Phalanx had already fallen. Now, considering what these War Walkers are supposed to be able to do, that is a really, really, really bad thing. (I won't insert the spoiler.) And yet there is absolutely no sign of anything changing in the game world itself. Everything is carrying on as normal.

I think we essentially have to ignore the TFs in their full canon sense because the implications of them are actually as wide-scale as the Cataclysm expansion over in WoW, except that we are seeing none of it.

My hope at this point is that I20, with its signed NDA, is actually going to be a pretty drastic change to the CoX multiverse. Something along the lines of Cataclysm. Something which will really shake things up.

*goes to check inbox*

Well, nothing here, but seriously? The Freedom Phalanx have fallen? And...

But that's... the zones, how can aogbaogbarnagh...


Airhaohraogbaeon!

AJOIH£)hogbaribai!

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Probably a bad time to mention I got four of those emails then.

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Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Haven't had that email of doom, but if that's what it says, and if that's talking about Issue 19 then I would expect the following to have happened:

Zone destruction to match the war.

The Freedom Phalanx NPC's to be removed from their places (though it might be reasonable for the phasing tech from Praetoria to be used if the defeat of the Phalanx is part of the TF's and the email is a blurb like you get on the back of a book, so that they are not there for people who have run the Apex and/or Tin Mage TF's).

Random groups of IDF appearing throughout Paragon.

Random groups of Longbow and Arachnos appearing throughout Praetoria.

So, unless that email is just a "here's the hook for the new TF's" note, I'm sure as heck not treating anything in it as canonical.