War Witch's new FAD!

For those of you NOT watching the Facebook page, they have "Happy Friday" posts there, too, usually a picture of some staffers doing their thing or having fun... and the picture today reveals a NEW WOLF HEAD on one of the monitors!

That should shut the furries up, and for that, I'm happy!

You know, it might not be a bad idea to talk about all the different people that work there at the studio (if they approve, that is) so we can know about the folks behind the game.

I know everyone has an avatar and a cool red name, but maybe interacting with the community more might be a good thing. Just an idea. I just wish everything was not so secretive.

(then again, maybe all this is common knowledge already and maybe it is just me. most people may not give a rip about the people behind the red names, but i do.)

Well, call me impressed! O.O'

I'm thankful for slee-zxzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

You have to hear it in Rufus' voice.

I appreciate ....

- The hard work and effort by the devs to not just keep this amazing game going but keeping it fresh and how they do reach out to the playerbase continously...

- That I have had, for the past 75 months, a way to see my characters come to life in other ways than just own written stories and self made comics...

- That there is more than just sci-fi and fantasy MMOs out there and this game was the start of this for me...

- The free comic books that used to be sent to each sunscriber....I still think it was amazing to recieve the City Of Heroes books each month whether it was Blue King or Top Cow...I didn't care...

- The return of the 5th Column...people may see this as lame but they are my favorite enemy group and running around Steel Canyon was just not the same with the "poser" Council standing around...

- The playerbase that frequents the forums...I may not always agree with the posts I see but I do know I will get lots of opinion here and some good reads ...

Things I was appreciative of last Friday, and still am today:

1) Double XP weekend. There are too many fun things to do in this game and I have too much fun making characters, which means that many of them languish for months, or years, with no attention paid to them. Double XP weekend is a great time to dust off some "old friends", relearn how to play them, and get some choice XP under their belts.

2) My company's vacation policy. Not only is it fairly generous - I get 26 days total - I can take vacation in chunks as small as half a day, and nearly at the drop of a hat (typically 1 week notice if it's only a day or two). This makes it much easier for me than for some to arrange time off to attend special ingame events like the Friday of 2xXP weekend, or the now traditional Anniversary day chaos.

3) My insulated French Press coffee maker. Makes the most delicious, flavorful coffee ever, and keeps it warm for hours. Invaluable for 2xXP weekend when non-stop task-forcing makes it hard to put on a fresh pot of java.

I am thankful for /Trick Arrow. It's without a doubt my favourite set

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

I am thankful that I still have an income so I can continue to play this game.

I will be even more thankful if I can win the lottery so I wouldn't have to work to continue to play this game.
Of course, that means that I'd actually have to purchase a lottery ticket.

I have to ask... is that a marshmallow gun in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture? My vision of what it's like to work in that office just took a sharp left turn into awesomness...

Firstly, I'm thankful this game is SO much different from my prior MMO, Horizons: Empire of Astaria. That game was a lag fest and the customer service WASN'T....as in it simply didn't exist. Imagine my surprise, finding a community here where the devs actually played the game and hung out on the boards, reading what the players wrote and taking it to heart. *GASP!*

Next, I'm thankful for not having to craft. I wish we never had a Wentworth's and an invention system, but so it goes. At least I don't HAVE to use them to play. I'm thankful I didn't have to level up a dragon character and have him "age" so he could fly (as in Istaria), just to see what flying in an MMO was like. At level six, just hovering into the sky felt like a slice of heaven.

I'm also thankful for all the folks I've met ingame and to the members of my SGs and coalition groups with whom I've shared some really crazy and fun stuff over the last seven years. I'm especially happy to be part of a game which can bring people together from across the world. Two members of our SG on Virtue, Gods of the Golden Age, were recently married in RL. He is from Australia and she is from the US. Without CoH, they never would have met.

I'm thankful as well for our ingame support to help with hidden mobs in missions, and for dev "drivebys" (flybys?) on instanced maps. BIG thanks to Black Pebble who helped my blaster out with a nasty EB who just had the wrong powerset for me to get past. I felt like a total NoOb, however. The EB knocked my character off the roof and I got stuck in the fire escape. I'm going to macro a "/stuck" key for my characters from now on.

Right now, I could be playing the Star Trek MMO which I waited YEARS to see come to life. I could also be playing Champions or DC Universe. At any other time in my life, I would have bolted to play the shiny new game. Somehow, they never have managed to pique my interest. The grass truly ISN'T greener on the other side of the fence. I'm in City of Heroes. I'm home. Thanks, devs and staff. Thanks for almost seven years of escape from the real world.

Now, if you'll just do something about all the jerk hacking.


Go! Hunt! Kill Skuls!

Hey all!

Friday Friday Friday! Last week it took me until the end of the work day to get on and post but this week I'm posting at the beginning!
Thank you, everyone, who has taken the time to post to this thread. I've been enjoying reading your posts and it kind of energizes me to think of more things that I am grateful for. (Not just in CoH, but in all parts of my life.)

So here's my list, so random, but that's the fun part of this.

Positron + Board Games

This is kind of a love/hate deal. Because I thank him for feeding my board game addiction by constantly introducing me to new ones that I think I'll love but then buy and don't seem to have the time or inclination to play (I do, however, take great pleasure in unwrapping and popping cardboard and organizing in Ziplocs). He gets an appreciation moment, even though he made that "eh" crack last week. And yes, I said it yesterday, too. Whatever! You can't box this Canadian girl in!)

My First E3

This was wayyy back in the same year we launched City of Heroes. I'd never been to an event of this kind before (many of us devs drove down together in my minivan) and it blew me away. We were kiddie corner to Blizzard's booth so we were wandering back and forth checking out each other's wares. But not only that, the sheer awesome of the number of booths and the excitement and getting a chance to see what other games were doing before they were released. It was so amazing! (And loud. My goodness was it loud.) And not only that, I was so insanely proud when someone would come by the booth and play our game or spend hours on the costume creator.

Avatea and Traveling

I had great fun with her in San Diego and New York for Cons last year. We were roomies and had a few I Love Lucy moments. One time, in New York, we wanted to open the window to let some cold air in (yes, that lets the sound in, too, we discovered) and we couldn't quite figure out how the latch worked. Somehow we almost unhooked the entire window and dropped it out of its socket onto the street five stories below. (We saved it.) In San Diego, we discovered the Apple Pancake at Richard Walker's Pancake House and so we'd walk there every day on the way to the booth. (Good thing we walked, we had a LOT of calories to burn off.) So far no one's been able to replicate the awesome of Richard Walker's here up in Northern CA.

The Hospital Gown and the Cape

I discovered via a PM that one of our players had some major medical issues and her husband had been keeping a blog of her progress. So I went over while on a break to check it out (the blog). And that quick break went on about an hour and a half while I sat mesmerized (and heartache-y) over the struggles and trials that she had to endure. She was preparing for a major surgery and just seemed so, well, chipper about it. It was amazing.

I was so moved by her story that I asked if it would be ok to send a simple bit of SWAG her way since she was such a big CoH fan. Her husband agreed and off it went. And then I got an email a while later with a picture attached of her walking the halls in her hospital gown, her portable IV, and that CoV cape flowing behind her. Almost brought tears to my eyes. So the appreciation here is how everyday people show me in small and big ways that no matter what life throws at us, we have a choice in how we handle it. And she handled her circumstance with confidence, grace, and an amazing amount of spunk. A-mazing!

The People Behind the Mask

I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating. One of the biggest things I appreciate is meeting people at the meet n' greets because this is where I get a chance to stand face-to-face and meet the person behind the forum post or the avatar. It's so easy to forget that when we go about our day-to-day business. The person behind the name is a person with a life with struggles and joys and pressures and friendships. So when I get a chance to break that barrier of the internets and meet people first-hand, that is a major moment of joy for me.

Wow, that's less of a list than it is a journal entry, but oh well. It's Friday. It's February.

War Witch

P.S. I deliberately haven't mentioned names in case my dear warrior-ess wishes to retain her privacy. Just in case! (She might not, I don't know.)

P.P.S. Right on, Sweet...oh there must be others.

Wow, someone is up early! 7:15 on the west coast!

Hope you're cranking away on I20 and beyond! :-D

Also, FPARN.

@SpaceNut - My 50s, AE arcs and current projects at ParagonWiki