Epidemic in Paragon City!

We interupt your regularly scheduled program to bring you this urgent message.

The CDC has declared Paragon City and the surrounding areas to be under a Yellow Alert for possible biological or chemical contageons! I repeat, Paragon City is currently under a CDC Yellow Alert.

When asked why the Alert was issued, Mortimer Crumb of the CDC said the following at today's press conference:

"We were made aware of potential problems by several concerned citizens of Paragon. They had recently witnessed an extreme upswing in the number of heroes wandering around Atlas Park who were... in one man's words... 'severely clueless...' We have spoken to as many heroes around the Atlas Statue as we possibly could and have found startling evidence to support the theory that our here-to-for dependable and knowledgable hero community may be slowly succumbing to an agent that leaves them... well... a bunch of newbs."

Our reporter Rip Corewell interviewed several such heroes today while investigating the story. If you have children in the room, we strongly suggest you consider sending them out. What you are about to hear is not encouraging.

"Yeah, new here to Paragon... umm... say... after I level up... do you have any idea where I go to get new powers and stuff?"

"Can you hear me? Tell me you can hear me! I've been trying to talk to that guy over there for ten minutes but it won't let me. Someone said I don't have access to private tells... But you can hear me, right?"

"I can't jump! Can someone tell me how to jump?!"

And, CDC officials state, the epidemic is only likely to get worse.

"This sort of thing starts out slowly. But then it will begin to spread... friends will infect friends... people who had a resistance to it will give in now that certain barriers have been removed... Soon you won't be able to turn around without some hero asking you what an influence is and what is he supposed to do with it..."

Rip Corewell also uncovered rumors that make the epidemic even more horrifying. According to sources, many of the heroes who are not displaying what the CDC is referring to as newbitis, are moving out of the city to an undisclosed location known only as The Exalted Haven. With more cases of newbitis appearing every day and our healthy heroes leaving, how long can we citizens of Paragon City consider ourselves safe?

When asked if the recent meteors striking Galaxy City could be the carrier of this strange new disease, CDC spokespeople would only say:

"We're not ruling out any possibilities at this time."

Stay tuned to SCS News for further updates.

Actually, I didn't write this as a means of saying "those darned newbs are ruining everything I love about this game!" Truth be told I've been hoping for an infusion of new players for a long time now and am still too close to my own frustrations of "Why did my danged attack button disappear when I clicked it?!" to feel comfortable ridiculing anyone else for their ignorance of a game that's new to them.

The concept behind the above news report was more along the lines of "what in the world must the non-powered citizens of Paragon be thinking about all these heroes coming in who have no idea of what they're doing? Especially considering most of the heroes they've dealt with over the past several years (even the first level ones) have been salty veterans..."

I imagine it must be very confusing.