Heartsick (*SPOILERS FOR BELLADONNA VETRANO*)

I've had the launcher patched for hours, but I can't bring myself to log in. I'll get over it soon, probably, but right this minute I'm feeling heartsick. There's a scene in this issue, by now most of you with level 50 characters have seen it, that just makes me queasy.

Over the course of Belladonna Vetrano's level 50 arc, we find that due to the loss of the Seers (Minds of Mayhem trial) and the exposure of Tyrant's surrender to the Hamidon (TPN trial), most of the Praetorian police and some of the surviving IDF have defected to the Resistance. By the time we get there, Neutropolis has fallen, and the Resistance controls most of Imperial City. And ...

And it's everything we fought to prevent, in three of the four level 1-20 Praetorian arcs. Half the city is on fire. The Crusaders won.

And worse, when we get there, the Resistance and the cops aren't saying to us, "Holy (expletive), the city's on fire! Help us put out these fires, help us rescue the people trapped in those buildings!" They're saying, "Oh, good, the city's on fire! This is a perfect opportunity to steal stuff from Praetor Sinclair!"

Thanks for another reminder that everybody in this game, hero and villain alike, is some kind of a monster. Thanks for the reminder that, to borrow (and bowdlerize) a phrase from TV Tropes, City of Heroes is a (Bleep)sack World.

Look.

I know that Tyrant and Neuron intended to kill every super on Primal Earth. And I saw what Battle Maiden did to Blyde Square. And I saw what Admiral Durray did to Skyway City. And I feel no sympathy for Mother Mayhem, who was a monster and genuinely needed to die. But are we no better than them? Is this what we were fighting for, to burn Praetorian City to the ground in retaliation?

Look, I know that very few are going to sympathize with me. This is the direction that the whole game's story has been going, all along. And most of you are just exactly the kind of people who actually nod when somebody says, "It's different when we do it, because we're the good guys, because we have good intentions," a human tendency that has driven me insane since I was a child.

I also know that I should distrust my own instincts in this, because I know that pure aesthetics are driving part of my reaction. Part of me actually cheered the destruction of Skyway City, wished it was permanent, because Skyway City is pathologically ugly. Aside from the Seer Network, Praetorian City was everything I've ever wanted to live in: comfortable, affluent, environmentally friendly, human pedestrian scaled, and above all beautiful, the most beautiful environment this game's designers have ever made. It constantly left me wondering if, frankly, once we got rid of Mother Mayhem, if maybe leaving that world to be co-ruled by Tyrant and Hamidon was really such a bad idea. And we just set it on fire. And looted it, rather than put out the fires or rescue the victims. Yay us.

What's WRONG with leaving it to two relentlessly anti-war supers, one who will not tolerate abuse of people, the other of which will not tolerate abuse of the environment? Once we rid that world of Praetor Tillman's vampyric, invasive hive-mind, shouldn't we have asked Tyrant/Hamidon why they were afraid of us? Shouldn't we have at least tried to negotiate peace, and combined our forces against the Battalion?

Yeah, I know, it's just a game. But I loved Imperial City. Several of my characters fought to save it. Give me at least a couple of hours, maybe a day or so, to get over seeing it in flames.

Berlin got a bit knocked about when we liberated it - which is what happens when crazies make last stands.

The damage to Imperial City is minimal - most of the flames are at the Ministry of Information, where, like all the best collapsing dictatorships, the secret police are trying to get rid of sensitive documents.

I know enough history not to be flattered when I'm compared to what the Russians did to Berlin in 1945. We're bad, in City of Heroes, but we're not that bad.

I'm assuming that they changed it a bit from beta, as I ran the arc several times, and never saw "half the city" on fire, or any looting, or Crusaders rampaging through the streets - there was just a force of Resistance fighters adn redeemed PPD surrounding Chimera's skyscraper, being watched by a crowd of liberated citizens, including Kang, who were all celebrating their freedom - so I assume the live version looks more like the destoryed Atlas Park mission map?

Consider it from this angle: Those in power tend to do anything they can to keep that power. If Tyrant is willing to drop a nuclear warhead on you, what's stopping him from doing it to the rebellious population?

Loyalists should also avoid the arc because it awards them a badge called "Savior of Imperial City".

eh I do not see the problem with lighting preatorea on fire, Hami probably wants his food cooked before hand like any of us do. Wakka Wakka




Now with that out of the way, This may well have been inevitable from the moment Preatoreans met Primals back in issue 1.

Remember Tyrant's motivation for this war is not gaining power it was because he felt that if Hamidon found out about another world full of meta-humans not under Cole's control it may restart the ceasefire between him and Hami. Now this line of thinking may be faulty but considering Arachnos likes to pry in places it may not be entirely wise to do so I can somewhat agree with it, even if Cole's plan of killing all the supers on primal earth was terribly stupid.

Honestly I think the fall of Preatorea was always going to happen in one way or another, all it would take is one crazy enough Crusader to do something wild enough to break the treaty with the Hamidon and Cole would have been deeply screwed.

Hmm isnt Primal Earth helping evacuate praetoria? Cause the prae hami is a little angry at Cole?

A depressing fate for what ended up being my favorite zones in the game. Oh well.

The damage is so minmal that the fires are restricted to 1 or 2 windows on a single floor of half a dozen multi-floor skyscrapers.
I'm not sure why those half a dozen fires are all high up on the buildings - but with the collapse of support for Tyrant following the destrution of the loyalists thought police, it's possible that the last remaining stiff-armers in Imperial City had switched to sniper tactics as a way to minimize the huge difference in number between them and the Resistance fighters and civillians who'd come out onto the streets to celebrate their liberation.