90 Days to the Apocalypse - A Journal

I've been thinking of keeping a journal of my last 90 days in City of Heroes since Saturday morning. I wasn't sure about doing it because the boards may or may not be around much longer, but once I saw that Nethergoat was moving his journal to Blogspot, I thought, hey why don't I do the same? And as it turns out I already had a Blogspot journal, I'd just never done anything with it.

Find this post at: http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...pse-day-0.html

Anyway, my journal will not have any stories of kids driving the characters around, I'm sorry to say. But writing stuff like this is one way for me to refocus and not dwell on the sad news that all of this will soon be gone.

So here we go:

90 Day Until the Apocalypse -- Day 0

On the day before the announcement of the apocalypse I felt very tired and I went to bed very early. I therefore woke up very early. With time on my hands I logged into City of Heroes and proceeded to run five hero tip missions, with the idea of running another five on Saturday and confirming hero status on my character Princess Ozma, which would allow me to start running the Signature Story Arc missions.

Later at lunch I logged into the City of Heroes web site and saw that they'd released a bunch of costume codes (which allow you to look like different NPCs). I applied one of the Talon Mistress codes to one of my CoH accounts and I was happy. I usually miss such giveaways, I'm not very interested in clawing my way past other players to try to be first in a free-for-all, so I don't watch Twitter or Facebook religiously or wait in Pocket D for hours when they're doing giveaways. I have a few of these NPC codes, and that's generally been enough to keep me satisfied, I never felt like I had to get them all.

Anyway, I was in a good mood. It was the Friday before a 3 day weekend, and I'd recently updated my list of CoH goals so that I knew which characters I wanted to work on and who needed what task force to earn the Task Force Commander badge, and so on. I was ready to have a good weekend.

And then, I logged on later in the day during my break and saw that the game was being closed.

I have friends who played Earth & Beyond, so I know a bit of what this is like. Obviously I knew that City of Heroes was an old game and wouldn't go on forever. But in the last year they've added so much stuff, the game has felt revitalized and active. There were a lot of cool things coming down the pipes in the next few months -- several new costume sets, at least four awesome ones that I very much wanted to get my hands on, and new AT powers, new pool power customization and cool new pool powers, a whole slew of changes to the game that was going to make things even better.

So it was a bit of a shock -- enough that people instantly began spinning conspiracy theories, and repeating them over and over. You repeat idle speculation enough times and it becomes hard fact. But all you really need to know is that NCSoft is a big company that makes most of its money from other games -- Lineage, Guild Wars, Aion -- and it has lost a lot of money recently. Like, six million in one quarter. City of Heroes didn't lose that money for them, but it was the smallest game in their stable, one of the oldest with the least prospect of making big money. And, apparently, although it's done really well in the last year, it wasn't doing so well very recently, with people trying out other games like Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World. Also, Funcom had been very disappointed with sales of The Secret World and has decided to back off from the MMO market, and even World of Warcraft has lost a million players in the last year, so there's an idea out there that MMOs are a thing of the past, not a thing of the future. They're a dying breed, or so it seems.

And Paragon Studios was developing a new one, which I'm sure would have required more investment from NCSoft. So, basically, they cut Paragon Studios free. You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain why

Anyway, I was very depressed the rest of the evening. I spent a lot of time reading sad and frantic posts on the message boards. I logged into the game and talked to friends, but I didn't play much. Really, I expect that this will be a good thing for me in the long run, I'm too addicted to the game and play far too much. But it's a sad thing to realize that you won't be able to log in and say hi to old friends and run an Imperius Task Force, and that all of that cool stuff that was coming will never arrive, and that all of your plans for the game and the characters you wanted to work on will be impossible to fulfill.

Anyway I do plan to stick with the game until it closes on Nov 30th, and thus I thought I'd try and document the journey, because I like to do that sort of thing. I have this blog here on Google's Blogger that I've never used, so this is what I intend to use it for.

This is also posted at http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...-up-early.html


90 Days Until the Aocalypse - Day 1

Saturday I got up early. logged on, and ran five tips plus the morality mission to confirm hero status for Princess Ozma. I wasn't sure why I was doing so, except that it was something I'd started Friday morning so I decided to finish it. But afterwards I decided that Princess Ozma would be the character that I used to play through all of the SSA arcs one last time.

I have a plan to get at least Princess Ozma (staff melee/energy brute) and Forest Goddess (nature affinity/water blast defender) to 50. Those are four sets that I've never played at 50, and two characters I happen to like a lot. And I decided, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to need to work fast. We may have three months but there's no telling what state the game might be in only a month from now, or how many players will still be around.

So I spent day 1 of my last 90 days... farming. PLing, using the Council Earth map that I've used for the last year or two. But really, I kind of like being overpowered and able to jump into large groups of enemies and then anihilate them, and it's not something I'll likely be doing in any other MMO, so it was fun to do it one more time.

Princess Ozma was 29 when I started, and I took her to 35. From there I spent some time IOing her out. Then some friends wanted to run an ITF, so I ran over to Night Ward, got my Midnight Club badge, and joined. And things went very well, I had fun. ^_^

I also spent the morning running Signature Story Arc 1.1 (twice, for the hero merits) and in the evening SSA 1.2.

Later in the day Exxxcaliber ran a Hami Raid in The Hive. There were people there who had never been on a raid before, or even been in the Hive before. This also went pretty well. I used Nina Ballerina, my flying Martial Arts/Willpower scrapper who is alway my go-to girl for Hami raids.

That was about what I accomplished on my first day after the big announcement. I spent a lot of time reading the forums and being sad.

Posted also at: http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...pse-day-2.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse - Day 2


I got up early again and got to work on my brute Princess Ozma. I ran the third SSA arc, 3.1 that starts in Founder's Falls. After that friends wanted to run an early morning ITF, and even though I'd just run one the night before, I joined. Nothing like an ITF for getting experience, and it seems to be the one thing my friends want to do in these last weeks of gaming. I popped an XP booster and by the time we were done, Princess Ozma was 39.





After that I spent a bit of time PLing Forest Goddess, from 28 to 32. I want to get her to 35 as well, so I can join ITFs with her too. Anyway I'm not going to PL my wal all the way to 50, but pushing them into the mid 30's sounded like a good idea at the time.

I spent some time taking pictures of my characters -- I did some of that on Saturday too. It's an ongoing project, I've got three months but I don't want to wait until the last minute, and I also don't want to try and do all of it at once.




I spent some time IOing out Forest Goddess and then ran SSA1.4. That was it for me gaming on Sunday, I went out to dinner with an old friend and we saw a movie (Madagascar 3 at the cheap theater). It was good to get out of the house and do something else besides dwell on the ending of CoH, but the sad thing was I missed the usual Sunday afternoon CoP raid. I even forgot to ask how it went.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...pse-day-3.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse - Day 3 (Monday 9/3)



This morning some friends wanted to run another ITF, so of course I joined. That got Princess Ozma to 41. Things are moving along nicely!

After that they wanted to run a speed LGTF so I had to switch. I wanted to play Jennie Nova, my beam rifle/radiation corruptor and one of my most recent 50's, but there were two other rad and I figured we'd want holds for the hami part of the TF, so I switchted to Ash Valentine, my fire/dark dom who I got to 50 this Spring. I don't know why, but I don't like playing the character very much. She's a perma-dom with great damage and sofcapped for smashing/lethal defense, can hold or confuse anything, but I don't know, the character doesn't appeal to me for some reason. But she was the right person to hold those green mitos, that was for sure.

I always get a little nervous on LGTF speed runs, because I haven't done them enough to be super familiar with what needs to be done. I mean, I know that you sped to the end of the first mission and then teleport people back for the fight with the Clockwork King, but I've never been the one to go fight in the end room so I don't know if there's any trick to it. And I've never been the one to go rescue the two people that you then let die in the middle mission. But oh well, I'm good at knowing when to wait at the door I guess.

After that, we ran a STF/MLTF, and I did switch to Jennie Nova. This is a character I made when beam rifle came out, but only got really serious about leveling in June because it seemed like a /rad corruptor would be a godsend on all of those Really Hard Way Magi runs people were doing at the time. But in July I did my Zero to Awesome 2 project, and while I did manage to get Jennie to 50 in July, I hadn't done a thing with her since. So it was nice to run her through a TF. I had fun playing her today, and that's exactly the point -- I want to use the last 3 months of the game to have fun with all of the great characters I've already made, and playing with my friends while I still can.

These could very well be my last runs for the Miss Liberty Task Force and Lady Gray Task Force. I don't run either a whole bunch. As for the MLTF, at least I'm pretty familiar with that one and mostly know what's expected of me on a speed run.



I spent some time PLing Forest Goddess from 32 to 36. That's enough of that. Later in the evening I spent time taking pictures of more of my characters, and then I ran Princess Ozma through SSA1.5, where Statesman dies. I also joined a Maria Jenkins team for one mission, and by the end I hit 42. The death of Statesman and ensuing fight was epic as usual. I've run through it only a few times on a handful of characters -- I don't know why, but I've done the first 3-4 parts of Who Will Die on a whole lot of characters, but 4 and 5 only on a few, and I've never done part 7.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...pse-day-4.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse - Day 4 (Tuesday 9/4)



Tonight was my time to finish my run through the SSA #1 Who Will Die arc. Even though i only started on this project 4 days ago, it's been one of those things where my character has grown in power as I get closer to the end. At 42 and well IO'd, Princess Ozma is already a very tough brute and a good fun character to play.

I worked my way through SSA 1.6 with Penelope Yin tagging along. I just have to say, that final mission -- escort someone through not one, but TWO Oranbega maps, then fight your way back to the beginning through rualruu, then you fail in your objective (which was preordained and you pretty much already knew that) but you still have to go back to the end of the two maps just so you can find out what you already know....

What Dev came up with that one?

Anyway, I moved on to SSA 1.7 which I'd never run before, but it is an awful lot of fun, and of course the famous fight out in space in the final mission -- I took a lot of pictures. I need to run my space-themed characters Jennie Nova and Dilithium Flower through that too this week so I can take pictures of them out in space. And then there's the news conference after -- that's a very nice touch. I was nice and didn't throw Manticore under the bus, but only because I'm nice.

If you haven't run SSA 1.7 yet, you really owe it to yourself to do so while you still can, for the unique mission maps, if nothing else.

My friends wanted to run something but it was late, so it had to be something short. So we ran a Penelope Yin TF. That's 30 minutes well spent!

I really feel like my opportunities to do things like this are slowly slipping away. It's not clear how many of my friends will still be around in a week or two weeks, or in mid October. So every chance I get to run a task force with them is good, because it might possibly be my last chance. So yeah -- had fun again tonight, hope to do it tomorrow.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...pse-day-5.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse - Day 5

Well, my only real goal for this evening was to take more pictures of my characters, and especially, get a picture of Jennie Nova in space.

To do that I had to run through SSA 1.7 again. Having done it the previous night, I went much faster this time through. The best result is below.

Other than that I said hi to people. I missed out on a speed Khan that Freaky formed while I was still running my SSA. I logged in to about seven or eight other characters and took screen shots of them as well. For any that don't have a bio, I'm writing one on the spot, even if it's just a couple of lines. But I did a more elaborate one for Jennie.

And that was my evening as far as City of Heroes went.

You Bio for Jennie Nova made me grin. ^_^

And I'm very appreciative of your journal. It's kicking me in the butt to set some priorities of my own and get them done. Thank you.

I've been doing something similar, a countdown journal inside an Excel Worksheet. Other Tabs have various bucket lists for specific characters and/or missions arcs to complete. A suprising amount of time is suddenly being invested in the demorecord function.....

I will second Atlantea's comment regarding, Jennie Nova -- yet another fun concept realized -- great write-up and costume!

Thanks guys. ^_^

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...pse-day-6.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 6

I didn't do that much last night. I took more pictures of characters and wrote up another article on some of them for my journal. While I was doing that, I missed out on a Tin Mage and two ITFs run by friends. I guess I should play when I get home, and do my character archiving stuff later.

Anyway with two different ITFs going most of my friends were busy and I wasn't, so I logged off and watched some Darkwing Duck (picked that up at Half Price Books recently )

Later at night I logged back in and was able to join a speed Tin Mage. I think my friends actually ran several since it was the WST. Without really thinking about it I brought Jennie Nova, and it was only when we were halfway through that I realized she doesn't have anything in her alpha slot. But on the plus side, the team was destroying everything quickly so I was mostly there as a buffer/debuffer/healer, and I also had some Ultimate inspirations so I did use those at least. :/ But I felt kinda dumb for bringing one of my only non-alpha'd 50's.

Not that it really mattered, we obliterated everything. Or they did while I tagged along.

I also ran SSA 2.1 last night on Princess Ozma, which was fun but I didn't take any pictures. Makes me kind of sad to see "Part 1 of 5" though.

Anyway, with no pictures to post here's one of my better bios instead, for Tiffany Blackheart:

Hi Organica,

I just wanted to say 'thank you' for your player journals, and everyone else who does them. I've been reading these boards for years, although I don't post, and the player journals you and other players have done have inspired many of my characters and given me the determination to play them through to 50.

Your journals though have been particularly important to me because of one specific journal you did a while ago and I wanted to share that story. I believe it was back in November of 2012 you were doing a journal for a project, I forget what for, probably the market, and you mentioned how it was difficult to find time for your NaNoWriMo project and your CoH project. I wondered what the heck NaNoWriMo was when someone asked that very question and I saw that it was National Novel Writing Month.

I had always loved writing but had given up on it many years ago and NaNo sounded interesting so I looked it up and I thought it was a really cool challenge. I was too late to participate during that November, but I couldn't shake the idea of writing a book in a month so I finally joined in the following year and wrote my first book in November of 2011 at 55,000 words. It was the first time I had completed such a major writing challenge and I couldn't have been happier to have once again found my passion for writing. The timing was especially fortuitous as I went through a lot of drama and pain in 2012 and it was writing that helped me get through it. I am not exaggerating when I say that writing saved my life this past year.

I've also participated in Camp NaNoWriMo this past June where I finished my second book and August, which I didn't finish because of too many distractions and a lack of a coherent plot. But, I will be back this November and hopefully will finish my third book. And it's all due to one simple comment made in a journal 2 years ago. So, I wanted to say 'thank you' and encourage you to keep writing, not only player journals for whatever game you end up playing in the future, but writing in general. As your character biographies show you have a real talent for this stuff. After all you never know when something simple can really help someone out.

-- CelestialDragon

P.S. I'll be watching your blog if the forums end up being shut down and I hope you'll mention any writing you publish so I have the chance to read more.

Hey Organica, when I heard the news and knew there were 90 days left, you were one of the first people I thought of and started thinking, 90 day project. So glad you are doing another (last) one. They are informative and entertaining. May run into you in game as I have previously during your first market project.

My current 90 day goal other than cataloging/saving every guy ever made, is to get everyone who hasn't gotten there, to 32...that's the goal, but for an altaholic, that's a stretch.

Look forward to reading your updates!

GJ, Organica.

I've been neglecting my own blog the past few days because I still can't think about this situation without getting depressed.

I think I need to just schedule a day sometime when ALL I do is catalog my characters and take screens.

That's really great to hear, CelestialDragon!

In point of fact I've published two short-short stories in my journal so far. I've been doing 3 types of posts to the journal -- "90 Day" posts that I also post here, "Characters" posts which I assume are more of interest to me than anyone, but I'm slowly listing all of my characters with pictures/bios and a bit about them, and "Grandpa Anarchy Tales", which are a series of silly short stories I did on one of my oldest characters. I have about 8 of them, and several more planned -- I haven't written a new one in more than a year but I'm hoping to write several in the next month or two.

I was thinking of posting them on the boards too, but I didn't want to clutter up this journal with them, so I haven't gotten around to it just yet.

I may still go for an archive of my other marketing journals -- we'll see. ^_^

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...pse-day-7.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 7


There weren't a lot of people online tonight it seemed. I started the night by spending a bunch of my tokens on super packs. I had 10 tokens saved up on Aug 31st, I've now spent 8 of them on super packs because I really don't know what else to do with them. Anyway, by the time I was done opening all of that, I had 6 catalysts, so I used them to upgrade the brute ATOs on Huntress Midnight. This gave me over 50% smashing/lethal defense on an electric armor brute. ^_^ (This is my only character that will ever have catalyzed ATOs I think.)

Freaky eventually formed a speed Miss Liberty TF. and I decided to bring Huntress Midnight and see how her improved defense held up. We had three brutes, a scrapper, a stalker, a blaster, a warshade... only one support AT of any kind, and he abruptly quit without warning in the third mission. After that, we no longer had anything resembling a speed TF. Some of the team members were not 50, those that were, weren't necessarily incarnated or well IO'd. Freaky was, and my toon was IO'd to the gills but only had a T1 alpha. Throughout most of the TF though, I felt like one of the most powerful people on the team, which probably wasn't a good sign. But it was nice after being clearly the weakest person on the Tin Mage the night before.

When we got to the last mission though, all of that changed. We tried to pull Mako to the corner, but then Black Scorpion came over, and then all of them showed up. Multiple team wipes followed. So much for me being a tough brute with massive defense -- defense ain't everything. At one point I grew frustrated, and realizing I had 35 shards and 3 notices of the well on me, I decided to craft my T3 alpha. But I had to exit the mission because my teammates were still fighting, and that counts as me being in combat apparently. And, naturally, backin IP there was a zombie invasion. Somehow I managed to be out of combat just long enough to slot my T3 though, and buy some quick inspirations (we were all out of them after multiple team wipes).

Having a level shift helped me a bit, and I'd bought some Ultimate inspirations as well (what else is my money good for anyway?) But I still died a couple more times before we cleared the four amigos.

After that, we had more trouble with the flyer. It was over Recluse, and when we tried to pull it someone held it. Then I aggro'd some ground guys who grounded me, so I had to fight them... what a mess. Then when we charged in to take on the red tower, there was miscommunication and our taunter Freaky was back clearing up some of the other guys still, so Recluse started slaughtering everyone. I flew up and taunted him, and about that time Freaky came and said he had Recluse now, but I suspected that he didn't, and yep, Recluse followed me. I waited, and then was told "everyone should be on the tower!" So I went over there... but Freaky still didn't have Recluse, who ran over and started slaughtering the team again. After another minute I gave up and went back to hover-taunting Recluse myself, and kept at it until the towers were down. By which point the flyer was back, but we just pulled Recluse to the cubby hole and fought him there.

Total time for our so-called "speed" TF: 1 hour 53 minutes.

Ah well, even a TF that almost falls apart seems like a good deal when you know it might be your last one ever. And after all, we did finish it.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...pse-day-8.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 8

Last week Freaky promised to run a Shard TF marathon on Saturday. So first up this morning: Doctor Quaterfield, the task force tour de force! 22 mind-numbing missions against Rularuu, Crey, and Nemesis! Multiple in-mission ambushes! Simultaneous 4-computer clicks! Defeat alls! Missions jump from Firebase Zulu to Paragon city and back three times! And then to crown it all off, a "mop up" mission hunting Rularuu on a large Oranbega map, with Circle of Thorns thrown in for good measure! Who could resist?

Resist would have been a good idea... or at least, a resist- based brute instead of a defense-based one; rularuu shred defense toons (Nemesis tend to as well actually). But ah well, I want to level Princess Ozma, so a defense based brute it was!

We had 4 brutes, a scrapper, one nature affinity troller, a warshade... another support toon I think. It was actually a similar team to the MLTF of the night before, though not all the same people.



Aside from its insanely long size, there's very little that distinguishes a Doc Q TF. Eventually you reach a series of four missions near the end that are in a white crey lab tile set, you don't see these maps very often. Also along the way you get to defeat bosses with names like Doctor Salad, and that seems really interesting because the TF is so mind-numbingly repetetive.

At one point I said I couldn't imagine doing this TF without the team transport power... but of course I've done it many times without that.

Anyway we were rolling right along and all the while, people were lining up in Atlas Park to hold torches and protest the ending of the game. And at some point, the server couldn't take it anymore, and I saw this:



Virtue was down for about ten minutes or so. The brute in the picture with me, Redeemed Clock Royal, never returned, so we were down to seven for the last few missions.



There was an awful lot of dying along the way, but we finally made it to the last mission. As promised, rularuu on an oranbega map! No AV to be seen anywhere. Boy, what an epic way to end such an epic task force, right? Right?

As if all of this wasn't enough, there were tornado warnings in the Northeast (where some of the team mates were) and then one of our team members started getting brownouts in the final mission, then DC'd and was gone for nearly five minutes. We cleared the last room, but missed one lone brute in another room. Violet returned, so we held off killing the last brute... then Violet DC'd again, but came back much quicker. As soon as she zoned in we finished it.



Look Ma! No defeats! (We probably had 75 or more, actually.) Doc Q is never a quick TF, but 2 hours 30 minutes is a really good time, and 3 hours would be average. We weren't all that fast but the crashing of the server added at least a half hour to our end time.

I got Princess Ozma to 45 though, halfway to 46 even. Afterwards I went to AP6 and held up a torch. I won't be able to play for the rest of the day, but I stopped in Ouro to start an ouro arc so I could leave Ozma in AP for a long time. Last I heard, there were 29 AP instances on Virtue, and Virtue was full.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...pse-day-9.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 9


Not too much to say about what I did today in-game.

First, since I had grabbed an Ouro mission with Princess Ozma the day before in order to hold a torch up in Atlas Park for a long time without auto-logging, I decided to complete that Ouro arc. This was "A Madman's Council" which leads to the unlocking of the Hess Task Force, so I hadn't exactly picked a mission at random. It's a fast arc and unlock.



(You can tell the arc has just ended because everything's gone all sepia-toned.)

Anyway, I'll have to try and run a Hess this week I suppose.

Freaky ran a Sara Moore TF Sat evening which I wasn't able to join, and this morning he wanted to run Justin Augustine. He was working his way through all of the shard TFs. Now, JA is what I consider the worst task force in the game -- most people have hatred for Citadel or Synapse, and Doc Q is famous for being the longest, most-drawn-out series of generic maps in existence, but what JA has over all of them is a bunch of hunts. Over and over and over. There are about 3 actual door missions in the TF, but JA is, to me, the #1 example of the "I'm too lazy to create an actual task force, I'll just throw stuff together and call it good" Task Force.

But I was willing to help Freaky do it anyway. Only it was too early in the morning so nobody else joined, and he said he'd try later. Woo, bad TF averted!

My big plan for the day was to PL one of my old blasters to 50. Liberty or Debt is a fun character that I've had forever, and has been 45 for a while. I came up with a build for her a couple of months ago but hadn't implemented it (she still didn't even have inherent fitness yet -- sooo many characters to respec, and I hate recpec'ing). So I fired up the laptop and soon was PLing away, and got her to 47. Then I spent maybe 2 hours doing the respec and digging up all of the IOs needed for the new build. While I was doing my respec, Freaky came back and started up his Justin Augustine TF. He sent me a tell asking if I wanted to join but I didn't get it until the respec was done, and he'd already started by then. Bad TF averted again!

I took a long break from the game, When I came back, Freaky and my other friends were already running the last shard TF, Faathim the Kind. Ah well. I went back to the PL thing and got my blaster to 50. Along the way I got complimented on her costume and bio, and tipped 5 million influence because someone enjoyed it so much. So here it is:



I got to 50 and ran the Alpha Unlock mission, and that was my evening. Oh, and I got two purple recipes in the process too -- both times right after I'd deleted some generic recipes because my inventory was full.

Not probably the best example of how to spend your last days in CoH, but I'm hoping to play Liberty or Debt a few times with the new build so it should be worth it.

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 10/11


I bought an iPad over the weekend so I have to confess, I spent most of my time yesterday after work playing around on that. I logged in for a short time later in the evening and bid on some of the last IOs needed for Liberty or Debt's build, and said hi to a couple of people, but nothing much was happening.

Tonight I logged in earlier and joined a speed Manti with friends. I brought Liberty or Debt, and was happily not the only energy blaster on the team. We had only one melee (scrapper) to complain about knockback, but luckily we had stone control holds to prevent knockback, and a kin to let me nova as often as possible. Getting Liberty or Debt to 50 and doing the respect and build was totally worth it, even if I only play her this one time. But I expect to play her more than that in the next couple of months.

Right after that we ran a Moonfire which is the WST, and I brought Princess Ozma for that one. I used an XP booster, and with the xp bonus at the end I made it to 46 and am now halfway to 47! I should be able to hit 50 by the end of the week or Saturday at the latest.

That was my evening tonight. Two TFs, one level, not too shabby.

No pictures... so here's the bios for my twin sister goddesses Megamisama (street justice) and Magami Hime (titan weapons):

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 12



Today's accomplishment was a Citadel Task Force with friends, which got Princess Shinobu to level 47 and only a Manticore and a Numina from Task Force Commander.

Later I joined some of the same friends to take down the Kraken, which took all of two minutes.

Citadel gets a bad rap for being a very generic series of council missions on council maps with no variety at all. But I tend to play the game to have fun with friends steamrolling enemies, and council are pretty good fodder for steamrolling. Story is a secondary concern most of the time, or even a non-concern. That doesn't mean I don't like better-built TFs more, but I don't hate Citadel just because it's generic and repetitive.

Anyway, I had fun, we finished in 1 hour 4 minutes which is a very good steamroll Citadel if you ask me. ^_^

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 13


I totally haven't been documenting my characters the last few days. First, I bought an iPad over the weekend and I've been wasting time playing with that, and then last night I started another project to give away a bunch of the extra stuff I have in my various bases. Full sets of ATOs for the most part, but some nice PvP IOs and a few purple sets and other useful things, hami O's, Obliteration sets, etc.

I've been thinking of the best way to do this for more than a week. One idea was to hold some sort of contest to fully IO someone's character, and maybe have as many as three winners -- whatever build you want, money no object, but maybe a limit on how many purple sets you can cram in. But that would have been a lot of work and coming up with a way to pick the winners was a problem, and having winners means you have losers too.

So instead I just decided to group things that I have that I don't need into lots and offer them up for free, first come first serve. So a lot might contain a full set of a given ATO, or a full set of something like Obliteration, or maybe just an Overwhelming Force KD/KB IO or a Glad Armor +3 Def IO. I made my post last night and soon had enough responses to claim just about everything. I like this approach, it's easy to let people pick whatever they want from the list of what's still available, and even though I'm not giving anyone their dream build, I'm giving a lot of people something to help out a little bit at least.

So tonight I missed a Manticore run by friends because I was too busy making sure everyone that had replied to my thread got the stuff they'd asked for. Then I missed an ITF. And Double Experience has been turned on too, so that made me a little sad, even though I very much wanted to get my deliveries done (and that was fun to do as well!)

Later when I was done I was able to join a Moonfire, which is the WST. The last time Moonfire was the WST during DXP was this last Spring, and it was almost perfect -- Moonfire is short enough to be run in about an hour, but long enough that you get a very good end-of-task-force experience bonus. Add in the WST, and that bonus doubles. Add in Double Experience, and it quadruples. My nature affinity/water blast defender Forest Goddess started the task force at level 36 and I used an XP booster, and I did not actually level until we were fighting the AV at the end... but then I leveled 5 seconds before Arkhan died -- and then I leveled again with the ending bonus! So that end bonus was worth a full level of experience (plus one bubble) at level 37.

I was level 37 for all of five seconds, lol.

Didn't do anything else tonight but that was fun.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-14.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 14


Tonight started off with a Friday night Riki Mothership Raid. These have been happening every Friday night on Virtue like clockwork for years, same guys running them, but I don't usually make it to the raid. Then again, the zone usually fills up quick, but not now.

I brought War Maid. She's a Claws / Willpower brute who has smashing/lethal and energy/negative energy defense softcapped, and fire defense at about 32%, and has excellent hit points and regen. There's nothing to not like about playing her, and she was perfect for a rikti raid, I never died and only came close once, and I spent most of the raid facing down rikti magi, sometimes 3 or 4 at once, although any time I managed to get 2-3 together in one place, someone else showed up to help kill them almost immediately. I even ignored warnings to get out of the way when people set bombs, was never at less than half health after the blast, and regen'd quickly. ^_^ In any case, it was a very good raid. I have no idea how many merits I got, I really only did it because it's fun. ^_^

Since War Maid seems to have at least one admirer... or at the very least, admirer of a specific photo of her -- I used the same costume as in my signature and tried to get a good photo of her during the raid. I took a lot of pictures -- my approach is not to demo record, but just hit print screen an awful lot, and try to position the camera for good shots. Only one of them really came out halfway decent, so here it is:



I had expected to maybe spend some time handing more stuff out -- but nobody noticed m second list of stuff in my giveaway thread. This is probably because I posted it near the bottom of page 2, rather than editing the original post to show new stuff. I didn't really think about it at the time, but most people only read the first post, especially in a non-discussion thread like that one is. Maybe I'll go back and fix that, though it's kind of an interesting experiment to see who notices the new list first (or reads about it here in my journal.)

After that we ran a Moonfire Task Force. I used One Divine Hammer for this. Technically I want to level up Princess Ozma and Forest Goddess, but both have been through Moonfire this week. The experience from the WST is so good that I really can't just run either of those toons through another Moonfire and miss out on the xp bonus, so I'm playing a lot of my other toons that I may or may not be trying to get to 50 after Ozma and Goddess. One Divine Hammer is one of those -- a mace/shield scrapper. I'd heard that mace was sweet on a scrapper, and it really seems like it to me. She was 35 when we started and I got her to 37 by the end.

And then... we ran another Moonfire. Why not? For this I switched to Death Ace, one of two toons on my third account (the Dilithium Flower account) that I leveled up during the DXP weekend in August. I sort of feel like starting a new toon and leveling them up from level 1 during a DXP weekend is the thing to do, even though I didn't have any new concepts I desperately wanted to try. I started that Friday with Cupcake Overdrive, an electric melee/shield brute, and then when Street Justice went on sale on Saturday I bought it and started Death Ace, who is a Street Justice/WP scrapper. Neither character really represents anything I haven't done before, so my will to get them to 50 by November 30th is not strong, but Death Ace was already 38 and Cupcake Overdrive is 42, so it may happen. Death Ace hit 40 tonight at the end of the Moonfire.

I suspect I'll run 2-3 more lowbie toons through Moonfire before Tuesday if I can manage it, although my weekend is looking pretty busy, so we'll see.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-15.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 15


Saturday is Hami Raid Day on Virtue, and will be right up to November 30th if Exxxcaliber has anything to say about it.

Normally I bring Nina Ballerina to hami raids, but I was on Princess Shinobu and she's 47 now and well IO'd so I figured, why not? This meant that I got placed on the taunt team because she's a brute. I was going to say I didn't have taunt... but actually, it turns out I do. I picked it up at 47. In my original build I was going to take Innocuous Strikes and was not planning to take taunt, but it turned out by my mid 30's that I had more than enough attacks already and they recycled quickly enough that I didn't need another. I was slotting the power for defense, and I could get good fire/cold defense from 5 pieces of Mocking Beratement in taunt. And I needed that.

Also, I think Innocuous Strikes is that dumb-looking attack that has you stabbing the ground multiple times. I hate the way that attack looks. So I don't need it, and I can definitely use taunt.

So! Off we went! I took pictures!



Nya nya! Missed me!



You will bow down before the great and powerful Ozma!



We paused in the fight to balance a giant boulder on my staff.



This is me taunting George. It turns out the back left yellow mito is named George. Blade Wielder said so.



From the depths of hell, I stab at thee! At... your knee!

This is what it's like when you take on the wall. I love doing it, titanic enemies on all sides! Better bring someone who can take a beating!

Anyway, the raid went a little rough but we pulled it off. Once again, there were people there who had never been to a hami raid, or hadn't been in years. That's very cool, everyone should experience it once I think. ^_^




A bit later Jane mentioned that her 45 troller was sitting around in Cimemora looking for something to do... Zombie said he could do an ITF, I said that I had 2.5 levels left to 50 on Princess Ozma... and soon we had an excellent ITF team rolling. ^_^ It's DXP, it's ITF, I popped an XP booster and a Windfall. I was level 48 by the end of the first mission, and level 49 only a few minutes into the third mission. By the time we reached big bad Rommy in the final mission, I had one bubble to 50. Right after his first death and rez, it came:




So that's one of my big goals for the last 3 months accomplished! I still need to respec and finish the build, and I need to run the Ramiel arc, but that can wait until later. ^_^ Tonight I'm busy with a friend... probably going to see Avengers again, or MIB III, or something. Tomorrow I have plans too, so may not have time to play much.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...days-1617.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Days 16,17

Here's the real life story of my weekend:

1. Car started breaking down. I took it to the shop Saturday and they decided to keep it until Monday, not sure what's wrong with it.

2. Did not drive up to Seattle for Writer's Night with my friends, as I had no car. Instead went to dinner with an old friend and we saw Avengers again at the cheap theater. Made me want to play City of Heroes, but it was really late when I got home.

3. Sunday I was supposed to have dinner with my parents and sisters for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary, but it turned out to be an early brunch and they did not bother to call me until they were at the Space Needle in Seattle wondering where I was. Still had no car. Friend picked me up instead, we went to a Half Price Bookstore warehouse sale and ate dinner at Gordito's. Got home late, had to get up early, did not play much.

4. Monday -- dinner with parents after work.

Basically I didn't get a lot of time to play on the weekend. Sunday I did manage to run the Ramiel alpha unlock arc, and in the evening I ran most of SSA 2.2 which I completed on Monday.

I've been pretty stoic about the closing of the game. I always knew I wouldn't play it forever, in a way I'll be glad to find a way to break my addiction and try to get more writing done, and I leave behind few regrets -- I've done just about everything in the game, I've played just about everything, all ATs to 50, over 40 level 50s, most of them IO'd out to the gills with money-is-no-object builds. I have over 1100 badges on Mouse Police even though I haven't done serious badging in a couple of years. There wasn't much left for me to do in the game.

But what makes me sad are the things that were planned or on test that I'll never get to see live -- the cool costumes, the new AT sets and changes to game play, and the last parts of the second SSA arc. Just running the first three parts of SSA 2 makes me sad, because I know I can't finish it or find out what cool stuff the had in mind. That's just something that can't be changed. Even if the game is miraculously saved, you probably won't see the same Paragon dev team that was there on August 31st, and whatever ending they might publish for Pandora's Box probably would wind up different than what they were planning.

But most likely you won't see it at all, and that makes me sad. But I'm not one of those people who feel like NCSoft kicked my puppy and I'll never ever buy one of their games again. All of the angry posts directed at NCSoft just seem silly. They made a business decision to close a game that had a really good run, and before that decision they'd done very well for the game. I may not like it, but I don't hate Paragon Studios so I certainly don't hate Arenanet. I haven't bought GW2 but I may try it out, who knows. (And I've already sworn to never buy anything from Sony and Electronic Arts, I can't write off every gaming company out there, and I believe have much better reasons for hating those two. ^_^ )



Monday we did an Abandoned Sewer Trial. That was cool, it doesn't get run that often and I hadn't been on one on probably a year or more. The last several I've joined have been very easy -- these days, with overpowered characters and disciplined teammates it's actually quite easy, whereas it once seemed near impossible to complete.



I brought War Maid, and like I said in my post about the rikti raid, she's nearly invulnerable against lots of enemies. I didn't have to hide from the hydra's psionic attacks, I ran out and slaughtered tentacles at will and went toe to toe with the tough monster-class baby kraken. Much fun!



After that we ran one last Moonfire while it was still the WST. I brought Cupcake Overdrive for this one and got her to 44, but I'm still ambivalent about getting her to 50, she does nothing that other level 50 characters don't already do for me. But I had fun.