New World, New Look, New Info.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the absolute latest information from City Of Heroes : Going Rogue.

Firstly, information on the gorgeous Nova Praetoria, the centre of Emperor Coles powerbase.

Nova Praetoria 

This city ward, considered to be the most exclusive district in all of Praetoria, houses the elite of Praetorian society: Cole’s trusted Praetors and the myriad state employees and officials who have been given the special privilege to live and work next to humankind’s savior, Emperor Marcus Cole.

From Cole Tower, the tallest building and most dominant landmark in all of Nova Praetoria, Emperor Cole can survey all that he has fought hard to protect.

In the Magisterium below, his Praetors gather for the day-to-day business in Praetoria, capital of the Empire.

Surrounding the Magisterium courtyard are the five most influential structures in Praetorian government: the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Technology, the Civic Center, the Praetoria Police Headquarters, and the Cole Transport Authority.

Statues of the Praetors stand like sentinels over the Magisterium, reminding all who visit that Cole’s trusted advisors watch over the city with constant vigilance.

But these statues pale in comparison to the glory of Emperor Cole’s likeness, which stands before his tower, hand outstretched in greeting to all who visit here. Before this colossus stands the statue of Praetor White, Praetoria’s enforcer and head of the Powers Division, Praetoria’s super-powered police force.

Where there is a city, there is a support structure and in the darkness below the gem of Nova Praetoria we have The Underground.

The Underground
The Underground is a network of tunnels that traverse the soft underbelly of Praetoria.

It was created to keep the appearance of the aboveground portion of the city unspoiled and uncluttered while the day-to-day maintenance and transportation tasks were carried out away from public view. Using the Lethe as its main artery, the tunnels follow a winding path through Nova Praetoria to Neutropolis and beyond. 

Not all is fun and games in the darkness though. Things lurk and people plot.

 

You’d be best not to take Nova Praetoria at face value…

(More information to come soon we hope and keep an eye on OnRPG.com for my take on Going Rogue soon)

Tourism

Shannon and I are off on a holiday.

Not an actual holiday mind you, just a break from Paragon City. For whatever reason (I suspect a Nemesis plot) Shannon is feeling like a break from the City of Heroes and so in finest “WoW Tourist” (Thanks Syncaine for the now old term even if we’ve never played WoW) tradition, we’re off on a holiday.

It is just a temporary break though given that Going Rogue is right around the corner. At most we’ll be away for a month. Of course it becomes complicated when we factor in Shannons computer having died recently and the replacement being … well… crap. No fancy high end graphics games for her and therefore for us.

So options appear to be

• Allods Online (Suggested to her by OnRPG awesome guy Nic)
• Dungeons & Dragons Online (I wont let it go)
• Anarchy Online (Blame Sareini)
• Something else (This is what the comments section is for)

So. Any suggestions? Preferences? Cautionary tales?

To Everything There Is A Season

I have never really had experiences with big guilds. I dabble in many many games but my home for the majority of my MMO life has been the Virtue server of City of Heroes.

City of Heroes is a reasonably casual game. You can hop on to either side, grab a random mission from the Police Radio or Newspaper (assuming you don’t have a contact with missions) and hammer it out quickly. Design aspects were taken and further expanded upon in Cryptics Champions Online and to an extent Star Trek Online. As a result of this casual nature, I have never had the experience I hear of with World of Warcraft guilds where courting them is a multiple week long process. I never really had much interaction with many guilds in Warhammer either. The one that I did join which wasn’t just a collection of City Of Heroes friends merely asked that I play with them a lot rather than a little. Given that more often than not I no longer played with friends at that time I had no problem throwing my various alts in.

However recently in City of Heroes old players have come back from the wilds of Champions Online and here is where I get to the point.

There once was a group. I shan’t name it, though anyone who knows me can guess it, so as not to come across as bashing anyone. I had a wonderful time in the group and made many friends. Some of them persist to this day, some of them I have had the fortune of meeting in person. The group was active, had allies, had stories and had fun. With so many people back in those heady days coming and going in City of Heroes there was a vibrance to the Supergroup. People came and people went but the core of what the roleplay group was remained.

As time passes though, so too do people. Eventually the group withered and died. There were brave attempts at restarting it to be sure. There were good ideas and good intentions but in the end, if no one can give the time to the group, the group does not exist. That is the core of my belief regarding Supergroups. Perhaps with hardcore guilds where it takes months to gain entry, where they are a heavy investment in time, money and effort, there is a greater sense of permanence to the guild. Perhaps in those cases it is about the tools and utility of the guild rather than the people. As I said, I don’t know having had no experience. Supergroups though are all about the people. In a casual game with so many coming and going and having so many faces (ahhh altitis, my bane) the time between a group being one you remember fondly and one being filled with strangers who have little link to the original ideals can be quite small.

In the end the casual nature of the game contributed to the death of the group. Some older hands retried it in Champions Online and it seems it has either diverged from the memory of the original or the game itself does not hold the interest of everyone. Why do I say this? Well those same souls are back in Paragon City and trying once more to recreate the group. The name was never the group. The ideals or roleplay reasons for it were never the group. The group was made and immortalised in peoples memories by the people themselves. They’ve moved on, the groups season turned. I just hope that in trying to bring it back again, people do not tarnish their memories (surely rosily coloured by nostalgia at this point) of what they had by the imitations attempted.

They say you can’t cross the same bridge twice because of the water flowing beneath. I suppose you can’t join the same casual dream twice either.

City of Heroes Kinetic Melee

Thanks to Quest for the link.

Enjoy! (I agree with the guy in the background, “I love you” )

C(ash cow)-Store

Sorry for the delay folks. Blame The SCP Foundation for my absence lately. I just can’t get enough of it.

Anyway as I am sure almost everyone knows, the Champions Online C-Store is now live. In it you can get such things as a complete Character Retcon (1000pts), Four additional Character slots (1200pts), Additional costume slots (400pts per two slots), Character Rename (280pts) then various emblems, outfits, vanity pets and so on.

Now those Cryptic points are roughly similar to Turbine Points. We’ll come back to that. The current exchange rate (as though to imply it can be changed later) Cryptic Points stands as shown here. It is at this point that I must point out quite clearly to one and all that City Of Heroes also has micro transactions.

City of Heroes lets you buy

• Character slots for a server up to a maximum of 36 slots on one server (1, 2 or 5 at iirc $5, $10 and $20)
• Server Transfers
• Respecs
• Character Rename
• Super Boosters

The Super Boosters are $10 each and you have such varied ones as the Good Vs Evil item pack (from the GvE edition of the game), Wedding Pack, Mac Item Pack, Cyborg Booster, Magic Booster and Super Science booster. Of all of them, only the Wedding pack is entirely cosmetic, with new outfits and emotes. The last three bring outfit pieces, emotes and powers. Good Vs Evil and Mac Pack have costumes and a new power.

Basically $10 buys you a fair bit of kit in CoH. Shannon wants me to get the Magic pack when I can because she adores one of the coats in it and I have to admit, the Fortune power is very handy to have but by no means game breaking. I personally have been eyeing up the Mac Pack, not for the mission teleporter power but the Valkyrie armour which looks gorgeous. Despite there being costume sets to buy and emotes only available to those who have shelled out cash the booster packs are perfectly acceptable to me for two reasons. Firstly (and I wish I had the time to ferret out a link to source the assertion) the Wedding pack sales directly accelerated work on the issue that followed it thanks to the cash injection. Hey, they give us fun stuff that we may want but don’t need and if it gives them a leg up? What’s not to love? Secondly, there are new pieces added to the game constantly. There are more temp powers than I’ve ever had knocking around the game. I may not be able to juggle electricity or drink a super serum for a costume change, but I eventually got my own costume change emotes.

$10 in CO doesn’t buy you anything. You have to purchase in increments. So the nearest band is $12.50 which gets you 1000 points and that’s just enough for a full RetCon in Champions. $12.50 to rebuild your character. City of Heroes also has Respecs for sale. Respecs in City of Heroes let you repick every power from your primary and secondary from the first level, entirely changing the pools you may have had and also are a handy way to sell off or remove enhancements and slotting that you may want elsewhere. You cannot, unlike the RetCon, change your primary and secondary. However as I write this I have 51 months worth of Veteran badges and Issue 16 recently launched. I personally tend not to respec and five years on from launch massive sudden nerfs to powers in CoH are rare. As a result I have Four veteran respecs (9 months, 21, 33 and 45 months), one new issue “freespec” and on most of my characters I have my three possible reward respecs from the trial. The trial takes about two hours and at the end, wahey respec and badge. If for some reason I managed to burn through those 8, I still do not have to shell out cash, there are Respec recipes on the in game market (though they cost a pretty penny).

Slots are also an issue. Four more character slots in Champions (to bring you to a total of 12) costs $18.75 (1500 pts) if you buy the two smaller instalments or $25 (2000pts) if you want to buy a few more things. Five slots in City of Heroes is $20 and you get a new character slot for every 12 months you’ve played the game, on top of the 12 you already had from City of Heroes (originally it launched with 8 but 12 became the standard after CoV) and the two they gave out if you were around for the launch of slots. You can on a single server in City of Heroes have 36 slots. Sure Champions is brand new and sure it doesn’t have servers, relying instead on the instances system but … it’s not like Cryptic didn’t know that hero games breed altwhores. It’s not like they didn’t give out Freespecs in CoH or didn’t have an easy and enjoyable respec system. Sure I suppose the ability to have a full retcon, rebuilding your character from the ground up and having entirely different powers, shouldn’t be cheap or easy. There’s a difference though between “not cheap and easy” and “screw the customer for cash”.

As people will continue to compare the two games (me especially) keep in mind that Cryptic did make them both. Champions should have been City of Heroes Mk 2.Awesome. They had the time and experience with CoH to show them what did and did not work, what does and does not piss off the fan base and finally how to have fans hand over cash with a grin. I’ve never heard anyone bemoan “having” to buy a super booster. Heck if you decide to play City of Heroes, buy the Architect edition, you get a free super booster with it. Right now Champions is punishing its players and the pricing is insulting in some cases and idiotic in others. Really though, it’s just retail. You’ll almost always have points left over and they’ll tease you with more bits and pieces. You’ll always need to buy just a few more to fit everything if you don’t shell out more than you need initially.

Though for the close we’ll go back to the Turbine Points like I promised. I played some DDO with Sareini over the weekend and I earned my first Turbine points which when I have enough I can use instead of cash to buy anything in the DDO store. Now obviously I know it’ll be a grind if I want anything in particular. The cash option is just the faster, easier but ultimately costly option. If I want it NAO I pay money. Champions to my recollection is supposed to have the same system. However Sareini tells me that there are to her knowledge at the moment no missions in the game that reward C-Points because well… it’s broken. Also Cryptics Daeke had this to say.

I agree with Syp in that CO really shouldn’t be charging for costumes and such when they haven’t yet surpassed their only competitor. If nothing else, charging money for Halloween outfits before Halloween? Whose bright idea was that?

Two notes I'm adding after the fact. First I will put in ParagonWiki links for people soon. Second, while I want clarification on the extra costume slot item in the C-store, it is the one thing Shannon would kill for in CoH

In The Name Of The Healer..

And the Tank and the Holy DPS did you see how I pwned that mob?!?

That’s right, the holy trinity. The three body system that has the person soaking the damage and keeping aggro, the person keeping everyone up and running and the person who dishes out the hurt. I’m told the Holy Trinity is boring and old fashioned and in need of a shake up. Personally, I’ve not had much experience with it. Even in games that have it, I’ve a tendency to go off and do whatever amused me rather than what I am good at or “meant” for.

The Trinity is being discussed on the Epic Slant Forums but this post is inspired by Luigrein over at Rainbow MMO. He was talking about City of Heroes and how just because your class is a tank, that doesn’t mean levelling one means you know them all. (By the way, I didn’t see your global for ages mate, I’ll tend to that tonight)

I am in total agreement with that. Last night I just got my tenth level 50 character in City of Heroes, this time my Warshade Kashlar. So as of writing this I have a max level on 6 of the 7 Hero ATs and 3 of the 7 Villain ATs. That doesn’t mean I have played everything, even in the ATs that I have supposedly finished. My friend Sephorus for the longest time had a Fire/Fire tank that he insisted was a scrapper with the wrong AT icon. Dinging 50, I was on an Imperious Task Force. We had no dedicated healer and precious little in the way of pure dps. What we did have was a lot of people who played well and had enough utility to carry the day (also lots of control). I have heard of all Kheldian taskforces, all Blaster taskforces, all Defender (broken and wrong:P) taskforces and so on and so forth. The Trinity can be undone through one word. Utility.

I think the hard part is though not everyone wants it gone. Personally I think I might enjoy some time making the healiest healer I can, or tankiest tanker. I might like my niche and I want to be able to indulge that desire wherever I play. Designers though are the ones who you have to convince and I know how.

Get the developers of all the games you love and have a massive Left 4 Dead vs marathon. Zoey is no better than Francis. Louis no less accurate than Bill. Each player is on an even footing and can pick the weapons that suit their style best, can heal with a medkit or patch up briefly with pills. They all can lay down walls of fire or lob a distracting pipe bomb. How the person plays with the tools offered is up to them. There is no dedicated healer, though someone can play that way. There is no dedicated tanker beyond “Hey you’ve slightly more health, you annoy the Witch”. There is no best weapon. You use what you have in a manner that suits yourself. Could that be applied to MMOs en masse? I haven’t a clue, though I will watch the one that recently caught my eye that might.

Levels and classes are a wonderful introduction to online games and teach you how to play in the virtual worlds that so many people love. Sooner or later though, the fun comes from having nothing but a shotgun and a prayer.

Double XP Weekend Returns

From the City of Heroes Facebook Page

We're celebrating the recent launch of Issue 16: Power Spectrum in style by offering all our players a Double XP weekend! But that's not all, all inactive accounts in good standing will also be given access to City of Heroes and City of Villains® during the Double XP weekend! Here are the dates and times:

• Starts: Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 8:59 a.m. Pacific Time (11:59 a.m. Eastern Time)
• Ends: Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time (2:59 a.m. Eastern Time)

It’s a longer period this time around (Hey that’s 5pm GMT so just as I finish work. Win). I’ll be on a whole hell of a lot on various levels. So anyone out there fancy coming along, inactive accounts will be back on and I will be running teams all over the place on Virtue. My global is as ever, @Ardua.

My plans revolve (at the moment) around a range of characters blue side and two on the red side. Levels 48, 27 and 22 blue. Levels 27 and 21 red. Guest appearances by the Robo-Buddy Mk IV may also be on the cards. That however (for those of you who haven’t been in Paragon in a while) doesn’t mean you can’t come and play on anything you want. Super sidekicking means everyone will always be the level of the team and always get xp, even if they themselves are a higher level. Rushing to 50 or sampling the proliferated sets way down at level 1, you’re more than welcome to play with us.

This is also a good time to mention a friend and I are resurrecting a role-play supergroup of ours and more information will come on that, but if you have any magic themed characters you plan on keeping around, feel free to join us. Other than that, send a tell, have some fun and enjoy the xp bonus.

Xp Curves Ahead

I've been talking to my friend Sareini today a bit about CO, CoH and xp curves. We're both old enough hats in City of Heroes to remember (even if the term confused me) the Purple Patch. It was a patch similar to the launch day shenanigans of Champions Online.
Quotes bulk out posts, so I'm going to be cheesy.

Sareini: This was way, way back in the early days of CoH. People were apparently finding it incredibly easy to solo groups of purple-conning mobs, so they put out a patch which raised mob difficulty. Across the board. Which made it damn near impossible to solo unless you were a few types of meleer.

Oh, and they put the patch out on a Friday and then left for the weekend.

Every game tweaks their critters now and then. Archvillains have been tweaked more times than I can remember. Powers have been changed and when they brought in Sonic and the whole concept of resistances, that changed alot of things too.

However I remember this so called Purple Patch. Suddenly minions, all but the lowest of the low, were an issue. Jack Emmert went on record (and I really must find and cite it) saying that One Hero should be equal to about Three Minions. No more wading through the faceless mooks of the opposition, those mooks had teeth. How do you feel like a hero though when a bunch of Skulls kick your ass? It's one thing to be done in by the machinations of an insanely powered insane threat, it's another to get your ass handed to you by lowly gang initiates.

Since then City of Heroes has had various modifications to how powerful you are. The Global Defense Nerf made it more unlikely that you'd be hit yes, but it also reduced defenses by 40%. Enhancement Diversification had some people screaming. It reduced how many enhancements you could effectively slot in a power by introducing diminishing returns. Changes were made to AoE powers limiting how many people you could hit with a single blast and changes made to taunt, ensuring that one tanker could no longer herd an entire map.
There were also improvements made, Invention Sets would be prime amongst them.

All of these changes are separate to the Curve Smoothing they did to make xp flow faster in certain level ranges, if memory serves the 30-35 range was particularly bad once upon a time.

These things happen though. Games are modified, some bits are clearly too easy, others far too hard. Sometimes it's to curtail farming, other times it's to make things more balanced and fair across the classes (which logically shouldnt be balanced in comparison anyway).

Quick shot at CO, yes I couldn't resist. Generally when there's a big shake up, City of Heroes grants all characters a free respec. You don't even have to go anywhere, just type /respec and voila, you can respec. Why didn't CO, made by the same people who have lived through the same problems, give the same ability?

Back on topic, I want to put a question to anyone reading this. How long should it take a normal person, playing no more than three hours a night, to reach the level cap?
I understand that there are different sorts of players, some want to get there as fast as possible, others prefer an extended smell the roses type of play.

It seems that most games eventually run into the problem of power and entertainment. If you are all powerful, how do they keep you entertained and thus p(l)aying? If you are held back by an unforgiving curve from getting more powerful for too long, you won't be entertained. If you level to the cap in seconds, they must have scads for you to do or risk you having little to no interest in sticking around.

It seems we've lost our patience as gamers. People don't want to have to work and make an achievement out of that next ding, they want power and they want it now. Champions Online has delivered this, Travel power from level 5, ripping up scenery to smash foes with, impressive attacks and a go-go-go pace that rushes you into battle. They just started to run out of things to keep you doing and forgot their own previously learned lessons.

Personally, I don't mind taking my time on occasion. Enjoy the journey, smell the roses, see the sights. Only then friends want you to play with them and they're soooo far ahead, but hey, you know that one great spot in that zone where the xp per minute is fantastic. Curve schmurve, people want a faster lane. Or do they?

Sareini: See, it's all about your audience. And personally, I wish they wouldn't keep making the xp easier in certain level ranges. I mean, I enjoy doing the content, and RPing (even if it's just in my head) the storylines, and now with one good team or TF I'm outlevelling huge chunks of the game. Yes, I can exemp or Flashback, but it's the principal of the thing. I shouldn't have to say, "Hmm, should I solo and get to do this content first time through, or play with my friends and miss it all?"...yeah, I'm probably not representative of players in general though :P

Sareini: The way I see is... *gets on soapbox* they need to concentrate less on all these TFs that you can only do from 45+ and the like, and put in more mid-game content. Will we ever see the Faultline trial, for instance? Or whatever they're building in Steel near Boomtown? Or new storyarcs or mini-TFs involving Boomtown or shock horror Dark Astoria?

Life in the City

If you've ever played City of Heroes, you've likely been around Paragon a bit. Even so there are entire zones you may have missed on your characters journey from 1-50. Maybe because they're older and you didn't want to. Maybe because the contacts you selected from Radio missions just didn't send you there or maybe you just stuck to the Radio missions.

In the Rogue Isles, the City of Villains, things are quite a bit smaller. Mercy leads to Port Oakes, Port Oakes to Cap and so on and so forth. Every time you're in a level band that opens a pvp zone, you get a mission to at least talk to the zone liasion. The Isles are a small and interlinked place. That isn't to say there's not things to see. My friends and I have a Widow team whose entire raison d'être is to work their way through each and every contact they can, turning off xp to make sure that we see it the first time through rather than using the Oroboros flashback system to relive it.

The Rogue Isles came after Paragon City and are a good example of what to do. Each island is meant for a different level range and there's always travel involved when you get sent back to an area later in your career. That retracing almost always is done properly.

Paragon City however is suffering due to its metropolitan sprawl. There are so many far flung corners of the city, people just don't see them all unless they make an effort to do so.
Partially this is due to some content being newer and better done than other bits. Partially it's because some places are just easier to deal with.

Take Faultline. Old Faultline was a horrible place full of zombies and Clockwork and Circle of Thorns. It had pitfalls a plenty and if you were a superspeeder, watch your feet. Before missions got a boost and you could as easily street sweep to 50 as mission, an old friend and I used to sweep Faultline, rarely was there competition. Why? Because Faultline was crap. It was desolate, it had no missions attached to it, no contacts. The nearest Hospital in Skyway was on the other end of that zone.
Issue 8 revamped Faultline and brought life to the area. Contacts were introduced with a level range of 15-20 and 20-25. There were more badges, including the out of the way Easter egg room, and there was more to see. Travel was made easier and Faultline was made the place to go for the mid levels. Pocket D even got an exit in Faultline to help with traffic.

New Faultline gives you it all, it has well written and interlinked arcs. Four contacts, four-ish missions each. Three or four of the characters you meet during the run come back later on in the game. There are Archvillains earlier than ever, Yin-O enhancements and all sorts of interesting things to get up to.

New Faultline has spoiled me.

Instead of working my way through all it has to offer on my blaster, I have gone to Striga instead. Introduced in Issue 3 if memory serves, Striga is the stronghold of the Council. It also has a string of four contacts, leading up to an unlocked task force contact. Striga however is tougher. It's better than the earliest zones (Boomtown) but it is by no means a quick run through.

Striga for all its worth, for all the fun toys you get (Holy Shotgun!) and for the two taskforces it contains gets passed up in favour of other faster flashier places.

This is how places we live are. Either it's small and you know everyone and every corner or it is built up and the slightest change to one area can draw people from miles away, leaving other places to stagnate.

This is all building up to something though. World of Warcraft : Cataclysm is going back and rocking the old world of Azeroth. That patch of grass you used to kill ten bunnies in? Steaming lake of lava now. I don't know myself, not being a player, but I can imagine revamping all the geography is also going to need a pass through on the quests. Will they be brought up to whatever the current population considers standard? I couldn't say.

In City of Heroes, the places you've likely never been are going to become more accessible first and then more irrelevant. Issue 16 brings supersidekicking and removes most zone entry restrictions. Never been to Striga because you were too low a level when it was interesting? From I16 on, you can go there as a level one and if you're supersidekicked, not worry about mentor range and getting turned into paste the moment you lag behind the group.

Going Rogue however promises to bring new zones to an already overburdened city. With the coming dimensional travel, I think it's time to say goodbye to some of the Hazard areas that never got the Faultline treatment and may never. It's time to close those giant zone gates and block out parts of the City, for the good of the City.

Personally I would love to hear that with the newest expansion, there will be work done on all the other zones. Updating and bringing new life and new contacts to all the corners of Paragon. If not though, I think we should pay our respects to the likes of Dark Astoria and Boomtown. Wave goodbye to the deepest regions of the Shadow Shard and Creys Folly. Supersidekicking promises to make the city more open than before, but it can't guide people to places of little interest or old tired content. It'll make the world smaller for a while as everyone can suddenly play on the same level, but the world is going to get larger once again, with the ability to play in Praetoria and switch sides.

Look upon the maps of that world of Superheroes. What would you change in the City of Tomorrow?

Issue 16

Issue 16 : Power Spectrum for City of Heroes is now in Open Beta.

Thanks to CoH_OCR and Niviene_CoH for the tweets.

Patch notes are linked in the title. I'll blog properly in the morning. But before I go, a reason why I shouldn't think too hard about game mechanics.

Supersidekicking is supposed to help deal with farming.

[23:46] Mr. Earl: "super-SK" sounds like "no PLz" :P
[23:47] Jonathan: tis somewhat :P
[23:47] Jonathan: Though logically, get 47s, supersk the folks to pl.
they're 46. Difficulty setting yourself some 50+ mobs
[23:48] Mr. Earl: ahh :-O
[23:48] Jonathan: aaaand turn off xp so the 47s dont level
[23:49] Jonathan: Heeeyy.... I just rediscovered how to farm CoH post
i16

Champions and Ardy

I knew I forgot something. I had a long string of blogging to be doing about Champions. I've stuff yet to come on the Microtransaction bits, MMO bits and so on.

This however is inspired by Werit, Keen and the players of the Shield of Paragon, Guardian Angels and other Coh supergroups.

I don't really like Champions.

That said, I never really did. There are some who greeted the news way back when of a Champions mmo and from their reaction it was though the Lord God himself came down and handed them a dream. Hark how the angels sing, go forth and pwn for justice.
I was unimpressed. Maybe it's a function of those gaps in my geekery that are responsible for me never having played a single Blizzard game (and boy was twitter shocked at that).

That first feeling has carried all the way through closed beta up until now.

First a quick comparison. This time last year I was chomping at the bit to get into Warhammers closed beta. I wanted that game. When I got the CO beta invite, I had forgotten I applied. Most midweek preview sessions ("Hi it's wednesday, log in, test") came when I was busy and the weekend ones rarely stood a chance if there was anything going on in Paragon City.

Champions has delivered a truely impressive Character Creator. But you know what? I'm not going to give them awards for that. Of course they delivered one. They made City of Heroes and its character creator. Delivering anything less than what they left behind in the hands of Paragon Studio would have been staggering idiocy. As much as some people will give it its due with the hours you can spend tweaking to your hearts delight, well... sometimes I just would like to play. It shouldnt take long to get from login to tutorial. When you're being given options to change the size of different parts of a single limb, you've gotten a tad silly in my book.

The variations on the characters get especially pointless when you consider the type of game Champions is. It's supposed to be action packed, quick quick quick, hit the button, build your energy, FINISH HIM! With the amount of sharding they're doing (Keen called it redundant instancing) and the pace of combat they want, I haven't yet seen how the game will have a social centre. Perhaps I'm wrong or more likely I didn't play enough. Champions though feels like a ritalin deprived game. They don't want you standing and spinning stories, they want you out beating the next guy with a tree you ripped out of the ground (which is admittedly cool). Who cares if your biceps ripple ever so slightly and your eyebrows are a certain way and your facial expression is sad. I'm going to notice your size, any bright colours, how you travel/hit and if you run funny. That's it though. The faster the game pushes me, the less time I have to take in what took you three hours and a muse to create when you'd have been just as effective if you hit the random button.

One note on the character creator. City of Heroes players, prepare to recognise many pieces. I don't just mean the art, I mean the names as well. I don't know if Cryptic retained rights to bits and pieces of CoH. For example the game engine (at least according to wiki so take that with a grain of salt) is a modified version of the CoH one.

Moving on, there are bits about Champions I enjoyed. The travel powers all have looked good and add a nice touch, however when you look at them close they're mostly variations on flight and jumping. Still they do look good.

I enjoyed the ability to select from where some powers originate, I liked how quick and easy it was to change power colours (whereas when CoH has it in Issue 16, I predict many trips to Icon). There are plenty of a-okay things about the game, but none of them grabbed me.

There are also plenty of things I hate. In case you hadn't guessed I hate the pacing. It's bad enough that with the instancing I may end up selecting zones to follow friends only to find that they've done a certain mission and ended up in yet another instance where I cannot follow (or at least if there is an easy way to follow, I didnt see it. Im talking about moving from Wartorn tutorial Millenium city to peaceful and from wintery blizzard Canada to regular old Canada, same place different versions).
The game is all go. For some that will work, they want the action and get it quickly. For others, I forsee early burn out.
I hate the cel shading animation, I always have. It's never done anything for me though I will grant it is very true to the comic book feel. I hate the chat system where everyone at all times is reminded of my username. And why is that? Well apparently there wont ever be any naming conflicts. You too can be Superman, because your usename will make it unique. Don't give me the monster of a creation suite you have and then make it so that I wont have my own name in the end.

In the end, I've come out of closed beta the same way I went in, unimpressed. City of Heroes has flaws, I'll happily point them out in a second, but despite that they're working on improving the game with each issue (Ardy hates the AE though). I'd sooner spend a day in Paragon City than Millenium City.

The most damning thing about Champions though? I was worried it would gut City of Heroes.
Every single player I know across several global channels has reacted the same way, "Thanks but no thanks".

Champions, you have one final crippling flaw to me and one shining virtue.
Firstly, you have Jack "Statesman" "Force Field isnt broken" Emmert. I don't trust that man any more and while he appears to be learning from some mistakes, I am not yet convinced.

The virtue though? Every thing you do makes Paragon Studios have to work harder to retain its numbers and suceed. Survival of the fittest. I don't think Champions could kill City of Heroes, but it certainly looks like it could forge its predecessor into something unstoppable.

The Best of Frenemies.

I love my friends, they're my friends after all. I am sure you yourselves also are rather fond of those you call friend. Then there's acquiantances. They're nice folks, handy in a spot, you're friendly/neighbourly with them but you've rarely had them over for a drink.

I've made many good friends in City of Heroes, I've made many more passing ones as well. The first in a series of blog posts about Champions is dedicated to my frenemies.

I ended up going back to City of Heroes for two simple reasons. I couldn't afford two MMOs at the moment and I wanted to play with Shannon more than the people I rarely saw in WAR. (If ever there is US -> EU Transfers, I'd be back in a heartbeat)
There are of course names I recognise, names I love, names I can barely stand and all the flavours in between. Like a good team player, unless I honestly cannot personally stand someone, I will play with whomever. I will try reign in my exuberance (lemming behaviour) and I will play.

Now some people in City of Heroes, I respect. They're good players, or good roleplayers or simply fun to see on the global channels. However, they are the frenemy. They want to try Champions. They want to up sticks and move onto the new game, and that's perfectly fine. They want people we're both friends with to go with them, also fine. Some people will make the move, others won't bother. There'll be a few who spend time equally across heroic games. The problem is this, they want to recreate what they have here in the new game.

That's why they bother me. Instead of going into a new and virgin territory where all are once again equal before their Mods, they want to bring their baggage with them. Friends they've made, people they've snubbed without realising, the stories that they have worked on and the associated bits and pieces that come with roleplaying.

For some it will work, I will honestly say that the Force powerset in Champions is far more like what I originally envisioned City Of Heroes' Forcefield powerset to be. I could be quite happy playing there, but the character I originally created in CoH will not make the move.

Now for some, there is a sense of identity with their avatar. They may use the same name in each game they go to, and that's fine. My complaint here is the wholesale copy/paste behaviour from one game to another.

City of Heroes has life in it yet. Issue 16 is in closed beta right now and Going Rogue looms in the future. There is freshness wherever you want to make it. For any who are finding it stale at the moment I would ask. Is it stale because you've really done everything in every way with every powerset? Or is it stale because you are beholden to passing friends, people whose names you possibly don't even know but who are not evolving with their virtual space?

Moving all the same faces, places and stories into a new game will not invigorate or freshen them, not for long anyway. In the end, I think, you'll have ruined a fresh start at a new you, a new way to be with your friends and a new way to make more.

When you're given the chance to create anything, create.

City of Zerg

Recently some friends and I have gotten together in City of Heroes/Villains and created a team. It's not quite a static team, though it comes close. It is also not really a superteam, though arguably it has the hallmarks.

To elaborate, a superteam is a group of characters in CoH/CoV that are usually comprised of identical or highly complimentary powersets. It goes to such a point where the major level organised superteams even have predesigned builds so they get certain powers (typically Leadership) at certain levels to maximize the twink. Example: Fire/Radiation Controller teams.
A static team, well most of you know but for those that don't; it's a group who will always come together at a set time on a set day and play together. Some run statics that rarely group with anyone else, others roleplay all the time on their static characters but only ever level with the other members.

Anyway we have a team of Masterminds. Specifically five Thugs Masterminds for a simple reason. The same reason that class gets used for superteams. GANG WAR!

We have a

• Thugs/Storm
• Thugs/Pain Domination
• Thugs/Dark Miasma
• Thugs/Forcefields
• Thugs/Traps

So that represents alot of slows, resistance and defense debuffs, accuracy debuffs, healing, defense boosts and stealth powers. A few of us have also started taking the Leadership powers which stack with the Enforcer leadership. Provided there are no cascading defense failures, the team will only get tougher and tougher as time goes on.

This weekend, we'll be tackling the Silver Mantis strikeforce together. If you are on Virtue and over level 20, give me a shout on @Ardua and join in. Just a word of warning, when all the pets are down, at this level we account for 75 characters on screen at once :P

What possible application could you have for pudding flavoured gunpowder?

In this universe? None whatsoever. But in the universe of shrimp it might be useful.

To be honest, the title line was something odd that came up in conversation once (don't ask) and I promised I'd use it. It does however let me launch into a City Of Discussion.

Having had time to settle down from my nerdrage, I think it is time we talk about Going Rogue and Praetorians.

For a long time, since the introduction of Portal Corps, Praetorian Earth has been a fantastic roleplay device. Evil twin? Praetorian! That or a Nemesis plot. Statesman is missing? Praetorians! A well known hero flip you off? Praetorian, or just a bit of a dick (I'm looking at you Manticore).

Going Rogue seems to be promising us access to this parallel world in more than just missions to beat up the Mirror Universe versions of our favourite Heroes. As such, some things you should know.

• Praetorian Earth has previously been depicted as a Crapsack World
• Most groups seem to have an inverse there. The Carnival of Shadows having a good guy version in the Carnival of Light. We've never seen Praetorian Recluse, so expect that one to be interesting (assuming Tyrant aka Emperor Cole didn't just off him)
• Unless they are being literal about their worlds colliding or there is a third path (the theorised Spy AT) that starts in Praetoria and comes to Paragon, expect this to be a high level zone. After all the machines are all based in Peregrine Island, Level 40+.

Fluff linkdump for those who want to get the skinny on all this Portal and Alternate Universe stuff.

This guy did the reseach and founded Portal Corp. This has led to a possible I15 Mcguffinpopping by, the Rikti invading, people accessing the Shadow Shard and of course Praetorians noticing Earth.

Probably all a Nemesis plot, as per the meme and the status quo

Other rumor mill items, some from the Shield of Paragon coalition and official boards include:

• Power Customisation
• Two new AT's (Dual Pistol .... scrapper? Demon summoner Controller or Mastermind)
  Assorted other bits and pieces reported on Massively before (Link redug by Spinks )

I'll certainly be keeping an eye on all this, though I stand by my complaint that it should have been announced in a better and more coherent fashion.

Some end of blog entry bonus Squick.
Miss Liberty is the granddaughter of Statesman. It has always been assumed that Dominatrix is the same to Tyrant, certainly Statesman in one of the CoH comics went to Praetorian Earth (and it looked like crap) to "rescue" her. Make what you will of the last line in her In Game bio.

Bad to the Bone

Ok no. I am annoyed at Paragon Studios and NCSoft.

Let's have a quick run around. We have NCSoft being sued by Worlds.com, NCSoft being sued by Richard Garriot and my original complaint for the lackluster annoucement.

Now we have this : City Of Heroes : Going Rogue

Is it an interesting idea? You bet. Is it something the player base has asked for for ages? Oh most certainly. Could it improve teaming in City of Villains and make City of Heroes pop just that little bit more.
Is it a big announcement that could steal Champions thunder and retain some of the current base or the resubs? Oh yes.

Then why has it been rolled out in this manner? There is a direct page for it on the main City of Heroes page, but as of writing this, there is no link to it on the front page. People have been emailed and directed to the link given, which is not an NC page. There were 13 pages of "omgwtfbbq" on the boards before Castle weighed in to say that it was legit.

Am I glad to have something coming? Of course I am.

I am however very annoyed at the execution. This hasn't so much been announced as "oh by the way.."
Where was this news two weeks ago?

Goodbye Grind, Hello Ban (There's a rant in here)

To my friends recently, I've been a bit vocal about City of Heroes, its lifespan and what I considered idiotic decisions. Hey, it's the internet. Bitching ahoy, granted it would have made sense to blog it all.

Yes I came back for a bit, Shannon wanted to and that was my deal maker/breaker.

Issue 14 is a failure. Issue 15 is an insult and the big announcement the other week was a let down.

In reverse order, here we go.
Posi gave an interview on Massively and hyped up a really big annoucement coming on the 5th anniversary of City of Heroes. All trial and inactive accounts in good standing (read: not banned) were given a free week in which to come back to Paragon and have fun. There was to be chaos on the live servers, Giant Monsters, invasions and Av's everywhere but no Rularuu invasion or 5th Column vs Council war much to my disappointment. In fact given the meat of the i15 annoucement, a 5th/Council war like we had way back at the end of i2/start of i3 would have been amazing. Seph sent me a link from the official site the morning of the anniversary, it was the i15 annoucement. Ooo the 5th Column are coming back, that's cool. Meh, one non co-op taskforce at level 45-50, that's ok. Some stuff from the Magic pack is being copied into the live game (costume change emotes, how long have people waited for those?) and there's some eye candy in more faces and costume pieces.

Slight aside that may get me flamed. Spinks put up a post a while back about a community blog Feministing complaining about the casual sexism in World of Warcraft with the bunny ears and the achievement gotten from tagging a female toon over level 18 with them. Personally I just thought it was an incredibly obvious popculture reference. I had no opinion on the sexual connotations and when you factor in Tauren and Scourge, I had a hard time thinking it'd be sexual. Then again, I'm not a feminist. Even so, why havent they complained about this

Back on track. The i15 annoucement page was up some 16 hours before Posis (late) 8est annoucement. I had come back from Star Trek, I had some free City of Heroes and I was expecting something huge. After all they went down in text as saying that the annoucement would only be published to the website after it was made. It sounded massive.

Global Anniversary Address From Positron™

Also on our anniversary day, be watching around 8pm EST in-game (and shortly thereafter on the website), for a special Anniversary Address from everyone's favorite Lead Designer, Positron.
He will certainly have some fun information to share!

Actually it was just the i15 annoucement page. The only added bit was that the closed beta testing of i15 would be open to all. So not closed then. Thanks for that.

To go back to the start, as mentioned Posi gave an interview on Massively before his big message we'd all seen. In this he talks about programmers they have on board working on a graphical update to City of Heroes. He teases about CoH 2 and plans for the future. He's working the marketing machine as Champions is just around the corner and it's built by the people who built CoH.
None of that made it into the address. No new zone, no mention of updating the game (look at EVE for an example of how to constantly keep your game gorgeous), no mention of plans for the future. Just "lawl new tf, closed beta isnt closed".

As a result I now find i15 insulting. Why? i14.

Issue 14 brought in the much vaunted Mission Architect system. Create your own content! Customise enemies and earn badges based on kills, tickets and people voting on your submission!

Now you have this.

I'm sorry, you're the ones who have gradually made the game easier and easier to the point that some people can fart and hit the midpoint of your levelling system. But because some people are now able to use a meow to burn right to the end of the game, the banstick comes out. As people on the forum have pointed out, the traditional farming maps aren't being removed, nor is the nature of the discipline clear. I got Shannon from 29 to 32 the other night so she could have a new costume and her controller pet. It was late and I was tired, so we farmed it. Are those levels at risk? Who knows.

This is turning into a long winded rant (it's always been a rant) so I'll bring it to a close and cleverly save myself some stuff to blog about later.

The level grind, Posis risk/reward ratio has been steadily pushed over to reward for a long time. Bringing out a system to let people create their own content was always going to be loaded. Sure there are some wonderful stories now that people have crafted themselves, at the same time farming has always been in games. I farmed in Warhammer to get myself to 35.

What really is happening is this. For whatever reason (smaller team, less funds, who knows) there is less new compelling content being created for City of Heroes. Instead they've focused on the end game and farmed (heh) the job of entertaining the masses out to the masses. People are always going to try rush to the end if that's where they think the goods are, look at Warcraft and what it's done to its early game. Death Knights start at 55 for more than just thematic reasons in my opinion. Now because of the farming that the studio themselves enabled, the lack of "official" content is clear. Oroboros was meant as a patch on the content by rewarding badges for rerunning old content, MA was meant as another to distract people while they got more things done. They tied badges to it and as someone on the forums so wonderfully put it "prayed on angel farts" that people wouldn't do what people always do. Min/Max.
It didn't work. Now out comes the banhammer to try balance the equation. They want farming to be dirty again instead of dev enabled.

In the end, under the wording of the announcement, technically anything that changes that magic risk/reward ratio is at risk. Are the PI farms a thing of the past? Are Superteams doomed to die as they max their potential? Will Soldiers of Arachnos get nerfed?

We'll see.

Alting : Good or Bad?

Alts are commonplace in MMOs. Why else would you have more than one slot per server if people never played more than one character? Sooner or later everyone gets bored. Either they achieve what they set out to do, hit the level cap or some other reason. Sometimes it is as simple as needing a change of scenery and a change of pace.

Personally in Warhammer I have four active alts that I've mentioned herabouts. All Dwarfs as is only proper. In City of Heroes, despite originally being very conservative and loyal to a handful of characters, I ended up filling my 17 server slots on Virtue.

I personally, as mentioned in GirlIRLs meme, prefer to start out slow and only play support when I start a new game. It's how I learn the ropes, the community and if I like the game. Other folks like my good friend Seph love to try everything as soon as they can. Seph had in very short order, some 10 or 15 alts and may well have filled two servers. He wanted to sample the various classes and have them there to play later. That's his perogative.

Now to the meat of the matter. Before the switch from Ostermark to Phoenix Throne my regular play group wasn't regular anymore. Some had left, others couldn't afford the time. C'est la vie. As a result I decided that I would shop around and find myself a nice Guild to try out. Grungi was with me though as when I settled on this course of action, Bitter Rivals had just finished and I hadn't even gotten Aardii past the first PQ in Ekrund when I saw the various guilds vying for new blood.
I ended up joining a fantastic bunch called The Sentinels as well... they were in my PQ group and seemed like good chaps.

Now a part of Sentinel policy is that they wanted to recruit not just your character, but you yourself. All of your characters on the server. At first, I was a little wary as well I had some in the Oathbearers Legacy, a friend group from CoH.
Now though, all my Dwarfs are with them and I've one inactive character remaining in the Oathbearers. They all left so nyah.

This means no matter what I play, when I play I am with them. Whichever alt I feel like being on, I've an active guild to be around. This is in part because when any of them decide they'd like to alt and play something else for a bit, their alts are also there. We're encouraged to be together and it works. Notes on the Guild Roster let you keep track of who is who easily and so far I've not met one bad apple.

Now I don't know any of them personally, I've not yet formed the friendships I did in City of Heroes. In CoH, I'd happily join any group a friend wanted me to and I have come to think that this is a bad thing.
When my account expired, it wasn't just me not being on the global channels. It was several supergroups losing one of their number. Had I been centralised like the Sentinels prefer, well then one group would have only lost one person. You can, except in cases of Dual boxing or that crazy 36 account WoW guy, only be in one place at a time. This causes trouble when you have 17 places to be instead of one or two.

In the end it may all just be a cycle. I may end up filling Phoenix Throne and Vortex to the gills. I may end up have 20 different alts, but I wonder if I will have 20 different places, or by joining guilds like the Sentinels, will I only have one or two?
Either way that time is still in the future of my Warhammer play, I've 40 to get to yet and Vorri has his eye on those Aviator Goggles from the live event. Tonight, you'll find me with the Sentinels, no matter who I happen to be.

You're in the Guilditary now

Bear with me folks. This one will wander a bit.

Massively has a Daily Grind article up with the following question.

Do you think a game needs to include some form of PvP to be successful? Or can a game go with a purely player vs. environment or cooperative approach and still succeed?

Now I've my own question based on the whole PvP thing. Not is it necessary to be successful but rather, what does it or could it do to the structures that come about in games.

In City of Heroes there is some PvP both through arenas and pvp zones, essentially though I've always treated it as a PvE game. A few years ago the Silver Guard was redoing its website and one part of that was a picture for the front page of all the available members wearing the Guard uniform and basically showing off the colours. A group effort, a sign of unity and all that jazz.
Boy did it ever go wrong.

Firstly there was one member who at the time didnt have the ability to enter Supergroup bases because they had to be the only person I think I had met who didnt bother getting CoV (if memory serves, a whopping $1 increase in the monthly sub at the time, I could be wrong). What do you do in this situation? Personally if I couldn't be where every other single player in the group was, I wouldn't hold things up. No... that's too easy. So this member (to be honest I've forgotten the character name otherwise I'd be all for the shaming) basically had us all relocate to Atlas Park. Atlas is the armpit of the CoH universe, partially due to it being one of the two newbie zones (don't hate the noob, help the noob) and partially because the Atlas statue has a big idiot magnet in it that summons hyperactive morons.

Secondly, despite it being a group photo and the group having colours, several members refused to wear them. The Guard never enforced a uniform like some other supergroups, but personally I would have thought that throwing the colours on for the sake of thirty seconds wouldn't have hurt. Excuses ranged from "I don't have a uniform" to "I prefer my shades, the Guard ones clash with what I want".

Finally it was down to getting people to position themselves in a sensible manner. Top tip, if you have an 8' tall character, stand behind the 4' ones. Wait for the Atlasidiots (polite name) to get out of the frame. Wait for the afkers to reposition. Wait for the sun to come up as this has now taken so long we're in our third night cycle aaaaand finally click.

It wasn't a bad photo but I still as you can guess have a sore spot over all the nonsense that interfered, especially the fashion comment.

Compare and contrast a straight PvP game. We'll take a few examples.
Planetside, also a few years back, had several outfits making in game promotional/recruitment videos. Cue many many more players than the maybe two dozen Guardsmen standing in formation and having a mexican wave style salute to the camera. You were in the military now and you followed orders.

Massively gave a one-shot of Darkfall Online with an "Inquisition raft fleet". Players coming together and, even if their vent server is filled with penis jokes and bash.org style nonsense, forming a fleet to take the waters they want.

EVE.... just EVE.

Why does it appear to take a game or setting where the prime opponent is other people for our imaginary otherselves to show discipline that they wont when facing a computer? I know of course there are exceptions to both sides of this and of course no amount of roleplaying or discipline survives first contact with the enemy.

Is it something in ourselves? Are computer controlled enemies unworthy of displays of restraint and discipline or are other players such a threat that we look down on displays of axecrazy? Will in game AI advance to such a point to challenge this?

Finally in the 80/20 split of Warhammer (i.e. 80%pve 20%pvp inverting in later levels) that I once heard quoted play with this? I've seen some instances of people following orders and acting in concert in ways I wish bands I've been in could, I've also seen everything degenerate into a zergandpray. Does Party 2 always listen to the Warband leader and cover the postern? Or does this only come later when it is clear it's you vs another meatbag?

I'm in the guilditary now, but I think no one got the memo.

Coming home

In one of those "I was reading this, which linked to this and then to this" things, I was reading Tobolds blog, got on to Syncaines posts about Darkfall and WoW tourists and Ixobelle.

Also recently my WAR account expired because of a credit card issue. My better half, Shannon, hasn't been playing City of Heroes and cancelled her account a few weeks back and now I'm considering doing the same.

First a commentary on the linked post.
Ixobelle had this to say:

LotRO is probably the only other game I really respect out of the ‘non-WoW’
batch of MMOs I’ve played (but I never subscribed to LotRO, so there you go),
and I have yet to actually even make it to the character creator in Coh/CoV. I
signed up for a trial, and the downloader was so fucking slow that my free trial
ran out before I ever actually got the game installed. Don’t even get me started
on EVE. Hoo boy.

With Syncaine coming back with:

No please, do elaborate on EVE, it would be priceless. Warning though, the game
does not contain NPCs with ! in bright yellow, so right off the bat it’s not as
‘polished’ as WoW. LoTRO thanks you for your respect, all 10 days or less of it.
I am curious though what exactly you are looking for in an MMO if LoTRO was not
WoW-enough for you?

Now personally... I've played all of 5 minutes of WoW. Decided it wasn't for me and left it at that. It was on my brothers account to boot, so it's not like I wasted any money by not properly playing out a month. I've my four year badge in City of Heroes coming this month (would be more but hey, account lapses). I've played a few months of EVE. I have never played Lotro.
While not being as ... adamant as Syncaine, I agree that Ixo really shouldn't have said anything.

You can download the CoH patcher before the trial, and also if it takes you 10 days to download a game, what have you been doing?
EVE has so much to offer, only the fact that I think I couldn't give the game time enough to do it justice keeps me away still.
The comment about LOTRO is just insulting.

It highlights something obvious of course, people like what they like. Some people like Pepsi, others Coke. There's always a George Lazenby fanboy in the corner somewhere.

In the end the thought came down to this. I've played CoH for years, I've made friends there, I've had good times there. But when it came to payday and we did a budget, I resubbed to Warhammer and I'm taking time off City Of Heroes.
It's not just a Pepsi/Coke thing for some people. It's so much more because of what the games are, MMOs.

CoH has great bits. EVE has great bits. LOTRO has great bits. WoW has great bits. WAR has great bits. At the end of the day, what really matters and what really spawns the comments is this. Where at you most at home?

All things Warhammer

How's it going folks?

I know, I know. I've been quiet lately (blame work). As such an update is in order.

First up, Bregel and Zylashiir of the Oathkeepers Legacy are finally together (awwww) and all set up. This is rather important.
I've had plenty of time to play games lately. I've a villain duo with Sephorus on City of Villains. My wife and I still have a duo on City of Heroes, and recently a duo I have with a good friend hit 50 and they've rerolled.

WAR though.... WAR is best in groups. In mobs. In rampaging armies.
I've no problem wandering through quests and pqs by myself or with random public groups to get the job done and get myself levels. But for the battle, for the fights and for the moments of complete win, it's better with friends. Failing that, with a warband to be in and another to fight.
So with them back, Leggit and Orrekai are pushing up the ranks again.

On the subject of Orrekai. It seems Dwarves are incapable of percieving anything above their own head height when there's Orcs about. Bregel is a fine Ironbreaker. I'm told I'm not a bad Rune Priest.
How then do I explain the fact that our Archmage and Shadow Warrior ended up buried under a mountain of Greenskins?
....There were Orcs to be killin....what'd you expect? And you better believe I can cause some serious AoE trouble.


On to the other war. Warhammer Fantasy!
The Battle for Skull Pass arrived today. Tomorrow I'll be swinging near the GOA offices and eventually tracking down NicGOA. He's getting Dwarves, I'm getting Greenies. Hopefully in a week or two I should have enough assembled and painted (badly) to blog a battle report!

GOA Meet March 9th.
Seems that Dublin Bus (rightly so) has stepped up its industrial action. There are to be no city buses from Sunday the 1st of March until.... some time. It could be that buses are running when everyone is here to meet the lads. It could be that the city is whimpering and curled up in the corner due to no transport. Either way, mark it in the calendar. It's happening!