Master of Imperious Task Force

Something a little more upbeat than the previous video! The Legendary super group and I run through the Imperious Task Force on City of Heroes. We were going for the "Master of the Imperious Task Force" badge, went meant we couldn't use any of our temporary powers. Also, we lost our chance at the badge if anyone in the group died.

Lounge L33ts Presents: City of Heroes, The Final Hours

Randy, Matt, and I are there for the end, as bumpy as it was. I've taken care to remove most of the recordings where we're shunted off to the queue after Virtue crashed the first few times. Eventually, we wound up finishing off in Freedom with new toons. It certainly felt like we had gone back to our beginings on Freedom, before the migration to Virtue after Architect Entertainment was introduced. This was hard for everyone involved. For me, it was my first ever venture into MMO's and my first step into a 3-D explorable world. For Randy and Matt, I suspect it was a way to express their creativity and imagination. This game will be sorely missed. A big thank to The Legendary super group! They lived up to their name. The Lounge L33ts will keep going on CO, LOTRO, AO, TSW, and Rift, if you ever want to give us a shout out.

Lounge L33ts Episode 3: The Ski Chalet Part 2

In the second part, we come to a conclusion. NC Soft is the FOX of MMO's.

Fight for City of Heroes!

     If you had asked me which game, City of Heroes or Anarchy online, was most likely to shut down first, I would not have guessed City of Heroes. And yet here I am, writing about something I never figured I'd be writing about. I was on Skype when my friend “Namiru” messaged me: “GW2?” which was the status on my profile. I told him that I had picked up the game at the behest of one of my coworkers, despite also playing both The Secret World and World of Warcraft. I was interested in the fact that GW2 had an open world system in place, rather than the persistence based world from GW1. To which Nam responded: “I'm not TOUCHING anything NCSoft made after what they pulled today.” That's when I found out they were shutting down City of Heroes/Villains/Rogues in November. You can read the official notice here:

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/thank_you.php

      I was totally shocked, as were many other devoted players. I did notice a decrease in population between when I joined on May 19, 2008, and when the Dual Pistols power debuted (for those who pre-purchased the Going Rogue expansion) around March 2, 2010. After that, the population seemed to spike and fall again until Going Rogue finally hit. I noticed yet another spike ending in a plateau in November 2011, when the game went Free-to-Play/Freemium. At first, nearly all the servers were in the red, but by the time I came back to game they had returned to either green (low) or yellow (medium). Occasionally on the weekends, Freedom and Virtue would reach red or be grayed out as full. Still, after the conversion to the f2p model, the population on Virtue seemed to remain substantial and never dip as low as it was in mid-2009.

      Once the rage around the fact that I had just spent $143 for a 1 year sub, only to get about 7 months of game play out of it had subsided, the questions started surfacing. What was going to happen to all the proposed content? Hadn't the team at Paragon Studios just added the new Staff Fighting, Water Blast, and Plant Affinity power sets? Weren't they working on new content for Praetoria? Might there actually be a City of Heroes 2 planned that would make them do this? And most of all: “Why?”

      Most people I've talked to suggest that it's financial. I find that hard to believe, though. As stated before, several new and intriguing power sets had been introduced, along with new enhancements, inspirations, travel powers, emotes, and some very detailed costume sets. There was also the Blockbuster Summer event where the players participated either in gladiatorial combat in an arena, or in a casino heist. LOTRO has done a similar thing during their Yule Festival at the theater in Frostbluff. I saw many players partaking in these activities with cash shop products. Why keep developing an unsuccessful game for nearly a year instead of simply axing it and cutting losses?

      I think the most likely reason (cited by ChaosD1 on MMO Grinder:

http://mmogrinder.net/2012/09/02/r-i-p-city-of-heroes/#comments ) is to try to push players off of an old acquired IP on to Aion, a title more inline with the company's Korean “grindfest” themed MMO's.. Some people are suggesting in the comments of the above post, that Nexon may somehow be responsible. This theory is based on their buying up a significant amount of NCSoft's stock, effectively making them the biggest holder:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-08/nexon-buys-685-million-stake-in-ncsoft-becomes-biggest-holder.html

http://gamepolitics.com/2012/06/08/nexon-buys-nearly-15-percent-stake-ncsoft

      For NCSoft's financial earnings, check here. I've not been patient enough to really sift through this information:

http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx

     I was on the Massively website looking up articles on this closing, and came upon one that asked what the reader's favorite memories of the game were. One of mine was when I first started playing and was running around a park to the North of Kings Row. Spotting a purple named enemy below me, I made a quick escape. Then out of curiosity, and the fact that it wasn't following me, I returned to carefully observe what I'd stumbled upon: the Clockwork “Paladin.” Over the years, I would catch a glimpse of someone fighting this Giant Monster, or see alerts of it's impending assembly. Once I even saw a solo level 50 controller take it down with pets.

     Kings Row was one of my favorite areas, although even Galaxy City had some fun nooks and crannies before the rock slammed into it. Gemini Park was where I first encountered my dreaded enemy, the Vahzilok Eidolan. At least in the lower levels. Valor Bridge in Independence Port was another favorite hangout, especially when you Super Jumped off the top down into the bay. Another fun place was Croatoa, the monsters there having also been used in the Halloween Event. They would jump out of the door every time you got a “trick,” whereas a “treat” earned you temporary costumes, inspirations, special salvage, etc. I'll also miss the Ski Chalet and trying to earn the special badge from the ski jump ramp. It was fun slipping and sliding all over the place! And the lodge at the top was great for sitting around and chatting with friends.

      Then there are all the things I never got to do, such as get a character to level 50, explore the Incarnate abilities, do a Task Force or Trial, not to mention fully explore the new Dark Astoria or Praetoria. Hell, my Praetorian is only level 15. There were ideas for future characters and rerolls of current heroes and villains, too. I was also working on a few CoH themed projects for the blog here such as a “Grand Tour” themed series where I explore various parts of Paragon City that might fly under people's radar, probably linking to Paragon Wiki for people looking to collect the exploration badges. Hopefully I can get a few screen caps of the House of the Wayward Soul super group base. I was also working on several character profiles such as the Vellum one posted.

      It seems most of the Legendary super group and my friends are giving Champions Online another try. Namiru says it's a bit better than when he last tried it. I have only just fired it up on the new gaming desktop, and am out of the tutorial zone with a CO version of archer extraordinaire, Elsie Dracona. I'm also going forward with the “Grand Tour” series, only it'll probably focus on LOTRO now, with maybe whatever I can get of CoH before it shuts down. I'll be taking screen shots of all the CoH characters I can unlock and putting up profiles of them.

      A lot of people also seem to be holding out for a last minute save for CoH from someone willing to buy the rights to the IP, the characters, and the engine. There is also talk of a fan run server. Author Mercedes Lackey, apparently a long time player, has thrown her support behind the campaign to keep the game going and there has recently been a large protest staged by players across 30+ instances of the Virtue server. TonyV has organized a special message board found here:

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/board,134.0.html

      A writing campaign has been organized on the Titan Network forums. The etiquette guidelines and addresses for CEO Mr. Taek Jin Kim can be found here:

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,4879.0.html

     The heroes of Paragon City have always been there me. It's high time I be there for them.

City of Heroes Profiles: Vellum

 

“A shadow slipping from corner to corner.

A glimpse of darkness in the night.

A curious little stranger in this strange world.

Only Vellum knows his own might.”

      I've been leveling Vellum for quite a while now. He is a Dark Melee/Dark Armor Tank created in 2009, around the same time my friend Bob created the super group House of the Wayward Soul. A living shadow visiting from a distant void, Vellum fit right in with the House's theme of strange and off the wall characters. He's been raiding the fridge, “borrowing” salvage supplies, and teleporter hopping ever since.

Vellum atop a building in Steel Canyon

      Vellum was created during a time of turmoil and altitist. Restlessly, I moved from character to character, experimenting with different power sets and trying to stay alive in a city that wanted my heroes (and villains) dead. I remember the first build, a haphazard application of slots to powers I didn't need. In particular, I selected the stealth pool power, which was later overshadowed by a similar invisibility power in the Dark Armor set, making it redundant. This was in addition to a myriad of enhancements that, while they fit with the powers, didn't play well with each other. In other words, while Vellum could do damage, he couldn't hit, couldn't block, and suffered from a massive drain of endurance every time he activated his shields or threw a punch. Vellum couldn't survive, and thus, was a failure of a tank. Out of frustration, I shelved him and moved on to other characters.

      Then “Drenivian” came to the rescue. Dren, also known as “Ed Boy” or “Edward” is a real life friend of mine (as well as that of Matt, Bob, and “Namiru”), whom I first met at the University of Wisconsin Anime Club in 2003. Dren was able to walk me through a quick repec of the character and also took me and Matt through some missions to learn how to tank properly. I also started crafting Set Invention Origin enhancements to improve multiple aspects of a power at once.

      But now we get to Vellum's origin. He is a living shadow from another dimension where only two light sources exist amongst the darkness. Every now and then, these two light sources cross over each other and wipe out most of the darkness between them.

      Vellum's people have been visiting Earth and other similar planets for quite some time now. His interest is in studying human society, and where better than Paragon City? Here, he can observe humanity at its best, and its worst, as well as how humans deal with attacks by outside forces. The Rikti are invading, although what they want is yet unknown to our hero.

      Being a living shadow, Vellum can take on various shapes and forms, including a flying beast. 

He's even able to manipulate darker colors to create his near human angelic female form.

 At first he was only able to travel and explore his surroundings at night, due to the brightness of an Earth day. 

Even then, he had to be cautious about traveling through underpasses and under street lights, for fear of disappearing. There is a solution, though. Vellum has begun pouring himself into human clothing and wearing a rubber mask. He hasn't quite gotten certain aspects of the human body down, particularly eyes.

      During his travels at night, Vellum has had his share of run ins with the Clockwork, in many of their forms.

 He's also had to tough it out with Trolls, villainous societies bent on world domination, and centurions. Civilians have nothing to fear from him, although his appearance maybe strange. So if you see an odd looking man with eyes black as a void, don't be afraid. It's only Vellum, and he's just curious about you.

Geek.Kon 2012 Links of Interest!

     Well, the time has come to start pimping out the annual Geek.Kon convention! Geek.Kon is an anime, scieince fiction, fantasy, tabletop gaming, and video gaming convention based out of Madison, WI. This year we will be on September 7-9th at the Madison Marriott West. Also, this year's theme is "Geekdom is Magic!"

     To register for day passes, go here:
    Registration Form
     To sign up to run a tabletop game (must register for day passes first):
    Tabletop Game Registration
     To register to run a panel, go here (must register for day passes first):
    Panel Registration

     We've got a few great Guests lined up as well, plus a great event known as Kon.Quest! We can't forget the contests, either:

     Fanfiction Contest

      What better way to fly the flag of your favorite fandom, than by participating in our Fanfiction contest? (Also, how's THAT for alliteration?)

Fanart Contest

     But perhaps you're  more of the visually oriented person. If so, enter our Fanart Contest!

     Other Events soon to come are the Geek.Show talent show, the AMV Contest, Karaoke, Mixer, and, of course, Rocky Horror Picture Show! I hope to see you all at the con!

Miss Popular on the Web!

Miss Popular is available now via my Deviantart account and comicspace !
It began as a doodle in a notebook I used for my high shool Psychology class back in 1999. It just kept getting bigger until it ballooned into 110 "Issues" (pages). I came up with three rules to follow as I went along:

1. No penciling in any characters or other artwork beforehand. Everything had to be inked, with minimal use of white out.

2. No thinking ahead more than one "Issue". As with the artwork, all storylines and plots had to be as spontaneous as possible.

3. It had to be done in a notebook. Preferably the same one that it was originally drawn in, but the story continued, I had to move it into a second book.

It's hardly high art, and I tried to refrain from making drastic changes such as actually adding panels (God forbid!) to the thing while digitally lettering it. Still, I'll try to get the rest up here. I've only ever been able to get the first eight pages published (once for Touche magazine at UW-Manitowoc, and then a self-publish of only 10 copies). I hope you get some enjoyment from reading it.