popplers

Thank you.

Today City of Heroes turns 4. Happy birthday, Paragon City. And because Mr. and Miss Abyss have already said it far better than I ever could, Thank You.

(There's a much higher resolution version of the video available at maximilia.net.)

How I feel after this week

Paragon City Pizza

I'm glad that, at least sometimes, a super-hero actually stops to help a woman whose purse has been stolen. Because if it went down like PvP portrays it, well, that would be harsh.

To the Justice-Mobile!

Cheryl related the following story to me this morning. This week is school vacation week, and she allowed the kids to stay up late to watch the Olympics. She heard her son, Rohan, hop out of bed, turn off the TV, go to the bathroom, and get back into bed. Some time later, she awoke and went into his room to make sure that he was tucked in and comfy. Instead, she found his large stuffed snake arranged in bed and covered up with blankets so as to resemble a sleeping boy. (Have the kids been watching Escape from Alcatraz?)

Rohan was downstairs, in front of the computer, playing City of Heroes at 1:00AM. The kids are only allowed to play online when there is a parent in the room, but Dad's password was apparently easy enough for a 7-year-old to figure out and he figured Mom would be unconscious 'til morning. No moral to the story, really… just that kids can be sneaky and CoH is addictive (but we already knew that).

Happy holidays in Paragon City

Last chance to get a jetpack for your hero (or villain, if you're into that sort of thing): log in before midnight to activate it for the next 30 days.

It looks a little silly (OK, it looks extremely silly), but it's a fun travel power for your lower level characters.

Arch-villains and Giant Monsters beware!

More City of Heroes pix: took down Shadowhunter and Jurassik last Saturday.

Played for a bit today, and got my clock cleaned by Nemesis and the danged Carnival of Shadows. More debt, more fun.

Cryptozoology 101

I woke up early and went adventuring in Paragon City this morning. While I was making the rounds in Croatoa, I noticed one of the rarer beasties. Sally apparently spawns every ~45 minutes or so, but rarely persists for long. She's a Monster, but she only has one hit point. And you have to defeat her twice to earn the Believer badge. Since I already had the badge, I swam around for a while and took some pictures.

Unfortunately, it looks like my /screenshotui setting got toggled back to "0", so you can't see the Info box for Sallie. But you can check out this humorous article from the Paragon Times: DOES EVIL LURK BENEATH THE WAVES IN CROATOA?

Paragon City Board of Tourism

I posted more City of Heroes screenshots to flickr, including some silly stuff. Flamesong will have to add titles and comments to her stuff later.

Chocolate Malta

Had some fun over the weekend with Dr. Ill-Rad and others in Paragon City. I like the Tesla Cage/ Zapp effects in this photo.

Scenes from Paragon City

With help from Poz, I got Flickr's "Blog This" feature working. Posted some new (and older) CoH screenshots. Share and enjoy.

CoH screenshots

I've been meaning to mention that I set up a Flickr page for all of our City of Heroes screenshots. So far, I think that Devo and I are the only contributors, but I could be wrong. Please feel free to add to it (email me for the login and password if you have pix that you want to upload). If you just want to view the pix, here is the URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/popplers/.

Geek therapy

Thanks, PvP. If we went to counseling, this is what it would be like.

Third time's a charm

(Note: non-CoHers will probably want to skip this post.)

After two failed attempts, HP Wuvcraft finally completed the Terra Volta respec trial! General consensus was that the previous attempts failed due to insufficient damage-dealing and control. The winning combo (for us) was 2 blasters, 2 tankers (1 of which was a fire AoE tanker), and 1 defender. Congrats to Misspelt, Mister Snow, Crispy Fries, and Doctor Dude!

Freakazette did this trial some time ago, and is about to get the Atlas Medallion (just need to get the Pupil badge). On a side note, did a little bit of badge hunting last night with Doc and Snow. Easy pickings on Striga if you need Family, Warriors, or Wolves.

For great justice

Today's Paragon City News headline: Federal Judge Dismisses Claims and Strikes Allegations in Marvel Lawsuit Against NCsoft.

Makers of City of Heroes online computer game score favorable decision; judge labels Marvel allegations as “false and sham” and throws out trademark claims

LOS ANGELES, March 11, 2005—A U.S. district court judge in Los Angeles dismissed several key claims by comic book publisher Marvel Enterprises, Inc in the company’s trademark and copyright infringement case against online computer game publisher NCsoft® Corporation and game developer Cryptic Studios™. Marvel sued NCsoft and Cryptic Studios in November of last year, claiming that the City of Heroes® online computer game allows players to imitate comic book characters owned by Marvel. […]

Now let's get back to "defeating" villains!

Game geek/ theatre geek posting

Doing our part to keep Paragon City safe from the riff-raff: Mister Snow and I celebrated Winter-een-mas over the weekend. We played City of Heroes on Friday evening, and for most of Sunday, but didn't actually go to the in-game celebration (it was on Victory server, and all my characters are on Freedom).

Alas, Freakazette doesn't have a whole lot to show for it (unless you count the 100k worth of debt). At least she earned her Frozen Fury badge and a decent amount of XP. Between Founder's Falls and Crey's Folly, I don't think that the debt will significantly decrease any time soon… Just trying to talk with a contact in one of those areas often leads to a hospital visit (danged sharpshooters!).

Not much chance of playing this week: went to NH last night for dinner with friends, and most likely going out to dinner tonight with Mark Y. And Wednesday night is the first "dry run" for Tom Foolery over at Acme Theater. The show runs February 11 through March 5, 2005, and I'm helping out behind the scenes with costumes and props. Come see it, especially if you're a Tom Lehrer fan— tix are only $16. So the earliest that I'll be on again is Thursday night. (I'm sure that Doctor Dude and Valnar will pick up the slack. Obsidian Knight has been MIA for weeks.)

City of Litigators, continued

NCsoft files motion to dismiss Marvel's lawsuit. Justice 8, assemble!

City of Heroes is a tool that encourages originality, not slavish copying. It allows young and old to exercise their imaginations to create super-powered beings and send them off to interact with the creations of other individuals in a virtual world called Paragon City. If it should be banned, then so should the #2 pencil, the Lego block, modeling clay, and anything else that allows one to give form to ideas. In Marvel’s view of the world, if people should play online games with super heroes, they must only play with licensed Marvel characters, and imagination shall be damned. Marvel’s attempt to monopolize online “hero” games and quash creativity has no basis, and its complaint should be dismissed.

City of Heroes

PvP on City of Heroes-- funny and accurate.