For CoX players who have considered Champions Online...

Alas, poor Paragon.  I knew it, Horatio.  A city of infinite pew, of most excellent napkin math...

Okay.  Now that I've properly invoked the angry ghost of William Shakespeare AND the lady that wrote For Colored Girls...  City of Heroes/Villains is closing its doors for good, and its players have been left floundering, searching for a new home for their heroes.  Current options in the comicbook subgenre of MMORPG are slim: SoE offers DC Universe Online (DUCO), Perfect World has Champions Online (CO), Gazillion's Marvel Heroes (MHO) is in closed beta...  And that's about it.  If you stretch, you could offer Paragon expatriates Funcom's The Secret World (TSW), but you'd have to be Cirque du Soleil flexible.  The upside of all of this is that the only game on that list that still has a subscription fee is TSW- and the jury's out on how long that will actually last, since their player retention has been spotty at best.  By Q2 of next year we may see yet another "free" to play MMORPG on the market.  In spite of all of its irritating issues, Champions Online is probably a refugee's best bet.

Crash course time:  Champions Online was originally developed to be Marvel Universe Online, back before Cryptic split into two studios (the other being CoX's Paragon Studios).  The guy at the top of the foodchain in Cryptic, Jack Emmert, used to be known as Statesman on the CoX forums.  Yeah, that guy.  The one constantly going "we're going to be better about communication!" and then disappearing for a few months.  Champions was the first of two Cryptic games to be launched by Atari, the other being Star Trek Online.  CO released with high hopes, mountains of bugs, and to a day one "kitchen sink" patch that nearly crippled it for good.  Cryptic has since confirmed that CO launched very rough and unfinished, and that things like Vibora Bay (which they initially tried to introduce as a paid expansion before pushing live as a free content update) were intended to be available at release.  Since launch, the game has gone through several major revisions, including combat revisions, several generations of "powers passes" that modified skill trees and balancing, the annihilation of their crafting system, the free-to-play conversion and introduction of Archetypes (effectively, classes)...  The list goes on.  The development team has changed almost constantly since launch, as publishers shuffle personnel around to different games and promote anyone who doesn't completely suck at their job to Executive Producer.  It's been a rocky road for Champions Online.

So why play?

Right now, Champions Online is a themepark MMORPG.  The developer and publisher expect players to come for a few months, spend their money, and leave.  As it stands, the only people that stick around for long stays are roleplayers and people who can only feel important as big fish in a tiny pond.  Veteran players take frequent breaks of weeks to months, cycling in and out as changes come along.  Taken as that, it's a great place to drop by and spend some time.  There are precious few games with the depth and breadth of character customization options the CO character creator offers.  The closest another game has come to rivaling CO's powers system is TSW's ability wheel- and even that is rather more restrictive than your powerhouse options.  Over the years, CO's various devs have given us a limited player housing system, thousands of costume pieces covering every shape and flavor of fictional character, and quite a few fun story arcs.  The game has no genuine raid content, and is light on team play.  Since the introduction of the Alert system, group content is available on demand as long as you're not picky about what you get.  Almost all features are available for free, minus true freeform character creation (which can be bought a la carte for a single character slot via microtrans).  Basically, if you're willing to find a copy of the game and get the free month, and maybe pay the fifteen dollar sub for a month, you'll have some fun.  Beyond that is anyone's guess.

Don't expect to make a home of CO, unless you're on board for some frustration, and the constant feeling of smashing your head against a brick wall.  Perfect World has tied the developers' hands, and there's not much they can do for us.  CO exists almost entirely to generate revenue for other PWE projects through microtransactions, and as a testing ground for features that will be in upcoming games like Neverwinter Nights Online.  There is a great community in CO, if you know where to find it.  Supergroups like ARC (PvE/Events), All Stars (PvE), The Saikashuu (PvP/Events), Red Academy (RP/PvE/Events), and Bloodline of Shadows (RP/PvE/PvP) can offer a lot of fun and great experiences for their members.  Joining channels like COPvP, Contests, CORP, and Talkytalk will help you find other awesome groups to get involved with.

I'm hoping that we'll get an influx of CoX players into CO, and that they'll bring the same inventiveness, ingenuity, and DIY attitude to us that made Paragon City such an awesome place to be when I played.

As I get time, I'll try to write up some mini-guides to important stuff in CO, but no guarantees.  If you decide to try the game out, feel free to send a tell to @ScarletShrike.  Just let me know how you got my handle so I don't feak out and think you're a crazy stalker.  <3

How to return gracefully, or Don't be a goddamned noob!

I'm not the sort of girl who's good at commitment.  The longest I've ever managed to stay continuously in one game was two years, and in that time I was also playing something like three other games.  I regularly take breaks from my MMOs, for anywhere from a month to three years.  Usually, it's drama that drives me off and big game changes that bring me back: expansions, class reviews, new races...  You know how it works.

Now, there's this negative stereotype of returning players that goes something like this:

*Joining Dungeon Group, Please Wait*

Priestard:  Hey guys!  I just came back from a million billion hours out of game.  It looks like a lot has changed!  Please be patient!

Group: *collective eyeroll*

*Roguetard has left the group.  Find new player?*

YOU: *click yes*  It's okay.  This dungeon is pretty easy.  Just don't stand in shit, and watch out for cures.  This expansion is brutal for that kind of crap.

 *Shamwow has joined the group*

 YOU: Okay people, we've got a newbie in the group, so let's take it easy and just get through is.  Kay?  [Time passes, shit dies, OOMs happen, but it's cool because shit dies.]  Here we are, kids, Awesome Boss Dude.  Remember to watch the cures, Priestard.

Priestard: Duh.  I'm on it!  I'm not a noob or anything.  Just taking time to get into it.

*Awesome Boss Dude's Easily Dispellable Detriment has anally violated YOU for WTFPWN points of I Told You So damage!  Awesome Boss Dude has killed YOU*

YOU: What's up, man?  I told you to watch the cures.

 Priestard: I did cure.  You just suck.  I was a hardcore raider when I quit and I know what I'm doing.  God, people are such assholes in this game any more.  Fuck you all, I hope you die IRL from genetically modified syphilis eating your BRAINS and your balls fall off.

*Priestard has left the group.*

 Shamwow : Dude, way to be a dick.

*Shamwow  has left the group.*

Basically, people expect you to think you know a lot more than you know, and then be all touchy when they try to correct you.  Rule number one of returning gracefully is:

You know nothing, John Snow.

It doesn't matter how famous you were back in the day, or how hardcore you were, or if you were in fifteen phases of early alpha.  All players are going to care about when you encounter them ingame is what you know and can do NOW.  Accept that on Day 1 you're going to have out-dated information.  Don't wave your peen around until it's not all shriveled and flaccid.  If you think you know something and you're called on being wrong, just accept that your information is out-dated.  Don't rage all over people about being assholes for calling you out if they're trying to help.  And if they're actually being assholes about it, deal with it.  Either there's no saving them from their innate assholitry, or you were being a dickweed to begin with and deserve all the punishment you get.

Your Day 1 procedure, while you're reinstalling and patching, getting your account sorted, and figuring out where the hell your guild wandered off to this time, should also include class research.  As a returning player, you're guaranteed that your game's matured at least to the point of having a couple reliable fansites, and where there are fans, there are fanbois who think they are the leet masters of this particular digital universe.  Find a cookie-cutter spec for your class, read some of the basic guides posted, and check to see who on the forums actually knows what they're talking about.  Then look up their characters and compare to the cookie cutters you've found.  Often, you can figure out what's good and what's not, and what's changed just by looking at existing specs and the arguments over what's broken.

If you're going back for an expansion or level cap increase, your first instinct will be to start grinding your ass off to get back to max level.  This is usually a decent idea, but sometimes can backfire on you.  If there have been significant changes to game mechanics, stat balancing, gear structure, or even just your class, you will probably want to consult the forums and work through some older content before pressing on.  If you've missed multiple expansions, there may be quests or gear you need from the interim expansions before you can get to the current content.

Case in point: Everquest 2

Every expansion, EQ2 either introduces a small mountain of gameplay changes, AAs, and some new zones or they raise the level cap and add some little stupid AA bullshit.  Either way, you're looking at some re-learning and grinding to do.  I quit near the end of Destiny of Velious, when I found out that the upcoming expansion Age of Discovery was not going to include new overland zones or raise the level cap.  It quite literally was just a features update, and I didn't feel like spending my money on that.  The newest expansion, Chains of Eternity, both raised the level cap and introduced new areas.  Between the two expansions, I have several new systems to learn, another offshoot of my class's mythical quest line and its followup, and a ton of crafting faction/recipe finding to get out of the way.  They've also completely changed Qeynos and Freeport, the two main player cities, and turned my tank class of choice from the joke of the game to the best raid tank.  (Go figure, I stop playing my monk and they get buffed out the ass.)  Somewhere in the mix, they've also changed aggro mechanics, possibly twice.

TL/DR: I've got to work my way through at least part of the AoD stuff so I can figure out the new systems like Mercenaries and Tradeskill Apprentices before I can even think about getting into Chains of Eternity content.  I've also got to re-learn how to tank, and figure out how the changes they've made to my class impact my gameplay.  Standards and expectations have shifted, and players in CoE content will be expected to have completed whatever was in the previous expansion, as far as prestige abilities and alternate advancements go.  Until my characters meet those minimum standards, I should not put myself in a position to waste people's time.

Which brings us to rule number two of Returning Gracefully:

Wise man shut the fuck up and read patch notes.  Learn many things.

In order to know where to start, you have to know what the current minimum expectations are for you.  If you want to know THAT, you have to read the goddamned patch notes, state of the class posts, and all that good stuff.  It can be a daunting task, but if you want to make a seamless transition back into your game without looking like an asshat, pissing people off, and needing to transfer/name change a month down the road you'll take my advice.

Coming up next:  More fabulous tips of badassitude for making a good impression when you finally dive back into the community.  Or possibly more bitching about my move.  Maybe both!  ^.~  See you then.

Packing Roxi-style

Yes. In my head, that's to the tune of Gangnam Style.  And there is a more than good probability that before the night is out I'll be galloping around my now-furnitureless apartment shouting that and failing at the Gangnam Style dance.  No, I will not be streaming it, because don't nobody need to see that crap.  There's a reason my drapes are some of the last things to be packed.

You would think a woman who's been a guild bank manager for five or seven years would be amazing at keeping her stuff organized, and optimizing her space to move.  She'd have boxes of the right size combinations to maximize her stuff/container ratio, and be able to shove everything she needs into her car or moving van efficiently.  If RL came equipped with slots, and my dining room table took up the same amount of car space as my socks, I'd totally be set.  As it is...

I have a diagram.  I don't have this diagram right now, because I'm at work and it's taped to my fridge and scribbled on the back of a Totino's frozen pizza box in sharpie, but I've got one!  It details where in my car everything is going.  It reminds me of a really really bad game of Tetris, which was analyzed after the fact by the guys from Monday Night Football to show just where the player went wrong.  Seriously, I've got squiggles and lines and arrows all over the damn place, and I know it's not going to go as planned because half my stuff is shoved into garbage bags at this point and they keep changing shape.  Screw paying nine bucks a tote for boxes.  I'm a hobo and I'm proud of it!

Suffice it to say, I'm a lucky person, because my sister has offered to be my bank mule until I get settled in.  Since things like my baker's rack, TV stand, desk, and so on won't fit into my Vibe (don't look at me like that), she's letting me pack some minor things into her basement.  Now if only getting things off the bank mule were as simple as clicking the "return to sender" button on the mailbox.  Mah well.  I wouldn't need to worry about a mule at all, but buying extra vault tabs IRL is freaking EXPENSIVE.  I am not impressed.

So anyway.  Roxi Style involves multi-colored post-it notes to denote whether a room is full, empty, or sorted.  Cabinets and closets also use this system.  Each room is assigned a certain number of boxes, which are labeled "Roxi - Store - Room" or "Roxi - Use - Room" (obviously, room gets replaced with the actual room it's from).  I have a master inventory of what's in each box, or at least had one until the cat kidnapped it and buried it in her litter box.  Now the only manifest I have is the one in my brain, and it's bugging the CRAP out of me.  RL needs a searchable inventory.  Anyway.  Things that are getting stored, or which could easily be damaged go into plastic totes.  Stuff I plan on using a lot, like clothes, go into collapsible cloth storage bags.  (I finally found a use for all the crap my sister got me from Thirty-One.)  Electronics are bundled together with their peripherals and cords, and placed into collapsible cloth storage cubes.  Cardboard is reserved for big things that are pretty much just easier to carry that way, like the slow cooker and coffee machine.  At least...that's the plan.

Every time you fill a box, you take a shot.  Every time you find something the cat stole and hid, take two shots.  When you have to repack a box because stuff doesn't fit, two shots.  One shot every time you move something out of your Goodwill pile and into a box, and two when you put it either back in the donation pile or in the trash.  Three shots every time you take a trashbag full of stuff down to the dumpster only to realize it was your pillows or towels and have to fish it out.  While filling out the car, one shot for every other box loaded, and three if you manage to get it in without having to re-shuffle things so you can use your rear-view mirror.

The last thing packed and loaded should be the cat, sedated and in her carrier.  Finish the bottle(s) if what actually goes into the car last is your laptop bag or tablet, because you were too busy doing scratchy cards on the Rift mobile app.

Oh.  Then sleep it off on your living room floor, huddling in your For The Horde hoodie like the hobo that you are.

Rift! No. EQ2! No. Champions! No. Wait...what's my pw again?

This time last week I was (a) whining about having to move and (b) all excited about starting back up in Rift.  I even went so far as to buy the one year sub so I could get the free expansion dealie.  Things were going great, I was smashing faces with my mage, and then...

...and then I went shopping with my friend, and she saw an old collector's edition of EQ2's Sentinel's Fate expansion for ten bucks.  Full game (to the old level cap, anyway), plus a month time, plus free station cash, plus a swanky new mount and a pewter battlecat that has already replaced her dog in the Monopoly set for only ten dollars was apparently too awesome to pass up.  This time, anyway.  I'd talked her out of it half a dozen times before, because we were playing WoW and running a guild and all that good stuff.

So now I'm playing EQ2, and trying to mentor a True Newb to a game that's gone through eight years of developmental dickery, after something like two years away.  I reactivated for a month towards the middle of the last expansion, but only played for about twenty minutes.  (Part of it was that I got robbed of 20aa on my illusionist because I hadn't resubbed when I logged her in the first time, and apparently lost all credit for stored xp.)  Ever since the game went Free to Play and, more importantly, Rift launched, I've been fooling around Anywhere But There.  They hadn't introduced mercenaries yet, let alone introduced prestige abilities or the Choose Your Own Focus Effects tab, or any of that good stuff.  Stats have been changed and changed and changed, they've introduced reforging...

I just spent three weeks getting reacquainted with Rift, and now I have to jam on the brakes and shift gears to get caught up with EQ2.  I've been staring at my monk's AAs for something like four hours now trying to figure out how to not do it wrong, and concluded that everything I set up when I logged in was most definitely doing it wrong.  It also turns out that I've got to wait a week to transfer said monk to the server I had my friend roll on because Butcherblock, my old server, is populated by quasi-sentient dildos.

And to top it all off?  My usual fallback fansite has all but died for lack of drama.  /mourn EQ2flames.  You will be missed.

But seriously!  I have epic game ADD any more, and it seems like just when I finally make a decision to commit, someone comes along with something shiny on a string and drags me somewhere else.

So...I'll be bouncing back and forth between games for a while.  Actual content to follow soon, I promise!

Time Management, Roxi Style

I'm in the middle of packing for a huge move, and trying to find time to squeeze in both getting the block back up and running and level my mage.  This...is not going well.  To compound my problems, I'm being slammed hard in the face ingame with Too Much To Do syndrome.

The solution, right now, is to curl up on the couch with the Hunger Games, and pretend that throwing a few boxes into key places in my apartment and making an elaborate color-coded post-it note scheme equates to Getting Things Done.

I think it's safe to say at this point that with everything going on, my stream won't be back up and running before next month.  By that point, at least, I'll have some fabulous co-stars to involve, and possibly even the KleptoKlip collar camera I've been talking about setting up on the stream for when I'm not actually playing a game.  For some reason, the prospect of broadcasting my cat's life Ghost Hunters style entertains me.

So sit tight, relax...and hope for motivations.

My beloved Russians! And..that other guy.

I'm sure you all heard the screaming from my dusty, cobwebby little cranny of the Internet when I discovered today that my beloved Russian audience of THREE has completely stopped checking in.

Why you do this, Russians?  After that whole thing you went through in the 80s I figured you'd be used to reading and rereading and rereading the same nonsensical blather scribbled on the back of a napkin!

Okay.  Possibly a low blow and very possibly uncool, but I had to throw that in there.  Seeing as I lost basically my entire audience except, apparently, this one guy in the US who I strongly suspect is a buddy of mine (HI MAL!)...  I was a little sad.  Never mind that I cruelly abandoned you guys when I discovered Outside, Real Life, and OMG GIRLS...

It's a long story.  You'll maybe get it someday.  Not today.  I know you're heartbroken.

Good news, long-lost readers!  I'm back, and this time I PROMISE it will be less thinly-veiled backseat guild leadership and blatant bitching about my recruits.  Why?  Because not only am I NOT a guild leader or officer this time around...  I'm not even IN a guild!  

The hell, you say?  THE HELL INDEED, my darlings.  I have once again jumped games, because I go through them like Lindsay Lohan goes through rehab clinics.  This time I've landed myself ass first in Rift, because I can't stand the lure of a GREAT DEAL, and when I mathed it out the free Storm Legion with 1yr prepaid game time came out to AMAZING SAVINGS.  And gave me an excuse to quit World of Farmville.

I was really active in Rift's Rogue community when the game first launched, though I'm sure nobody remembers Roxina the Raging Nightblade Bitch who would chime in on literally EVERY thread about "WHY MY DPS SO BAD" with "y u no roll spike?"  (Not quite in those words, but...that's what I wanted to write.)  When I was looking at the new souls for the expansion though, I saw Harbinger and literally creamed my pants at the thought of what I could do with a Harb/Chloro/Dom spec, so...

Yeah.  I'm healing.  Shut your whineholes.  Wineholes?  Either way, it's a hole, and things should be going in, not coming out.  I'm on a rambly roll here.

Anyway.  I'm Roxina, on Wolfsbane (all hail free server transfers.  It's not that I don't like you any more, Faeblight, it's just that I have bad memories of being ostracized by every member of the early hardcore community for officering in three separate guilds that I either accidentally destroyed, poached members from unintentionally, or screwed by not turning over guild bank information before I left on my neverending search for a guild that could actually kill Infiltrator without having to spend two and a half hours wiping because People Can't Fucking Turn Around).  Right now I'm working my way through the Storm Legion content at a snail's pace, because I'm getting ready to move in with my ex-guild leaders and start a new job (BEST IDEA EVER or TOTAL FUCKING FAIL, there is no middle ground possible).  Wave at me.  Hug me.  Ignore me.  

Just be ready for guides of awesome and, hopefully, some new streams.