InfamousBrad

That it drops their IQ down to the low 30s or high 20s hardly seems like "all up-side."

Interesting factoid: up until the next issue, almost all non-natural origin, non-tech origin characters that start as villains have taken at least one dose of Superadine in their lives: as a cure for the suppressor drugs that are administered in Ziggursky Penitentiary. Because, left out of the above account, a single dose of Superadine is enough to activate or awaken any latent super powers, any powers you didn't know you had yet. That's what the drug was invented for, by [SPOILER REDACTED], as part of a larger plot so that he could [RIDICULOUSLY LONG SPOILER REDACTED].

A "Troll" is what happens to someone who takes 'Dyne, finds out they have no powers, and keeps taking the stuff anyway ... eventually it turns you into either a super strength/invulnerability or super strength/stone armor brute with serious anger management issues and the IQ of a below-average house pet.

It won't be Back Alley Brawler, for the same reason it won't be Sister Psyche: they're in the new tutorial, and they're not going to re-do the new tutorial two months after they release it.

I think you've made a pretty compelling case that it'll be Citadel. I remember him fondly for one grace note during the Top Cow comic book series ... and NOTHING ELSE. The only places I can think of where he even shows up, in the game, he shows up as an undistinguished disposable extra: once as some guy in the background when villains wipe the floor with the superteam he's a member of, and one other time as the weakest member of that superteam, and therefore a good one for a villain to take as a hostage in order to lure out the member of that team that your employer actually wants beaten up. Not exactly a distinguished career.

(And the Citadel Task Force series of missions needs to die in a fire. Now that the Positron Task Force has gotten updated, Citadel's is the single dullest task force in the game, and the rewards are below mediocre. I don't know if that has anything to do with the likelihood of them killing off a character or not, though.)

If you read City of Heroes' website, there are references to two permanent human habitats in space, Gagarin Station (in Earth orbit) and Armstrong Base (on the Moon). Way the heck back in October 2006, they wrote it into the game's content that (probably not) coincidentally, at the same time as the second disaster at Faultline, all contact was lost with Armstrong base ... and that's the same issue where the modified Steel Canyon in Paragon City, and Port Oakes in the Rogue Isles, to include half-built rocket launch platforms. The next issue, early 2007, was supposed to send us to the Moon to find out what happened to Armstrong Base; clues suggest that it was supposed to be a prequel event to the Second Rikti War.

Those rocket launch platforms have been half-built ever since. They decided they didn't have the budget to do a moonbase, they dropped that subplot from the Second Rikti War storyline and it's now officially over, and the lead developer has admitted that they no longer have any current plans for those rocket launch sites.

World of Warcraft's hands-down most annoying is the sound that boars and Quilboars make when you're fighting them.

City of Heroes has two, for me. (Oddly enough, I'm a force fielder mastermind, it's not one of them.) Spines scrappers have a damage toggle called Quills that most players turn on and then never turn off, that shoots out little puffs of spines once per second "scritch scritch scritch ..." the whole time one is standing next to you. I call it "scrapper dandruff," and it's the audio equivalent of second-hand smoke.

The entire Sonic Blast ranged-attack powerset is even less pleasant, but, thankfully, it's also pretty uncommon.

There actually is a good overview that needs to be written, for all four epic archetypes, because what they did instead of offering you multiple powersets is they offered you about twice as many powers as you can possibly take and about three times as many attacks as you could possibly effectively equip. Which means that a human-only peacebringer plays nothing like a human/dwarf form peacebringer plays little or nothing like the most common leveling build, the nova/dwarf form peacebringer -- and warshade builds are even weirder than that. Similarly, a soldier or widow isn't going to have much variety in their secondary (you pretty much need to take almost every power), the huge variety of attacks means that you can build for mixed damage type, for optimal single-target damage of either damage type, or for AoE-heavy big-team builds and they'll play differently in each case.

I know that issues 19 and 20 made me really, really love my tri-form peacebringer; it's a raiding *machine.*

"You would think that the supposedly savvy hardcore PvP crowd (you know, those vets who've been around the block a few times since the days of Darktide and pre-Trammel) would know better than to rise to the flame-bait that skitters across global every few seconds like a cockroach when the lights come on."

I think you meant that to read, "You would LIKE TO think that ...," etc. Because I, for one, know better than to think any such thing. I've been around MMOs long enough to know that FFA PvP brings out the worst in a lot of people. The traditional explanation is what academics call "the online disinhibition effect" (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GIFT), but that doesn't explain why PvP servers have it worse than PvE servers.

My theory is that all it takes is one of these future trolls to get ganked, even once, on a character that they identified with and wanted to never, ever die, wanted to never, ever get beaten on, for them to go into full-on insatiable perma-rage; they suffered, and now the whole world must suffer, forever and ever.

@Azules At first, I misread what you meant by exploits.

Because exploits is what I'm most curious about: once you get into open RvR, how rampant is the cheating these days? I quit specifically because it was out of control and, at the time, they weren't even bothering to suspend, let alone ban, the most rampant cheaters.

My pick would be for you to play a damage-specced zealot, if that's even still possible.

@Malagarr I'm glad somebody brought up WAR.

In most MMOs, your choice is between the good guys and the less-good guys. In WAR, your choice is between the evil guys and the only barely less evil guys.

On the other hand, I've heard some speculation that that was one of the (many) things that held down its subscription numbers: that given a choice between playing the empire's Spanish Inquisition, emo elves, and drunken racist dwarves versus murderous suicide cult Vikings, goth sadist elves, and green-skinned soccer hooligans, a lot of people chose ... to play an entirely different game.

Actually, in City of Heroes, the minimum level for travel powers, especially for villains, is level 1 ... if someone hands you the 10,000 infamy. Skip the tutorial. As soon as you exit the helicopter out of prison, turn around and talk to the helicopter pilot again, hop a flight to Grandville South. Walk up the ramp, past customs, and talk to the Jetpack Vendor. For heroes, it's a little more difficult; not only a longer walk but a much more dangerous one, sneaking past or getting someone to teleport you past a lot of level 45+ enemies. But it's still doable, still at level 1.

I bring up Jetpacks because they're handed out like candy, now, and they make going without a travel power of any kind entirely viable. You get a free one at level 6 if you do a Mayhem or Safeguard mission. You get another free one as a level 10+ hero if you do the Positron Task Force. You get two more free ones as a level 15+ or 20+ villain, if you do the right story arcs. And always, once you use up the 90 to 120 minutes of in-flight "fuel" time, it's just another measly 10k inf to refuel at the jetpack vendor.

All of which gives you a full 3D flight, use anywhere, 45 MPH flying mount that can be used at any level.

Other MMOs take it for granted that between the contact and the mission, you have to walk, and you have to kill everything that tries to kill you between point A and point B. City of Heroes lets you do this ... but neither requires nor encourages it. At ANY level.

The one I miss the most, my all-time favorite, was the subway system in Neocron. It was like the flight paths in WoW, only it felt more immersive, and it was much faster. Think "Deeprun Tram" only cooler looking, quicker, and with more stops.

My second favorite is the Raptor Pack jetpack power in City of Heroes. When they made that something you could have permanently, instead of just during specific missions or in PvP zones, I was relieved and delighted.

My third favorite isn't, technically, a travel option, but I have to include it anyway: the Bravo Company Siege Tank in the quest Redridge Mountains quest "AHHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHH!!!" in WoW.