carnival-of-shadows
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A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Meet the PAX press
Compared to the other two City of Heroes events that I took part in at PAX East, the meet and greet almost seems like an afterthought from a news standpoint. And it's fair to say that no new information could be teased from the development team, mostly because they were far too busy laughing and chatting with fans. Not that any of the fans seemed too keen on asking big questions anyhow. It was, all in all, a big chance for everyone to relax, talk about what the state of the game was, and be pestered by me in the form of Mr. Not-So-Mild-Mannered Reporter. And it was a fun time, with a lot of different opinions and a very relaxed atmosphere. However much of an afterthought it might have been from the perspective of hard news, it was a great time for the fans, and that's what the column is really all about, right? So check on past the break for some of the highlights from the evening, not to mention my global handle. (Because people asked there and I blanked under pressure. Plus there wasn't room on the nametag.)
One Shots: Celebrating 50 with the Carnival
Hitting 50 - the level cap in City of Heroes - for the first time is an imporant moment for any hero, just as hitting the level cap is in any MMO, really. Of course, unlike say, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes really doesn't change significantly at endgame - you just get to spend all that Influence on the max-level IO Enhancements. Today's One Shots shows off one of our readers, Tony P., hitting 50. He writes in: The shot was taken in a Carnival of Shadows radio mission. I was waiting for the level animation so I could take a screenie of reaching 50 on my first character. I must have been casting one of the archery AOEs at the time as I got this interesting shot of arrows and and the levelup animation combined. My character was in stealth which is why you can't see them much. Grats on 50, Tony!Do you have a particularly cool shot of a casting animation, a Ding-shot, or just one of combat? We dig on those cranked-up spell effects. Just send it to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the game and location. Descriptions are, as always, welcome but not required. We'll post it out here for the world to see!%Gallery-9798%
The 'proud nails' of City of Heroes design
Zubon, of the award-winning Kill Ten Rats cooperative blog, has a great design discussion up on on the site concerning the 'proud nails' of City of Heroes' elder game. The term 'proud nail' is one that Zubon and I both enjoy from the design discussions on the official Wizards of the Coast website. Wizards makes the tabletop RPG Dungeons and Dragons, and many of the observations they make there are easily transposable to Massively Multiplayer games.Proud nails are 'design snags', problems that screw up the smooth movement of design mechanics. On the D&D site, examples include 'ten foot square' horses, crazily random lists of special abilities for monsters, and the strange way that bow ranges are calculated. Zubon's 'proud nail' list for City of Heroes focuses on the insanity of pitting high-level heroes primarily against a single villain group called the Carnival of Shadows. The Carnival has some serious issues, primarily stemming from their annoying attack moves and the famously weak amount of content at CoH's highest levels.I think 'proud nail' is a really useful term ... can anyone else point out a proud nail from any other games that immediately spring to mind?
