Battlerock X: Journal Entry 20090126

I’m using my down time to put together some of my thoughts of my most recent missions.

I had just finished a team mission with some people on Talos Island when I was surrounded by Rikti forces. Apparently we missed out on getting the warning because we were in the sewer. I fought off the swarm of soldiers and was trying to get to the rally point when I was taken down by a passing swarm of Rikti drop ships.

I had NEVER seen so many drop ships at any one time! It was almost as though the Rikti were carrying out their November offensive.

As I left the hospital, I was greeted by a whole caravan of drop ships, one after another after another, right outside of the hospital door and thirty feet off the street. Rage got the better of me, and I had charged up and attacked the closest ship with everything I had. I knew it was a futile gesture, but it was one that I had to make anyway. This metal plate on my face is not for decoration.

I knew at best I would get in maybe two or three good punches before the drop ship weapons send me back to the hospital, and that’s pretty much what happened. But as I exited the medical teleporter, the whole hospital started shaking! I had apparently knocked the drop ship into the hospital and it could not free itself. It was difficult getting to the ground floor so I could give it another attack. The whole building was shaking violently.

Just as I exited the hospital I got a new tactical team message.

“Drop ship has been destroyed.”

I could not believe it. I had single-handedly taken down a Rikti drop ship… with the help of a building.

Obviously if this was planned I would have used some OTHER building. I had no intention of putting a hospital in harm’s way. Fortunately there was no loss of life, most of the hospital staff and patients were already moved to the basement shelter, and the damage to the building itself was negligible.

Still, given the fact that it normally takes a whole team of heroes at level 50 to bring down one of these ships, this is an incredible moral victory to know that I could do it at level 24.

"Double XP" Weekend is here!

Once again the strange forces in the universe converge to give double the rewards for good and bad deeds.

Nobody knows the real reason why this happens, but for a select period of time, all rewards for good and bad deeds are doubled. This includes experience, money, and group prestige.

Experts believe that this strange period, referred to by Paragon City and Rogue Isles citizens as the "Double XP Event", will start at 12noon on January 23rd and end at 11:59pm on January 25th.

Now is the time for all adventurers to join in and enjoy the benefits of this strange recurring event.

US Democracy Server: Patch Day

[The following Patch Update has been sent out to numerous forums. There is no word as to whether or not the patch listed here applies to NCSoft or any of its specific MMO games. - From the desk of "He Who Chronicles"]

US Democracy Server: Patch Day
Version 44.0

President

• Leadership: Will now scale properly to national crises. Intelligence was not being properly applied.
• A bug has been fixed that allowed the President to ignore the effects of debuffs applied by the Legislative classes.
• Drain Treasury: There appears to be a bug that allowed loot to be transferred from the treasury to anyone on the President’s friends list, or in the President’s party. We are investigating.
• Messages to and from the President will now be correctly saved to the chat log.
• Messages originating from the President were being misclassified as originating from The American People.
• A rendering error that frequently caused the President to appear wrapped in the American Flag texture has been addressed.
  

Vice President

• The Vice President has been correctly reclassified as a pet.
• No longer immune to damage from the Legislative and Judicial classes.
• The Vice President will no longer aggro on friendly targets. This bug was identified with Ranged Attacks and the Head Shot ability.
• Reveal Identity: this debuff will no longer be able to target Covert Operatives.
• Messages to and from the Vice President will now be correctly saved to the chat log.
• A rendering bug was affecting the Vice President’s visibility, making him virtually invisible to the rest of the server. This has been addressed.
  

Cabinet

• There was a bug in the last release that prevented the Cabinet from disagreeing with the President, which was the cause of a number of serious balance issues. This bug has been addressed, and we will continue to monitor the situation.
  

Judiciary

• Many concerns have been raised regarding balance issues in the Supreme Court. This system is maintained on a different patch schedule, and will require longer to address.
• A large number of NPCs in the Judiciary were incorrectly flagged "ideological." We are trying to identify these cases and rectify this situation.
  

Homeland Security

• Homeland Security Advisory System: We have identified a bug in this system that prevents the threat level from dropping below Elevated (Yellow). The code for Guarded (Blue) and Low (Green) has been commented out. We are testing the fix and hope to have it in by the next patch.
• Torture: This debuff is being removed after a record number of complaints.
• Item: Large Bottle of Water is incorrectly generating threat with TSA Agents when held in inventory. We are looking into the issue.
• Asking questions about Homeland Security was incorrectly triggering the Chain-Jingoism debuff.
  

Economy

• Serious on-going issues with server economy are still being addressed. We expect further roll-backs, and appreciate your help identifying and fixing bugs. We can’t make these fixes without your help.
• Bug reporting engine has been fixed on this feature. Previous version issued false error messages stating "Fundamentals are sound" and "You are a whiner." Said messages have been removed.
  

PVP

• Reputation with various factions are being rebalanced. The gradated reputation scale was erroneously being overwritten by the binary For Us/ Against Us flag.
  

Quests

• The” Desert Storm” quest chain was displaying an erroneous "Mission Accomplished" message near the beginning of the chain.
• The quest chain that begins with “There’s no Cake like Yellow Cake” and terminates with “W-M-Denied” has been identified as uncompletable, and has been removed.
  

Reagents

• Many recipes that currently call for Crude Oil can now be made with Wind, Solar, Geothermal and Ethanol reagents. We hope to roll out even more sweeping changes in the next patch.
  

Events

• The “Axis of Evil” event is drawing to a close. Look forward to the “Rebuilding Bridges” event starting in January.

Miscellaneous

• NPC pets "Conservative Hosts" have been readjusted. Verbal attack has been reduced. Aggro strength and range have been reduced.
• NPC pets "Liberal Hosts" have been readjusted. Previous patch commented out feature. This has been fixed and set to be similar to "Conservative Host" pets.
• Contrary to rumors, there are no plans for a "Fairness Patch".

New Ad - Day Jobs

Hero and Villain are at it again. This time it's about jobs.

New commercial for City of Heroes

Now available on Macs as well as PCs.



Here's more on the new Mac Special Edition version. I'm jealous of the mission teleporter and the Valkyrie set (and NO it doesn't make your character look like Tom Cruise).

The one thing that should be pointed out that the game will NOT work with Power PC-based Mac system nor with the Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics chip. You gotta upgrade your toys Mac-heads.

I'm curious to see how the Jobsonians will handle this at Mac World.