These are just too funny.
CoX Motivational Posters
Global: @Jimmy Amp
"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow's too lazy to form an opinion." -- Will Rogers

Apparently some of the university stuff with some of the Invention system active in it leaked onto Test. (Cricket already posted in the thread I linked below that it was a bug that it came out) This is looking awesome, though. A nifty glimpse of the future.
College Pics
CoX board thread on it
Global: @Jimmy Amp
"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow's too lazy to form an opinion." -- Will Rogers

Issue 8: To Protect and Serve
Noticed by folks on the forums, but not mentioned in patch notes is that if you have an open arc with a contact, it shows a little book symbol next to their name in your contact list. No more guessing!
NOTE: Veteran Rewards are not a part of Issue 8's initial launch *ON TRAINING ROOM* (will be added to Test in later patch)
Approximate Arrival to Training Room - 10/12/06 10PM CST
Issue 8: To Protect and Serve
Pocket D Changes
Arena Kiosks: These Kiosks will allow Heroes and Villains to fight against each other more easily if they want to settle personal issues.
In front of the bars are two arena officials, an "Arena Information Operator", who will provide information on how to use the kiosks; and a "Games Information Operator", who will provide detailed information on each of the game types of the arena.
Rikti Monkey Fight Club: Due to a combination of the Family cutting in to the RMFC profits in Sharkhead, and an offer from DJ Zero to expand their enterprise, Joe Young and Cornelius have moved their "entertainment concern" on up to the Pocket D. They have set up a new "Lounge" on the hero side of the club. Its a lot classier than the old place, says Joe Young.
Its loud in Pocket D! Local chat in Pocket D will only be heard by players within 50ft of each other now.
Powers
Many objects in the game which were meant to be immune to Teleportation have been made so. This affects several powers in the Traps Secondary and Gadgets secondary for players.
Various Build Up and Aim powers now have a new look.
Alternate flying poses. Fly and Hover (and temporary powers that duplicate their effects) have new poses. Your character will transition into an alternate pose after flying forward for a few seconds. Also implemented a banking animation for flying forward while strafing left or right.
Increased the base flight speed of Hover by 10%.
Added a slight delay to the usage of Team Teleport. This should alleviate the issue of Teammates randomly being left behind after a Teleport.
Soul Storm is now escapable. There is still a bit of delay after you escape before you can move or attack again, but its much less of an I win power.
Rikti ambushers will once again show teleportation FX.
The Helmet enhancement (Mutation/Magic Range) was giving twice the bonus of other Range DOs. It has been reduced to match.
Rebalanced some of the high end Longbow critters to make them less frustrating.
Fixed some animation issues with the Jump Jet Pack power granted from the Good vs. Evil Edition.
Titles
Players may now change their title at levels 15, 25, 35, and 45. These title changes do not stack (if you do not use the one you get at level 25 when you reach level 35, you only have the level 35 change, and lose the level 25 one). At 50, players may change their title without restriction. Talk to any trainer to change your title in this manner.
Tailor
New costume pieces are available at the Tailor and at Character Generation:
Male/Huge/Female
(Head Detail 1)
Galactic Glasses
Government Glasses
Blast Goggles up
(Head Ears)
Floppy
Bunny
Cat
Rat
Teddy
Wildcat
Female
(Upper Body - Chest - Tops with Skin)
Angelic
Assassin
Excess
Savage
Tanker
(Lower body - Legs - Bottoms with Skin)
Angelic
Assassin
Excess
Savage
CITY OF HEROES
Faultline Redux
Faultline officials recently provided funding for reconstruction and work was underway in the first neighborhood, when major disaster struck. Due to strange seismic activity on the moon, tidal anomalies caused the Overbrook Dam to rupture flooding the zone. Additional crews have been called in to assess the Dam and shore up the rest of the zone, however, they are continually thwarted by the recent arrival of new villain groups to the area and one group, in particular, that no one expected: Arachnos. It appears Arachnos has been poking around supergroup base wreckage in Faultline for some time, searching for technology that will further Lord Recluses nefarious plans. Paragon Officials have called in small detachments of the Paragon Police Department and Freedom Corps, but are also asking heroes to come forward and protect the new city.
Features of the new Faultline:
Transition from Trial Zone to a City Zone (with Overbrook Dam as a Hazard area)
Level range has been adjusted to 15 25
Missions have been added (see Jim Temblor in New Overbrook at the Memorial statue in the park as your initial contact)
New Villain groups added: Arachnos, Freakshow, The Lost, Sky Raidersand something lurking in the water.
More plaques and badges
Entrance to Pocket D
Stores, Trainer (Mirror Spirit), and a hospital have been added to Faultline
Police Band Missions
PPD Contacts have been added to all City Zones except for Atlas Park and Galaxy City. They will be added to a Heros contact list as soon as they enter a zone. These contacts will direct characters to missions aiding the PPD in fighting crime in Paragon City.
Once you talk to a PPD Contact, your contact list will have a "Police Band Tuner" added to the top of the list. Clicking this will bring up an assortment of crimes-in-progress.
You will fight level-appropriate Villain Groups in random maps and random mission objectives. Once you have outlevelled a zone, however, you will no longer be able to get Police Band missions in that zone.
In addition to normal missions, the PPD will give out Safeguard Missions. You get Safeguard missions after performing three to five Police Band missions.
Safeguard Missions
Safeguard missions allow the Hero player to enter a large outdoor mission map and defend the city from invading villains. The goal is to defeat the Villain behind the attack, preventing a bank robbery, but there are lots of other things going on, too. Safeguard missions are set up for single players and teams.
When you enter the instance, the bank is immediately being robbed. Dont delay in getting to the bank, or the crooks could get away with the cash, failing the mission.
A 15 minute timer starts once the bank heist has been stopped and the mission is completed. At this point you can use the given time to secure the map, and explore and fight for additional badges and rewards. This allows the players to end the mission quickly, or hunt for additional XP and rewards if they choose.
There are several goals and multiple side missions that can be unlocked and played once the bank robbery has been thwarted. Completing any section of goals or each side mission rewards the players with a special bonus (such as extra XP, temp powers, or unique salvage) and will add some time back to the counter. The more they complete the longer they have to try and complete more goals, so the better they do the higher their rewards.
Giant Monster Spawns Increased
The following Giant Monster Spawns have had their frequency increased;
o Kraken - Perez Park
o Babbage - Boomtown
o Jack in Irons (non-scripted, individual) - Croatoa
o Eochai (non-scripted, individual) - Croatoa
o Adamastor - Dark Astoria
o Jurassik - Crey's Folly
Powers
Controllers Fossilize power will now properly have critical hold effects versus critters. This is a bug fix -- this aspect of the power already existed, but was set to always fail.
Fixed the Short Help text on Stone Cages to properly reflect the powers usage.
Game
Trains will now stay at station longer, there will be shorter times between trains and the doors of the trains will be clickable while the train is in the station.

CITY OF VILLAINS
Powers
Many Darkness powers have a new look attached.
Removed Double Stacked Super Jump from Ninja Mastermind Pets.
Added slightly increased running speed to all Mastermind pets.
Updated the power description on Thermal Radiation.
Arachnos Night Widow Bosses have had their Defense values slightly reduced.
The Arachnos Arch Villain Nocturne has been rebalanced.
Dominators will now build Domination faster depending on the size of the Team they are grouped with. Each member of the team (aside from the Dominator himself) increases the speed of Domination gain by approximately 16%. Note that this bonus does NOT apply to the existing bonus Assault powers gain in PvP. The maximum bonus to Domination will happen in a full 8 person group.
Base Domination gain increased by 50% (to 3 points per attack up from 2 points per attack.)

Global: @Jimmy Amp
"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow's too lazy to form an opinion." -- Will Rogers

Finally, and after so much wait, a technician is coming tomorrow to install the cables required for me to have the Internet.
So, if you see Yukiyo gleefully leaping off a building, please do not be surprised.

Something the Paragonian Knights are running, which I'm betting will be damn cool - a public festival event this Saturday, with competitions, prizes and stuff.
Oct 14, 9 - 11 pm EDT
Here's their flier ...
And here's the thread on the CoH forums, with more information.
-- Acyl

The place you go when you use your VIP card to teleport in...
Holy crap, it's a Tiki Bar!





--Sam
"The night is young and we have umbrellas in our drinks!"

As I noted in General/General, Peg and I got a chance to take a week off on very short notice -- so I'm going to be gone from Friday 13 to Friday 20. The odds that I can get onto a machine with COH during that time is vanishingly small, so I just wanted people warned when I dropped out of sight for a while.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

Not quite ROFL. Not quite Crossovers That Should Never Be. This one is for bizarre and improbable fic challenges. Feel free to chime in with your own wackiness, and if one of these inspires you, then by all means run with it.
I'll give it a start: it's a concept that's shown up from time to time, as an expression of impossibility, or a technique for the male members of the cast to douse their own ardor. That's right. Snape in a tutu. It has to be real, and he has to have put it on voluntarily, fully aware of its nature. Everything else is entirely up to you. Bonus points if someone (anyone, anyone at all) sees him in it, and finds him strangely attractive/compelling. Super extra double bonus points if you can figure out a way to wind up with Snape in a tutu, fleeing desperately from a horde largely made up of adoring schoolgirls.

...to found a super group.
I picked Triumph, since it's supposed to be relatively empty.
Now, Rev, Foxboy, and the Lovely Wife will perhaps remember our improvising a magical girl team on Virtue several days back. At about that point, the idea of creating a mahou shoujo SG and raising it up as an organized concept from level one on lodged itself in my brain and has flat-out refused to go away.
And yes, I fully recognize that the Mirror sibs and Kingdom have already pretty much beaten me to most of this punch. I'm trying to placate my muse, here, not be original.
Of course, the minimum level requirement for SG founding is a bit of a bump on the 'all at once' part of the concept.
At this point I've managed to dream up titles and potential powersets for a full eleven characters. There'd be room for Kamen types, of course - male or female, even - but I'd prefer to get all the girls spoken for before investing anything in them.
Which just means they'd need to be pitched beforehand, rather than showing up. ^_^
So, without further ado, I give you The Facets of The Yrmaw:
Inez of the Wildfire - Evil Midnight Lurker
Blaster: Fire Blast/Fire Manipulation
Lia of the Sea - His Lovely Wife
Blaster: Energy Blast/Ice Manipulation
Rina of the Shadow - Morganni
Scrapper: Dark Melee/Dark Armor
Lloelie of the Songs - Hunterminator
Controller: Mind Control/Sonic Resonance
Grace of the Spirit - Acyl
Defender: Empathy/Psychic Blast
Tonya of the Snows - Foxboy
Blaster: Ice Blast/Ice Manipulation
Yin of the Spheres - Chibi Konatsu
Controller: Gravity Control/Kinetics
Satomi of the Stars - Drenevian
Defender: Radiation Emission/Radiation Blast
Sara of the Earth - Valles
Dominator: Plant Control/Firey Assault
Sasha of the Storm - Sweno
Controller: Gravity Control/Storm Summoning
Kara of the Thunder - Valles
Blaster: Electrical Blast/Electricity Manipulation
Yes, most of those combinations are rather obvious. They seem apropos nontheless. I'll wait to see how much - if any - interest there is before I start getting into backstory and costuming instructions and such...
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

As the subject line suggests, I went and wrote myself up as a Naruto self-insert character.
Yeap. SI. I don't normally do this, so I'm not sure why. Well, okay, the stuff here sorta popped into my head a couple nights ago, while I was trying to sleep. So I scribbled it down, and then I had a really strange dream...
And then, of course, there's the wonderful stuff Griever, ClassicDrogn, Drakensis and Nathan have been doing. Certainly an influence, there.
This really isn't a story, it's just a character sketch in prose. I dunno if I'll ever do anything with this.
That said, I've already written a bit of Naruto fanfic (about the Waterfall village, entitled "Lesser Nin"), and I've got a couple story ideas revolving around the canon Leaf-nin cast in Konoha. So this might still see the light of day. Sometime. I should probably run through those ideas in a seperate thread, but anyway...