No new information here. I'm just linking to developer posts from the past few days on the official forums. I'm doing this 'cause it's come up in chat a couple times, and it seems not everyone's seen 'em yet.
Horatio on TF/SF

Quote:Hi, I’m Bruce Harlick, aka Horatio, the guy who was in charge of the Reichsman Task Force and Strike Force. Thank you for the comments and feedback on the TF & SF. I’d like to take the opportunity to respond to some of them and let you know our some of our intended responses.
To start, there is a difference in the challenge of the final fight in the SF and TF. The TF fight is much trickier and takes longer. We didn’t address that when assigning the initial merit values for the SF. We will be increasing the merit award for the Strike Force to 30 merits later this week. As time goes by and we collect more data on how long it takes groups to complete these arcs, we’ll likely be adjusting the merit rewards further.
There seems to be some confusion as to the use of the dimensional ground ray in the final fight of the Task Force. Before Reichsman’s hit by the ray, he is in a phased state and is running a rather nasty debuffing aura. When he is hit by the ray, it “grounds out” some of his power and he returns to a normal state and his aura is shut down. This will persist for the duration of the fight. The dimensional grounding ray isn’t intended to be used at specific points in the fight; it should be used early on, and one hit will do.

On the villain side of things, our intent was to try to do something a bit different for the end fight. As has been previously stated, we wanted to do a “gadget” fight; something that was more than just hit the bad guy until he fell over. And we wanted to encourage teams to include different ATs, to help shake up some standard team compositions. Certainly, the end fight is more difficult without having each of the appropriate ATs on the team, but it is still doable. Each of the temp powers is intended to make stages of the fight easier. There is no one “golden solution” to solving the fight; by including some or all of the ATs that can take advantage of the various temp powers, you can approach this battle using different tactics.
The Mastermind temp power is not working at this time; Castle has fixed that, but his fix did not go out with the release due to some build issues. This power should be working in a patch this week.
Switching voices, I am aware of the canon issues with the story. The problems are purely my fault; when I came up with the original flow for the story I was under some mistaken impressions on some events in the game’s history. While I did make some adjustments to the story due to the feedback from the training room, I didn’t get all the details nailed down as best I could. Due to a tight translation deadline, I was unable to get final text passes into the build that was going to the Live servers, but rest assured I’ll be doing my best to address them over the next week or so to bring the story of Reichsman’s return in line with the existing history of the 5th Column.
I’ll certainly be reading this (and the other) threads for any other comments you have on the issue. Please feel free to PM me with your comments and concerns if you’d like. I’ll do my best to respond to them in a timely fashion.

Quote:The original Axis America mobs don’t have a lot of variety to them – there’s basically four minions (the rifle, rocket, grenade, and flamethrower), one lieutenant, and one boss in the group. That’s not enough variety to provide interesting encounters for an entire story arc. While it would have been very cool to use them, we didn’t have the resources available to expand the group in a way that would let us use them for the missions.
I’d like to see the original Axis America troops available in Mission Architect, and I’ll look into that. No promises, but if we can make it happen, I’ll try to see that it does.

Quote:The Power of Black Scorpion Click power given to Masterminds *is* broken. A fix is in the pipeline; not sure when it will reach live.
How it broke:
Basically, just before the deadline, I completely rebuilt the power to do something different from what it had done before. The previous version had always been problematic and it just wasn't working out, so I replaced it with something more reliable at the 11th hour. Unfortunately, there was an error in my testing process and I failed to detect that, unless you had Dev Tools enabled, the power simply wouldn't actually trigger on Reichsman. So, you can use the power on him all day...and the attributes simply don't process.
This was caught just before launch, and I fixed it, but the fix had not gotten through the production process in time.

FUCKFUCKFUCK FUCKITY FUCK!!!!

RIAA Wins
against Thomas-Rasset

Usenet tagged
as well by RIAA

As a point of reference and to give you a sense of scale, Air-France recently paid out $24,000 to families of victims in a recent crash.

So - 1 illegal download = 3.3 dead relatives.

In an attempt to find something positive about this, a poster on the Hero boards put it thusly:

"Was winning the worst thing that could happen to the RIAA?...

Since (the decision) at least 2 artists (Moby and Richard Marx) have publicly criticized both the decision and the record labels, and it appears
Mrs. Thomas-Rasset has every intention of dragging this out as long as possible, and probably hopes to get all the way to the Supreme Court.

...The RIAA, on the other hand, is apparently anxious to convince her to take a deal. They seem to be understandably concerned that $1.92 million for one
person sharing 24 songs makes them look pretty bad to the public. If there's one thing the RIAA has been good at it's controlling the perception that
file sharers take piles of money from them every year. They know that the longer this case drags out, the more likely a mainstream reporter decides to actually
do his job and question their numbers. Or worse, notices that the Justice Department lawyers arguing that they deserve that much money used to head their
litigation team."

All I can say is - there is a very special place in HELL waiting for these bastards.

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2009/ ... -obit.html]Karl Malden died yesterday, at age 97
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

"Roseate Nocturne"

Utena AMV based around that mother of all overused but still good songs "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence, it was thusly removed from AMV.org when
every video featuring Evanescence and a few other artists(Creed, for one) were pulled to avoid lawsuits and such.

However, having looked through my files, I lack an actual copy of it in a decent format. If anyone has one, I'd be most grateful to get a copy. It's an
old favorite and pressing the replay button on YouTube gets tiresome after a while. *grin*
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

Robo Geisha

----------------

Epsilon

Handicap gun.

Something I've been working on, and hopefully be able to do some justice to.

The Fen from Outer
Space

I intend to update late Wednesday evenings (EST), though the schedule may slip in the fall as my Thesis deadline approaches. I think I have enough of a buffer
to cope, but we'll see.

--

"The nation of France is a theory, not a fact. It should therefore be

approached with an open mind, and critically debated and considered."

-- SirNitram, SDN

As of Sunday July 5th after the VIIOR 2.0 ITF I will be takeing a week..maybe 2 off from CoX. I need to just get away from things in general. I'm Sure
Several of you have noticed my change in temperment for the worse, and I do sincerly apologise if I've aggrivated or annoyed anyone with my recient moments
of Vitrol and complaining. So yeah, I'm Sorry..I don't mean to be so angry and snippy when there isn't really any reason to be. Prime example being
the Katie TF a lil while ago, its a game..and it seems like my temperment is makeing things difficult to keep stuff fun, it seems like even minor things have
been makeing me so furious lately that I feel I'd detonate on someone who certainly doesn't deserve it if even one wrong thing was said at the wrong
time *sighs*

So I'll be takeing a little time off to try and figure out if I'm ready to play again without risking hurting anyones feelings or angering any of you
by something I may say in frustration, I came to this realization Dureing Said Katie, then reaffirmed by yesterday and today by playing my stalker..I enjoy the
game alot, I love hanging out and just being around to read chat, everyone is a blast to be around. I just .. I feel horrible after each time I snap because I
know theres no need for it..its not justified, but I can't help myself at the moment. I'll come back in a week after the ITF Hopefuly I'll be more
stable by then.

Sincerly

Terrence

"New Divide" by Linkin Park

The repeated references seem to fall under two categories. The verses seem to refer to recalling some past, dramatic event, while the chorus repeatedly refers
to crossing the titular "New Divide". Given the latter is far more clear, one has to wonder if it'd be a transit power of some kind, or possibly
a potential gate song.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

Unsure if this is a hoax or not at this time, but video of....something growing in a North Carolina sewer...

Personally, I think we should nuke the area. It's the only way to be sure.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

I would have to say, had I considered it, that this would be in the top ten things I would least have expected to see as a news story. But nevertheless, there it is -

Quote: The Chinese Ministry of Commerce policy aims to limit the impact of game currencies on real-world markets.

In the future, any cash earned by Chinese gamers can only be spent to acquire items or equipment in that particular game.

The move is widely seen as a crackdown on so-called "gold farming" in which players amass virtual money and then sell it to other
players for real cash.