Archive for the 'City of Villains' Category

This was, peripherally, for work.

Thursday, October 12th, 2006

So there I am, thinking that I don’t really like the villain I recently created on Virtue server* with which to play with various MMOG researcher types who are already established there, and then the Cape radio makes a joke about discrimination against “catgirls,” certainly a recognized toon type in CoX, and then I realize that I am wearing a shirt that says “Schrodinger’s cat is dead” on the front and “Schrodinger’s cat is not dead” on the back, and IT COMES TO ME.

Schrodinger's Catgirl

The result of a disastrous attempt by the renowned theoretical physicist, Dr. Leopold Sparks, to extend and apply Schrodinger’s thought experiment to the development of super powers, Schrodinger’s Catgirl now roams both the Rogue Isles and Paragon City, both evil and good. So far, the professor has been unable to get either cat back into the box.

The hero version is a scrapper; the villain is a stalker. I made the villain first and really only realized that I needed to make two as I was logging her in, so I didn’t write down the avatar specs as I was making her like I did with the twins, but they are pretty close to identical. Since they’ll never be seen side-by-side, I figure small differences aren’t important. Anyway, they’re probably quantum.

I know this is a new high in geekdom, even for me. I don’t care. Nothing you can say will diminish my nerd joy in…

Schrodinger’s Catgirl.

I need a theme song.

*She’s a dominator named F A E, which stands for “Fundamental Attribution Error,” which is what my sociological girl gang name was going to be back when I was planning to start a sociological girl gang so I’d have more opportunities to wear the red leather jacket I got at St. Vinnie’s. Which, incidentally, is really too big now, so if anyone wants to pay me like $30 for a size large totally 80s red women’s leather biker jacket, let me know. Anyway. This joke toon is probably more accessible.

Dr. Gathman goes where the funding is

Sunday, April 16th, 2006

So this weekend I activated the 14-day trial pass my friend Travis found for City of Villains. I should never have even LOOKED at it. God.

At first, I thought that, while interesting, the game just didn’t appeal as much as City of Heroes. However, as I ran around the Rogue Islands with my Dominator and then my Mastermind, it grew on me. For one thing, I appreciate that the character classes are not just EEE-VIL versions of the City of Heroes classes–they seem to be actually different, although the Dominator is a bit blaster-like. At least mine is. This may be more a reflection of me.

Anyway:

Name: Dr. Gathman
Concept: Some day I will be Dr. Gathman. I’ve been confused with my father on these grounds, actually. Anyway, it seemed like a fun name for a mad scientist. I took the official villain organization contact instead of the mercenary because I figured Dr. Gathman goes where the funding is. As soon as I can find a tailor, I am changing the ampules on her belt to a contrasting color–they should have been poison green.
Class: Mastermind
Level: 8
Server: Protector

Name: Briony Bedlam (pinched from my SecondLife account–makes a better supervillain)
Concept: Evil plant seductress! Shut up, it is NOT derivative. Anyway, briony is a woody wine. So it seemed appropriate. You can’t really tell, but her tights are fishnet.
Class: Dominator
Level: 5
Server: Protector

They’re both on Protector because that’s where Travis, king of the random server choice, put his Corrupter, BoyAndHisMachineGun. (Travis enjoys saying “Gee willikers!”)

I actually kind of like the missions for CoV better than the ones in CoH–it’s more fun to ARM bombs, dammit. And this morning I pulled a bank job (see screengrabs below). I do wish there were some way to create a character without having to run it through the damn tutorial, though. Why on earth isn’t there? Maybe I’m just missing it.

It seems like I’ve seen more male toons running around on CoV than CoH. Probably the demographics of newer games run a little younger in general, and younger guys are less likely to gender-swap (Yee 2003). And of course, that’s just my impression.

Screengrabs:

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