Superhero comics have to be the most consistently grim form of literature imaginable. Here you have people with cosmic supernatural powers, and those powers bring them no joy. Instead, they are crushed by tragedy after unthinkable tragedy. Their lives are living nightmares, and for most heroes, there is no peace even in death. Satan once bet God that he could shake the faith of his most pious worshiper, a rich man named Job. God said sure, go for it, and Job was robbed of his wealth and his family. Satan went on to wrack Job with terrible illnesses, but Job struggled on, never losing faith. We see that in the Book of Job was written the very first superhero story.
I guess this is a sort of roundabout way of celebrating the lifting of the DC Universe Online NDA. But what of The Agency, the other SOE Action-MMO property? News of both, and more, after the break.
Tipa
Daily Blogroll 12/7 — Expansion edition
The Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor 69 years ago today. Now we’re having a little payback at the expense of the whole world. I know a lot of people who plan to take days off to play their way through the entire expansion as quickly as they can. My cousin Tom even (jokingly, I hope), regretting that he had to work, thought he might let his son take the day off from school to play.
I’d like to be more excited about the WoW expansion. But — I just don’t think a game can make me feel like that anymore.
On with the blogroll — it’s been a long weekend. I was too busy playing a game which cannot be named to write much, so there’s a lot to catch up.
DDO: Taking a Wight at the Ghast Station
Shy, a hireling cleric, and I watch the pretty burning ship while Spode flees the scene
The topic came up last week about maybe picking one of our myriad guilds as the one guild we all would join. Despite all the good times I had at GAMERZ, the nights we just spent describing our adventures over guild chat, banding together to defend Stormreach from its deadliest foes and… ah, forget it. I was a ninja invite, just a warm body to them. The only thing they ever wanted from me, as far as I know, was free guild renown at no cost to them. I left GAMERZ with nary a backward glance, and nobody noticed.
I DID leave on “good terms”, though. Leaving on “good terms” means I left most of the renown I’d earned with them.
We’d decided to all converge on Spode’s guild, “Order of Cannith” (inevitably changed to “Order of Cannabis” in Team Spode). Spode found to his shock and amazement that he was an officer, and so last week he invited Gleek into the guild. While looking around the guild airship, he spied the guild bank, full of low level stuff, from which he selected a wand. Spode also found a bit of armor. The next morning, the guild leader, inspiringly named Colossus, sent a blistering message to the membership about someone cleaning out the guild bank. PROBABLY just a coincidence.
Spode invited me and new Team Spode member Shy(sp?) into the guild Saturday night. I checked out the guild bank — it was filled to the brim with stuff. I felt I had to complain that I would need more clear inventory spaces to grab everything in one trip.
I didn’t say that in guild chat 🙂 “Order of Cannith” has no idea who we are, and it’s probably best they don’t. I hope they enjoy all the guild renown we’ll be earning them, though.
Gimme Some Space: Star Trek Online, Pirate Galaxy, Space Paranoids
Klingon meets Breen. Breen goes boom. Star Trek Online’s launch missions were a little weak. If you stuck to the main storyline, you got some pretty exciting missions, but as you got to the higher levels, the missions tended to devolve into “go here, kill N groups of X.” This is my main memory of … Read more
Daily Blogroll 12/2 — Rift-tease Edition
There’s a Rift Beta event this weekend, and that’s about all you’ll ever hear of the beta from this site at least. To call their license agreement secretive would be an understatement. In Rift, you start out dead, and then are sent into the past to, I guess, prevent the events that led to your death from occurring, or something. Best let them explain it:
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the survivors from the desolate future of Telara have resurrected champions and sent them into the past to prevent the dystopia caused by the Bloodstorm and the blindly faithful Guardians. Join the techno-magical Defiant in their fight to change the course of history!
Play to Win! Escape to Freemarch and you could be eligible to win an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 460 video card! Terms and conditions apply, click here for details. In-Game Prize Packs will be given away to ten (10) select players who complete the objective!
So, there you go. Log in, escape to Freemarch, and you could win a video card, or an in-game prize pack. You will never, unfortunately, be able to tell anyone in game WHERE you got that prize pack, because as far as future history is concerned, this beta never happened. The first rule is: You don’t talk about Rift Beta. The second rule is: YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT RIFT BETA! (Thanks to Amanda Rain for the Fight Club ref!)
Blogroll juiciness after the break!