No Food today.

Sorry.  Just made sweet and sour meatballs and steamed rice for supper.  Ground beef held together with egg and bread crumbs,  cooked up and tossed in some store bought sweet and sour sauce.  nothing too involved.  (You walk 12 miles and clean a 2400sq ft house from top to bottom and see how much you want to cook)

So I think I'll post about City of Heroes/Villains today.

City of Heroes debuted around 7 years ago, the brain child of Jack "Statesman" Emmeret and Matt "Positron" Miller of Cryptic studios  After a bit NCsoft bought the IP and it's taken off like mad.  It is a superhero based MMO with untold character customization, then about 2 or 3 years after,  it's first real expansion, City of Villains, came out,  introducing the opposing faction, Supervillains, and just a few months ago they released their third paid expansion, Going Rogue,  which allows the player to drift from good to evil and back again.  (WITHOUT paying faction change surcharges, just do some dailies and pick the right option bam)

Anyway let's get on to rolling a character shall we?  I'll be including screen shots on the step by step process.

First step is to obviously select your server.  Pick whatever one you want.  Freedom is a high pop regular server, whereas Virtue is a high population "Roleplaying" server.  (If you're into that kind of stuff)  Guardian is a mid population server.

Next:  Pick if you want to be Hero, Villain, or Praetorian.  This determines where you start, and what Archtypes you have access to.  Praetorians have access to all the archtypes, except for the epics, right off the bat.  Heroes only have access to the Heroic archtypes (Defender, Controller, Scrapper, Tanker, Defender and Blaster, Warshades and Peacebringers are the epics)  Villains have access to the villain archtypes (Brute, Stalker, Corruptor, Dominator, and Mastermind.  Arachnos Widow and Soldier are the epics)

I picked Praetorian for this blog

Now,  On to pick your archtype or "Class"  For this blog I picked a brute. 

Now origin doesn't really matter except for what kind of Dual Origin/Single Origin enhancement you can use when you get to use them.

So after that you get to go pick your powers.

I picked Kinetic Melee for my primary and Stone Armor for my secondary.  Just for this demonstration anyway.  I have no real urge to play this one.

Now, on to picking your body type!  You have three choices,  Male, Female, and Huge.  I picked female to show you all the absolute super customization you can achieve with this game.  Yes my friends, you can give your character....HUGE TRACTS OF LAND!!!  Chest Slider Maximum ftw.

Now, comes the fun part.  The costume creator.  You have endless combinations as to what you want your character to look like.  I know people who spend hours upon hours trying to create the perfect look.  The best thing about this game honestly, and the "gear" aka Enhancements, do not mess with your look!  That's right.  All sorts of Juicy gear that doesn't mess with your looks.  It's good!

anyway here's a few screenies of the process.  I stayed with the bikini...just for this demonstration..(and I know you guys would like to see)

now, even more customization, you can choose what your powers will look like/animate as.  Seriously  the customization in this game is phenomenal.

On to the big question.  What will you name your character?  Pick carefully because a rename token costs $10.  Try not to go for copywrited names/costumes either, that will get you genericized and possibly banned from the game.  See once upon a time when this game first came out, Marvel decided to sue Cryptic/NCSoft for IP infringement.  The suit was settled when Cryptic agreed to enforce the "No Comic book ripoff" rule.  So, if you make a Claws/Regen Scrapper named.."Badgerine" That's gonna get you hit with the Generic stick

After all this,  you can click "Enter Praetoria/Rogue Isles/Paragon City"  And you'll be given the option to do the tutorial or not.  For new players I strongly suggest it.  Heck even for veteran players it's an easy level up.

and Into the game we go!

Now you can see I included my UI.  Down at the bottom right is your power tray.  They correspond to the numbers 1-9 on your keyboard, and you have 9 of them.  You can expand/detach organize this however you want.  above it is inspiration tray,  somewhat like potions. Then at the bottom left, is your chat box.  You can customize this as well.  Upper left,  Target,  it's what you're currently targeting to either attack or talk to. Upper left is your menu, Hitpoint, stamina, experience, and in the case of brutes and dominators,  fury and domination.  it's a pretty tight UI and it's pretty easy to use.

Anyway I figure I bored you guys enough already and I'll let you get back to your blogging/surfing.  Hopefully things will start clicking here in my life again.  Life has been pretty hectic these past few days so when it's time for things to click in to place...it's tough.  Don't worry though.  I'm sure everything will get back into the swing of things soon.  I'm still viewing the ol screen though. Don't worry about that.