Wednesday 16 August 2006

Pic of the day: A new dawn for Itland the were-porcupine, who has moved to Paragon City. The see-through effect is the game's representation of his sneak skill, which is my CoH translation of his ability to get around unnoticed as a small porcupine.

Itland the were-porcupine

I guess it all started 6 years ago, the night to August 20, 2000, while I was visiting my best friend and had a vivid dream about becoming stuck inbetween the states of human and porcupine. It does not take a psych major to realize that this was a symbol of my emotional state.

Later Itland the were-porcupine became a role-playing character, in the very free-form text roleplay on the Acid Reflux forum. The character became more detailed and changed a little. He was now able to change fully from human to porcupine form, and the in-between stage became his "battle form". In this form he was more massive than in human form, encased in protective quills that made him almost invulnerable to weapons, and able to fling quills at opponents. I believe it was one of my fellow forumites who gave him the quill-shooting power in a scene he wrote. At the end he could even shoot bursts of quills, though this would drain him of a lot of energy.

It was after all this that I was invited to the closed beta of the massive multiplayer game City of Heroes, which featured a wide range of hero types. One of them was, to my surprise and delight, the spine scrapper. While the spines were not nearly as dense as on my RPG character (they are more scattered, bony outgrowths filled with a weak nerve toxin) they could be used both up close and to fling at an enemy... in fact, the spine scrapper is one of the extremely few close-fighting characters who has a ranged attack at all. In fact, he even has a spine burst that does explosive damage nearby, but also drains a lot of endurance. It was as if Cryptic Studios had read our little RPG, which seems highly unlikely since the Acid Reflux forum has been an obscure hangout not associated with superherodom at all.

I had great fun during the Beta, as regular readers may remember. It was, and I think still is, the most addictive game I have played. Among my fellow beta testers the feeling was much the same: "Better than sex", "I have to fight with my spouse / children over the play time", "my children just sit and stare at the screen while I play". This was all before World of Warcraft, another MMORPG which is also considered highly addictive. I still prefer CoH by far, although I vary with other types of games like The Sims 2... OK, that's pretty much it I guess, though I did play various versions of Civilization at times and still may one day.

After the beta ended and I became a regular player (with some help from a good friend in Texas, since the game was not in sale in Norway for a long time yet), I quickly recreated Itland the regenerating spine scrapper. But for various reasons I got distracted by other shiny hero types, and the low-level porcupine remained in stasis for years. (Although I used him to prime the global chat when this became available: My global handle is @Itland.) Only just now this week did I bring him out again. I was amazed. I had remembered him as rather slow to level and hard to keep alive. But that was before I was familiar with the game. Now, he is quite a joy to play. And after a few more levels he became much more sturdy, thanks to constant healing (regeneration). More about this in a later entry, I hope.

The short of it is, the game now much better captures the feeling I had on the AR forum, of a naive, optimistic, friendly, heroic porcupine. Still shy and defensive at times, but strong enough to fight for what he believes in, together with likeminded people who may or may not be porcupines themselves.