Monday 31 October 2005

Pic of the day: It is I, the great and terrible Indigo Moon! With beast feet, as is good and proper. Because animals are eeevil! Right?

City of Villains release day

"It is good to be evil." "Release your inner villain." What kind of stupid slogans are those? Don't people realize what a villain really is? "Villain" is simply a name people give to those who don't respect the law. And what is the law? The law is simply the rules which people are not willing to follow unless everyone else does too. The rules people won't follow unless they are punished for breaking them. The law is the things they don't want to do but want everyone else to do. The law is for people who don't know in their own hearts what to do. Villains are the people who do what they consider necessary to reach their goals, even if the law says otherwise. If the goals are small and self-centered, they become petty criminals. If the goal is to change the world, they become arch-villains.

Take me, for instance, the villain known as Indigo Moon. I was persecuted on my homeworld because I lobbied for a more ethical treatment of zombies. Let's face it: People would always have zombies. So we ought to empower them. The zombies, I mean. We should accept the fact that some people are just meant to be zombies. We should give them the means to accomplish in their undeath what they didn't in life, to be truly useful. Not all people are meant to think for themselves. But as zombies they can be quite effective, directed by a higher intelligence and empowered through magic. But the government continued to act as if necromancy didn't exist, even though we all knew better. At last there was nothing else to do than seek a better world and elsewhere. This one seemed like an ideal choice: Even one of the major world religions is based on the fact that people want to be raised from the dead.

On my arrrival I soon found out that things weren't so different after all. People don't want to come back from the dead unless it is in perfect condition and a perfect environment. And they definitely don't want to die in the first place. But at least here is no world government to chase me off the globe. I was arrested in the United States despite all their loud boasting about freedom, but luckily these guys from Arachnos broke me out of there and brought me to this island...

***

What really happened was of course that I did buy City of Villains after all. It gives me four new character slots on each server, and one month of free play time for either City of Heroes or City of Villains or both. You see, the subscription price is the same whether you play one or both. Each of the two games is included in the other. This isn't as crazy as it sounds, since battles between heroes and villains are the big attraction of the new game. This means that all the costume options and powers from both sides need to be included anyway. Many of the nonplaying character classes are also the same.

Once I had bought the game, I decided to try it just a little. There is a new archetype which is fundamentally different from every other player class in the two games. The "mastermind" isn't very good at fighting, but can summon from one to three henchmen. Depending on your preferred play style you can choose robots, zombies, ninjas or mercenaries. You start with only one, but as you progress in levels you get two and finally three. When you get two henchmen, they are one level lower than you; and when you get three, they are two levels below you. On the other hand you become able to empower them, which makes up for the level difference while creating more variation.

This was interesting, and I think I may come back later when it is possible to switch sides. But for now, I prefer being a hero. I may not respect the law (in fact, I don't even in real life) but my goals are roughly the same as the law. And that's the reason why I'm not a villain at heart. At least not under the current government...