There was a point on Saturday when I was running itrails with Mouse Police where one person sent me a tell. "I remember you! We PvP'd in Warburg!"
I remembered this, of course. It's one of the few times I'd ever PvP'd at all, and it wasn't the reason I had gone there. I was there, of course, to get a Warburg nuke, and I was right at the launch pad when I was attacked. This initially made me pretty angry -- I have only a few seconds to launch the nuke and complete my mission, and some PvPer decided to ambush me right there! But Mouse Police is a well-built katana/regen scrapper with overwhelming recharge and high damage, so she's actually one of my best characters to PvP with. I turned and killed my attacker, and still got my nuke off, so no harm done.
After that we PvP'd several more times, and she complimented me on my build, and then I switched to my fire blaster Serpentine Fire who I thought of as a very high-damage toon, but in PvP she wasn't actually that good. But it was a good experience meeting this person, she encouraged me to PvP more, something I didn't actually do, but anyway. I also remember that Serpentine Fire got a PvP IO drop when I was allowed to kill my opponent (who had defeated me several times otherwise).
Anyway it made me think about how the game would be different if I played only one character, because I probably meet the same people over and over but often don't recognize them. I only know the people on my globals really, and even then if it's not someone I've starred or play with constantly, I may not recognize them on an unfamiliar toon. Tunnel Rat recognized me that one time because I was playing AE Baby and she'd been reading my journal. If you see Golden Girl, for example, you know who it is. But if you see One Divine Hammer you probably don't know who that is, even if you've teamed with Nina Ballerina before. (Well... especially in that case because I have two accounts and they're on different accounts -- but you get the idea.)
If I'd played only one character, I think I'd have a lot more friends, and maybe a few more enemies as well. At least, I'd have a lot more recognition across the Virtue server, for good or ill.
On the flip side, if Mouse Police had been my one and only character I'd never know what it's like to play so many other sets and characters, and that's really what I've enjoyed most about this game -- that I get to try so many different things. So that's kind of the curse of the altoholic, relative annonymity.
(I think I still have that Warburg nuke on Mouse too. I'm always saving those things for when I really need it.)
I started Sunday morning on a Trick or Treating league in Peregrine Island -- 3-4 mostly full teams at that one hotel with the multiple doors right near the hospital. It was pure chaos, in the best way possible. There were so many people and halloween monsters that at times I couldn't see enemies just 20 feet from me until I moved closer, because the game was having a hard time drawing everything. But it wasn't like your typical invasion lagfest, there was just enough people for massive chaos but not to grind the game to a halt. And again, what other game is going to provide an experience anything like this? So far as I know most games do not allow for massive melees where the players are outnumbered more than 3 to 1. But it was a blast, Saturn Princess earned most of a level to nearly 48.
After that I spent some time completing Forest Goddess's build. I hadn't really done anything with her since hitting 50 last week. I hadn't even done any of her costume missions yet, or turned in halloween salvage for the extra costume slot, so I spent time doing all of that, and Maressa sent me halloween costume salvage since I'd said in a global channel that I didn't have that yet. She said, "Don't spend it all in one place!" I sent her 500 million influence in return, but she logged off just after that so I don't think she even knows yet. ^_^ But my build on Forest Goddess is complete, what do I need with the money now?
Freaky was doing an "SSTF" marathon all weekend -- Shadow Shard Task Forces. Every time he used that acronym, people were confused. He ran three Doctor Quaterfields on Saturday, that's the second weekend he's done that since Sept 1st. I still think that must be some kind of record, who in their right mind does that? He also ran a Justin Augustine on Saturday, and again on Sunday morning. I don't know why, but he seems to like that TF. I've said in the past that it's the worst excuse for a TF in the game, consisting mostly of hunts and "go touch this monument" errands, with five actual door missions and an ending that involves clearing a few CoT out of Faathim's Chantry palace -- no AV, of course, unless you count Faathim standing around watching you. But I joined Freaky for the Sunday morning run, and on a good team it's not so bad. We had one person with afterburner and some sort of team transport (the incarnate one I think) and that made everything go fast, we finished in 55 minutes. But there's not a lot of experience involved, it's mostly good for the badge and the merits.
While the team was still forming I goofed around in Firebase Zulu, posing as one of the soldiers, and then trick or treating. It's actually a great place to do that, there are a lot of doors in the portal area. When the TF started I tried to solo a group of watchers with 1 or 2 overseers up in open space, since I'm a flying brute, but here is where SR fares poorly, and you can see the results.
Freaky was planning to run a Faathim later in the day, but in the meantime someone was starting up an Admiral Sutter and that's one that I didn't have the badge for on Mouse yet, so I joined that. We had a team full of people who weren't familiar with the TF, but we did just fine, and Mouse got her badge, just as Freaky was forming his Faathim.
I parked Mouse back in First Ward and switched back to Saturn Princess, and this time I hit an xp booster and a windfall when we started. I hit level 49 -- I think I was already 48 when we started -- but I forgot to use a second xp booster after the first hour, and I finished the TF 2 bubbles from 50. We finished in 2 hours 8 minutes. I like Faathim, it's a bit long but there's several AVs along the way, so it feels like one of the big top-level TFs like Statesman/Miss Liberty or ITF or Khan, which is what it was meant to be I'm sure -- it's kind of the partially failed first experiment at making that kind of end-game task force, but still enjoyable.
So far as I know, Freaky did not run a Sara Moore all weekend. I asked at one point but didn't get a response. I like Sara Moore, far better than Justin Augustine or Doc Q, but maybe I'll get a chance to run it later, since I have the other three badges on Saturn Princess now.
In the afternoon we were supposed to run the CoP. We could only get 18 people for the blueside run -- I'm not sure how much of that was just fewer people playing these days, and how much of it was people wanting to trick or treat or do other things, or even people unable to log on because of the big hurricane bearing down on the East coast, I know that preventedd Zombie from joining us at least. After a few problems we managed to complete the first part of the trial, but the AV prooved too much for us, he was always at full health by the time we took down the cubes again. Either we didn't have enough damage and debuffs, or it may have been one of the bugged AVs, people didn't have a consensus on that one. But we weren't able to finish and had to bail. This was extra sad because we'd dedicated the CoP to Sebastian (think I got the name right), Jane's TF Dog, who died on Friday.
I spent a little bit of time ToTing in PI on Saturn Princess before the redside CoP. I wanted to get those last two bubbles to 50, but finally I logged in to AE Baby to help the redside CoP effort. Ultimately we weren't able to get enough people to even make an attempt. But in the meantime I hadn't logged AE Baby in two weeks, and I had 17 sales of blaster ATOs to collect, and I was already over 1.7 billion so I had more money to collect than I could actually carry. And what was I going to do with it, exactly? I only play AE Baby for these CoP runs for the most part.
On the other hand, there was one person there named Red Rika (I think it was) who had just said as I logged in that she'd only been playing the game for two months. "I joined just as the game hit an iceberg," she joked. She really likes the game too, and she had one level 50 blueside. I located her and opened a trade window and handed her 999,999,999 infamy, which kind of left her speechless. ^_^ I don't think she even has any idea how to spend that kind of money! Also, I offered to give 200 million to anyone who opened a trade window with me -- first four people -- I could have done five or six, but only three people actually took me up on it so I logged off with 600 million still.
I probably would have gone back to Saturn Princess, but Jane and CA wanted to run their mayhem missions and I absolutely couldn't miss that. I had managed all of the mayhems up through the level 30 one for Mouse, but getting 35 and 40 would have meant PLing my 34 crab spider a few levels. Luckily for me, CA had already been doing this on his TW/fire brute FIreMight to help Jane out, so he had both mayhems saved -- an the 45-50 one also as it turned out. We ran all three in a row, slaughtered everything, and Mouse got three explore badges, plus the vault badge, the cop badge, and the Vandal badge for phones/mailboxes/new stands/fire hydrants. And after that I helped them run the first half of Ghost Widow's patron arc, which I didn't really need but Jane did. I've run that a lot and Mouse is extremely well suited to speeding through those kind of missions.
Mouse Police finished the night with 1219 badges. It shouldn't be hard to hit 1250 at this rate.
That would have been my evening, but much later after 9 PM I decided to log back in and try to get that last bubble on Saturn Princess. I figured I could join a ToT league in PI, and I was right, there was one going, and I did manage to hit 50, but this time it was a lot more chaotic. It was late at night and people were joining and leaving constantly, and the leader was juggling teams. At one point I was tanking a large group of enemies and I was instantly dead when I got exempted down for just a few seconds to a very low level. At another point my team was level 12, and it took forever to get someone to fix that. I only realized it after being unable to click on any doors -- somehow I avoided dying that time. But I imagine trying to run a league under those circumstances is pretty demanding.
Right after hitting 50 and leveling up, a banner event took place, and people in Whisper's global channel were desperately trying to get those badges and begging for help, so I said I was going to go help friends do the banners and quit the ToT league. But before I quit I heard the leader ask if people wanted to do the banners, and lo and behold, my friends only had one team but the two-team ToT league came to help, and we joined to form a 3 team league and did a very successful banner run. I know those badges are really hard to get just because it's difficult to get enough people interested/motivated and formed up in time to accomplish the event, so this might well have been one of the last chances for my friends to get those badges.
And that was a good way to end the night, and as good as an excuse as any to bow out after having hit 50. ^_^
I'm not sure how many 50's I have at this point, or who I might want to focus on next. Eternal Sweeper probably, and One Divine Hammer. But I'm reaching a point where I just want to play characters once more and not focus on leveling up new ones so much. I think.
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