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Following the initial 24 hour period, there were 76 questions. A copy of the document seven minutes before its takedown for answering can be found in a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/155aXZStUUjXxRfn_v5mMjjsh60Jdz-maIwmUct73LFY/edit Google Doc]. Positron noted in [https://twitter.com/MMODesigner/status/458994112230727680 a tweet] on April 23rd, 2104, that all question for the 2014 AMA had answers.
Following the initial 24 hour period, there were 76 questions. A copy of the document seven minutes before its takedown for answering can be found in a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/155aXZStUUjXxRfn_v5mMjjsh60Jdz-maIwmUct73LFY/edit Google Doc]. Positron noted in [https://twitter.com/MMODesigner/status/458994112230727680 a tweet] on April 23rd, 2104, that all question for the 2014 AMA had answers.


On April 28th, 2014, Positron released the answered questions as a DOCUMENT(with link).
On April 28th, 2014, the tenth anniversary of City of Heroes, Positron released the answered questions as a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ocOo69mXIQ8HthabNe1F4X1EcZcSDwZFEE9sT8WSBc4/preview?sle=true# Google doc].


The third Lore AMA at its time of last revision/release (DATE) is as follows:
The third Lore AMA at its time of last revision/release (DATE) is as follows:


{{hidden|CoH Loregasm: 2014 Edition|bg1=#ccccff|content=AMA OH YEAH}}
{{hidden|CoH Lore Questions 2014|bg1=#ccccff|content=CoH Loregasm: 2014 Edition
 
Previous Year’s Lore Q&A docs:
2013:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bjjR2rdP9Kbe8baODElUQGRxNTTlj_b5PVqCdNXJ8o/edit?usp=sharing
 
2012:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qbHHrRmifxGPz60hi-_ApLNiwOmF5QVEMrXHgB1Nrd4o/edit?usp=sharing
 
 
 
Q) There were several villain group names in the original trailer (Revelation, Twilight Men, Seraphim, Fear Factor, Killing Crew) that we never really, or ever, saw in game. Were there plans for them? Did they end up getting sidelined by other groups? How wicked awesome were they?  (@bpphantom) [IIRC, Twilight Men became Malta, Fear Factor became the Carnies, but I could be wrong - @Samuraiko][I seem to recall Killing Crew becoming the Freakshow... Felderburg]
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Samuraiko and Felderburg are correct. There was some trademark issues with the original names and/or better names were thought up. Also some groups were concepted but cut (Revelation and Seraphim I think) long before real production started.
 
Q) While I understand it wasn’t truly completed yet, how were the upcoming villain groups powers being designed to fight against a fully powered Incarnate?  What was the idea about long term opposition viability against the characters who were starting to get more powerful than the first trials threat levels.
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - We started to get a bit more creative about the things we would allow villains to do. There were quite a few rules that we started to bend and then outright break at the end. This started with the Going Rogue VGs, from Protean, Castle and Synapse, but really broke loose with the First Ward groups, which Arbiter Hawk, Black Scorpion, Zillionaire, Protean and I designed. The best (worst?) example here were the Psionic-damage Awakened, which had some unusual mechanics where they would synergize with each other, forcing choices as to which part of the group was most threatening to your team’s make up, or bosses with mechanics that forced a lot of movement or management of adds. The First Ward groups generally were really risky, given the level range, but they generated an interest in more challenging fights that we wanted to build on.
 
The Talons of Vengeance, the Banished Pantheon monsters, the Knives of Vengeance, … many of the late villain groups began to do things like have powers that behaved differently at different radii, used unusual debuffs like -EndCost and -MaxHP, stacked on the -Def, -Rech and -Acc, or struck at combinations of damage that weren’t necessarily easy to build for. We began combining powers together on single creatures that would be absolutely debilitating unless planned around, and then had them be one of a couple of types that could appear together (ToV Siren and Sorceress). Eventually, we’d have to start including Incarnate level powers on regular villains, particularly when Omega appeared, but we hadn’t reached that point yet. Thanks to Black Scorpion, we also got better at estimating what an individual power, or a suite of powers, behaved like, so we could build to a challenge level we wanted to hit. There was still plenty of experimentation to be done!
 
Another thing we focused on, though, was creating an epic feeling. We spent time trying to make these powers and the creatures using them feel like you were facing something you’d never seen before. It wasn’t enough for a Keres to have a death-energy ice blast; she needed to do it with a titan weapon slung on her shoulder and blackened shadow ice. It wasn’t enough that the Siren sang; it was her song itself that took physical form and tore into you. It wasn’t enough to have a death creature running you down; it needed to be a skittering, chittering nightmare that would be memorable because it felt different than anything you’d really seen before.
 
Q)Did Paragon City have plans on how they were going to rebuild The Hollows? (@AtomikSteel)
 
A) Matt (Positron) We hadn’t really planned on rebuilding the Hollows, we threw a lot of design time over the years to fix its initial implementation though. In hindsight we probably should have scrubbed it and started over with it.
 
Tim (Black Scorp) One of the crazier EAT ideas involved the Battalion and the Rikti civil war moving forward- some Rikti becoming tenuous allies (and therefore Rikti EAT pcs). One of the underutilized hazard zones would become terraformed to be their home on Primal Earth. A similar concept involved the Recovered Devoured EAT concept and possibly one of the DE zones.
 
Q) Instead of just demolishing the older zones (Galaxy CIty) was there any plans to rebuild or renew the older zones (Perez Park?) @MetalMountain
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I had a design document written up for a revamp of Perez Park. It was going to be a mix of a high level/low level zone. The Circle of Thorns would have completed a ritual and caused the main “park” to come out from beneath the ground and rise into the sky, and they would’ve begun remaking part of Oranbega there and on the ground. The ground portion would’ve remained the same level band, while the island would’ve been a high level zone. The idea was that you would see the floating islands as a vista from the city zones that surrounded Perez.  We were planning on re-doing Perez Park for Freedom launch, but decided against it, as we were doing a lot as it was and the quality of the content would suffer. I wrote the doc in preparation for that, but we cut re-doing Perez Park early on.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Yeah, I know we kicked a few ideas around for Perez Park, and the rising of Oranbega just seemed appropriate. As the main 1-50 magic origin villain group in the game, the Circle of Thorns were definitely deserving of the injection of awesome. New costumes and now a whole high level zone dedicated to them.
One of the things I really enjoyed talking about with Oranbega, is how it would have enjoyed U.N. protection, what with being a sovereign nation in its own right. The fact that it uglied up the Paragon City skyline with some nefarious dark wizard mojo was just salt in the wound. I had some ideas involving Oranbega playing a much more political game in the future from their base right in the heart of Paragon City.
 
Q) One of my favorite additions to the game was Faultline’s update. It really made the CoH world feel “alive” or dynamic. Were there any plans to wreck different zones or rebuild others? Thanks again for all of the great times and stories. (@Peter_Chess)
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Faultline’s update taught us a ton of things, primarily it was pretty much exactly the same amount of work to overhaul an existing zone as it was to make an entirely new one. Adding a new zone makes the game bigger, whereas overhauling a zone makes the game the same size, and removes something that some players liked.
 
In the end if given a choice of overhaul or make a new zone, we almost always would choose to make a new zone (unless our focus was something like acquisition of new players, then overhauling early zones became a priority).
 
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) I loved Faultline. It was my "baby", replete with endless easter eggs. But Matt's right. We thought it would be quick, but the old assets were so well...old, they didn't mesh easily with the newer ones and we spent time reinventing a wheel that wasn't technically broken. So it wasn't quick. In fact, if you placed old Faultline next to new Faultline you'd notice that new Faultline is 1/3 smaller. However, what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in unique areas rather than just endless crags of rock.
 
Still love Bianco's restaurant, I had to beg to get that in there.
 
Q) What with Talos. Kings Row, Steel Canyon, and Skyway being trashed in various task forces, were there ever plans to revamp those zones? Talos was kinda nice as it was, but Christ did Skyway ever need an overhaul… and were we eventually going to take back Galaxy City after the Shivans wrecked it? (@Samuraiko)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - We had some ideas of having players go back to a wrecked Galaxy City as a level 50+ zone, but to that, we would’ve had to make the Shivans way more impressive to fight.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I had laid out a massive zone revamp plan at one point, where some of the salad bar villain group treatment for the zones got reduced to tell just the core stories. It would have been a ton of work, and as Matt said in the question above, it was a hard sell when we could churn out a whole new zone instead. Still, I argued that revamping the older zones was necessary to keep new players interested, and I think the revamps for Freedom and i24 were steps in the right direction.
 
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) I wanted to revamp Boomtown back into Baumton, complete with amusement park, fairgrounds, but there would be absolutely no asset reuse there and it never made the list for touch up.
 
Q) Prometheus at one point brings up “Ascended” wells and renegade Ascended, using Rularuu as an example. Was there more intended for this concept of ascending into that kind of power in it’s own right, either for NPCs or as a further stage of Incarnate abilities waaaaay down the line? Further, who were some of these others who either ascended by circumvention or went renegade? (@Twi)
 
[Q) The Dimensionless created the Wells, but it also seems like people / beings can contribute power to Wells, or even become Wells themselves. Additionally, it seems like beings of great power can have their power transferred in whole to a new being (Zeus -> Statesman, Merulina -> Leviathan) rather than just having it reabsorbed into a Well. Can you explain more about this? (Felderburg)]
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There isn’t really a good way to answer this without tackling the second question first, so here goes.
 
The “Wells” were created by vastly more powerful entities than the Dimensionless. We tentatively called them the Primordials, but never settled on a player-facing name because they wouldn’t really be a factor until Issue 32 or after. The Dimensionless were the collective name for the dimension-spanning armies of each Primordial, and were charged with supervising the sapient species and their “Wells” in order to protect the first Primordial, who was bonded to the font of existence, which we internally called the Source.
 
“Wells” were individuals chosen by the Primordials to provide a buffer between the font of existence and the sapient species to which a “Well” was tied. Essentially, once a species became sapient, its deeper potential and creativity could leverage the energy of the Source to achieve amazing feats. “Wells” were trusted to serve as control valves helping the sapients grow their potential while keeping the power-mad from coming too close to the first Primordial/Source and threatening existence. The “Wells” would be influenced by and grow with their species, and in return the species was helped to freely develop their powers and abilities as they saw fit, but without risking everything to do it.
 
This is why rogue “Ascended” like Rularuu are considered extremely dangerous: by effectively becoming their own link to the Source, an Ascended could potentially gather enough power to challenge the Primordials themselves and change the nature of existence. Those chosen for it must be trusted; rogues are anything but.
 
Each “Well” had a watchman from the Dimensionless, who would be a check on the “Well” to ensure it didn’t get any ideas of its own, and serve as a balance to the “Well” helping the species along. Rogues generally didn’t accept such oversight willingly, making them doubly dangerous. This oversight was Prometheus’ job, though he aggressively took the approach that the Well was a tool meant to be used by the “multiverse of humanity” to shape their destiny, while the “Well” thought its role was to shape and influence the species to grow in directions where “humanity” became his tools against other “Wells”.
 
This conflict between the two first came to a head with the Flames of Prometheus. Zeus, one of the Well’s first champions, punished Prometheus for attempting to awaken the species’ latent ability to manipulate the Well with the Flames. Prometheus’ resentment over his punishment has festered for millennia, and he has gone from hating Zeus to hating the Well and distrusting the Dimensionless for their lack of intervention.
 
A second factor influencing Prometheus is the success of Battalion. He sees their continual expansion across the universe as a sign that his philosophy of “Wells are tools” is correct. Combined with his resentment of the Well and his own self-importance, Battalion’s success has inspired him to the belief that he could lead humanity to shake off the Well’s control and build a better Battalion. In this sense, he denies the player the chance to become Ascended not so much because of the threat they pose to existence, but because it would obviate his role as our guide. He would once again be surpassed by those he believes owe their success to him, as Zeus had done. He would lose to those he should control. He would once again beaten by a Well. This result was something he simply would not tolerate, and we intended for this to boil over near the end of the war with Battalion. Prometheus would have eventually become a traitor to his cause (and you) as you came closer to ascension.
 
Sometime in Issue 25/26, we planned to introduce a “Third Way” NPC, who would be a Dimensionless sent by the first Primordial to guide the players through the path between the Well and Prometheus. This is because the Dimensionless are aware that the defeat of Battalion means that those Wells they consumed would need to be taken over to save the lives of trillions, and the players would be in a position to ascend to do this. You could be a villainous Ascended, and rule like a tyrant, or a heroic Ascended, and rule like a paragon. Once this started, however, both Prometheus and the Well would personally take issue with it, and they would need to be dealt with. We never got far into designing this stage, however, since it would have happened around Issue 30-32.
 
So, with all that out of the way, DJ Zero was one of the other Ascended. There were some others, though I cannot find those notes at the moment. The Praetorian Hamidon was certainly on its way there, though.
 
For movement of suites of powers, this was going to be covered in the Pandora’s Box arc more thoroughly. Essentially, the Box provided a way for a “build” to be preserved separate from the “Well”, rather than be reabsorbed and redistributed. Zeus and Tartarus had done this long ago. There were many other items of great power out there that would facilitate the same thing, some of which had already been mentioned in game, and some of which we were developing. An interesting direction we planned on taking this is how these items (and the builds therein) might interact with the player, and how they could be used to assist in the war against Battalion, Prometheus and the Well.
 
That went on awhile… someone else want to jump in?
 
(Matt) Why? You covered it better than any of us could.
 
Q) What was the lore on the Trashcan man located inside Fort Trident? If memory serves, him and his… trashcan were clickable, the latter function as a contact but had no missions. Just a little joke or was there to be more for him down the line?
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) It was originally designed that EVERY Contact have a unique story arc associated with them. In an effort to make our release date, the story arcs were condensed down into Origin-specific arcs and multiple Contacts would hand out the same arc.
 
Trashcan Man had a unique rhyming voice to the character, so putting an existing Story Arc (or even the general missions) didn’t work for him, so he lost his “Contact” status right before Alpha.
 
Since I liked the character so much, I made sure players visited him in a Task Force (Synapse’s, I think, I am probably wrong though).
 
A) John Hegner (Protean): Matt, I’m not sure if they are talking about him, or the guy that Pitman had in the Arachnos recruitment area who was also ninja’d into Fort Trident to explain where he got his sweet enhancements. Basically he was a gutter rat who had the ability to pretty much get into anything and the only reason he wasn’t a smear on the training room floor was because he stole great stuff. IIRC he was effectively the villain version of B.O.T.L.E.R.
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Good lord, you’re right. I got confused with The Can Man. I always got them confused and hated the Trashcan Man name you guys chose because of that. :)
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion) The joke was his power was that anything anyone “trashed” wound up in his hands. Hence the name and the goods.
 
Q) Why would you have Operative Lo Pan be a named Arachnos paper mission boss instead of a Tsoo one?
    [Arachnos can have Asian members too. (Felderburg)]
    [Beyond that, all Arachnos paper mission bosses were named after movie villains. Operative Bligh, Operative Lo Pan, Operative Gruber, Operative Kurgan (have to remove the head FULLY!), the list goes on. (Kadmon)]
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Yeah, newspaper missions were randomly generated, and that name just was on a list. No thought put into it.
 
Q) Did Statesman or Lord Recluse have a weakness? (Mentalshock)
    [Statesman: Darrin Wade. Lord Recluse: the short-sightedness of obsessive villainy. (DarkGob)]
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Both of these characters were empowered directly through the Well of Furies. This was their weakness. If you could sever that connection (which was thought to be impossible), then you could kill or destroy them.
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion) They also were influenced by the elements they were Incarnates of - having drawn that power in as opposed to entirely generating it themselves. You could say that there is an element of “living up to their roles” in how they acted.
 
Q) Did PCU offer classes in power training/was it possible to get scholarships to PCU through your hero license? ( ParadoxicalOxymoron )
A) Matt Miller (Positron) They tried to offer classes in power training, but no insurance company would cover them if they did. They did offer free classes on criminal justice to those who had hero licenses though. Better to teach them the limits of the law, and know how to spot crimes in progress.
 
Q) Could you have gotten a degree in Super Heroing from PCU? And if yes, then was it a BA or BS? Was there a graduate degree program? (@AtomikSteel)
A) See above answer.
 
Q)I have always wondered, who was on the take within Paragon City Hall? All the villain groups had to have an inside man in order to pull off all of their hijinks. (@AtomikSteel)
 
A) John Hegner (Protean): first, never make a list when that list doesn’t need to see the light of day. Second, i24 had a story arc in Kings Row that dealt with the Family, Skulls, and some political corruption.
 
Q) Were there plans for Crey to get involved in the Incarnate arms race? What with Malta forging an alliance with Battle-Maiden, and Crey’s Paragon Protector project seeming like small beans in comparison to the rapidly upscaling power levels, how
would they have kept viable as a villain group? (@Twi)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I had written out an idea that Crey were trying to biologically engineer their own incarnates in an improved version of the Revenant Program, which would involve them trying to scientifically measure Incarnates. The goal was to build an army of Incarnate Paragon Protectors. I really liked the idea that Incarnates started an arms race between high level villain groups that were trying to match the powers that were coming out.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Back in the first few drafts of Praetorian content I had Battle-Maiden and Black Scorpion having a nano-tech vs. power armor arms race for some higher end content that sent you back and forth between Primal Earth and Praetoria. We scraped it, but I had always liked the idea of Crey making a deal with the Freakshow to upgrade their cybernetics with Battle-Maiden’s nano-tech.
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) We won’t talk about the Incarnate artifacts the Countess bought up to become an Incarnate herself. That storyline lives in the same place as the one where Manticore winds up turning to her for solace after he goes fully downhill.
 
Q) Simple question… where were all the buses??  Plenty of Bus Stops, but no buses!  Silly cosmetic thing really, but were buses ever planned?  I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s asked this?  (@Wolfybane)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Sadly no. The Paragon Transit Authority switched over to 100% Monorail system shortly before 2002, but the bus stops still brought in ad revenue, so they kept them around instead of demolishing them
 
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) If someone didn't cap off a monorail correctly, you'd get buses, of a sort. Monorails would hop the tracks and wander down streets with the cars. My question is how, considering how many ambulances were part of the atmospheric SFX no one really noticed there weren't any on the streets.
 
Q) In general, what was the deal with Praetorian Hamidon?  And in specific, why did it come into being so much sooner than Primal Hamidon, and if it didn’t start with Hamidon Pasalima, why was it still named Hamidon? I asked Protean about this once, and he basically said he couldn’t tell me yet, but that there was actually an important reason for it.  (@TA)
    [I don’t remember the specifics but if I recall right, someone went overboard with nukes during an earlier war, spurring Hamidon Pasalima to take drastic actions earlier.  I remember that this was mentioned somewhere in the promotional material for Going Rogue but I can’t remember where. @Mekkanos] [Nukes were used in the Praetorian Korean War. I don't remember how that eventually led to Early Hamidon. (@DKellis)]
 
A) John Hegner (Protean): Reading between the lines, when Marcus Cole (praetorian version) disappeared after the nuclear exchange in Korea, he retreated from the world, hating what it had become. This event changed everything in Praetorian Earth. Years later, a young Dr. Hamidon, his life’s course changed by the environmental tragedy of the nuclear crisis, would discover early the means of creating the Devouring Earth. He tracked down Marcus Cole (many believed he was dead) and offered Cole the chance to be humanity’s guiding light and bring them into a new age of peace and prosperity and one-ness with the Earth. Cole dismissed him as a lunatic and thought nothing of it.
 
Years later, Dr. Hamidon, convinced if something wasn’t done sooner than later, and untrusting of anyone else with the responsibility to guide humanity, used himself as the germinating seed that would soon become the Hamidon. The rest is more or less history that was written up on the Going Rogue website, where the Devouring Earth nearly wiped humanity out, but Cole returned to save the day.
 
In that history, there is a moment where Cole is fighting the Hamidon (Kaiju?) and it projects a telepathic beam into Cole. During that momentary connection, Cole and Hamidon have a heart to heart discussion which he never reveals to anyone else, but it is at that time that cole convinces Hamidon to give humanity a chance to redeem themselves. Hamidon lets himself get “beaten” and waits to see if Cole can rally humanity into something worthy of saving. By the time Going Rogue begins, with the horns of war between Primal and Praetorian Earth sounding, Hamidon is unconvinced.
 
Cole is on the fence about invading primal earth, because he knows Hamidon will be unhappy, but he also has the backup plan of simply fleeing Praetorian Earth and sealing the portal up behind him and starting anew on Primal Earth. A third option, becoming the Well’s champion, presents itself and leads to Cole’s final defeat.
 
Q) How much did the US Government/Paragon City spend per year on repairs to buildings, roads, etc.? (@AtomikSteel)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The U.S. Government was asked not to step in and help, and was told Paragon City could take care of its own. Paragon City had an insane tax rate on the super-rich, and those taxes were used exclusively to pay for damages caused by super-powered beings.
 
You see, all the Billionaire Playboys are secret (or public) IDs of super-heroes anyway, so they just thought of the tax as a work/hobby expense.
 
Q) So in the Midnighter arc, the heroes help develop a cure for the Lost. Which (thanks to a bug, until they fixed it) you could actually zap the Honoree with! Was this the early groundwork for eventually restoring Hero 1? (@Samuraiko)
    [Much to my amusement, you could also zap the AV at the end of the Lost section of Death From Below. Not much utility there, as it robs the group of XP, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t funny :) (Kadmon)]
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There was a redemption/reversion arc planned but I can’t recall what it involved. I do know that when writing the Lady Grey Task Force, the writer didn’t like the fact that Hero One came back as a Lost. One of the variables in the mission data was “INeverLikedThisStoryArcAnyway”.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean): We had some discussion on bringing back Hero-1 as well as a handful of Omega Team who had somehow survived all these years on the run on Rikti Earth. IIRC Ruin had taken over Rikti Australia. The restoration of Hero-1 would have been closely related to the reveal of these characters and their work with renegade factions within the Rikti who opposed both the war on Primal Earth and the genetic modification of the Rikti people.
 
Q) Prometheus told us about how the Well of the Furies came to be, and how a person came to embody it - details hazy, text isn’t in the wiki.  The identity of that person was suggested to be someone we’d know of, but wasn’t revealed.  Who was it, and why/how? (@TA)
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Prometheus was actually referring to DJ Zero as another Ascended with whom we were already acquainted. The identity of the Well wouldn’t be someone we’d met in game at that point. “He” was already ancient when humanity came to be. Then again, Positron, Protean or Dr. Aeon may have had other ideas…
 
Q) The Lore Bible suggested that it might have originally been intended for the street gangs of Paragon to remain viable threats all the way through to level 50.  The way things played out, though, that was pretty much just The Freakshow (and to a lesser extent The Warriors).  Were there ever any lore plans to demonstrate truly high-level versions of other street gangs? The Outcasts always seemed to have potential and the lore suggestion that Grendel gave Statesman problems suggest high danger from The Trolls.  (And the mysterious leaders of The Skulls and The Hellions were probably more dangerous than their bottom-of-the-totem-pole members implied.) (@CyberSunset)
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - The Skulls were getting an update for Issue 24 that would have introduced us to the three leaders, Morena, Veles and Chernobog. I believe Protean had some other future plans for them as well, but they’d have at least acquired Arch-villains and made it to level 25. We would probably have found a way for most of the other groups to get higher-level or more powerful versions if the story development merited it, but there weren’t any solid plans.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There were two “paths” of Streetgangs in the games, the artifact ones (Hellions, Warriors, Tsoo) and the superadyne ones (Skulls, Trolls, Family). This was intended to keep the players fighting streetgangs, although ever more powerful ones, as long as possible if that’s what their character was into. There is a running storyline through the missions and story arcs of the two paths.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Part of the i24 revamp of Kings Row was to bring the Superadyne story arc into clearer focus. Before, most of the initial story is scattered through a handful of task pool contacts, which meant a good number of people probably missed them. My goal was to pull those threads out of task pools and turn them into full story arcs or even Task Forces.
 
Part of my grand revamp plan was to really redefine the turf wars in the zones, making them “belong” more to one group or the other. The Hellions served the Warriors who were rivals to the Tsoo and Family. The Skulls and Trolls had a relationships that fed up into the Family, who opposed the Warriors and Tsoo. The Tsoo were sort of the odd men out, but were strong enough to hand without a mewling low level gang serving them. This was one major chunk of the Paragon City criminal puzzle.
 
The other side of the coin had the paramilitary groups like the 5th Column and Council battling it out from 1-50, meanwhile the Sky Raiders and Freakshow showed up mid-level to mix things up and provide some cross over to the more gang related smash and grab activity and heists with such characters as Captain Castillo.
 
Then you had the Circle of Thorns and Vahzilok, who were a bit more marginal and self contained. The CoT and Tsoo, however, did clash over magical matters from time to time, while the nobody really liked to mess with insane Dr. Vahzilok, whose grandiose plans petered out around level 25 anyway.
 
Q) In the Going Rogue promo, Manticore and Ghost Widow were shown with auras around them.  Were there plans for them to change sides at that time?  If not, what were the auras meant to represent? (Liquid)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I forget. Maybe? I think it was just to represent how those characters saw themselves, Vigilante and Rogue.
 
I know we pitched having a “major player” switch sides, but then realized the headache of all the content that character was involved in and came up with two new characters to poster-child Going Rogue.
 
Q) Was Mr. G always intended to be Praetorian Protean? (Liquid)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Yes, John “Protean” Hegner had this planned from the get go.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Yeah, we wanted it to be super subtle (so totally obvious to our massive player base of apparent psychics). If you read the Praetorian content, any character that tends to repeat his last sentence is actually Doppelganger - off the top of my head I think it was just Mr. G and Tami Baker, but I am certain we hid Easter Eggs here and there. The intention was that Protean was damaged goods in Primal Earth. Doppelganger had been playing the game of masks forever and had no issues about discovering his missing identity. After all, he trained Chimera after murdering his parents. Manipulative bastard, ain’t he?
 
Q) What was the Kheldian “homeworld” like, their government, native culture, etc, prior to their being a big space war? Did they evolve their symbiosis with the Dwarf/Nova races peacefully, or was that a necessity of the war with the nictus? (Spectralent) [Q: And would we ever have gotten to visit? (Memphis Bill) ]
A) Matt (Positron) It was never fleshed out, afaik.
 
Q)Would Tyrant redeem himself and take Statesman place? (@Night Prowler)
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There were some idle discussions that mentioned this as a possibility. To my memory, it was not settled, however.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) That was my plan. After he broke Praetoria he would see the error in his ways and redeem himself taking up the mantle of his former enemy. I know some of the writers pushed back on this saying that “Statesman is dead-dead, no backsies.” I would like to point out that this respected that and also got us our marketing poster-child back at the same time. :)
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I had a vision for Tyrant’s redemption as basically playing out similar to Hannibal Lecter. When the going gets tough for Earth, Vanguard turns to the one man who has been the Well’s Champion for some insight into how to stop Battalion. Cole basically points out that what Earth is lacking is a symbol to rally behind. Statesman was that symbol for Primal Earth, just as Emperor Cole was that symbol for Praetoria.
 
In a massive PR move, Lady Grey and Vanguard basically convince the world (and the players) that Statesman has been resurrected. But really it’s Emperor Cole just carrying the symbol forward in order to rally Earth’s forces. I had ultimately wanted him to try to sacrifice everything in one last hurrah, but Cole’s curse would be that he could never become the man he was destined to be on Primal Earth, and would be forced to survive time and time again, never achieving the redemption and glory in death he so desired.
 
This truth would come out issues later and cause some massive issues between Ms. Liberty and Vanguard.
 
Q)Were there any plans to allow Heroes/Villians to go to the Preatorian zones for badge hunting, exploration badges, etc?  (TheJudge) [I recall that they could do that anyway. The only thing they were locked out of without purchasing GR was access to story content and contacts. @Blondeshell]
 
A) Matt (Positron) Yeah that sounds right to my knowledge. I think there were some badges that were impossible for a non-Praetorian to attain and vice-versa.
 
Q) Was there anything that the team wanted to include plotwise that was deemed too controversial or grimdark? (@Peter_Chess)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - The original introduction arc for the revamped Atlas Park involved Matthew Habashy purposefully abandoning his wife to the destruction of Galaxy City. He did it out of cowardice, and his arc was supposed to be a redemptive one where he was out to prove his love to his wife after leaving her to die. However, in our first team playtest, the content was very divisive. Some people loved it and wanted more, other people hated Matthew Habashy for what he did and wanted no part in the rest of his story. We changed it after considering that it might be too divisive for the very first story arc in the game.
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - When Positron asked for my idea for “Who Will Die?”, I suggested pretty much instantly that Sister Psyche and Manticore have a child, but she is murdered and the child kidnapped. It kind of cascaded into misery from there, but I could tell almost immediately from the reaction that it was going to a bit too dark a place.
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There was a letter for the Omega Team Time Capsule from one of the suicide team members that was very, very, grimdark. It was extremely emotional, but had such a dark ending to it that it was deemed inappropriate and (thankfully) never published.
 
A John Hegner (Protean) - We could have taken Mother Mayhem much further, but decided she was creepy enough as is. Mother is still my favorite Praetorian baddie. Isn’t she yours? ISN’T MOTHER YOUR FAVORITE TOO!? Good.
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Minds of Mayhem remains my personal favorite of all the trials I worked on, and it couldn’t have existed without Mother Mayhem, so I second John’s motion!
 
Q)What was the plot of the third novel going to be? I still re-read the other two novels every so often. (The_Judge) [I seem to remember it being “The Rikti War.” (Memphis Bill.) ] [That is correct. It is even mentioned on one of the last pages of the Freedom Phalanx novel (Lycantropus)]
A) Matt Miller (Positron) It was to be the first Rikti War. I think that what we did in game (with the time capsule) was far superior than anything that the novel could have achieved.
 
Q)With the Praetorian relocation occurring, were there plans to use the formerly Praetorian-only enemy groups in additional content? (IE The Destroyers, Syndicate) (@Carin_McLeoud
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I think we had some plans for the Syndicate to start working together with the Family. There was a long villain story arc for i24 that involved Praetorian Penelope Yin going crazy while trying to take control of the Awakened. The idea was that she would become the new leader of the Awakened and become a nemesis for primal Penelope Yin.
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - The Talons of Vengeance were everywhere, thanks to Diabolique, and as we introduced the remaining elements in new powersets (Water, Wind), we’d have continued to expand them. We also combined some other forces, mainly DUST, IDF, and Resistance into the Unified People’s Army, under Calvin Scott’s leadership. The Carnival of Light would continue under Desdemona’s guidance, though some of them would also join up with Aurora Pena, and that story could have gone a few ways (*cough*Praetor Tilman?*cough*). The Forlorn would continue to follow Noble Savage as well. The only ones I think were completely wiped out, not to appear again were the Destroyers.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - In some ways The Talons of Vengeance were the slowly creeping death that would ultimately destroy humanity. Master Midnight has a monologue where he paraphrases what they are about, and basically says that they are the literal reason why the ancient Greeks punished oathbreakers so harshly, because if left unpunished, then the punishment of the Furies (i.e. The Talons of Vengeance) would consume mankind until justice was done. The oathbreaker in this case was Emperor Cole. The oath he broke… ask Praetorian Stefan Richter.
 
Q) From the Summer Blockbuster Double Feature, was there anything significant about the extra information you could get by reading the bios of the Time Gladiator enemies?  I’ve occasionally wondered if the backstory for Armageddon, Apocalypse, Gotterdamerung (and the never-seen Gehenna) was meant to set up something down the line. (@CyberSunset)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I don’t think so. That whole thing was a piece of fiction within the fictional universe of CoH. (Like Tarantino’s Kill Bill).
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) I don’t know about Time Gladiator, but you could learn the oh-so-secret revelation that the devs were big fans of Leverage and Ocean’s Eleven from Casino Heist. Also, the VO for that event’s trailer was done by our lead engineer.
 
Q) If you have a chance... everything in this post, which also includes questions not answered in previous AMAs as well as general dev opinion / favorites questions that only a few devs answered: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,9602.msg138418.html#msg138418 (I will post my most burning questions here, though) (Felderburg)
 
A) Matt (Positron) I would recommend putting questions into next year’s AMA. It’s way more convenient to work in this format than a forum post.
 
Q) Who or what are the Furies? Would we have ever seen them in-game? Are they the same in both dimensions, or is it just the one set in charge of every single alternate Earth well? (Felderburg)
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Like Prometheus is a watcher and agent of the Dimensionless, the Furies were watchers and agents of the Well. They work to see its interests preserved, but like Prometheus notes, they haven’t evolved with their master, who has changed with “humanity” through the millennia. Their ideals are ancient and somewhat out of sync with the current mindset of the Well. However, they also still serve his interests, particularly in loosing the Talons on Praetoria to test Tyrant’s mettle, so there’s not much pulling of the leash. There was only one set for all dimensions; they were made immortal by the Well’s power. I like to think they were drawn from three different dimensions, but that wasn’t official at all. Neither was their appearance. I tended to think that they would have multiple forms, and this dichotomy in form was reflected in the beautiful Sirens and the monstrous Keres.
 
Q) How accurate is the 2004 Story Bible that was released? (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Story_Bible) Some of its lore is contradicted by in-game materials, while some of it is seemingly confirmed. (Felderburg) [I think that was “This is what they started with/at launch, it changed during development.” (Memphis bill)]
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The number of people working on the game when the bible was written as well as the last couple years of the game was TWO: Melissa and myself, and neither of us contributed greatly to the original Story Bible.
 
I made it clear to any person who wanted to contribute to the game that they were not beholden to anything in the bible as long as it still maintained the integrity of what the players were already told and knew about. How did we remember what we told the players? ParagonWiki of course.
 
I was convinced that if an admin at ParagonWiki knew Paragon Studios’ IP address they could look at what pages we were reading and pretty much decipher the content of our upcoming issues.
 
That said, I am not surprised there are contradictions. If someone had an idea for backstory that contradicted something the players were never told, what kind of manager would I be to say no? “Sorry, Joe, you can’t be creative this week. Please use stuff that was written by Rick 6 years before you ever got here, even if the players have no clue about it.” I never wanted to be that guy.
 
Q) Can you tell us more about the nature of Rularuu, how his dimensional devouring / transferring to himself worked? Or just everything about Rularuu in general? (Felderburg)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Rularuu was a very power super who, in his native dimension, grew so powerful he consumed his entire universe. Unsated, he found an alternate reality, and an alternate version of himself, and teamed up and consumed that one too. Did this over and over and over until he got to our dimension, where the Midnight Squad figured out what was going on and created a “Shadow Shard” for him to consume, and in doing so would trap him there.
 
That was the crux of the ‘ruu. Pretty much he was our Galactus.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - What Rularuu had discovered was a means of jumping dimensions. There were some strange caveats to this process. First: He could only jump to a dimension where there existed another dimensional version of himself. Second: When he left a dimension he had traveled to (or originated in) he consumed the entirety of that dimension. This was why he was so insanely powerful. It was also the reason that Battalion feared him above all other things.
 
It also happened to be the reason that the Dream Doctor was able to defeat Rularuu. He was Primal Earth’s version of Rularuu. It’s also why he went into hiding. He realized that as long as he stayed on Primal Earth, Rularuu could one day go to him, consume everything, and leave.
 
Battalion sought to discover what happened to Rularuu, as they detected his arrival in our dimension, and then… nothing. This made them incredibly paranoid about Earth, for they apparently had the power to stop the Devourer of Everything. Discovering that the Dream Doctor was the key would have focused Battalion’s efforts to the nth degree in destroying him.
 
I had wanted to have Dream Doctor sacrifice himself by merging with Rularuu and containing his dimension consuming power to just the localized area of the Battalion fleet. With Dream Doctor gone, Rularuu could never return. With the Battalion fleet annihilated, Earth gets a fighting chance and moves onto the offensive. None of this was ever given a green light or fleshed out completely in a meeting, but damn we were getting close to having those meetings where I was going to present it.
 
Q) Who funded the first manufacture of Superadine back in the 70s? According to the 2004 Story Bible, Nemesis didn't know about dimensional travel until Portal Corp's presentation, so I assume it wasn't him (as he would have known about the dimensional discovery of the immoral scientists creating Superadine). (Felderburg)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The 70’s was a crazy time, man. There was a group of super-villain scientists who called themselves the Mood Ring (Made up of Lava Lamper, Belle Bottom, Rock Pet, Smiley Face, The Streaker, and 8-Tracks of Destruction) who perfected and sold the formula to the Family who used their considerable business interests to see to its manufacture and distribution.
 
Q) Would the True Rikti have looked/acted like the regular Rikti but… bigger? Or would the True Rikti have been even more alien and bizarre?  Would fighting them have been like fighting regular Rikti with lots of crazy defenses and new tech basically?  (I’m similarly curious about The Dimensionless and other long-way-off enemies.) (@CyberSunset)
    [Would we have fought the True Rikti of our dimension, or the "fake" Rikti's dimension? (Felderburg)]
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I would have loved for them to be even more alien, on a non-humanoid animation rig for one, but that would have limited what they could do in-game, so they likely would have been humanoid, looking like super-exaggerated Rikti.
 
Both True Rikti’s would have been in-play. The one in Rikti Dimension would have been answering the distress beacon sent before the uprising on Rikti Earth took place. They would NOT have been happy at the outcome of their race, diluting it with the genetic material of these “humans” even if it was the only possibility for their survival.
 
True Rikti would have made their way to Primal Earth and contacted our True Rikti. We were still up in the air as to whether or not our True Rikti were conquered by Battalion or not.
 
Q) In regards to existing power sets, I believe it had been brought up on the original CoH forums, were some of the underperforming (perhaps perceived as such) powersets going to be tweaked (ie: Energy Melee, Electrical Blast, Icy Assault)? Also what can be mentioned about what the other origins versions of Sorcery, and what were they going to have for powers? (ErrantBlue)
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) That question is in the hands of the powers designers and not the story-guys. Maybe one day Arbiter Hawk will do a Powers AMA or something.
 
Q) The initial contacts whose story arcs were replaced when COX went free to play had their own backstories (for example, the tech contact was the former hero Horatio whose armor was used to help rebuild Citadel). Were there any plans to use them at all in new content? (Blue Battler)
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We were always open to the possibility, but as far as I know, no writer was running with that idea.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - The arrival of Battalion, and Earth getting its ass royally kicked, was going to have people come out of the woodwork to fight the good fight. And yes, Katie Douglas was going to have a bad hair day and take it out on a Battalion Warship.
 
Q) There never seemed to be any mention of professional team sports in CoH. Was there ever a thought to expand missions, contacts, or costume sets (besides boxing) in that direction? I referenced American football in one character bio (http://cit.cohtitan.com/character/2089) but rarely heard of or saw mention of anything else even in other players’ character bios. (@Blondeshell)
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Not a lot of thought went into sports in a super-powered world. I am sure that they are around, but how do you know that the guy who hit 90 home-runs last season wasn’t a telekinetic?
 
If we ever put an arena or colosseum into CoH, we would have had to come up with some sports team. But alas, we never did.
 
Q) Were the non-immortal characters (like Psyche and Statesman) supposed to be in their mid-40’s/early 50’s by the time CoH started?  Or was this just sort of a screwup brought about by the timeline introduced in “The Freedom Phalanx”, which had the modern incarnation coming into being in the mid 1980’s.  (@Hyperstrike)
[This was just the game acknowledging “Comic book time” if I recall correctly. Basically there was no attempt to explain why some character seemed long lived yet youthful, same as Spider-man was introduced as a teenager in the early 1960s, yet is only mid twenties today. (Rune)][Additionally, States was an Incarnate, which I recall being used to explain his youth, while Psyche’s mind-riding was used at least once to explain her youth (her body somehow didn’t age without her mind in it). (Felderburg)]
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Comic-book aging, although Dr. Raymond Keyes is in his 50’s during the time of the main game.
 
Q) Were there ever any regrets or apprehension in “The Origins of Power” story line being used in game to explain in game changes and/or mechanical functions of powers (ie: the introduction of diminishing returns/enhancement diversification)? (ErrantBlue)
[At least one Dev had regrets about it, per the 2012 AMA question: “If you could retcon any one thing in the storyline, what would it be? Alternately, what’s the one retcon you’ve made that you later regretted?” Don’t know about any other dev’s feelings, so hopefully they answer. (Felderburg)]
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - I can’t speak for the others, as this came into the game before I joined the team, but it was certainly in the back of our mind while we developed the background that drives the Well, Prometheus, Battalion, Praetoria, the Dimensionless, the Primordials, etc. One thing we worked on in this regard for Incarnates and up was to emphasize that the Well was not the source of powers; human creativity and potential were instead leveraging the energy of the Source (which we planned to rename), through the Well, to achieve superhuman feats in whatever way they chose. The player should be the driver of their own story, and we wanted the framework to be flexible enough to accommodate that, even though it didn’t seem that way when we had to dole it out slowly.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I think if anything we regretted that we couldn’t tell it all up front without spoiling the story. We heard the outrage and had to knuckled down knowing that the pay-off in the end would more than justify the momentary appearance of lack of character control.
 
Q) Were there ever any plans to finally rescue/revert Tanya/Terra from “The Terra Conspiracy?” That was a favourite, though somewhat sad, arc. (Memphis Bill)
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) There were plans for two Praetorian Epic Archetypes on the tables, and quite a few of the powers were actually implemented. One a Praetorian Clockwork, and one a Recovered Devoured. I think that we probably would have used the former as a way to help refresh some of the AI/robot related storylines, and the second to advance Devouring Earth plotlines like that. An way to trigger factionalizing or internal disruption to the DE might have been a good, polarizing plotline. Plus, we could probably have turned her into our own version of Sarah Kerrigan.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Unrelated except for the DE comments above. Many players asked us about what the deal was with Praetorian Infernal (since he wasn’t from Primal Earth initially anyway). We kept him off the radar for a few reasons, not the least of which was a lack of Praetorian CoT costumes. Anyway, I had toyed with the idea early on of Infernal being Cole’s greatest concern because his magic was unrivaled in Praetoria. His master stroke would have been learning of a way to use the Thorns on Hamidon and to effectively possess him and through him all of the Devouring Earth. The temp name I had for him was Hamidaemon.
 
Q) Were there ever any plans (before or after release) to flesh out, or possibly branch by choice, the VEAT arcs? The later ones always felt disappointingly *rushed* to me (and let’s not get into the speech on the last one…) and given the insight from some of the independent arcs, there was potential in the banes and fortunatas. (Memphis Bill)
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) It would have been a passion project by one of the staff, as there wasn’t a good case for going back. On the other hand, I could have seen Sean writing additional VEAT only optional or side content into whatever came next in terms of the Recluse/Red Widow plotlines.
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon): What Tim said.
 
Q) I don’t know if any of you were present at the time, but I remember how, early in development, CoH was *very*different from the way it was at release; no archetypes, and origin mattered a lot. If you remember that far back, could anyone expand on the way it was first planned? (@Interface)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) It was before even I joined the game. It was much more freeform, but it was quickly discovered that without a guiding hand in choosing powers, a player could make a completely combat-gimped character that could never gain XP. It was then decided that a guiding hand, in the form of powersets, was the way to go.
 
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) I was around for this, though I'd barely gotten past responsibilities beyond laying down combat beacons in the Sewer maps so I wasn't "in" on the design decisions or plans. It was way back in the beginning when the game had spawn generators, rudimentary loot (as in, yes you really could loot a defeated foe), a completely different UI, and the beginnings of directioned attack locations (i.e. head shot vs. leg shot). The game used a points system for abilities and, yes, Flight was pricey so while I could fly, I had no real attack powers to use as Matt mentioned.
 
These were very reminiscent of "traditional" gameplay mechanics players were used to at the time.  I believe there were inherent bonuses with whatever origin you chose, but the reward wasn't stellar - maybe something like more Heal for X and more Stamina for Y. But it did incentivize choosing X origin just for the benefits so it was scrapped.
 
Q) Given the I24 changes, Blasters were, IMHO, just about right. In your opinion, were all the archetypes ‘just right’ at that point? Personally I’d say Corruptors needed a bit of love, and Warshades were still a failed experiment, but that’s just my two INF. (I know these aren’t technically Lore questions, but I really need to know.) (@Interface)
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Again, outside the wheelhouse of what this AMA can easily answer.
 
Q) Can you give us a general description of what the Battalion would have looked like, what they’re powers were, and how they were connected to existing lore? (@Liberties)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Battalion’s forces were sort of a mish-mash of hundreds of different alien races all subjugated to work for them. To that end the art direction was a uniform suit of power armor, made from Impervium, that we could throw into the costume creator and then put alien heads, arms, legs, and tails on in hundreds of different ways.
 
Their powers were planned to be extreme. You would have needed level shifts to have a hope of hitting and hurting them, and surviving their attacks. They were end-game content exclusively. Non-end-game Battalion would have been lackeys like the Shivans.
 
Battalion had an agent on Earth for decades, planting the seeds for their eventual arrival. Now, originally the Battalion bible had this as Lady Grey, who sold out to Battalion shortly after becoming head of Vanguard. This would have allowed Battalion to subvert the organization put together to stop threats like them.
 
As time went on we eventually created a new NPC to be the “traitor to Earth”, named (XXX). This would have been cleaner and better fit with the story that the writers wanted to tell, and left Vanguard intact (not causing us a bunch of work tearing out and re-working stuff involving Lady Grey).
 
As we worked on the story it became obvious that this new NPC was going to be the traitor, so we decided to change it. We looked at our roster of NPCs and saw that Stephen Sheridan, aka Dr. Science, fit the bill of Battalion agent perfectly. He would have used the new zone, Cole Plaza, as the staging point for the invasion by Battalion.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - IIRC there was Battalion (the race) and then there were the legions of loyal super soldiers. Levied from the myriad worlds Battalion had conquered the Wells of, these legions were equipped with the finest technology in the galaxy. The legions were going to be badasses themselves, but facing down an actual member of the true Battalion race was intended to be nothing short of epic.
 
Q) Penelope Yin was revealed to be Vanessa DeVore’s daughter in the Praetorian arcs. Was there a proper backstory built around this, as it seems to really strain the timeline (with Vanessa being a graduate student and finding Giovanna Scaldi’s mask in 2000, Penelope Yin being an older teenager in 2012, and Wu Yin being noticeable older than Vanessa by some 20 years)? Where was this storyline going? (@Phoenicia)
[Did this revelation of her mother apply to the Primal Earth side of things? (Felderburg)]
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Dr. Aeon had planned out Penelope’s story into Primal Earth, where she would have become the arch-villain Penelope Mayhem, leader of the Awakened. He or Protean could probably go more into her background, though.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Because the Praetorian timeline is suitably mixed up due to the events following the Korean War and the Hamidon Wars, we had license to determine that some individuals were born earlier or later than they were on Primal Earth. Vanessa DeVore is one such individual. I did have a rough timeline at one point, but I doubt it exists anywhere anymore.
 
Q) Was Penny Yin's mother always intended to be DeVore? (Liquid)
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - To my knowledge, no. I remember connecting the potential dots at one point, mulling it over, and then excitedly dropping the idea on designers to see their reactions. Majority of reactions were positive, so we went with it. It also helped flesh out Mr. Yin as the head of the Syndicate as well. Until then, that villain group had no true heart.
 
Q) OK, *one* last not-really-Lore question then I’m done. You step through a time warp back to ‘04. Axe the Fitness pool or keep it? How about Hasten? (@Interface)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - C) Buff the heck out of Pummel. (also, I’m not a powers designer)
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Axe the fitness pool. Hasten has a hilarious history. In Alpha it was way too good. If I recall correctly, there was no crash. When we added some drawbacks to it, the players went ballistic. I still remember one player claiming that it was “completely worthless now”.
 
I would always, always, keep that player’s comment in mind whenever we would downgrade other abusive powers and players would complain. A small part of me would always think “maybe it’s not enough?”
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Fitness seemed to remind me of making a Palladium character. How everyone seemed to be a gymnast/boxer/track&field star/professional lawn dart champion, etc, because the bonuses were just too good to pass up. I always felt like choosing your tertiary power pool should have been like D&D feats. The unique spice to make your Fire Tank stand out from the Fire Tank next to him. Instead, some pools were almost universally ignored, while others, like Fitness, were pretty much required.
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) Barring any other changes, making them more like feats or utility powers from D&D 4e would have been a nice move. Several powersets suffered because thematically correct powers were in the 9, though failed to fulfill a clear mission.
 
Q) Were there ever plans to delve further into Cimerora? (Lord Arkasas)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I really wanted to expand on the Path of the Dark and its connections to Cimerora.
 
Q) Less of a lore question, more of a general writing question. Were there any stories/characters/ideas you didn’t use because you thought they might be too close to existing comic stories, or would cause potential trouble with Marvel/DC? (@Cooldrew/@Crippl3)
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We wanted to make a game where comic book fans could feel at home, yet at the same time make it their own. Many, many, of the storylines in CoH pay homage to classic comic book stories. GIFT was pretty much just Xavier’s School, HeroCorp was Heroes for Hire, Vanguard was S.H.I.E.L.D., Altas Park was Metropolis and Kings Row was Gotham, etc. etc.
 
I mean, they were our own versions with their own stories and uniqueness about them, but we wanted players to find familiar footing when they played CoH.
 
Q) What were the ultimate Magic origin and Technology origin threats that were conceived of by time of the sunset announcement, and what made them scarier than what we’d fought before? (Tim Compton, AKA @Draeth Darkstar)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - I don’t know that these were specific to an origin, but the “ultimate” threats included:
 
A possible battle against Praetorian Hamidon, though we were also considering other solutions to that story.
A war against Battalion, culminating in showdowns with their well-consuming “True Battalion” leadership, some as early as Issue 26.
A war against Prometheus, the Furies, and the Well to free yourself from all of them.
A war against the Primordial who came closest to eliminating the Source at the dawn of existence when he returns. You have to rally other Wells (along with some NPCs, that’s you in the post-Battalion, post-Furies world) to your side.
A war where the Concepts of Order and Chaos themselves break out of the void, culminating in battles against their personifications and the first Primordial to save (or control!) all of existence. But first you need to survive a civil war tearing the Dimensionless and their Primordial leadership apart, fraying the whole infrastructure keeping it all going.
 
Q) What tabletop RPG system do you feel best fits the power scale, game style, and themes of City of Heroes? Have any of the developers designed any unofficial homebrew City of Heroes pen and paper material? (Tim Compton, AKA @Draeth Darkstar)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Jeff Hamiliton and I were just talking about this the other day. IMO, the best “system” for conveying a comic-book game would be something akin to Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPG system. Extremely narrative storytelling, less emphasis on making numbers into bigger numbers.
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) If I were to do it, I’d probably start with FATE. It’s got a lot of room for the player’s imaginations and thoughts to move the game along.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Power Scale, Game Style, and Themes. This sounds like you want something that plays like CoH combat. My money is firmly on D&D 4th edition. Hell, Matt even ran a Cimmerora game using 4th edition rules. I’ve seen people playing Justice League using their rules (Batman is a Rogue, fyi). But if you are looking for something that plays like a comic book, well, I would suggest modifying Dogs in the Vineyard or In a Wicked Age to use their rules but match the superhero theme, as they are heavy story games and not so much about min/maxing stats and abilities.
 
Q) If City of Heroes came back would you bring back Statesman and Sister Psyche? (@Nyght Blade)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Personally, no. I hate it when comic book characters are brought back to life.
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Same, though we did discuss it. My opinion is that there were other, more interesting stories to tell in the context of their death that wouldn’t work if they just came back to life.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Death is such a formative part of life. We had so many places we wanted the death of those two iconic characters to take us. Ms. Liberty and Manticore both have these huge gaping wounds in their hearts now, so many possibilities to go with that. We fleshed out a number of ideas as well, and they shook things up something fierce.
 
Q) Something I actually quite enjoyed about the story in the game’s later years was that the villains (both groups like Arachnos, and the player character) WEREN’T incompetent; they were extremely skilled and organized, and probably accomplished more than the heroes from about Going Rogue onwards. Was this an intentional decision, or did that just happen during writing? (@Cleretic)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Villain groups in games fascinated me, and I was a big City of Villains player. I loved being able to advance the stories of villain groups and the player villain. One of my favorite was with Malta, Praetoria, and Incarnates. I loved the idea of Malta rescuing Battle Maiden, since she was totally powered by technological means. It was a lesson I personally learned in the Alpha Strike task force where people said it didn’t feel good to be fighting Malta when you’re an Incarnate - why are they a threat? That’s when I began to think… this must be what the villain groups are thinking. How can we face Incarnates, and what do we do to solve this?
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) Heroes had a ton of advantages, and it felt like the momentum was on their side - villains needed to step it up to keep pace, and we wanted to ramp up the stakes at the high-end.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - A hero is only as good as their villain. Definitely intentional. The writing for Praetoria necessitated that shift in possibility, since a decidedly non-heroic faction had taken power in Praetoria. Furthermore, the capacity for humanity to overcome obstacles basically empowered villain groups like Malta to start catching up. Only the inclusion of Incarnates kept the heroes a step ahead of them. Basically, the heroes shine brightest when surrounded by darkness, and we wanted things to get oh so dark.
 
Q) One thing I never really got an answer to was, what was going on with Primal Earth’s Furies while Praetoria’s (insane) Furies were running rampant in our world? Why did they not intervene? (@Lycantropus)
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There’s only one set of Furies. They unleash the Talons of Vengeance, their army of the Well’s will, on Praetoria because of Emperor Cole’s actions when claiming his power. Primal Earth originally did nothing to offend the Well or the Furies, so the Talons had no business there, until Diabolique fled there and Mot started waking up.
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) They trusted Statesman to do the right thing. I suppose they would had some reaction after his death.
 
Q) Speaking of Primal Earth’s Furies, they had a resturant in Kings Row at the top of a building. Was that ever planned to be represented in game (or was it and we just didn’t know-if so, where!?)? (@Lycantropus)
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There were some talks about it appearing in the Pandora’s Box arc, but I think that was scrapped. Someone else could elaborate more on that arc. If not there, it would have likely been seen when it came time to face them.
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I wanted that restaurant so bad. One of my driving goals was to get things referenced in the novels and comics into the game whenever possible.
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) That would have been a great place to use the phasing tech. What has looked like a bunch of vents and water towers on top of that building suddenly appears to be a restaurant now that you’ve completed the story arc.
 
Q) Were there any Easter eggs that no one ever seemed to find? (@Crantz)
[Per previous AMA: “The Producers were the keepers of the Easter Eggs, so bug Melissa Bianco or Nate Birkholz. (Matt)” So if they’re around for this AMA, hopefully they’ll be asked. (Felderburg)] [Oh, okay, thank you (@crantz)]
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I don’t think anyone noticed that there was a skull on each and every cover of the Who Will Die? SSA.
http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//6/69/Who_Will_Die_Part_1.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//7/71/Who_Will_Die_Part_2.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_3.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_4.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_5.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_6.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_7.jpg
 
For Pandora’s Box there is a Nemesis tidbit contained in every cover.
http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//3/34/Pandora%27s_Box_Part_1.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Pandora%27s_Box_Part_2.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Pandora%27s_Box_Part_3.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Pandora%27s_Box_Part_4.jpg
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I know it took months before anyone finally triggered the massive Hamidon tentacles outside of the sonic fencing in Praetoria, and months later someone finally got a screen shot after people were talking on the forums about hearing or seeing “something” out there.
 
I remember the design team got dragged into the sound designer’s office at one point when it was all finally hooked up for the first time, and played it. My immediate response was, “I’m a loyalist!”
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) Null the Gull’s talk tree had a certain path through it that seemed like it was looping, but it was just repeating the same text in different internal states. If you kept going in the right pattern for about 10-12 pages, it did a badgegrantall on your character. No one found that on Live. (WHAT?! - Matt)
 
Q) Did Nemesis have a real name? If he didn't, do you want to make one up right now? (@Crantz) [According to the novel “The Freedom Phalanx”, his name was Gerhardt Eisenstadt from Austria in the late 1800’s (@Lycantropus)] [Ah! Thank you (@crantz)]
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Yes, Mr. Eisenstadt was a gifted clockmaker and toy maker, and well ahead of his time.
 
Q) If Megan Duncan learned of the ability to resurrect someone who died (per the Valentine event) why did she choose to bring back Red Widow instead of her grandfather or Sister Psyche so soon after their deaths (this Valentine event was presented shortly after the Who Will Die arc reached that point so it just seemed weird)?(@Lycantropus)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Statesman wasn’t killed, he was destroyed, so no resurrection magic would work. Sister Psyche was killed on the cusp of frying the minds of everyone on Earth. Bringing her back would just resume the countdown, so that was out of the question until a solution to that problem could be found.
 
Q)We never saw how the Signature Story Arc “Pandora’s Box ended. How was that all going to play out? (@Lycantropus) [Episode 5 did get released to the beta server before shutdown, and both the hero and villain versions are documented at Paragon Wiki. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Pandora%27s_Box_(SSA) (@Blondeshell)]
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) That’s a great resource for that sort of thing. Far better than what we have access to.
 
Q) Can we just make a big, running doc left open for questions, that devs can answer as they see fit? It seems like it’s sort of a chore to try and gather a bunch of people once a year, and it would also help get more responses to general “what was your favorite ___?” type questions, which seem to be answered by only a few devs at a time. (Felderburg)
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Then what would we do every April? This is more fun (and less year-round work).
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I agree with Matt. Having it be a “time of year” brings it more into focus that if it was just sitting there all the time. How often would I be expected to check it? I wouldn’t want you guys to feel let down if I got distracted by something shine-tastic and didn’t answer for months on end.
 
Q) Is there anything you can tell us about what was going to happen story-wise at Kallisti Wharf?  I know some of the arcs that were in beta made some mention of it apparently being a source of a lot of technology, which seemed to interest Arachnos. (@Mekkanos)
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - A new friend of the people would present a technologically advanced waterfront development to the people of Paragon City, complete with memorial to Statesman. He would be a totally innocent, upstanding citizen, and not in any way connected to Battalion. Certainly not one of the well-consuming true Battalion, ruler over an army designed to crush resistance before it even notices a... Coming Storm?
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We changed the traitor to Stephen Sheridan after Chris left. :)
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - The storyline would still firmly point the finger at the new guy, then Steve Sheridan was going to blindside everyone. Oh what could have been!
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - What about Shiva? Was that event still kicking around? That would have been a really fun event… indeed, what could have been!
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - If I recall correctly, the idea was Battalion would show up for the first time at the opening of Statesman One. A portal into the Shadow Shard would open, and Battalion would begin to try and actively attack and destroy it in order to stop Rularuu, who they devised was the only being powerful enough to completely stop them. Their main plan was to bombard it from space and then Shiva would deliver the final blow. I think in the last month before we were shut down Addison Delaney, one of our environment artists, had finished the initial pass of the final fight, which would have taken place in space on top of Shiva, and ended back down in a crater in a random part of the world. At the end, Steven Sheridan, revealed as a Battalion agent, would arrive to fight you. I think if you were a hero, you fought him on Shiva and used Shiva’s power to launch him back down to Earth. If you were a villain, your overall goal was to take a chunk of Shiva’s power for yourself, and we planned that the villain, temporarily gaining the strength of Shiva, would have a drag-out brawl with Steve Sheridan, who eventually would retreat before the villain’s power was removed. This was all in the first pass phase, so nothing was too set in stone… ish.
 
My favorite… FAVORITE… part of Kallisti Wharf, was the villain section, which was a bit more fleshed out. The idea was that your villain was planning their biggest move yet, which involved crashing Statesman One Plaza durings it opening ceremony. You set up a secret base within Kallisti Wharf, and then summoned previous contacts to aid you. For example, in the unreleased i24, you gained allies in Mr. G, TRANSMUTOR, and a few others. If you didn’t betray them in the end, they would show up in the i25 arc to help you, along with Dean MacArthur, Leonard, and Vincent Ross, if you did their arcs. You had a choice at the start of a few missions of who to bring with you.
 
I think the ultimate goal was if you summoned Dean, he would have no powers whatsoever, but would just shout out one liners. We also had a mission that we had (sort of) gotten to work where you as the villain had to defend your secret base from incoming heroes. The owner of the mission wouldn’t fight - they would be flying around placing items to fight groups of heroes. If you were teamed, your teammates would be on the ground fighting. If you had NPC allies, they would be your “heroes” who you could order around to move, attack, defend, like mastermind pets. This was all in the extremely experimental phase, but it would’ve been amazing to get it off the ground and in.
 
Q) The Drudges, and Night Ward in general: What’s going on with the British themes? Is Praetoria actually in the British Isles, or is something else going on? Also, are the Hooded Lanterns supposed to be “unformed” Drudges, or just conjured entities? (@Goblinman)
 
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) The Black knights and Pendragon had a large effect on the artistic focus for the zone, and the Midnight Squad being similar to the stereotypical British “Watchers” can also be blamed for this. Night Ward was also supposed to evoke “not of the present time, but containing the past,” and “British” tends to read as “old.” It had a good deal of influence on the art, and also gave the excuse to put a blue police box in Night Ward. Part of Pendragon’s shtick is his deep connection to the ideas and collective spirit of the Isles, so as in-world explanations go it is somewhat plausible.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Whispering Coyote mentions that the Drudges took samples of the world of the living to model their enterprise on. He mentions the DMV amongst other things, IIRC. The cruel task masters took a page from Industrial Age Britain for their efficient utilization of labor for profits, those profits coming from shipping souls in exchange for wax to keep their candles burning.
 
Q) What was the deal with Number Six from the I24 beta?  It’s implied that he was the AI Executable Number Six from one of the early Crey arcs.  In fact, he outright said that things were simpler when he was Executable Number Six at one point. However, his bio claimed that he was a human with the ability to turn himself digital and his “real” name sounds humanlike.  Which was he; human or AI?  Was he an AI that was pretending to be human, maybe? (@Mekkanos)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - He was Executable Number Six. I wrote that arc. Bonus trivia, we squeezed in that Incarnate Arc when we noticed we had nothing for solo incarnates for i24. His initial character was someone who could turn himself digital, but then I decided it would be much more interesting if he tied back to Executable Number Six. He would have more backstory, and create a conflict between Crey and Vanguard. However, the idea was that he was originally human with the super power to turn himself digital, but that Crey trapped him in a computer for so long that he nearly lost his mind.
 
Q) Was there anything planned for the Lord of Frosts from the backstory lore? To recap, he was the leader of the Imperial Japanese supers in WW2, and he "vanished mysteriously" along with his US counterpart Captain Volcano at the end of WW2. (@DKellis)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Nothing planned, sorry.
 
Q) Can you go into more detail on the actual background of Countess Crey, and was the Clarissa van Dorn personality made up by her (Countess Crey) or was it an actual person that she was impersonating? (@Liberties)
    [Clarissa Van Dorn was a real person.  In fact, in the arc where you find out about Countess Crey’s background (Check it out here), you find Clarissa Van Dorn’s dead body.  That’s what spurs the whole
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Looks like someone got cut off writing that, but yes, that was all resolved in-game.
 
Q) Were there any future plans concerning the Freedom Phalanx and their HQ? In the SSA, their meetings seemed to take place mostly within the underground/cave base in Atlas Park, but it seemed kind of lackluster compared to the likes of Grandville and Cole's tower in Nova Praetoria. Expanding on that, were there ever any past plans to give a group a headquarters that didn't work out, or any headquarters that you had planned to introduce in the future? (@Scitenik)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The Freedom Phalanx “main HQ” was more of a gathering point than a Watchtower-like HQ. Each member had their own base that fit their own needs, and they only gathered at the main FP HQ when briefing the team on a crisis worthy of their combined talents.
 
As for the second part of your question, “not really”. But in a similar vein I really wanted you to be able to buy vistas that you could stick on the walls of your Supergroup Base that would show a windowbox of an in-game zone (totally faked), so that you could deem your base as existing in that zone. The aritsts claimed they couldn’t make it look good, so they nixed the idea in the planning stage. I’m still sad.
 
A) Shiny bases exist to get blown up (cf. Tyrant’s Tower, and every action movie with a cool base ever -- how many Helicarriers are they going to go through at S.H.I.E.L.D.?). I’m sure this would have happened to the Moonbase, should we have ever gotten there.
 
Q) Did you guys have any plans for future storylines involving S.A.M. (Superpowered Activities Monitoring) or FBSA (Federal Bureau for Super-Powered Affairs)? (@Scitenik)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There would have probably been a time in the future where we had to do our “Government Taking Control of Supers” storyline, but that wasn’t in the next few issues planned (that was all Battalion).
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - S.A.M., for the record, was intended to be annoying and redundant, like any good overfunded government program. Some group decided that they didn’t like how FBSA ran things and figured they could annoy the piss out of Congress enough to warrant them slipping in a loophole to give S.A.M. traction and legal authority. This was intended to make friction and provide a hook later for some government vs. government infighting.
 
Q) Were there any plans for Praetorian zones after Night Ward? Or in continuing the Resistance/Loyalist storylines in the Primal Zones (similar to the arcs that were available in the i24 beta that involved the fallout from Tyrant's Trial)? (@Scitenik)
 
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - We thought about filling out Praetoria to 50, including going out into the Hamidon Wastes, but it was hard to justify it given concerns about Praetoria fatigue and the fact that Issue 24 spelled out the world’s fate.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Yeah, players made it clear that they were getting sick of Praetoria, so we expedited its demise.
A) John Hegner (Protean) After working on Praetoria for nearly 4 years, I was getting a bit sick of it too. Though, we did have a plan to take players to Neo Tokyo at one point for 40+ content.
 
Q) Was the Prime/main universe the only one with Kheldians? It always seemed strange that they never showed up ‘canonically’ in multiversal arcs. (@Tab)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Battalion’s existence ties directly with why Kheldians are on Earth. Battalion doesn’t exist in other universes like it does in ours, hence why Kheldians never play a role in multidimensional stories.
 
Q) Were there plans in the making for a special event for this year, 10 year anniversary of the game. And is it possible to get the badge for this (@Dark Energon)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We hadn’t got to this point yet in our planning.
Q) Can you explain how the CoS strongmen were recruited/created? One arc suggested they were dead, but the wiki talks about their loyal service.  (@Sooner)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The dead can be extremely loyal.
 
Q) Why were the remaining members of  W.I.S.D.O.M.,  Rose Star and Spark Blade never added to the game?  Were there plans to add them?  Also, what is W.I.S.D.O.M. an acronym for? (Peacemaker - copied from Titan forums by Felderburg)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Art time to do their costumes.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Pretty much. They had elaborate costumes that didn’t justify the art time needed to put them into the game. And I have no recollection of what WISDOM stood for, but it was probably something Korean.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I strongly supported having Rose Star step up her game to fill in for Statesman as primary tank on the Freedom Phalanx. I thought it would be badass to have her take the hits and show Spark Blade and the other gents that she doesn’t need protecting, but the backup is nice to have.
 
Q) Did Katie Douglas survive the destruction of Praetoria - and if she did, was she going to appear in any further content? (Golden Girl - copied from Titan forums by Felderburg)
 
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Katie Douglas did survive everything and was part of the Praetorian refugees who arrived on Primal Earth. I had an idea that she would one day join the New Praetorians if the Praetorian Aurora Borealis ever left it.
 
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Katie Douglas is such a fun character for me. She evolved from what was intended to be a glimpse into the life of a seer and became pretty much the poster child for Praetoria and gained a cult following. Definitely psychic manipulation going on there.
 
Q) I've got one more - when the 5th Column returned, during some of their street fights with the Council, a 5th Column soldier would sometimes unfavorably compare the Council's base on Striga with their own secret base, which they claimed was in the heart of the city - where was it located, and was it going to play a role in any future content? (Golden Girl - copied from Titan forums by Felderburg)
 
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Weird, I don’t recall that. I mean, the 5th Column base was on the moon, why would they claim otherwise?}}


==See Also==
==See Also==

Revision as of 15:31, 28 April 2014

Overview

The Lore AMA (Ask Me Anything), or "Loregasm", is a series of documents document created by Positron to answer questions City of Heroes players had about the game's story following the Sunset announcement. In the thread announcing its creation, Positron stated that anything it contains "SHOULD be considered canon when concerning anything to do with Issue 24 and previous. Anything after that is speculative and should be treated as such. We'll note in the answer if it's anything different." On September 18th, 2012, Positron posted a link to the first Lore AMA as a Google Doc in a City of Heroes forums thread.

In an interview of Positron and War Witch at OnRPG discussing the closure of the game, Positron stated that he would do yearly AMAs as long as people had questions:

MeticulousMeta: There are still a lot of questions after the Lore AMA. Is there any chance of getting another?

Matt: I’ll make a deal: I’ll do AMA’s about CoH lore every April 28th until the questions stop coming in. I’ll give more details as we get closer to that date, and I can’t promise everyone who should be involved will be.

After taking questions in a now closed Google Doc, the first of the yearly AMAs was announced at OnRPG on May 3rd, 2013, and released as another Google Doc.

City of Heroes AMA 1 (2012)

The first Lore AMA was linked in a forum post by Positron titled "Loregasm" and includes a key of the answering developers' initials:

City of Heroes AMA (part 1?)

That's a link to the doc, in case these boards get shut down, and because I don't want to clean it up for our forum posting format (if someone ELSE does, feel free to pad your postcount).

Some answers are not satisfying. Some answers are made up, and that answer only exists in that doc. I tried to get everyone who was involved in the stuff at the end to answer the questions as best they could.

MM: Matt Miller (Positron)
JH: John Hegner (Protean)
JAH: Jeff Hamilton (Arbiter Hawk)
SM: Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon)
RG: Ryan Greene (Viridian)
TS: Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion)

If there is a miracle and somehow CoH is saved, we reserve the right to change any and all answers given in the doc, to maintain suspense and surprise.

The Lore AMA itself at its time of release is as follows:

Lore AMA

City of Heroes AMA 2 (2013)

After taking questions in an open Google Doc, the first of the yearly AMAs was announced at OnRPG on May 3rd, 2013, and released as a closed Google Doc. In most cases, the name of the dev giving an answer is listed after the answer. The devs that answered are:

Editor's Note:

This is the most likely list of developers who answered AMA 2, as there are multiple devs with some of those first names.

Some questions do not have a dev name, and it can be assumed that they were answered by Positron unless the context indicates otherwise. Several questions were unable to be answered, and are marked as "Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)." It is unknown if they will be taken up at the next AMA, or if players will have to re-ask those questions.

The second Lore AMA at its time of last revision (May 7, 2013) is as follows:

CoH Loregasm, 2013 edition

City of Heroes AMA 3 (2014)

An unofficial thread was started on the Titan Network forums for gathering questions. Positron was contacted and said: "I plan on doing it a bit differently this year. Doc will only be up for a short window." On April 17, 2014, at 8:45 AM PDT, Positron posted a Google Doc that he was left open for only 24 hours. Positron also put in some general rules for asking questions, largely prohibiting questions not related to the game's lore:

Original 2014 rules for posting

Following the initial 24 hour period, there were 76 questions. A copy of the document seven minutes before its takedown for answering can be found in a Google Doc. Positron noted in a tweet on April 23rd, 2104, that all question for the 2014 AMA had answers.

On April 28th, 2014, the tenth anniversary of City of Heroes, Positron released the answered questions as a Google doc.

The third Lore AMA at its time of last revision/release (DATE) is as follows:

CoH Lore Questions 2014

See Also

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