Part 18: Architect: LOST DOG - WeX Majors

Among many of the things City Of Heroes does that no other MMO really does to this day, Is the Story Creation System. Introduced in Issue #14 2009, Architect Entertainment allowed players to create not only simple missions like "Fight against a custom hero I made" but create entire story-arcs, complete with customized text of every sort the game allows. In fact, the creation system was so intense and in-depth the Development Team missed one very important issue:
Players are going to exploit anything they can for more xp.
Thanks to multiple reasons that I won't get into in this LP, a majority of players didn't really want to make new content, they just wanted to get past the beginning sucky levels, and move on to becoming a Fire-Emitting, Giant-Weapon-Wielding, Demi-God.
Within days of AE being released, missions designed solely for farming XP became The #1 Reason to head to the building. People who had been playing the game since Issue #01 and never wanted to see the inside of City Hall again, instead became intimately familiar with the trek from the steps below Miss Liberty to the door of AE.
Naturally, this upset the devs a bit, and the system has been consistently mauled like a batch of silly putty in an attempt to not have players skip every zone up to Talos Island. Oddly enough, some good has come from this. You have an entirely different beginning hero experience now than you did just 5 issues ago. However, the possibility AE had as a content delivery system was forever fucked.
However, that certainly hasn't stopped people from creating their own Super-Stories! I'm going to try and show off some of the highlights that AE has available. Some of these will be amazingly intricate and serious tales. Most will be incredibly silly. Speaking of Silly, let's get on to our very first story where we'll definitely need some help...perhaps a bit of...representation.


That's right baby, Rad Ronnie The Rep here, Agent To The Stars, and your host for this very special mission. See, even here in The Rogue Isles, we care about our pets. So when I heard a lil tyke named Billy lost his pet dog over in that shit-hole Steel Canyon, I knew that he was going to need some help. Unfortunately, the amount of actual heroes has gone down lately, but I managed to scrap together some peeps who wouldn't mind work no matter how small.


Granted, they weren't the most...upbeat of clients I've had, but you take what you can get these days right? So we head into the portal to Shit Canyon.


Whatya know, as soon as we show up, we find some nutjobs trying to kidnap a damn Warwolf. I mean, how dumb do you have to be to think *this* is a dog? Like any other dog they've seen lately looks anything like this?


So then after we "rescue" the..."dog", we find that they've already been quite busy.


Don't worry, Ol' Ronnie's got this one under control!


Uh...Hmmm...It's like trucks can't take a simple fireball to the gas tank. Poor Doggies never saw it coming. Oh well, time to tell these nutballs to lay off the pups!


So after dispatching those wackos, we try to find the rest of the trucks. Except, turns out these screwballs weren't the most attentive of thieves.


Hogs?


Bar-B-Q Time! Ol' Ronnie's always got a back-up plan!


Logs?


Well Hell, Ronnie knows exactly what to do with them!


Frogs? Really? Now we're just getting silly.


FOG?! Really? Really? Like how do you even...



Ronnie's clearly got to call some people...one sec.



Right. So, where was I?


The Dog Nappers! Right!


Time to Interrogate The Leader!


Or set fire to her. Whichever gets me some more info on Scruffy!


So it turns out that the clowns already shipped him off to some weird cave.


Aw man, I hate caves. When you're an irradiated slightly-leperous Super-Agent like myself, you really don't want to have to worry about things like headroom. So I decided to just stick to my new clients, and let them do most of the work.


They weren't too happy about it, but that's why they're the clients and I'm Ronnie The Rep baby!


Oh hey, Scruffie's right here in the beginning of the cave! Sweet, we can just hop in and rescue the lil...


massive dog in a suit jacket?



Yea, that's...unusual. Guess we'd better figure out who has the capability to capture something like that.


Man, these damn dognappers are all over the place. Go get 'em Death Girl!


More crates! Ugh. Well, Ol' Ronnie's willing to make up for his mistake with the truck. Veeeerry slowly now... Just a little bit of fire to pop the seams...


Aww dammit!


The scream of those dogs, that ain't gonna help Ol' Ronnie sleep tonight that's for sure. Then again, neither is this Arrow To The Spine


So finally, we run into the chick who's in charge of this operation.


Don't worry girls, Ol' Ronnie's gonna add some light to this situation!

Yea, that's how you...


Oh great...Well, turns out that these chicks were from some Alt Dimension where all the dogs died, and they had like...a Cuteness Deprivation thing goin. So they were attempting to bring in some dogs to save their world from the complete lack of Puppy Calendars and shit like that.


Well, the good news is, Billy got *his* dog back! So that's a win at least, right?

Think Ol' Ronnie's gonna go hang around in Pocket D. Think I'm gonna go get me a house cat. People always say there's a bunch of cats in The D. They call em "Furry" though, so I hope I ain't allergic.