The Micro-manager comes to Europe

The Micro-manager has accepted a promotion, sideways of course, that has sent him out of the US to the EU. Reluctantly taking some retraining in the process energy now pulses out of him when asking for status updates, instead of fiery bursts. All his abilities to irritate and annoy for long stretches of time are still based on his remarkable willpower, though.

It hasn't taken long to become comfortable with the new workplace, as it is quite similar to the old. Indeed, the international offices of any company can seem familiar once you've been with the company long enough, and The Micro-manager's relocated offices are even located in areas of the same name: Mercy Island, Port Oakes, Cap Au Diable. Before the end of the first week he was asking everyone to go ahead and come in at the weekend, even on Sunday for a team-building exercise that ended up with only a few ugly disfigurements and one amputation. All in all, quite a success.

There are always a few troublemakers, though, and for The Micro-manager these are the Circle of Thorns and the Mu agents of Arachnos. Some Circle of Thorns employees have an aura that imposes an accuracy debuff on those close by, and as the Micro-manager is quite obviously a hands-on kind of fellow the debuff affects him for as long as it is active. This is quite frustrating, as I end up trying to point at the screen where the Circle of Thorns should be clicking with their mouse but, with the loss of accuracy, point in the wrong place.

Spending a lot of time with the same mobs and getting nowhere is frustrating, but even the Circle of Thorns can learn a lesson in irritating villains from Mu agents. The Mu drain endurance from nearby people, mostly by talking about their weekend or pets insufferably, right to the point where you have no endurance left and barely have enough energy to walk away from them. It's one thing to be continually trying to throw your coffee mug at someone, it's another not to be able to lift it in the first place. The Mu agents leave me powerless whilst they prattle on about little Timmy's performance as the sheep in the school play.

It's lucky that I can gain inspiration and ask them if the more annoying employees if they could move their desks down in to the basement, where I can eventually ignore them and continue with the important tasks of ensuring people are reminded about the TPS cover sheets. And so The Micro-manager's power grows.

I'm not sure if there are any differences between the clients for the US and EU servers, as I am under the impression that the game's loader is the only different downloaded needed to access the different servers. Either way, it seems that playing City of Villains using Crossover Games on my Mac crashes a little more frequently on the EU server. This could be a coincidence, or down to perception issues, and it is still possible to play for a significant amount of time without crashing, as well as Crossover Games actually making it possible to play City of Heroes and City of Villains on a Mac with little fuss. With any luck, the planned commitment for Codeweavers to officially support City of Heroes will bring improvements in stability soon.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: advocate, city of villains, crossover games, the micro-manager