Question for those of you who might be more familiar with CoH's coding than I am (or just more in the know about these things):
As we all recall, in order to switch sides from Hero to Villain, one would have to run their toon first to Vigilante and then to Rogue, finally becoming a Villain. (And vice versa.)
Was this the way it had to work mechanically, or just by developer caveat? Could one theoretically switch from Villain to Vigilante? Or Rogue back to Villain, or the like, if the proper "flags" were switched through the course of a suitably designed story arc?
In a similar vein, I know that once you moved from the Rogue Isles to Paragon City as a Rogue or Villain, all of your contacts from the RI or PC (respectively) would "shut off" and you'd lose those alignment missions. This part, I'd imagine, was definitely hardcoded and couldn't be easily gotten around, but it seems to me that there were nevertheless some "universal" contacts- like DJ Zero (at least that's my recollection; I may be wrong.)
Could special Rogue or Vigilante contacts have thus been added for whom Rogues/Vigilantes would have retained their contacts after moving between Red and Blue sides, thus allowing for cross-side story arcs for characters of those alignments?
