Retrospective
Aug. 31st, 2012 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlI forget when it was, exactly. I know that sometime back in 2002 or 2003, I was sitting around, talking to online people as is my wont, when someone brought up this new MMO they thought I'd like to try out with them. I turned it down at once of course. MMOs were for weird pervy elf lovers, or something. I'd beta-tested a few but never really buckled down and played one. This one was different, they insisted. This one was about superheroes. ... Okay, I was willing to try it. I signed up for a beta code. Eventually I got into beta. I futzed around a little and thought, hey. This is good. This is in fact really good.
It took a while before I bought it. The game launched in April 2004, my account was activated in May 2004.
Since then I've played 4 years, 6 months of City of Heroes. It was worth every damn minute.
City of Heroes was the first MMO I took seriously at all. The first one that had really quick-paced combat, where you didn't sit around and buff between encounters, you just maybe rested a second or two and then charged the next group. It was the game that taught me that crowd-control is incredible if used correctly, that battle-buffing can mean the difference between winning and losing, that when you're playing a melee character you can easily get in way, way over your head.
My first character was Wavestate, a blue-leather-jumpsuit clad aviatrix in goggles who loved to fly and controlled gravity to do it, while using radioactive isotopes in creative ways to weaken foes. That was the first. I soon developed an addiction to the City of Heroes character creator. I made tons of characters, filling up the allowed slots on one server and spilling into another. I'd load the game up and just... make a character, slap together an outfit, and play them for a while.
Mark Rush, who inherited his supervillain grandfather's old cybernetic gloves and decided to use them to punch crime. Stardirt, strange visitor from another planet who became a hero because television told him that is what is culturally expected of strange visitors from other planets. Malicious Muridae, the mouse of a million dollars and endless ninjas, with a gold-plated assault rifle.
Then there were the Tawne Dynasty, a series of catgirls in the same family I made to play with variations on ideas. Marissa Tawne was the matriarch. Merlina Tawne was the brash young cocky mage. Marvin Tawne was her gender-swapped alternate-reality supervillain self. Minerva Tawne wore heavy plate armor and carried a broadsword, dragged forward in time by a spell gone wrong and content to spend most of her time bashing ghosts and goblins in the VR "Mission Architect", the City of Heroes user-created level editor.
I played them for hours, fighting off clockwork robots, exploring the city, earning badges, stopping Nemesis plots.
Hell, it was the first MMO I ever hit level cap on, and of course I posted about it here.
I wandered off and played other MMOs fairly often, once I'd gotten a taste for them. I spent a lot of time in Norrath and Tyria and Azeroth and wherever the fuck Rift takes place and Millenium City and so on. But in the back of my mind I was always ready to drop them and go back to Paragon City, back to the City of Heroes and the City of Villains.
Even right now I have Cheetron V2, a cybernetic cheetah with few morals and fast fists, sitting logged out in the official "Mirror Universe", Praetoria. I have her parked in the city, waiting to experience some of the content I never got around to playing, some of the entire expansion pack I missed. Waiting for when I have time to come back to City of Heroes again.
Today they announced that before the year ends, City of Heroes is shutting down forever.
It took me three tries to get through typing that. I can't believe how absolutely gutted I feel by this. I am in fact crying a little.
4 years, 6 months.
I swear I thought I'd have more time.
It took a while before I bought it. The game launched in April 2004, my account was activated in May 2004.
Since then I've played 4 years, 6 months of City of Heroes. It was worth every damn minute.
City of Heroes was the first MMO I took seriously at all. The first one that had really quick-paced combat, where you didn't sit around and buff between encounters, you just maybe rested a second or two and then charged the next group. It was the game that taught me that crowd-control is incredible if used correctly, that battle-buffing can mean the difference between winning and losing, that when you're playing a melee character you can easily get in way, way over your head.
My first character was Wavestate, a blue-leather-jumpsuit clad aviatrix in goggles who loved to fly and controlled gravity to do it, while using radioactive isotopes in creative ways to weaken foes. That was the first. I soon developed an addiction to the City of Heroes character creator. I made tons of characters, filling up the allowed slots on one server and spilling into another. I'd load the game up and just... make a character, slap together an outfit, and play them for a while.
Mark Rush, who inherited his supervillain grandfather's old cybernetic gloves and decided to use them to punch crime. Stardirt, strange visitor from another planet who became a hero because television told him that is what is culturally expected of strange visitors from other planets. Malicious Muridae, the mouse of a million dollars and endless ninjas, with a gold-plated assault rifle.
Then there were the Tawne Dynasty, a series of catgirls in the same family I made to play with variations on ideas. Marissa Tawne was the matriarch. Merlina Tawne was the brash young cocky mage. Marvin Tawne was her gender-swapped alternate-reality supervillain self. Minerva Tawne wore heavy plate armor and carried a broadsword, dragged forward in time by a spell gone wrong and content to spend most of her time bashing ghosts and goblins in the VR "Mission Architect", the City of Heroes user-created level editor.
I played them for hours, fighting off clockwork robots, exploring the city, earning badges, stopping Nemesis plots.
Hell, it was the first MMO I ever hit level cap on, and of course I posted about it here.
I wandered off and played other MMOs fairly often, once I'd gotten a taste for them. I spent a lot of time in Norrath and Tyria and Azeroth and wherever the fuck Rift takes place and Millenium City and so on. But in the back of my mind I was always ready to drop them and go back to Paragon City, back to the City of Heroes and the City of Villains.
Even right now I have Cheetron V2, a cybernetic cheetah with few morals and fast fists, sitting logged out in the official "Mirror Universe", Praetoria. I have her parked in the city, waiting to experience some of the content I never got around to playing, some of the entire expansion pack I missed. Waiting for when I have time to come back to City of Heroes again.
Today they announced that before the year ends, City of Heroes is shutting down forever.
It took me three tries to get through typing that. I can't believe how absolutely gutted I feel by this. I am in fact crying a little.
4 years, 6 months.
I swear I thought I'd have more time.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-31 09:05 pm (UTC)I hope some pirate servers show up after or something so people can still play this piece of history, and punch people off roofs.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-01 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-01 03:43 pm (UTC)Tried logging in, but I really couldn't make myself play. I ended up just talking in general chat (incredibly rare for me) and logging out with a protest sign in front of Atlas Park.
I'm taking this kind of really hard.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-31 10:37 pm (UTC)They've been going since 2004, eight years is a pretty good run. Maybe the community will find some way to keep things going afterwards.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-31 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-01 01:44 am (UTC)I wonder if there's any possibility they might open it up, and let folks run their own servers.. probably not, but who knows?
no subject
Date: 2012-09-01 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-01 03:44 pm (UTC)On a potential upside, there's people in the community who are looking into what might be involved in acquiring the Paragon Studios IP and setting up their own servers, but I have no clue there.