Any old COH players out there?

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One of the saddest moments in my life was the day I learned one of the greatest MMOs in history was going to close down. City Of Heroes. I'm going to start taking computer programming and networking courses and I will attempt to create a free private server for all to enjoy. If you support my cause then I thank you and I hope to see you on the server. My character was called Frost Man (level 37, protector) and ny brother was Gravity Shift/Point (level 50, virtue). If you're an old player then post your character's name, level, and the server you used to play on.

yeah, I used to play it myself as well. Hell, I was one of the oldest players; I was there since the very start of the game's beta, back when it was just this perpetual bugsplosion.

Heck if I know how many characters I had.... probably too many. All of them were on the Freedom server, the original beta server. My favorite was a Blaster that had the Sonic powerset. He was a fun one..... specifically set up to be able to take on large groups at once on his own and able to directly fight an archvillain at close range without dying, which I had to do on numerous occaisions when teammates werent paying any damn attention and were fighting other nearby things instead of the archvillain.


That game shutting down.... ugh. It sucked. It sucked HARD. And you kinow, for all of the excuses that NCSoft gave, the central thing that stood out to me was that they "didnt find the right buyer". No. They had PLENTY of offers. Quite a few of them. But they REFUSED all of them. They've constantly avoided giving a real reason for this (and in interviews/articles, they seem to do absolutely anything to avoid even having to mention this part), but the theory that I'd heard was basically something along the lines of a tax write-off, if that's even the right term (which it may well not be, so forgive me if that doesnt make a lick of sense). Regardless of the reason though, they had the chance to hand the game off to someone else.... specifically, the chance to hand it to someone AND GET A BIG BLOB OF MONEY FOR IT, and they refused, instead just letting it die a horrible death. They can ramble all they want about "Oh it wasnt profitable" and all of the other corporate sorts of reasons, but THAT reason is exactly why I dont really believe them and dont trust a damn thing they say.

Granted, they're sorta like EA in that they're NOT a nice company, so none of this was very surprising.

But irritating? Oh yes. There just wasnt another MMO like that one. What drew me into CoH wasnt even the whole superhero bit; the part that grabbed me was how the game handles powers and combat. Combat was ACTIVE. Running around, knocking foes around with different abilities, shifting position frequently; these things dont happen in a normal MMO. Normal MMO combat against normal enemies often just involves hitting the same sequence of skills over and over each time. Or the utter gibberish that is raids in most MMOs, which are hard for non-players to even WATCH, with screens covered in a gazillion random icons and numbers flying everywhere. CoH didnt have any of these problems though. Bloody excellent, it was.

Though, I will say that Champions Online *is* pretty close to that. If there was a "spiritual successor", I'd point at that game, because it has the same feel to it and alot of the same qualities.

But still.... argh. CoH closing down pissed me right the hell off. What was really nasty though was that I'd not played the game for probably 2 years..... but not by choice. I'd developed back/neck/spine issues that, long explanation aside, made it so that I really couldnt use the damn mouse very much at all for awhile. Physical therapy was the fix to this here, but it's a slow process, and only within the last 6 months or so have I been able to really dive back into mouse-based gaming. .....but by then it was too late, for this game. And I'd been all ready to jump back in, too.

Bah. Bah, I say!

I could seriously rant about this all day, but I'll stop here.

I played City of Heroes from June 2004 and was there the day it shut down.

There was so much wrong with what happened that it is difficult to get it all in order.

I have issues about compartmentalizing my online participation in various places, so I am hesitant to reveal identifying information about myself. I did play on Champion primarily, and Virtue secondarily. I had some bouts of play on Victory, Guardian, and Justice but it was always Champion that I spent my time on.

At the end I had approximately 60 characters, but only maybe 20 I was playing to any degree. My level 50s were a Dark/Dark/Body Mastery scrapper, a Dark/Dark/Energy Mastery Defender, a Super Strength/Invuln/Ghost Widow Brute, and a Fire/Kinetic/I forget my epic pool Controller.

I had Kheldians, a night widow, a few masterminds, another controller, more scrappers, a tanker, and a blaster up in the high 30s-40s.

This was the last character I made before the news came out - a heroic Beam Rifle/Time Corruptor:



I'd been waiting to purchase the retro science fiction costume set so I could make this character.

Also, this is my DM/DA scrapper doing the final mission of the Incarnate arc::



A larger version is actually the wallpaper on my computer.

What had happened was I got close enough to activate the portals and then got sidetracked into chatting with people. In that time, hordes and hordes of Rikti spawned. When I finally got around to dealing with them it took about five or six minutes to get through all of them so I could get to the Honoree and the...other person whose name I forget.

The aggro cap is actually being observed. I liked the image for looking like I was actually directly fighting a horde instead of a few at a time. I did have to run around a corner to control things a bit better.

Also: Forum Cartel.

And: The Phoenix Project, City of Titans Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mis ... -of-titans

Looks interesting, and they've already met and exceeded their goal. I hope they succeed and give us a game that is evocative of City of Heroes. I totally miss my characters.

I had a few major characters I liked a lot.

Shang Tso was basically a Lightning/Storm Corruptor and his look was inspired by Raiden and also the lightning guy from the movie Big Trouble In Little China.

Vulkaen was a Fire/Fire Dominator. I used the lizard costume parts to give him a cool Fire Dragon alternate look.

Dr. NightShade was a Plants/Spine Dominator. I gave him a look that was like a mad scientist and an alt costume made of plant and insect parts. That along with the spines gave him a crazy mutated look.

Dr. Xombie: basically another Mad Scientist that was of course a Zombie Mastermind.

I enjoyed this game a lot because of the ridiculously extensive character designer or Mission Architect. Because of these tools, it seemed to me a lot of this games fun came from the other players custom character designs. I really enjoyed that creative part of the game.

I had Frost Man who underwent over five different incarnations before I settled on his final appearance which was a superman-esque look with a a metallic costume using the Diablo design and a snowflake as the main emblem. He was a blaster.

Fahrenheit was the villainous counterpart to Frost Man, he was a fire based corrupter. He wore a tattered trench coat and sunglasses. Essentially Fahrenheit was like the joker if the joker had fire powers and was a mass murderer.

I could spend all day listing the some hundreds of characters my brothers and I made but for now I'll just keep it to my two primary characters. If my comic book kicks off then I will incorporate these characters into my own universe with my own cities and backstories.

For various reasons, I wandered back to the world of Consoles. Recently, I think the massive design of Grand Theft Auto 5 is very impressive. Yet, there is a MMO element to it that feels missing.

I liked how City of Heroes had the split of zones like City of Villains. Or special PVP Zones in between them. In GTA5 everyone on the open map may potentially try to kill you or rob you or just destroy your car.

I think what Rockstar has achieved with world detail is very impressive, but ironically for me almost to realistic. I would love a game like this with Fantasy or Sci-Fi elements and also incorporating many City of Heroes elements like the powers system and characters design.

After my current subscription to XBox Live runs out I'm inclined to sell my machine and try returning to PC gaming.

My current MMO is The Secret World.

I did play some Champions Online, and while I enjoy it for a bit at a time I tend to get sidetracked into other things. I think that often this game is judged far more harshly than it deserves, but it is also not exactly Cryptic's most loved MMO.

Otherwise I play single-player turn-based strategy, real-time strategy, and RPGs. Mostly.

The Secret World is pretty fun I was into it for awhile. It takes a bit too get into and the plot is very confusing, but overall a really fun gameplay system, and a well rounded character creator.

I didn't find the plot confusing because I looked up discussions about the confusing bits on the official forum. Wait, that doesn't contradict you at all. I do love the story, though.

I also like how you can learn all the skills and abilities. I have 100% completion and can use all weapon combinations. My actual gear is focused toward specific roles (Healing primarily, then DPS, and dungeon drops for tanking). I like the flexibility.

And the wardrobe. I like being able to have a wardrobe full of clothes to wear for all occasions.

VIDEODROME:

It's worth giving a go. If you want, I can probably get you a guest code to see what it's like. I think you can buy it for $30, and it doesn't have a mandatory subscription. Also, it has a fairly substantial ex-CoH player base. However, it does have an in-game cash shop. Most of it is nonessentials (clothing, titles) with a few items that have mechanical benefits (like faster ability point earning - not precisely pay to win, though). The DLC issues 5-7 (soon are also on there, and cost a bit - I think $10 each.

Excuse me, they made a comeback! Please see my post here. See how to download it here. There are also youtube videos as well.

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I always know the right thing to say,....AFTER the right time has already passed,....

The place I'm at now has slow internet, but I hope to move soon and check this out.