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A Games Demise (a repost 1 year on)

Posted by alipuk on October 11, 2013 in Me |

I posted this just a little over a year ago following the news that City of Heroes was closing,and I thought that I would repost it here In Memorium.

Sadly I heard the other day that a game that was so much a part of my life a few years ago is to close. No not WoW, but City of Heroes. A place that I got to know so well from The Hollows to Portal Corporation, from Freedom Plaza out to Croatoa, these places meant so much to me

I was at a LAN when I first came across the game, one of the insomnia series, I was annoyed that they only had servers for the Americans and only took US Dollars as payment. Then 5 months after that I found out they were releasing the game over here in the UK and Europe with 4 dedicated servers.

What happened next was a revelation, I bought the game installed it on my AMD powered machine, and my eyes opened to this big city called Paragon.

This started one of the best things to happen in my life.

I sat down and decided to play a female character (after all, who wants to look at a mans arse as he runs around), and I chose to make her a healer with psionic powers, and thus the amazing Ace of Diamonds was born

I played the intro missions in the initial zone and hit the heady heights of level 5. It was time to move on to the next zone, The Hollows.

This is where the second greatest thing happened to me, I was invited into a Super Group called the Femme Fatales. Eventually by the time I had stopped playing that night I was able to first hover then fly over the hollows, and I had hit double digits on my level! I had managed to team with other people and I had been promoted up through the ranks of the Femmes so that I could invite people to the SG.

Playing over the next few months we recruited to the SG, Pyra, Proximty, and Starstorm, and the foundation of one of the best community’s I have been involved with was formed.

Whilst I was playing I used to regularly team with people, and through this teaming I met Poison Spine (Peter) and Fae (Frida), who have become some of my closest friends.

Eventually Ace of Diamonds hit 50, so then I created her sisters Ace of Hearts (Illusion/rad Controller) Ace of Clubs (katana/invuln Scrapper) and Ace of Spades (claws/regen scrapper). After a while all of these hit 50 as well. Then came the themed Super Groups. The best of these was the Reservoir Dolls and all there missconnotations.

Then CoV arrived, and out came the villains. Cascade Failure was my Brute. An electric/electric behemoth who had severe mana issues. Then there was my Master Mind, Molly Coddle, who had a small gang of ninjas at her command and they proceeded to tear up the isles.

More and more heroes followed including, Ace of Base (fire/fire blaster), Matris Delaigo (twin weapons/invuln scrapper), and Hamelil (dark/dark scrapper). Slowly I started to play the game less and less, and eventually stopped all together.

After just over 3 years of playing the game I hung up my cape and moved onto other MMO’s. I tried Warhammer online, Eve, and even WoW. NONE of these games had the community or support that I had encountered in CoH, in fact I believe you will never ever find that community spirit in any MMO.

Maybe it’s because we were playing heroes and were all on the same side, perhaps it was just we were all new and relied on each other. Whatever caused the community spirit I wish it could be coded into other games so that they are as easy and fun to play.

So come November Paragon city will be no more and a good slice of my life, and my characters Will have disappeared into the ether, though I know some screen shots will be available and some of my characters will still be visible for everyone to see on Peters site, random dice. So have a look and see if you recognise the old guard of Defiant.

Here’s to you, you defenders of freedom, the creators of mayhem, my fellow players. I am sure we will bump into each other in another game.

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