((As I write this, only Careless Whisper plays in my mind))
I started playing with my brothers Matt @Soupor and Wes @Elegost in late 2005 on Guardian; we all shared two accounts, and I ended up buying my own in August of 2006. We palled around with my buddy Jeremy @Brin Ohmsford for quite some time. Nobody knew me by my original global, which I changed to Ryxx after I rolled him the next January and got him up a few levels, realizing that he was iconic enough to become my new persona. I leveled Ryxx to 50 in my first semester of college with Ele playing on dialup back home on an earth/sonic controller, Demon Duster, even though I pleaded him to roll earth/kin, he refused, condemning me to a very slow stone tank career. With him being on dial-up, we couldn't play with more than one or two other people, usually @Liteon/@Chan or @Kickbot 2.1, without him lagging out. After about 35 or so, his earth powers got to the point that his drops would lag him out, so we had to switch to playing Elegost with me. We hit 50 one day apart.
After about a year of playing (and the parents getting a sprint air card for much faster internet back home) Elegost and I started running RWZ raids after they revamped the zone, which was when we first started getting popular. We brought some new players and friends into our supergroup, @Fyreknight, @Club Bouncer - @Pwnsaucier, @Violet Dark, @Speed Trap, @Summer Heat, @Centralizer, @Raging Nova - @Major Patriot, @Chrysalis, and started playing regularly with a few others who refused to leave their own SGs - @Cozmic, @Masque of Red Death (whom I meet much earlier at a Lusca killing when we healed together), @Blitz Auggen, @The Norm, @Waspie, @Bluejay and @Roderick.
We eventually hooked up and coalition'd with another group of great people, the Intrepid Warriors, who also had their own vent and global channel. I remember both MPs, Flux, Escher, DC, Vanum, Chumly, Enigma Black, Vhassen - Valdy (as Elegost dubbed him), Horatus, Fista, and many other fantastic people that I met there.
After I got 2 or 3 50s, Masque helped get me into farming, and he and Blitz helped me level a fire/kin controller on a new second account I figured I'd need to PL my first. I was highly hypocritical, both being a farmer at a time when powerleveling was largely frowned upon, yet also (being temporarily banned for) pulling giant monsters onto lowbies in portal court who were waiting for free PLs. Elegost flat-out refused to farm with me for YEARS. To this day, he still hasn't rolled a single toon for the purposes of farming, while I have about 7 50s just for it. He also HATES playing kinetics, and only has one such toon - a grav/kin that I rolled on his account (and PLd to 50 without his consent). Although he'd lightened up recently, usually bringing his plant/earth dom, Shambler, to whatever kind of farm I was running at the time - usually plain-old council farming.
After watching a video (I think it was PennyPA who posted it) of an STF being run in less than an hour, we decided to adopt the practice of Speed STF and make that the soul purpose of our SG, as self-proclaimed power-gamers and elitists. We became quite proficient at it, and eventually MoSTF came out and we realized we didn't seem to be getting any deaths, so we started setting for 'Master Of' with awesome successes.
Running our first QMSTF:
We ended up getting some really good run times during a period when most teams had trouble completing the TF at all. and started rolling toons specifically for the purpose of speed runs (mostly /ice defenders). I remember this time fondly; it was somewhere around i11-13. No incarnate abilities to complicate character choices, just a few IOs, team building, tactics, and as Coz would say, playing 'balls out.'
However, my dedication to the game was taking a toll on my personal relationships and my college progress, so I decided to take a break from the game for a while to get my real life back on track. After a few months, I returned to what seemed like a very different game. My SG had pretty much completely disbanded, i14 had dropped just before I took my break and I had COMPLETELY missed meow farming and other dirty leveling exploits.
I did lots of farming in this time, as most of my former allies and many of the IW crew seemed to be sparse, and PLd lots of new characters in AE (sometimes in a single day) with the Mastermind pets staying at 50 even while EXd down to level 1 exploit (fighting level 9 giant monsters, 1-50 in a few hours), bile spray not having a target cap, minesweeping, rikti monkeys, farming leuitenant custom mobs with no ranged attacks (just stand back, fire cages, and pewpew), ambush farming (particularly awesome when reactive first came out and was mega-broken in rain-type powers), and many others.
Life went on, I got married, most of my supergroup WAS my wedding party. @Pwnsaucier (or Pwny / Pony, as I called him) even flew out all the way to Kentucky from California to be there.
@Brin Ohmsford, @.Vertigo/@Soupor, @Ryxx, @Elegost, @Pwnsaucier
I started playing CoH in August 2006, sometime after i6 dropped. I was 17, a senior in high school. Now I'm 24, finished with college, and working at PMEL with the USAF. I'm married with a child on the way. Elegost started at 15, a freshman in high school, and is now 22. He's graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Physics in the spring, and going on to graduate school after that. This game means the world to us; we both grew into adults while playing it. I developed many character traits from my time in this game, leadership being the main one.
This is the only game we have that my brothers, my closest friends, and I all play, so it's how we've been spending time together across 4 different states. There have always been other games, Minecraft, LoL, WoW, MW2, CS:GO, Borderlands, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Dungeons and Dragons: Online, Diablo II and III, but this has been the only one that we all play with the capacity for us to all play together at the same time. I still don't know what we're gonna do after this.
I remember QKaties with Cozmic, Heal farms with DC, badge hunting with Elegost, dueling with Nivra, trading pillboxes with Necrotech_Master, QSTFs with the Sacred Brotherhood, and PVP farming overnight with Masque. I've had countless good times and thousands of hours spent with my favorite group of people in the world. Even if I never played with the majority of you, I will miss the community, the forums, the chat channels, and the fact that any question I ever asked in VF was answered immediately, usually with multiple answers. I don't know how many times I've asked where to pay base rent redside, but I still don't remember where the **** to do that. You have all been there through some very hard and lonely times for me, and I'll never forget you.
I leave with random other things that I happen to have screenshots of:
Random character creator bug
Pocket D party
Making my first 2 bil sale
You should consider getting some hair. It's awesome.
