Chad Gulzow-Man

...

It was a Paragon Studios project. I'd already inferred that from the very beginning.

It's Tuesday, and my heart is broken.

Thank you to everyone who's been using this thread for Paragon Market information, and an extra big thank you to all who have made comments, suggestions and error corrections over the last year. I am truly grateful that I was able to serve the fantastic community of City of Heroes, even in this small sense.

I remember when the switch to CoH Freedom was first announced last summer. I remember being shocked and outraged at the very idea of CoH becoming a "Free 2 Play" game. But as that shock wore off and I re-read Positron's message again (and again... and again...), I realized that Freedom was actually a tremendous opportunity for both the players and the developers to enjoy new content and experiences. I let go of my trepidation and never looked back. I believed--I STILL believe--in City of Heroes: Freedom.

As some of you may remember, I practically became an activist for the changeover. I poured over every bit of info I could find, memorizing details and repeating them in every thread that had confused questions and negative emotions. I participated in every Freedom Friday on Facebook from the initial one all the way until Freedom's launch, and even a few beyond; I wanted to make sure that the "easy" questions were taken care of, so that the community reps could focus on the tougher ones.

I remember coming up with a brief list that showed how many character slots a Premium player would have after the switch to Freedom, and that Positron liked it so much that he copied it for an official post. (Vindication! ) Not only that, but he remembered me when I met him at Comic Con a few weeks later. (I don't think I'll ever forget the looks that he and Zwill gave me when they realized that my superhero name was my actual name, Chad Gulzow, with "-Man" tacked on the end.)

As Freedom neared release and I received a closed beta invite (believe it or not, I was usually either in the last or second to last wave of beta invites, and on several issues I was never invited at all), a discussion between Snow Globe, Zombie Man and myself led to the first Paragon Market spreadsheet, which still exists out there; someone posted a link to it a few months ago in this very thread. I don't really know how to describe how I felt then--I was working with Snow Globe and Zombie Man, two of the biggest names in the CoH community, on a community project! If I recall correctly--and no offense if I get any of this wrong, guys--Snow Globe did most of the work on the original spreadsheet, including all the data manipulation and adding a real-time Paragon-Points-to-Euro/GBP calculator (which was changed to the static numbers Paragon chose to use for the live version of the spreadsheet in this thread), and Zombie Man and I filled in the majority of the data, and I did most of the formatting (arranging columns, setting up borders, etc).

With the live release, a lot of the pricing info had been changed and things had been reorganized a bit, so we decided to start a new spreadsheet and just leave up the old one for reference. I kind of took charge at that point and did nearly everything for the current version--most of the data, the formatting, setting up the sale and new release tabs, this thread--but I still made sure that Snow Globe and Zombie Man had full access to the spreadsheet. I never really discussed it with them, but I hope there were no negative feelings... I just figured they were both already busy with other community projects, and that any monkey on a typewriter could copy an item listing from the game into a spreadsheet, so why should they need to bother with it?

But thank you, Snow Globe and Zombie Man, for all the work you put into the original version of the spreadsheet, and for everything else you do and have done for the community. *round of applause*

Before I wrap up, I also want to give a shout out to my friend Roderick, who has both been active in educating people about the switch to Freedom and in keeping up with the releases on the Paragon Market. He's been posting the information on a Facebook board we're both active on, and whenever I've had to work on a Tuesday morning, he's been an incredibly reliable source of information that has made my updates in this thread a lot easier.

So again, thank you everyone for just being here to read this. If by some miracle we earn a reprieve from City of Heroes' death sentence, I will jump right back onto this spreadsheet and continue updating it. It has been an honor to serve this community.

Someone linked it to me on Facebook a few hours ago. It is a tremendously well-written article.