Dollhouse

But...but...at least half of my existing characters' costumes are already all black...

I've played since right about at launch, so there have been a fair few of these moments over the years. They're a big part of what's kept me around, too: you get to feel like a superhero!

Just one of many CMoA memories:

On my primary D3, her being new to Peregrine Island and doing a bit of streetsweeping (and this is back around, oh, I5 or so). Dove into a full-size spawn of red-con Nemesis, which were always more of a challenge since you can't stop them with Fearsome Stare. But Spookie had 'em wallowing in tar, caught up in tentacles, and ToHitDeBuffed all to hell...and was whittling them down while she dealt with what incoming damage there was with Twilight Grasp. About halfway through the process, I get an incoming /tell: "How are you not dead???" I replied, "Well...I make 'em miss a lot."

Grinned my fool head off for about half an hour after that one...and I've never forgotten it.

Ms. Lackey is a very regular player of the game to this day (as in "several times a week, schedule permitting"). Just like so many of us, she's fighting for something she loves.

Highly unlikely. What's kept me subscribing for the last couple-three years now was a roster of much-loved characters (well...that and the many good friends I've made in the game). There's something about re-rolling characters that makes it hard for them to ever seem the same, to seem "real." At least there is for me, and I've tried several times. It would be even worse if some scum-sucking varmint took my names before I could get them!

Simply magnificent...

I popped back in, on a free-to-play basis (money's really tight right now), and have been trying to get back up to speed with the game. I played through Beta and for six months after launch.

I liked many aspects of the game then, and I'm remembering those aspects now. I actually enjoy the combat system, particularly how it allows you to configure your screen to display a reticule and auto-target the (targetable) object closes to center-of-screen (under the reticule). Somewhat like an FPS targeting system, which I've always preferred over tab targeting.

I also like the free-form character progression, and when I can afford the paid sub, I'm looking forward to playing my freeform characters again. A couple of those were re-creations of CoX characters, so as a roleplayer, I'll enjoy working up their reason for being in a different world and so forth. All dependent on what ends up happening to my beloved Paragon City, of course!

One of my big objections previously was the overly campy feel of the game world. It was so over-the-top that it often seemed like I was playing The Tick Online. Bit of an immersion killer for someone like me, who's not really much of a comic book fan and who approached the CoX world from a somewhat different basic angle. Fortunately, much of the content in CO that's been developed since I left seems to have toned that down quite a bit.

I don't find CO's engine to produce the wonderfully fluid movement and sense of mass and "real" physics that CoX's does. "City" is still the best MMO I've ever played for that, the best for "kinetic immersion." CO's better than the MMO average for that...just not as good as CoX.

The welcome from the community over there has indeed been very warm. I had a character configuration issue, posted to their forum, and had several attempts to help follow on in pretty short order. There are several "welcome" threads, too.

I agree with much of what has been said abut TSW in this thread, good and bad. TSW was, when it was still very early in development, literally the MMO of my dreams. Perfect setting, heavily story-driven, and at that point it was going to be FPS-style reticule targeting (which I overwhelmingly prefer to traditional MMO tab targeting). They worked hard to foster a sense of player committment to one of the opposing factions, and to play up the idea of the game's happenings actually going on in the real world, under the radar.

I was annoyed (to say the least) when they abandoned the reticule targeting. It was, apparently, the right decision to make: their engine couldn't handle it w/o serious performance problems. But sheesh...if tiny little independent Fallen Earth could do it, why not Funcom?

I looked forward to Beta, and got a pretty early invitation. I was pleased that all my hopes for the game's atmosphere and immersion potential were realized. It's roleplayer heaven in that regard (although as Sam points out, there's not a ton of scope outside the official canon...). The story writing is absolutely top shelf, the cutscenes are the best I've seen in an MMO, and the graphics look good to me.

However, the character creator is not only limited, it really is hard to get a character that's actually attractive (or notably ugly, for that matter). The finished avatars are just bland. The combat system is dull (and glitchy on my system...more on that in a sec). And some of the communication and team-building tools are pretty poorly done (or absent).

The big dealbreaker for me, though, was that despite doing all kinds of things to optimize the configuration, I just couldn't get the game to run acceptably on my three-year-old machine. I'd have put up with the other things mentioned in order to have the good parts...but performance was so bad that it pretty much ruined any chance of enjoying the game. It's hard to feed my inner immersion junkie when the game kept devolving into a slide show.

I'll give it a try when my finances get better and I can build a new gaming box. For people with reasonably good machines, I also suggest taking the three day trial and having a look.

For me, I'm going to play out whatever time we have left in this game, and I've re-installed CO. Going to need to buy a sub there to be really happy with it (the f2p options are kind of annoying), and I never enjoyed it as much as I do City...but it'll work for my spandex fix. I also play GW1...for my relatively rare fantasy fix!

Thank you so much for over 7 years of fun. Thank you devs for, well...everything. But thank you in particular for some of the very best NPC dialogue (and other in-game content) that has ever existed in any game, anywhere. More than once I laughed so loud that I scared my cat...

As much of a gut punch as this was for us players, our livelihoods don't depend on this game. Wishing you as soft a landing as possible.

I was just wasting time on Facebook and saw the status update post. Hit me like a punch in the gut...

I remember my very first foray into Atlas Park on my very first character, more-or-less at launch, my first MMO experience ever (previously strictly a FPS player). Wandering around like a slack-jawed tourist, killstealing because I didn't know any better, and blurting out in-character nonsense on Broadcast. The archetypal nooblet...

I remember getting a character to lvl14 for the first time and being utterly amazed at how much fun Superjump was.

I remember founding the Carnival of Light roleplayer SG on Triumph, based on the tiny snippets of lore available about that organization at the time, and trying to make plausible "carnie" costumes out of what was available in the creator at the time. Smiling smugly right now at Festival's signature white and gold motif...created years before that look became official canon.

I remember the lonely life of a Dark/Dark Defender back when teams only wanted Empaths and Bubblers (despite D3s actually being hideously overpowered at the time). I remember my joy when getting invited to a team that had apparently been struggling and the first thing I heard in Team chat being "It's going to be okay: I found us a Dark Defender."

I remember the golden era of Firetanks.

I remember the rage avalanche over ED.

I remember being part of the first successful all-Defender, all-Defender-ATs (there were only eight at the time) STF.

I remember getting the MSTF badge...on a Stalker.


And so very much more...

I loved The Secret World's phenomenal setting and atmosphere, but the game had some pretty serious performance issues on my three-year-old machine, so I haven't bought it after the beta ended. The combat system is disappointing and the physics engine is (like most MMO games) inferior to CoH, but it's still a roleplayer's dream game. I'll give it a go if I can manage to budget a new gaming box.

I might go back to Fallen Earth. That's another game that really worked for me from an immersion standpoint, and having real (that is, reticule, not tab) targeting in combat was a huge point in its favor. The constant parade of technical problems with the game? Not so much. I need to see if they've made progress, though. I could easily end up back there, at least for a while, if they finally got things to work properly after that botched port to a different server architecture.

I didn't hate CO...but I didn't love it, either. Some of my CoH friends are considering it, and those people are a big reason I've been here so long. We'll see...

GW2 is a possibility, too (although again, I may need a new computer). I play GW1, although not a lot lately, and I enjoy it.

This still feels like a punch in the gut...

Perma-death in the comic book superhero genre is about as rare as plausible physics and tasteful female costumes.

Just sayin'...

When I still has two accounts, I think I had something like 130 characters. Not sure what the count is today. I think I have something like twenty-five 50s (although only about a half-dozen are level-shifted...don't really care for the Incarnate content).

Some of the other games I play have very limited numbers of available character slots...and it's quite an adjustment for me!