Guen

You never get it, do you, kiddo?

Take a look at the responses to this post, and check out how your story moves people. You haven't lost your touch! You had it from day one. From the moment Silver Dragon and Mal entered the Dream World, I was hooked. Your spelling sucks, your grammar is even worse, but you can tell a story like no one else I have ever met. And while I appreciate the lovely compliments that you've given me in your initial post, I will once again state that I did not save your life. Neither did an MMO.

You did that.

Yes, the game brought us together. Yes, I moved you out and helped you learn to live on your own, but the rest was you. If you want to see a hero, you need look no further than the mirror. I may have helped you move out of a basement. But you, through your stories, moved yourself out of a far darker place. In a way, it was a lot like the way we used to team. I did my best to try to soothe your wounds. But you are the one who fought the battles.

Listen, I know that you never thought much of your stories, but they touched people. Just ask Spack, or Blastblaze, or Aaron, or anyone else who really took the time to read them and let them in. The struggles you were going through in your real life lent your stories a sense of reality, despite the fact that they were, as you put it, "Fictional stories about pixelated characters." A story, be it written, played on a movie screen, or whatever the medium, can have a lot of power. It can make us laugh or cry, make us forget for a moment that all we've got in the cupboard is cheap pasta and that our boss is a jerk. And the stories we did together did that for us both.

City of Heroes provided you with a platform where you could launch and learn to fly. I know it hurts now to see it going. But you are more than strong enough now that you can fly on your own.

Silver Dragon was your hero. You are mine. I'm proud of you, kid.

Oh, and one more thing, if it matters. When I was sending those e-mails, I was checking the character's e-mail, to see if they showed up. I was worried that, as I was sending them to myself, they'd just go back to the same character I was sending them from. But they never showed.

So, no chance of getting it all back, huh? Wonderful. Don't remember exactly when it was, when did the e-mail system come out? That's what I'd been waiting for, precisely for this reason. The first day you could e-mail items/influence, I did it, and deleted the character.

I don't understand what you're saying about the e-mail. I told you I am computer illiterate.

And seeing as how I've had problems since CoH beta, I didn't expect anything would be resolved. Just glad I can finally ask questions, six years later.

I had a pre-order of City of Heroes. As in, when this game first came out. And I got to see the very first Rikti invasion over my husband's shoulder, because from the start there were problems.

Got into the game, finally, by making another account, because my pre-order account didn't exist, according to whatever computer my computer was talking to. Yet, when I made a working paid account, there was my original account! I actually was watching my credit card bill to see if I was being billed for an extra account, but nothing. And yet, I never got the pre-order bonus, one of the "prestige sprints" that came as vet rewards later, until I got it as a vet reward.

Naturally, I petitioned. And got an e-mail, telling me I should post on these boards for help. Except that I still didn't exist, not in any form, my original pre-order or my new paying account. I could play, but I couldn't access the forums. So all communication was via e-mail. And this issue has not been addressed for six years.

But hey, who needs to forum troll. I went on, enjoying the game. Until now, when the automated e-mail robot started bouncing my e-mails back to me, insisting that I reply between two lines. Except I can't reply between two lines, because my reply button gives me a nice blank e-mail body to type in, sans whatever I'm replying to. Yeah, I'm computer illiterate, so I was pretty stuck.

Meanwhile, I'd e-mailed myself all the influence (8 figures worth) and the rare salvage I had on one character, just before deleting that character. And it all predictably vanished. I got an e-mail saying there was a hiccup in the server or something and that it should be there, but it's not.

So, SDragon showed me how to get in here, six years later. Any idea what happened with that influence and salvage? Should I mourn it and move on? I gave up on ever getting my account fixed about five years ago.