JohnRobey

I heartily agree, Rangle. More options does equal a better game.

That is something I think I'll miss should I play other MMO's: I loved the humor especially when the dev team ran special events, such as Capt Mako's Shark Week. Memorable lines for me from Capt Mako include: "I ate Woofers!" and "I six-slot Brawl! I hear it's really good!"

As for my being beneath the notice of a business-minded executive, well yeah. But I felt I had good to great customer service from game staff and NCSoft tech support. The only poor customer service I've had to date is No Reply to 2 emails sent their cohsunset account. It's only further confirmation they're not interested in my business and I'm happy that NCSoft doesnt have another product at present that appeals to me, so I have no problem saying good bye to them.

My two cents to this discussion: I never had the sense that either Paragon Studios or NCSoft was laughing at us behind their collective back. The players I knew who after 8/31 quit never or seldom to return (mostly for screenshots) were very emotionally invested and wrote how playing CoH got them thru various rough periods in their lives, how CoH was a mainstay they counted on and thought they could count on due to its duration.

Most maintained at least one subscription, tho a few dropped to F2P/Premium for short term economic reasons and planned to resubscribe. Some had disposable incomes that they could afford to buy things like the canine vanity pet, and had bought every booster pack etc. These guys would still be playing CoH and we'd have daily SG events had the sunset not been announced.

While my friends and I constitute a tiny sliver of a fraction of the player base, we'll remember CoH and NCSoft for quite some time. (One commissioned an oil painting of his favorite toon--how's that for emotional attachment?)

As a newbie MMO player (CoH being the only one I played for more than a few hours and the only one to hold my interest thus far) I'll certainly be both more savvy and wary of MMORPGs and my attachment to them in the future. While I found solo play in CoH interesting enough, it was the community and veteran players who really made CoH special to me. From my first days in Galaxy City and Atlas Park, vet players would look at my badges (or rather my lack of veteran badges) and give me SOs, INF etc. like some informal Welcome Wagon to say Welcome to CoH! Hope you like it as much as we do! It made such a positive impression, I've done my best to "pass the goodwill along" by assisting new players when I came across them.

Maybe this is standard in MMORPGs -- I've tried only LOTRO since starting CoH -- but in CoH buffing one another in passing is common, helping one another is common. In other MMOs that isn't the case. (If it is, let me know which MMO's so I can check those out after 12/1.)

Anyhow, BlueBattler, I'm preaching to the choir since it's clear you and your friends cared a lot about CoH, and so did mine. We're losing something special, no doubt about it. I imagine I'll forget about CoH and NCSoft about the time I forget all about the Star Wars movies, Star Trek TV series, books I love and gaming groups I had superlative times with.

That others aren't as hurt emotionally about this is great--for them! I have friends who still feel devastated by this, though they're moving on, and many are avoiding gaming altogether until the wounds heal.

Congratulations to the Dev Team who've found new employment in the MMO industry. Star Trek Online (per their forum) players look delighted to have a content dev join their MMO. And if Sean "Dr Aeon" McCann is there, I'm even more tempted to check out STO after 11/30. Thank you again, Dev Team, for CoH! Thank you also to the many players who made teaming up a joy!

Thanks, Hit Streak, and thanks Dev Team!! For sure, we CoH fans/players want to have communication. If nothing else, there's Titan Network after these forums are ended. I don't know whether TwitchTV is possible from Titan but I presume youtube and other podcast tech will work there. Best wishes to all. I'm playing CoH until the end/11/30/12 and otherwise hoping the CoH Dev Team invents a better MMO or else that Plan Z's "spiritual successor" gets traction and perhaps attracts some of the dev team.

Thank you and Code Walker for replying to my query. Yeah, most of my characters earned a number of the level 25/30 crafting badges for the extra salvage, thereby memorizing these common IO recipes and usually I'd slot a # of these rather than buying and replacing SOs. It was more cost effective.

Interesting about tracking the # of missions completed on individual characters (and now wondering what that data was for), and I'd always assumed there was lots of tracking for which TFs, arcs were popular and which weren't, etc.

I'm curious about and have been hypothesizing for a couple of years that the auctionhouse market was directly influenced by game design, probably as automatic or semi-automatic programming code, since I never could figure out why certain Common and Uncommon Invention Salvage items would go from plentiful and cheap to few and expensive with some regularity (looked like a 6-8 week cycle on some of these, e.g. Nevermeltng Ice, Titanium Shards, etc.)

I also never understood why one of my Field Crafter characters could make certain level 45 Common IOs (notably End Mod, End Red, Rech Red, Dam, ACC and a few others) price them for a nice profit at 116K INF and find in the next day or two these IOs were bought for 150K-500K. I figured ONLY NPCs (i.e. by game design) would overpay so consistently, which was entirely fine with me and a nice reward for earning the Field Crafter badge.

Can you confirm whether the auctionhouse market was solely player driven, as some have thought, or a hybrid of player action and game design, or what? Thanks!

Hi, I've never met you nor have an informed opinion about what knowledge, competencies or areas of expertise you may have. I wish you well generally simply as a fan and player of City of Heroes.

I agree that shutting down an MMO/killing it isn't the same as murdering another person. I do however disagree with your opinion the loss of city of heroes is not comparable to the loss of a family pet or even family member, since I and others have reported that what we feel/felt IS very like the grief experienced by such personal losses. I am glad however if your own emotional response was not as extreme.

On to "Forever". Notwithstanding caveat emptor (generically, not limited to real estate) and the need to be savvy to potentially misleading but legal advertisement puffery (what an appropriate term!), does "PLAY FREE FOREVER" http://images.mmorpg.com/images/cont..._header_us.jpg mean
1. Play Forever, until your death or the heat-death of the universe, whichever comes first?, OR

2. Forever Free; i.e., you have the option to play for free forever, as long as you/your interest and the game shall endure, with an implied, non-binding pledge not to rescind the Free to Play business model?

If you think it's option 1, i won't call it "stupid" or otherwise use derogatory language; however, I'd always assumed option 2 was what this meant.

LOL too true! I love Lord of the Rings, but found LOTRO less than satisfying. Playing a standard fantasy character pales after having gotten to play various superheroes and villains for a few years.

I never played Guild Wars 1 but my friends who loved GW1 tell me that GW2 isn't nearly as fun, went from raving about how great it was the first two weeks of play to dissing it before 2 months were out. Maybe GW2 will add content or make teaming up easier (the things they dislike about it.) Whatever, GW2 isn't for me. After CoH, I don't know which if any MMO i'll wanna play.

I see I'm not the only one who still enjoys CIVILIZATION.

As to the tally, nope, didn't get any new toon to 50 - nor was that my goal - but I played about a dozen characters on 5 different servers, getting to teamup with old friends and their friends on whichever server made sense at the time. The last 50, the water blaster, has alpha and ordinarily would be doing incarnate trials. Yeah, there's DA content - and i like it but I've seen all of it - and after all this time there's still content from Issue 15 that I've never done. As it is, the radiation blasting/kinetics corruptor (a vigilante "mender" investigating Praetoria I started when the Going Rogue expansion came out) finally got some play and is not working thru the Night Ward arcs and finished all the First Ward arcs during double XP.

Got my oldest toon on Virtue to 47. Not sure I wanna bother takin' him to 50. Worked some on Ghost Widow's patron arc (the first patron arc I've played) for my first and favorite Dominator, Mrs Frostfire (Justice: House of Tera, Most Wanted), who's still only level 45 (46 untrained) and who I will take to 50 before the end and probably even give her her Mids build, though it will all go Poof! (other than Titan's extractor) in a short while. But, hey, while longterm in-game goals no longer make sense, I'm still having fun playing, and wanna get to experience all the Super Awesome I can before it's taken away. Besides, while the numbers are down and it's not the same, there are still cool people playing CoH. Even PUGs have been awesome lately!