Toxpin

* Were we going to see more of the fallout of the Second Rikti War at any point? Or was it meant to be something ongoing that could be referred back to at any point?

* Where has Horus (the Kheldian from the Blue King series) been all this time?

* Was Fusionette's origin just meant to give her character or was there plans for the Nuclear 90 too at some point?

Having had to give up a dog to be put down, this is the reaction that finally made me cry. It's exactly how I feel. NCSoft's "restructuring" to be all these Korean friendly, ultra-"pretty" fantasy MMOs while the older, scruffy, but loving City of Heroes gets taken to the vet for the last time....

I shouldn't feel this way over a game, but... guys like you hazard, guys and gals like you make this so much more than just a game.

Thanks. For both the tears, and for making City of Heroes better than just a game.

I ended up a Premium player on Wednesday, and was actually planning on resubbing my VIP status sometime in the next week. For me, what really hurt in the last month and a half or so is that NCSoft actually changed the nature of the cards they put into Gamestop stores. I purposely don't have a credit card, so I was relying on time cards for my VIP, and PayPal is a hassle I generally don't like dealing with, so using that for CoH has left me hesitant. That said though, even though I had all the non-repeating Reward Token perks, I was still subbing regularly, and spent money on power sets, costumes and super packs.

That said about my end, we players still posting here and trying to figure out a way to save the game aren't the problem by a long shot. The problem is NCSoft spent a ton more than it made earlier this year and CoH looked like the easiest thing to lop off to try and stop hemorrhaging profit. Thing is, I really think they didn't take the community here into account.

Yeah, CO was a mess. I didn't even wait out the free month. Between a stat system that was nearly unintelligible and horrible, horrible content writing. I was pretty well done with the "game" part of CO within a few days. Add in the single server/many small instances of zones and being mostly unable to find people to hang out or RP with (a big part of my CoH play), I couldn't stomach it for the full free month.

/e crackknuckles

Damn straight. If City of Heroes is going to have go down, by God it'll go down swinging in ways never seen before.

So, as you guys can tell by looking to left here, I've been a CoH player for a fair bit, but have been very quiet on the boards. Reason is, I really feel like you guys say the sorts of things I would, but usually much more eloquently. But this is something I have to say for myself, as best as I can.

I grew up on superheroes. Much more than fantasy or sci-fi, or really any sort of nerd or pop culture touchstone. And to me, now as an adult, the best superheroes come from something personal. Whether based on hopes and dreams or feelings someone can't express otherwise, my favorites evoke something. For me though, the best hero I ever created came from a darker place.

In 2005, I had been playing CoH for a while, and unable to really find a place stopped until the release of City of Villains. A couple months in, playing a character that was based more on what I saw my brother as, I really got my start in roleplaying on Virtue. I joined a group called The Orphanage, a sort of wayward home for characters who weren't really villains, but each had their dark side.

After a couple months there, I decided to create a new character, the previous one's younger brother. Modeled more after me, I seemingly unwittingly created an avatar of the negative feelings I had about myself. At that point in my life, I was relatively alone. My family were there, but I kept to myself, and really, I didn't have any close friends. I thought there was something wrong with me, something that kept me from making friends, or even finding someone I truly cared about. It colored everything I did, like a poisonous hate.

The avatar of these feelings ended up becoming Toxpin. A character who was, by all accounts, a freak. Ugly by all classical standards because of the snake-like scales that grew over his skin, and with a mutation that kept him from coming into physical contact with nearly anyone, I played him more like myself than I could admit at the time. Timid, shy and introverted, he hated himself. But because of his regenerative powers, he couldn't really act on it. Worse, he was stuck in the Rogue Isles, a place he hated, much as I was hating the place I lived.

But hope shone through, and he was able, in story, to make a return to Paragon, a representation in his story of the hometown I never had as a military brat, and make an attempt at becoming something greater. But even arriving in Paragon, he was alone, but not for long. New friends, Bobby Thistle, Little Zoe, and Graffiti Samurai almost immediately took a chance on him, and they became fast friends, as I became shortly thereafter with the players behind them.

Within months, Toxpin, and I, changed for the better. The friendship he and I shared with the Zenvious Foundation characters and players got me through what had been a crappy part of my internal life, possibly the worst I've ever felt about myself. And, further, changed the avatar of my self-hate into the avatar of my better self.

See, I posted elsewhere that Toxpin will live on in my heart even after the servers turn off for the final time. And it's true, because he's the shining example of what I'm still working to see myself as. He's the ideal me. And just losing access to the pixels and polygons that make his pseudo-physical form isn't going to change that, nor will it take from me the friends and meaning that go along with living through his story.

So, I want to say thank you to Paragon Studios. Thank you for providing me, and well, everyone else here for a place to bring out the inner heroes in us. And thank you to everyone I've met along the way here for helping me in ways I'm not sure you even knew.

If I have to say the world ends when the servers go down for the final time:

Tox--

I can't. The characters I created for this game are far more than pixels and polygons. They're parts of me. Toxpin, Tempestra Silversong, Maggie Accident, Jacob Wyatt, and all the rest; they'll be in my heart, waiting for a chance to live again outside of me.

I'm not going to boycott anyone, but to be perfectly honest, I've never tried any other game published by NCSoft and liked 'em to begin with, so, meh.

Yeah, I was wondering who forgot to turn everything back on for us.

...I don't like this Grakulen guy on the stream. He obviously did no research before getting this stream up, and with no dev audio working on the stream, the advertisement value for Paragon Studios seems really low.

That said, the new iTrial looks amazingly epic.

I'm going through following everyone I can too. Follow me at

www.formspring.me/toxpin

I like my long hair thank you, but I would love to meet the team and get five years of free VIP time.

As you can probably see, there are holes in the split at the end of the Retro Sleeves under Jackets when seen from behind. Probably because it appears that the Sleeves for all Jackets replace the upper arm textures, but there needs to be something there to hide that.

Seen here: Jackets: Retro w/ Retro sleeves, Monstrous gloves.

Hmm, I've crashed a couple times when changing costume parts (i.e. chest or pants texture) using the left/right arrows after changing bodytype (male to female in this case) and loading a costume in the Super Tailor myself. Using the drop downs worked just fine though. This was on a Blaster, in the Atlas Park Icon store.

Normal tailors on the same character, or any other character don't cause this problem.

Posi's TF needs a major overhaul anyway. Vahz at those levels and numbers (except for min. sized teams) are unbearable, due to random spawn embalmed abom's.

Quarterfield, I haven't done, but the Shadow Shard as a set of Zones need some serious TLC. They're a pain to get around in, a pain to TF in, and a pain to get one of the two total non-TF badges in. Yes, it's an I2 zone, but if Fautline and the Crash Site can get some serious cool added to them, the Shadow Shard can too. Heck, tie some story aspects to it (like making Nem bases part of the area as seen in the RWZ arcs), and maybe reduce the total size of the empty and junk spaces (seriously, recall friend can't port across some of those gaps, and that's a Problem, capital letter intentional), and it shouldn't be too hard to work it into the schedule a few issues down the line (I hope, those are HUGE zones and I assume they'd be HUGE reworks as well, I do know and appreciate that man hours are a very finite resource).

As for most of the other TFs from the beginning, really, the only rework I'd like to see for them is the form of maybe some unique end maps. Instead of taking on the AV in a generic mission, give us something more along the lines of the fight with the Clockwork King, whose map is simply amazing as you get near him. A few more moments like that in game would totally be worth it from a player's perspective, and it would certainly increase interest in the TFs outside of the Task Force Commander badge.

Teldon, they should be working, on Virtue at least I could buy the Dimension Drop powers. And DeepShade, I agree wholeheartedly, in fact I posted a long one in the other Valentine's Day official thread.

For me at least, it's not that there's no tangible reward for the new mission, it's that there's not any sort of intangible reward for doing that mission. There's simply nothing cool about that mission. A cool named boss, like maybe a unique looking "Operative Heartbreaker" for heroes (Devs: Feel free to steal that one), with some dialogue to him would have wowwed me. Pump him up to EB with some unique mobs around him, and I'm stunned. Fill that entire mission with a unique brand of Arachnos never before seen, and I run that mission with all my characters, and beg for teams so that I can try to get a better look at the mobs. We already have a red GW, why not some sort of crazy male Arachnos type in Valentine red armor?

Ex, Lighthouse, devs et al:

I don't normally complain about a whole lot, but... seriously. This year's "Spring Fling" (it's FEBRUARY, that's WINTER)/Valentine's event, is, in a word I can actually post here, lackluster. It's all essentially a fourteen day advertisement for something that occurs only for three days on day number one, all dedicated to the character played by the team's writing guru. Sure, grats on the IC marriage guys, but why not do this where the RPers gather: Virtue? Or, set up some automatic version for the later days? (Too late for that I know, but it could've been in consideration.)

The worst part though? The new mission. Singular, mission. Yes, there's one for each side, but a single mission? Okay, Baby New Year is a single mission, but BNY is unique, with a memorable character and map and an enemy set not seen at any other time of the year. But a bland ol' warehouse versus Arachnos for seven glowies is... severely underwhelming to say the least. The clues from the glowies measure out at a whopping one sentence apiece, and their not even complete sentences! The mobs in the mission are as mute as a old school RPG hero, there's no named boss to speak of, and the only interesting thing is, there's finally some tie in with the books and other concepts spoken of outside of the game.

For future reference, and mind you, I'm but one player so take it how you will, please, please, PLEASE, put some extra effort into things, especially if most of the stuff that should have been event rewards or tie-in bonuses are gonna cost extra to the players. Sela or Cela or Zela or whatever her name is in Atlas needs something of substance inside that warehouse. Otherwise, it's a waste of time, as the mission spoilers are already on the boards, and they're the missions only real reward.

So, yeah, a few hundred people get to see the real Valentine event, while the thousands of the rest of us have one craptacular new mission and a repeat of last year to blitz through for old badges. Sure, it's an "exclusive" holiday, but, still, that's a little TOO exclusive for as awesome as events usually go for Co*.

Good luck next time, and give us another event when spring really gets here, because February is cold in the northern half of the US, unlike for you guys who went from Austin to Cali.