peterpeter

It would be nice to have enough warning to move my favorite characters. Given that, sure. No problem. Shame about the lost bases, though.

My instinct says no, unless you really lower the threshold on what it means for the game to live on "in some form". I very much hope I'm wrong.

I've never gotten around to joining in before, but I guess now is the time. Freedom server? I can shift someone rich over there.

Buses. I know it's silly, but it's the first thing I would have done. I would have created a bunch of buses, designed routes for them, and set them loose to travel around within each city zone. I'd shift the bus stops a bit so there was one at each neighborhood marker, or as close as possible. Then I'd make the buses work like a local version of the T:

* Stand at a bus stop and wait.
* When a bus shows up, click the door.
* A menu pops up of all the neighborhoods in that zone.
* Choose a neighborhood.
* Get a loading screen.
* Appear at a bus stop in the same zone, at the neighborhood you chose.

Also, the top of the bus would be flat, so you could stand on it and ride around. Maybe I lack imagination, but I can't think of any really effective exploit from standing on the roof of a bus. Or the blimp, or the subway car.

After that, I would start writing missions. But first... buses!

You know, after all these years of reading your posts Arcanaville, I thought I had a pretty good estimate of how awesome you are. Now I find out that I was off by an entire order of magnitude. Wow.

Losing my characters would bother me less than you might imagine. I could just reroll my favorites, and the rest exist more as characters in my imagination than as datasets on the game servers anyhow. I'd miss the vet rewards, especially at the low levels. What's really precious to me is my knowledge of the game: the mechanics, the geography, the missions, etc. These days I just can't spare the many hours I spent 8 years ago learning my way around. That's one reason I'm reluctant to start a new game. I can handle being poor and having a low level character. I'm not sure I can handle being so ignorant, especially in a game where the other players may be less helpful than they are here.

I'd like to echo what others said about wishing you luck on the job search. That's clearly your top priority and I respect that.

If you do find time to share some stories, I'd like to know more about Ouroboros and the Shadow Shard. No specific question; I just don't feel like I've ever really understood the big picture in those two areas. Also the Blood of the Black Stream. What was the idea there?

Also, one very specific question: What shocking thing did BABs and States find when they uncovered the source of Superadine? Was it just the reality-piercing power of the drug, and the cruel human experiments, or was there something else going on?

Just Said No To Superadine, Monument 4, Inscription

In March of 1986, with the mystical aid of the Midnight Squad, the Back Alley Brawler managed to track local Superadine distribution to a secret lab beneath this building. Little is known about the lab's contents. It is simply known that the Back Alley Brawler and the Statesman swore their comrades to secrecy after the battle.

I admit the same question has crossed my mind. I imagine some people will start spending their hoarded influence, and other people will start selling their hoarded goods. That should more or less balance out, but I'd expect more randomness and volatility. If one guy spends several hours spending tens or hundreds of billions of inf, it could suck the market dry of many goods and cause prices to spike to insane levels for a little while. If someone else goes out the next day and spends several hours emptying out every storage bin in every SG on every server where they have a footprint, it could saturate large swaths of the market and push prices into the basement for a little while.

Overall, the biggest impact I worry about seeing is that no one will bother crafting and selling common IOs. They'll just make enough for their own purposes. I don't know how other people will choose to spend their final days, but I think crafting is unlikely to be a big draw.

I say on Nov 30 they turn off the ability for enemies to respawn. We can all go zone by zone, saving people from purse-snatchers. Once a zone is clear, it stays clear forever. By the time the day ends, Paragon City will have been saved. Crime will be no more. We can all retire with our heads held high. (And in the Rogue Isles, Longbow interference will be permanently eradicated, incursions from Snakes and Coralax put to an end, and so on.)

I was just thinking, if I were to bother making predictions for the market for the next few months, a lack of common IOs would be on the list.

It's good to hear from you. You guys are the best. Thank you for 8 years of fun and friendship and creativity and craziness.

My heart goes out to War Witch. A lot of people, both players and staff, have put a lot of time and energy and heart into this game. A lot of people who were around at the beginning and left (voluntarily or not) still have fond feelings for the game. A lot of people who joined recently have as much passion as the veterans. But there are a few people, like War Witch, who were here from the very start of this game and have stuck around until the present day, continuously.

War Witch, Melissa Bianco, put more than time into this game. Her sense of humor is built into the world we play in. She put as much of herself into this game as anyone could. And this game has changed the course of her career in ways I don't think she could have imagined when she first started working here.

I love the stories about people who met friends and even their spouses through this game. A lot of people have had their lives changed for the better through this game. When the game ends, those people will still have their marriages. However our lives were changed, we'll still have those changes. But War Witch? This game gave her an amazing career, and everyone who enjoys gaming can only hope and pray that she will be able to keep her career, despite the loss of this job.

I have great sympathy, based on personal experience, for everyone who lost their jobs yesterday, or will in the next few months, but my heart especially goes out to War Witch. If a positive reference from 100,000 happy customers will be of any use in your next job interview, just tell us who to call. Good luck, and thank you. It wouldn't have been the same City without you.

Darn, wrong forum for this.

I've been trying other archetypes lately, but when the lights go out I'll be logged in as my first level 50, a katana/regen scrapper. Thanks to all of you for the many years of advice and math and encouragement and inspiration and just plain fun.

Count me in.

I've got a feeling they're not looking for a buyer. Maybe there's some complicated accounting reason for it, but it seems like they've decided to just pull the plug and not even consider other possibilities. If they're not going to even try to make money from it, you'd think the least they could do is open-source it, but I don't see that happening.

It's a hell of a thing, killing a game. You take away all it's got and all it's ever going to have. (with apologies to Clint Eastwood, from Unforgiven)

I keep thinking of all the things I'm never going to get a chance to do now, in City of Heroes.

I started writing a guide a while back about player notes. It's a nice feature, but not well known and not well documented. No point in finishing it now.

I had lots of ideas for AE stories that I'll never write now, like the mission where Back Alley Brawler is hit by a shrink ray, so a tiny little BAB follows you around in the mission.

If I ever got around to learning how to draw, I was going to draw a series of CoH comics based on common misspellings and bad puns, like the Rouge Aisles, or a Dark Armoir powerset.

There are characters I'll never create, like Leo Rex, the energy aura/kinetic melee brute, half lion/half man. I loved the way the golden powers looked against his golden fur in the character creator, but I never actually put him into the game world for some reason. No point now.

I always wondered what it would be like to have a team of 8 shield characters all hit shield charge at the same time, or 8 electric melee characters all hit that lightning bolt teleport power at the same time. But I don't know if I'll have time to level up a character high enough to get those powers by November, what with school and all. So I'll probably never know.

I don't think I'll have time to play through every different path available in Praetoria. Or get my old katana/regen scrapper, my first level 50, totally maxed out with incarnate stuff. I'll never play the grifter role from the Halloween event. I always meant to go back and study in more detail the not-really-random way the game resolves ties in the auction house. Just so many things...

So what's some of the stuff you'll regret not having a chance to do?

Wow. The fact that players become devs and devs remain players is one of the many wonderful things about this game. I really feel bad for you guys. Losing my make-believe second job as a superhero with only 3 months notice stinks. Losing your real-life primary-income job with no notice at all is disastrous. I wish you all the best of luck.

I suppose I'll stay here until the end. After that, I don't know. I have some friends who play Star Wars, but I expect I'll just give up on MMOs after this.

The song going through my head now is When I'm Gone, by Randy Newman, from the last episode of Monk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTM6mmAqRwA

People have said this game was doomed every single month of the past 8 years. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I was just hoping it would be a lot later, like after I died of old age. As far as I know, the game was doing better financially the past few months than it has in several years. I don't think the PvP crowd quitting in droves after I13 is what got the game killed on the eve of I24.

But, really, I'm with VoodooGirl.