6-Year Anniversary Address from War Witch

My one year anniversary is on May 8th so all my memories are recent ones but they are some really great ones.

-My first time through the Hollows story arc. I loved the idea that all these story arcs were related and that a trial caps off the fate of Sam Wincott.

-Realizing that the Cavern of Transcendence trail CAN actually be completed easily with a 14 level character with teleport and an empowerment station.

- First time through the Faultline story line and thinking "wow. This really is like a comic book!"

-Regaling my RL friends who have been playing for 4 and 5 years with how awesome these arcs were and getting weird looks. They stopped reading the text long ago and were surprised to find there actually was a story there. They started reading the mission text again. (just to keep up I think)

-Being welcomed by the community on Liberty and helping me run Task Forces and learn how to plan events and well everything.

-Creating a toon just so I could join the Sisterhood.

-Getting the last Teleporter for my own SG. (Boomtown was the winner foe being last)

-Reading the Death and Rebirth of Numina in the Midnighter's club Archivist badge. It's the little touches like that that make it such a joy to explore.

My favorite memory is from CoV end of beta duking it out with Positron and Statesman.

My favorite in the actual game memory is a bit trickier. So many to choose from...

I guess it would be my first time in Independence Port and I beat some 5th Column on the street (this was before the Council take over) and he changed into a Warwolf. I wondered if they would all do this but he was the only one. Quite enjoyable.

Second I am going to choose my first trip to Brickstown with my level 30 blaster. This was before the change to Phase Shift and a level 50 Malta ambush was creating havoc on the streets. I was able to "taunt" them by being phased so they left the other lowbies alone until a level 50 was able to come and SK me up and we beat them down.

Third favorite memory was the first Halloween event with large Pumpkinheads strolling around Atlas Park and vampires, ghosts and werewolves popping out of the doors at me.

I have a few memorable moments but the one that I think stands out the most was in the middle of a mission, I used the fortune buff on one of my teammates. The teammate was my brother who was sitting next to me who returned the favor. The conversation then went:

Him: What did you get?
Me: the sun card. What did I give you?
Him: Herpes. (Which was actually the Lovers card)

After 3 awkward seconds, I replied the only way I could think of.

ME: Well, your welcome.

Favorite memories in date order, earliest first

Back on union playing my good old fire/fire tank back when they could pull the entire map at once.

My Invul/energy tanker stood tanking 3 players at once pre i13 with sets, and watching them get very annoyed that my HP wouldnt budge below 3/4.

Laughing at a controller who claimed he was the single best PvPer on Union, because he spent x billion on purple sets. Then killing him 3x in under a minute and watching him leave match, block me, then still make the claim hes the best PvPer on Union 10 minutes later lol.

Tanking romulus in ITF and all the nictus summons you can taunt.

Being wanted by several people as a tank within seconds of logging in and having them compete with each other because they know you can do the job that damn well.

Finally getting Dual pistols after asking for them since i4 lol, shame there physically weak, but i still love them on principal

EDIT: Oh and also the first time i flew into Lusca without realising what it was, getting one hit killed and thinking 'wow wtf was that?!?'

I have a few favorite memories, so will name a few in no particular order...

- Soloing Lord Recluse on my Bane Spider, who was my first EAT ever!
- Coming to Virtue after playing on another server for a long time and realizing there ARE roleplayers in this game, which inspired me to move all my mains there!
- Sitting in Grandville and chatting with Dark Watcher in Broadcast with some friends about i16, which was really just random and not a planned event, and that only made it better! "The first rule about [Walk] is you do not talk about [Walk]." Of course we immediately told everyone we knew about it. We were also pleasantly surprised that it was actually released before i16!
- Being challenged to a MM vs. MM Arena match by a friend and pwning him so bad in a first to 5 match that he quit after the third consecutive defeat when he learned my pets were never even set to defensive!
- Most importantly, the great friends I've made over the last few years playing this game. They've been a blessing and I hope they remain in my life for years to come!

Thank you, and I look forward to seeing more memories shared by others here!

Favorite memories:: Some of these are easy:

My first character on Pinnacle, taking down one of the last Rularuu portals
on my first day, all the time hoping nothing came out of it because I was solo...

Finding out that enemies will follow you if you are Tped while holding aggro.

Finally seeing the good things that others see in me.

My first Virtue character.

Wild Childs entire 1-50 run...

Seeing the shadowshard for the first time.

many many more...

Favorites... good question... there are already so many even though I've only been here two years. Last night of course was fun, nothing like an invisible Jade spider killing PD *LOL*. (was my first time in a meet and greet)

But I guess my oldest fond memory is the day I started playing, two of my dearest freinds leading me through the Zig only to enter a world where around any corner, stepping off any Ferry or Train the Rikti could drop you in a single blow. I was never a gamer before COX and I couldn't be happier.

Viva La COH/COV

The Extraordinary *******: Proof that people who played Blasters were just awesome people. Let's make an SG who's theme is "It's my $15, I'll play however I want." Make as absurd of a character as you can think of, the Tank who wanted to be a Controller, or the Blaster who wanted to be a Scrapper, or the Scrapper that decided to aggro the entire map and pull everything to the front door and never attack. Good, wholesome entertainment. Best group of people ever.

First Kill on Hamindon, Liberty: HDS may have splintered, but there were a number of really good people in that group and I'm glad I was able to get in right when it was created. It may have taken a few months, but we were able to best the best the game had to offer. /salute Liberty, still the best and friendliest server.

Fave moment ... I think that would be the first time I'd taken a lvl 32+ Thugs Mastermind to a Mayhem and realized just how destructive they REALLY are! Half an hour later, I'd burned the whole place to the ground! Simple Pleasures.

That and the first time my best Brute, Ami Shields Mk-1, ever solo'd BaB, real moment of pride!

Oh, so many memories...

The costume creator in general, it's what hooked me on the game and part of what keeps me here. I played with paper dolls as a little girl, and this game lets me make superheroine paper dolls and then I get to punch things in the face with them!

The first time I ran the Ernesto Hess TF, going inside the volcano and seeing the giant robot. It's still one of my favorite TFs, just because it was so different than anything else I'd done in the game.

Dinging my first 50 with Cobalt Freckles, my illusion/empathy controller. Related: leveling up my first EAT, my Peacebringer. And dinging 50 with her.

HeroCon, especially last year, playing Apples to Apples with a bunch of players, plus Dark Watcher and Synapse!

Almost forgot -- the first time I did a Mayhem mission with my thugs/dark mastermind. Now that's destruction! It was glorious...

Happy anniversary, CoH...may there be many many more!

Noire aka Cookie Mistress here from guardian

In the last 6 years Ive met so many coh players both face to face (Even Met My HUBBY IN COH, been married almost 5.5years now, just sucks he don't play anymore due to ED and other nerfs !) and others just over facebook or talking on the phone/voice chat but they have all been wonderful friends and like it's been said on the Guardian server we are like a extended family there

Ive never really played on any other server cause guardian is home to me and many others

In game Ill never forget ...

Writing recipes for the city scoop

@Mental Madens all troller tfs

@Armtrage's all MM tfs

@0th's all blaster tfs...

all (select AT here) tfs period!

The time we decided to do Posi & stay up all night.... the "old posi tf"

Other times where myself and others decided to run tf after tf or mission after mission and spend all day doing it or running though the Shard doing all the tfs and staying up all day/night with caffeine doing it!

Where we didn't speed though everything we played though everything...

The told days of Street sweeping in Prez Park after lvl 5 til we got to level 12 or 14

The old hami

many other memories!

Also rl memories

The time I had to go back home to Canada for my Grandfathers funeral I had a ton of support from online as well as offline, we seen that with everyone though that had loved ones pass and this community helped everyone stay strong even when family members where sick and In need of prayer ~ When I went for my Grandfather's funeral I remember Hex & Dragon Canadian two of my good friends drove from where they lived (about 4hrs) to where I was to hang out for the day after the funeral was over to cheer me up & go to dinner, we had a lot of fun that day.

There is a few other coh friends that do drive up once a year and we all go to the comic book convention together it's become a Ritual we go then head to lunch then after we come back and watch a comic movie of some type and if I have them I usually make cookies to go with the movie, then they go home, it's always a lot of fun.

Others I get together with on mostly a regular bases we D20 game or plan a movie night and stay up late, whatever we feel like doing.

I remember a couple years ago when a couple friends came by when they where on vacation & stayed at my place for a couple nights and we squeed and made cookies and had tons of fun

I am sure we will all have more fun in days years and months maybe decades to come Both face to face and online in coh or even over facebook. I have to say I am glad to have a extended family as Guardian and other folks ive met though writing for the scoop

*sniff*

So many memories and still many more...

I got something in my eye....

I'm pretty much just an echo at this point, but:

The character creator sucked me into the game. The community kept me here. And it's the little things that still bring me glee.

I have always loved designing my own characters, and have often been frustrated by games that expect me to play "their" character and follow the story they've written for that one person. I know this is mostly a limit of game engines of yesteryear, but it was something that always bugged me. I'm female, and most games forced me to play a male character. A few games threw in a secondary female choice, which was cool.. but I was still following "someone else's story". City has let me design characters that I care about, write their own history, and then create a new future for them within Paragon or the Rogue Isles.

A large part of that is also the community. Other players' characters help shape my character's personality. Other players themselves help me learn about the game, and I enjoy the social interaction. Though the group of people I spend the most time with has changed over the years, City is the one place I know I can go to connect with people who share similar interests and philosophies. I'm not going to find people like me at a bar, for instance, or at a club. (Unless it's Pocket D.)

Finally, I love the little things that have been put into the game. I love the additional costume bits. I love the badge system. I think bases are really cool. These are all things that appeal to me in different ways, so there's always something different to do.

Thank you all for a fantastic six years, and here's hoping for six more and beyond!

WOW! I have a bunch to refer to! but the ones I always remember are My first 50!
The SG members I got to know and love. My first SG base raid was awesome! Statesman TF!(masters) Getting shot by a dev controlled Manticore after getting yellow title! Soloing my first Maria Jenkins arc! 6th year anniversary event on Liberty! Awesome x20!

Edit! an 8 player all controller team beating Lusca!

The first time my main saw the Atlas Globe and the shiver it sent down my spine back in '05.

AND

When my main dinged 50 surrounded by monkeys in PI's Monkey Island in '06.

my fav memory? uhmm yeah about that.. its been a heck of a five years(for me anyway ) and i've ran with many different people as many different characters over the years started out with a very limited teaming experience with my friend that introduced the game to me, now all these years later I'm still here and kicking... butt

anyway as alot of people have said the best part of this game is the people and who we get to play or even just chat with when logged on or on the forums or as alot of my ingame friends are now also fb friends but I think one of the coolest moments had to have been one of Kitten of Chaos' level 4 free for all's those were hella fun

Dev created things that hooked me to start and keep me around:

• My first trip through the hero tutorial and the "Big Trouble in Little China" quote. And your first mission as a hero being "Stop this gang of drug-abusing vandals" instead of the MMO cliche "Here's a rusty knife, I think there are some rats in the basement." Got my attention right away.
• Hover on my first alt to level 6. Decided to cut from King's Row to Atlas through Skyway. Took about 20 minutes but it was awesome!
• Fly at 14.
• Holiday events.
• Giant Monsters.
• First time in the Shadow Shard.
• CoV Beta.
• When Bank Robberies became Mayhem Missions.
• Ultra Mode.

• Having every name I thought of for my first alt taken. Creating a second alt and having the perfect name available on the first try.
• Talking to LadyMage on the Triumph boards. Then a week later trying to put together a Positron TF before Slugbug outleveled it (this was before you could do TFs you'd outleveled). LM came along with several of her SG-mates just so I could see the content I wanted.
• Joining Ion Force, most of whom aren't playing anymore but they were (are) a fun bunch. LM, Quickling, Warmy, Leapin Lizard, LadyGrav, CPL Mayhem, Toshi, Titan, Shen, INOA, Cronos, Mindlock, Quickening and all the rest. Thanks all!
• Forming the "Snow White and the Seven [Kheldian] Dwarves" superteam and seeing the most appropriately named villain in an early mission: Damned Quantum.
• Realizing how truly awesome Controllers could be when an unexpected Speed Boost turned "stepping a bit closer to the fight" into "flying off the catwalk and into two more groups below." Reactions from teammates came quickly: "What happened to WalkMan?" "I think he went off the edge." "Crap. Slug, are you ok?" After a few moments of sleeping, holding, terrifying, or confusing everything around me, "Take your time, I've got them all locked down."
• Convincing a PuG of one Tanker, 3 Blasters, and 2 Scrappers that we didn't have to keep searching for a "healer" and could play just fine if we didn't do anything stupid. And three missions later having them all admit I was right...
• The first response to an arc I wrote.
• The (many, many) crazy ideas I've had for alts. And the thousands of others I've seen in game.

My favorite moment is herding the dreck map with my buddy who was a invul/mace tank and I was playing a fire/fire tank( my first 50). We had about 300 freaks jumping all over us and I looked over at my buddy and called him a sissy. Imagine that a fire tank calling an invul a sissy. Man we laughed. That is when I fell in love with being a hero and felt powerful. Since then I cant even hardly play my tank anymore, the nerf bat really hurts.

Can't pick just one, sorry ...

My best City memories, eh? There have been many, but a few of them do stand out. My first level 50, for one … forged back before warwolves had a ranged attack, when there were no target limits. I used to use Force Bubble to anger half the wolves on the map, then bring them back to one particular hill. Sometimes I'd pause and look at the terrifying, boiling sea of werewolves. Then I'd switch over to Phase Shift and bring them up to the hill for the rest of the team. My favorite City screenshot ever is one of our Energy Blaster going Nova, with wolves flying everywhere. While I know target limits and aggro caps were necessary, there's just no such thing as that kind of spectacle in the City anymore.

The first time I saw the Crystal Titan in the titan chamber, on my first-ever run through the Eden Trial, was pretty awesome.

Ages ago, when the game was still new and the blue Circle portals still summoned huge numbers of demons, I was one of a trio of characters who stumbled into that room for the first time. Proceeding not quite cautiously enough, we activated two or three of the portals and were quickly inundated by an ever-growing number of summoned demons. So there we were, huddled within my hurricane, while the blaster tried to get ahead of the spawn rate and the empath worked desperately to keep everyone alive. It was solid adrenaline for a few minutes, as more demons rushed in and our last stand started to crumble. In the end ,we lost. We were overwhelmed, but it was an outstanding battle.

Once I was running through some zone when I got a tell from a coalition friend. She was on a team trying to finish the Sewer Trial, and they were almost out of time with the head hardly damaged. This was back in the day, when you could invite more to the team in mid-trial. So, I rushed madly into the Abandoned Sewers, clicked through the door, and plunged headlong down the long fall into the trial chamber. The radiation debuffs and controls I brought were just enough to drag the mission back from the edge of failure, and we finished off the head as the final few seconds ticked off the clock. I felt pretty heroic, that day.

Then there was the time, late last year, that I spent a few weeks working on my submission for the first Aeon story arc contest, the one about a hero forced to commit evil acts. I labored over every last detail, then submitted it well in advance of the deadline, then received a comment to acknowledge that someone on your contest staff had looked at it. Wait, no. That last part never happened. Not such a great memory, I guess. If you guys could get to that at some point, I'd appreciate it.

A while back, I brought my Force Field Defender to accompany a big team into an Oranbega mission. At one point, most of the group foolishly rushed into a prison room. Attacked from both sides, they were crushed and most of the team were defeated very quickly. Most of the time, this game is pretty merciless with the odds. Once past a certain point, it's very difficult to recover. I activated Force Bubble and flew back around a nearby corner, as out of sight as I could manage while using FB to keep the Circle hordes at bay down the hall. Gradually I recalled everyone out, while under constant ranged attack, thanks to probably my entire inspiration tray. Slowly, people started firing Awakens and Resurrections. Within the Force Bubble shelter, the team regrouped and struggled back to win that battle. So even though it's definitely a niche power, these are the sort of reasons why I really love Force Bubble. Once in a while, it's exactly the power you need.

The first time I ever walked into Perez Park, I found myself in an epic scene. What I'd guess were two or three big groups of Hellions had been aggroed to near the gate area, and a bunch of newbie heroes like myself were trying to get control of the situation. Later that afternoon, I joined a large team for the first time. Until then, I hadn't been part of a group with hovering Blasters and attentive Defenders and the myriad of wildly colorful powers. That was the beginning of what's become a six-years-and-counting addiction.

Not so long ago, my wife activated an account for what was expected to be a sort of MMO learning phase for her eventual cross over to Aion, but as it turned out she liked her City Tank more than her Aion Templar. Since then, we've nurtured many heroic duos through their careers.

The Fir Bolg in Croatoa trying to figure out the ringing telephone still gives me giggle fits.

Finally, I guess I'd have to mention the point where I realized, conclusively, that you guys really were paying attention to our feedback. It's been amazing to see the numerous suggestions and ideas reflected in content, improvements, and features. I'll be honest, I never thought I'd still be playing City six years later, but here we all are. Thanks for investing the effort in having a good working relationship between the game staff and the subscriber community. It's appreciated. Now, about those Peacebringer improvements ...

Good times,
FCM

I have several, one fo them is the first time doing the lgtf and entering the final mission with all the bodies on the floor and the heartbreak ridge music playing.

Favorite moments?

Leveling my first and only 50 blueside, elec/elec/elec blaster. Endurance shutdown is awesome, and became even more impressive when I saw how much easier an kin/elec defender could do it.

First time using Fulcrum Shift.

Soloing purple bosses on my Ill/Kin controller, during double XP weekend!

Nights in the Pocket D listening to The Cape Radio and just cycling through dance emotes and chit-chatting. The Halloween costume event where the theme was to show up as the toon that would most likely violate a copyright. Proud to say my Dr. Jonas Venture Jr. character won a full set of costume salvage.

Costume contests in AP. Don't see those much anymore.

First time entering Croatoa.

Running around a good ol' Fashion Pinnacle Intern Battle Royale on Halloween with everyone in costume, me dressed up as Space Ghost, and getting blasted in the face.

Rerolling my Plot Device character 42 times on heroside, picking a build at random in CoV beta, sticking with it and finally getting it to level 50 when Grandeville opened... seconds before the server crashed.

The first time my team managed to crack the Recluse Strike Force through the awesome power of stack-cheating and aliens.

The time I ran into a battle with an AV, hit aim, build up, then fired my cryo freeze ray for some reason.

Farming the entire monkey island back when you could as a blaster using only lightning field just for fun.

Just hanging out and running the Moonstone and Hess TFs in Striga to the point where my entire team knew exactly where every door was and every glowie was going to be.

I only just joined and I think I've already got more praises for this game then can be named.

I adore the:
Map layouts
Architect Entertainment
Cinematics (Looked them up on youtube, daaayum!)
Day jobs
The snow ramp in Pocket D. I was fortunate to go there during the 28th event. That thing is so freakin' cool!

I could go on, but I'll leave it to that.
Congratulations on your anniversary, may you have many more.


-El Bellaco


p.s. Oh! And of course, the amount of emotes this game has! Fantastic!