6-Year Anniversary Address from War Witch
By
8_Ball,
Posted on: 2010-04-28 16:55 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Well after all the ones I listed I have to say my top 2 are .....
meeting my husband in game & all my friends in coh and quite a few ive met outta coh but met in coh
that's two right? 
Instead of listing all my favorite moments I have created a collection of screenshots I have collected over the years with my comments. ENJOY!!!
http://catreena1.tripod.com/sitebuil...s/special1.pdf
Catreena
"Why can't the villains ever hide out in the old abandon catnip factory?"
Some of my best memories come from a few team sessions a long time ago on CoV.
Started forming PUG's as often as I could and soon people started to send me a tell the next day asking if i was running a team again. I'd always set one up and we'd go on a chaotic series of missions. The difficulty was always set to relentless and the teams understood this was the lowest it would go.
We'd enter mayhem missions, get slaughtered by the ambush and have a laugh attempting to escape from jail until the timer ran out.
No matter how many times we died, we still got back up. We never cared about the debt that kept building up from our mistakes (I remember some players joining my teams on a daily basis who would clear the debt they had accumulated after the team disbanded only to get more debt added the next day), we were playing the game for fun. We even got surprisingly good with our characters due to the continued difficulty, most impressive being that we all learnt how each other played and worked to each others strengths and weaknesses
Many of those people i teamed with went on to populate my global list, and most of those still remember the insane sessions I led (and mostly still do).
It's always been the playerbase that bring me back into the game time and time again.
A few other small things I remember are:
After one of my first Mothership Raids declaring that Tsumiju Zero should be praised for his successful leadership.
Meeting one of the craziest people I have ever known (Arnold Hoffler) and helping him become more crazy 
And having a mainly PUG team with just a few friends team up daily for a week, managing to get our current characters (of that time) from 1-50 without the use of any farms.
Attending the Golden Age Festival as PinUp Girl, a newly-minted member of the Gods of the Golden Age SG, and meeting a wonderful character named Proud Citizen, who was hoping to join the Gods too. Having the two of them marry in-character at the next Golden Age Festival--knowing that we, their players, will be getting married IRL later this year.
Standing in Atlas as a brand new player watching all the heroes running and flying around, thinking how cool it was, then getting a tell complimenting my character concept from a level 50 who took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. His player is still a friend these several years later (hoping to see him at the wedding, too!)
I'll be here until the servers are shut down. CoH means a lot to me.
Busting heads since 1938
Character references * My DeviantArt gallery * I am an altoholic
One moment that encapsulates why I like to play CoH:
Mission team was gathering at mission door, a mausoleum in the graveyard on Striga. Someone accidentally aggro'd some werewolves and the team was about to wipe as I arrived on scene with my first hero, an Eng/Dev blaster.
This sequence was just so epic in a micro kinda way, starting with a lucky-landing SuperJump that perched me on a ledge above the mission door, looking down on my teammates getting their butts kicked.
Unleashed Energy Torrent, knocking all the baddies away from my beleaguered 'mates, giving them the two seconds of breathing time they needed to regroup and finish off the mob.
I'm sure we've all had dozens, if not hundreds of moments like this, but something about the "nick of time-iness", the way the jump landed, the resulting camera angle down on my teammates, the rockin'-ness of Energy Torrent, and the feeling like I really was a hero, just for a second there, instilled in me an eternal love for this particular piece of gaming software.
My first little steps into the game were as an Empathy Defender (waits for Defender rage). I remember being a huge support to a team of also relatively new players in the Hollows. We had a blast doing story arcs (a thing uncommon today) and easily had memorable moments. Hell, I can still remember keeping the Blaster alive to tank Frostfire while we got the Tank back on his feet. It's been a long and memorable ride. Now we have inventions, Co-Op zones, new powersets, color customization, and so on. I'd definitely say that first little team where everyone was relaxed and laid back was the greatest experience I had in CoH. Getting together with a group of people to experience a game we'd never played before (we eventually formed and SG, but it didn't last too long) was, indeed, an exciting event. And no, I didn't just "trow heels", i actually used the KB in my energy secondary (I'm looking at YOU Defender forums).
I'd say if I could re-create the experience I would, but people today are just too hellbent on getting exp rather than slowing down and taking the time to actually enjoy the story arcs, or the Task Forces, or even Haazard zone hunting. I truly wish to experience that laid back little team once again someday, but...well... it probably won't happen 
* The first time my first Stalker assassinated a minion. Pure evil awesome.
* The first time I flew. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
* The beta for CoV, where I summoned my first zombie henchman. My zompocalypse begins!
* The first time I visited the Paragon Dance Party. Woo!
* The first time I completed the Sewer Trial. It felt like such a major accomplishment!
the first time i made it alive to the tailor in steel canyon on lvl 5 blaster.
my first Frostfire.
my first time in a super group base.
my first fly/cape.
and my first 50!
The early Hollow teams were great, i would have to agree....
I remember the first time my SG took my with them on a level 50 mish... i felt so cool :P
No one goes there anymore, it's too crowded...
"The potato goes in the FRONT."
My Favorite Moment from the Last Six Years
I remember it like it was yesterday.
I had my main character, Dasher, a Super Speed, Martial Arts/Super Reflexes scrapper in Terra Volta, on a mission that had me hunting Freakshow.
While I was in there, I ran into a tanker who was getting overwhelmed and had broadcast for help.
There were about a dozen Freakshow around him, and he went down just as I dove in. He had no Awaken, so there was nobody to hold the aggro.
That's when I saw everything around me was conning orange, red, and a purple boss tank.
Oh, joy!
In for a penny, in for a pound, and I knew the only way to avoid (then massive) street debt was to pull out all the stops.
I sent in Dasher at full Super Speed, targeted on a Freakshow minion, kicked off my best attack and zipped past him, cut a hard 180-degree turn as the attack resolved and hit him again; three shots and he was down.
I kept Dasher moving in a super-speed circle around the Freakshow mobs, every defensive toggle running and kicking off "Practiced Brawler" at every recharge... I didn't know how to set it on auto back then; I don't remember if that ability was even in the game at the time.
Dasher would get clipped by a Freakshow tank or zapped by a Zapper lieutenant, and I'd burn a couple of blues or a Discipline and zoom Dasher back in, repeating the process: Target an enemy, zoom past, resolve the attack, kepp a wide circle, keep moving, keep hitting, zoom out to range then back into the aggro zone, never stop, all the while burning inspirations like it was going out of style.
After almost fifteen minutes of solid, unrelenting combat, the last Freakshow, a boss, finally went down. Dasher had less than 25% Health, no Endurance, one Awaken inspiration which he gave to the downed Tanker, and one double-origin enhancement drop for all the effort.
But the greatest reward of that battle was when the Tanker used the Awaken and typed in: "That was awesome! How the heck do you DO that?"
I sent back: "It ain't easy. It takes a LOT of practice. :-)"
The memory of gameplay like that has kept me in this game for the last five years.
That memory is from a time when you could actually could learn how to use your character's powers, and by learning how to use them, you could get so much more out of gameplay than just another level's worth of modifiers or a special enhanecement set bonus and its attendant perks.
Then, your character could get better by YOU learning to play the game better. And even if you didn't have optimal Enhancements, you could use all the elements of comic book superpowers to win a battle; manuever, tactics, and just plain basic smarts. It was more than just a numbers game, and the whole of a character -- with a dedicated player behind them, committed to learning how to use all of that character's abilities -- that character could become greater than the sum of its parts.
Those are my favorite memories of the game: Before Travel Power Suppression and Enhancement Nerfification and the Seytts that followed, before multiple overlays of animations and visual effects to dress up the same basic powersets at the expense of genuinelynew powers. Before, especially, a PvP system so imbalanced it requires special sets of Enhancements and an alternate character design to be viable.
My favorite memory was when this was a game of superpowered characters.
For five years I have voiced the the hope that it would return to that, but alas, it seems to have found its market in a very different opinion of what a superhero or supervillain game is supposed to be.
So my favorite memory of this game of super powers was when we could play it with super powered characters.
Perhaps it will find its way back to that; maybe it needs a nudge in that direction.
But when that nudge comes, it may already be too late.
Dasher; Always and forever, a Superspeedster first, and everything else second.
HELP SAVE THIS GAME!
If we can save this game, I promise I will never complain about Travel Power Suppression again! You have my word on it!
"The customer is always right."
I have so many great memories from this game. I'll have to settle on sharing just 2 or 3.
The first year anniversary for The Sisterhood, July 2005. A friend asked for my help and I agreed. he then started to "show me the shortcut through Paragon Dance Party". When I entered, there were literally dozens of heroes inside gathered to wish me congratulations and future success. it melted my]e right then and there.
Green Eyed Lady and Outlaw Woman being married in Talos, in front of so many from the Liberty Server, on March 27, 2006.
Green Eyed Lady met Ghost Widow in-game on a rooftop near the Nimble Mynx badge. It was during The Sisterhood Scavenger Hunt, a Halloween Event in 2007 that we hosted on Liberty Server.
Here's another favorite memory:
Back before Travel Power Suppression, "everybody knew" that in-game speed topped out at around 85 mph. "Everybody knew" it. You couldn't go faster than that. Period.
Even so, we measured out a level, straight, one-mile course in Talos Island, and on it we used to have footraces between SuperSpeed characters.
We'd have a stopwatch running in the background and, well, you can do the math to figure out your speed: If you finished the mile in one minute, you were running at (duh), a mile a minute, or 60 miles per hour.
My SuperSpeedster (who happens to be a Scrapper with Martial Artist/Super Reflexes) had six slots in SuperSpeed and six in Running, and both were filled with max-level Speed Enhancements, and hey! Guess What?
His top speed clocked out at about 125.7 mph! On five different players' computers!
But that must have been wrong, because "everybody knew" you couldn't go faster than 85 mph. I mean hey, just because five stopwatches said he finished a measured mile in 42 seconds, which works out to 125.7 mph, well heck, what does math prove? I mean, besides everything... but I digress.
Anyway, now he has a full set of Level 50 Celerity in Running and a full set of Level 50 Winter's Gift in SuperSpeed, and the other night he lost a footrace to a toon with SuperSpeed and NO Speed Enhancements. He lost because I clicked the "R" key a split second after the other guy.
My character didn't overtake or pass the toon. In fact, he never even caught up to him. They maintained an exactly equal separation the entire length of the run.
Because now, what "everybody knows" has become game-imposed dogma; six years of effort building a superspeedster and my character is no faster than a toon with one slot in SuperSpeed that's holding an Endurance Reduction enhancement.
I wish "everybody knew" what a bad idea that is for a game that's supposed to be about comic book superheroes.
As I have been saying for a while now: Tick-Tock, Devs, Tick-tock... You're not the only game in town anymore, and while the other one sucks form association with the same ignoramus who imposed Travel Power Suppression and Enhancement Nerfification, not too long from now, there will be a comic book superhero MMO designed by people who actually READ superhero comic books.
And they write 'em, too.
So Devs, you'd better think about fixing your screw-ups while there's still time to avoid becoming Ultima Online in spandex.
My favorite memories of this game are from when our super heroes had super powers.
Dasher
HELP SAVE THIS GAME!
If we can save this game, I promise I will never complain about Travel Power Suppression again! You have my word on it!
"The customer is always right."
And it started off as such a nice post too... a shame.
I've been around on and off since August of '04:
- Hero Dawn of Virtue. My favorite guild out there, and the one that caught my crazy Claws/Regeneration Scrapper at the time (Way before ED. I sooo enjoyed R.Y.N.O.-ing through +5 Rikti bosses while listening to Rammstein). There were so many cool people in the guild at the time, Lin Xiao Fung, Redlynne, Lord Goat, Gridiron. I miss 'em and shed tears of nostalgia for it. The SG is still up and one of the best on Virtue, but it was the people I got hooked on. I kinda feel sorry for them, having to deal with my immaturity (I was 13-14 at the time, I spent most of my teen development with CoH! Thank goodness the community here is so awesome and filled with good role-models.)
-Other memories of my Claws/Regen scrapper include accidentally having his difficulty slider maxed and being the leader of a respec TF (at level 33 or I think). We didn't realize it until the first mission when there were lots of bosses at +5 our level. Our Stone/Inv tank kicked ***, however when we finished the mission we decided that we should regroup with the slider set lower since it was just too slow a slog at that difficulty (not that it was hard or anything ). It was just awesome.
- I have a few close online friends I still keep in touch with a lot that I met while RPing with my Dark/WP brute (My first 50 after much altaholism) and Dark/Dark Stalker (both being the same RP character).
-I always enjoy showing my friends this game and how immersive it is. One of the best times was when a friend accidentally clicked the Self Destruct power and was wondering why he wasn't doing anything when I told him: 'Dude, you clicked the explode power.' His reaction was priceless: 'I can EXPLODE!?!?!?' That power has been my favorite thing from the Cyborg pack just because of the reactions new players get when I tell them about it. 'Oh let me take that off your power bar. It makes you explode.'
-Another was when I bought an HD graphics card and played CoH at max graphics for the first time and flew around Steel Canyon on my Nrg/Nrg blaster. I trembled with joy and ecstasy.
My favourite memory has to be my first Lusca fight (back in I3). I remember the call going out on broadcast in the neighbouring zones of "Lusca is up in IP" - at that point I had no idea who or what Lusca was. So I was a tad surprised when I was told it was a giant octopus attacking the city .
So off we went to IP (I think every single person that was online in our SG at the time showed up) to join up with what seemed like every hero on the server. It was really amazing to see that many characters in one place and every single one of them unique. The actual fight with Lusca was amazing. There were powers going off left, right and center with everyone working as one giant team to take it down.
It really felt like something right out of a comic book, like all the heroes in the city dropped what they were doing and joined forces to combat this massive threat. I think that was the first time I actually felt heroic while playing the game - before that my character had been just that, a character. But afterward, she was a Hero!
My favorite thing about CoH has been two things: First was the day, after two dedicated years of playing CoV early early in the morning and as briefly late at night when I could at night, I finally got my villain main to Lvl 50. Then, after five years of neglect, getting my original, first toon on the account, Ellen Akres, to level 50.
Along the way I've had fond memories of teaming and whenever I revisit a zone or arc, I chuckle at some of the whacked out times I've had completing those missions or eras.
Best memory? The feeling I get whenever I log into the game. It always feels like I'm moving from a world of adulthoods and seriousness to a world of childhood dreams.
And knowing from experience that the dev team is the most awesome of any MMORPG I have ever played.
I have so many wonderful memories of the game so far - I really can't pick a favorite
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork