Requesting one last favor from Liberty

After my third Iraq tour, medically I wasn't up to doing much (the VA has since rated me 100% disabled). Playing COH has kept me alert and engaged in what otherwise is a rather austere life of being pretty much housebound.

Today's news about the game has hit me very hard.

I want to thank all the great people on Liberty server I've teamed with over the years and wish to ask one last favour:

I need to find a new COH to keep me going during the day. I've been trying to prepare for this day by testing out various other MMORPGs, but haven't found a suitable replacement. Of course, hooking up with people of the caliber of Liberty Server would go a long ways to overcome game defects.

Any suggestions of what game to turn to?

Well I don't know...

Myself I think I'm "done" with MMOs...I can't do fantasy anymore...they're all the same to me.


I think I'll stick with Team Fortress 2 and Borderlands 2 when it comes out...beyond that....*shrugs*


If others do go somewhere, post here!

I actually also play Lord of the Rings Online (it's F2P) and will probably resub as a VIP when CoH is gone. It can be grindy, but I have enjoyed it.

Thanks, Ion. My thoughts on fantasy as well. And Champions or DCU superheroing would just remind me too much of COH right now.

I'd love to find a good spaceship sci-fi game.

I wish I could stand EVE. The game's gorgeous and the game engine runs seemingly flawlessly. Can't stand the anarcho-nihilistic Social Darwinian game culture, though. Semi-solo PVE doesn't seem very possible there.

I did like a lot of STO but mission play quickly became mind-numbingly the same. Maybe they have new content since I tried it at game launch.

If I could find a group of sane and grown-up players like here on Liberty to guild with, I'd be okay with WoW, clunky as the game feels after COH. My old toons are on Undermine over there iirc. Still, I'll probably end up dusting them off and trying it again.

Thanks, Hazy and Ender. I didn't know LOTR was still running; I'll have to give it a looksee.

Considering re-upping to play WoW, yes WoW... but don't think I have it in me for another MMO. We'll see.

GL with whatever you decide.

@Tax E - RIP CoH 2012

thanks, Tax E.

The thing about WoW is at least I can be pretty sure it's not going anywhere soon. I don't think I could take this a second time. Not for a while, at least.

Here's a list of why I'm spoiled and why all the other games I tried didn't click for me.


Casual play. I could park a character and run pull the clothes out of the dryer without worrying about mobs respawning on top of my toon.

Super Sidekicking. Lowbies teaming with level-cappers. Dogs and cats living together.

Travel powers! COH's normal non-sprint run is faster than WoW's sprint power. You can jump over objects! And you can fly. Other MMOPRGs feel like a plodding stroll compared to moving around in COH.

Character customization. Aside from themed supergroups, it was almost impossible to find two characters that looked alike. I have an Egytpian pharoah in tuxedo and spats, a Revolutionary War naval officer, a 19th Century Britsh railroad conductor, a St. Pauli's Girl barmaid, an pumpkin-headed bipedal plant, and a biker dude turned zombie and not one of them depended on class or race or gear to look the way they did.

Player demographics. COH players seem to be a little older (not to mention mature and polite) than other MMORPGs I tried. Large number of female players and spousal and parent-child teams, too.

Liberty server. COH in general had a good player base, but Liberty players in particular were great. Helpful and friendly to new players. I've tried other MMORPGs and haven't enjoyed the player encounters I've had.

Guild-free teaming. The chat channels filled the need of joining a guild just to team. I used my two-account solo supergroup just for storage and could skip the politics and thievery of guild membership.

Easy game to play. Not that there wasn't a lot to learn eventually, but the basic play was pretty simple and you could pick up things at your own pace. You didn't need to memorize hot keys for 300 popup menus etc. Casual player-friendly GUI (for the most part).

Endless combinations of alts. I tried to make one of every powerset. I had over 70 toons on two accounts and still didn't have all the powersets. Never did make a battle axe toon for example.

Have to agree about fantasy MMOs and MMOs in general. I just don't see anything anymore worth playing in this genre, myself. Some that some close but aren't quite?

As for thoughts I have two I think worth mentioning.

Diablo III - Sure, it got off to a pretty bad start but Blizz' is tryin' to turn that around. I can respect that and am patiently waiting for them to follow through since, having admitted making a great many mistakes, they now need to correct them.

MechWarrior Online - Despite it's arena format I'm intrigued by this. I'll probably give it an honest try. Who knows, maybe a 'slow' FPS will revitalize the genre which, like MMOs, is in dire need of a shake up.

Not sure if either of these are your cups of tea, but as I said, worth mentioning.

~Raven

Yep. Liberty has a lot of great people playing on it, Doc. I don't think I will be migrating to any other game. I have put some time into both WoW and SW:TOR and they just don't have the same pull for me that CoH has over the last 7+ years. If I do choose to find another game, and not try to undo the 11,000+ hours of CoH couch-potatoing with some kind of fitness regimen, The Secret World seems a good candidate, based on what I have read of it. They are also running a 3 day free trial now, so it might be a good time to give it a shot. I haven't really seen anyone say anything negative about it recently and many love it. Will probably lurk their forums to get a sense of the community.

This really sucks.

-Yeti Gone Bad

Thanks Yeti, and Raven, and G69. And thanks for the tip about Secret World. That actually looks interesting, and even with me not being a big fan of urban dark milieus. Looks like they have a three day free trial. I'll put that to the top of my list of things to check out.

I signed up for a year of WoW to get Diablo 3 for free, so I have those games I can fall back on... but NOTHING will -ever- compare to the ultimate customization that was City of Heroes.

I am seriously hoping that they release the code for open source so someone out there more tech savvy than I can reverse engineer the costume creator into an offline version (complete with all the costumes in the PIGG files). Something like this used to exist several years ago after the failed launch of City of Hero (Korean Launch).

My SG has been actively trying to sell me on both Secret World and the Arma: DayZ mod, unfortunately I have little interest in both.

I understand that the offline costume creator can still be found somewhere...... anyone recall where?

I'm not joining another MMORPG. This will be my only one, and I'm going to miss the heck out of my Liberty family. We had truly amazing players who turned out to be equally amazing people, and it's this community I'm going to miss the most.

I tried to name names in my post in the main discussion thread saying goodbye, but there is simply no way I could ever list everyone on Liberty who has made my life a bit better and brighter just by meeting them. I'll still see all of you as long as the servers run. I'm not going anywhere else. Liberty is my home, and all of you have been my online family. Losing this world sucks and it hurts, but instead of mourning, I will celebrate the fun and the happiness that I found here. Thank you to all of you for contributing to that. Best wishes and all my love to each of you. See you in Paragon City, because I'll stand by you until the very end.

Thanks for dropping by Doc R, Mystic Fortune, and Kurrent. Enjoyed my teamups with all of you.

Checked over the Secret World site and they've at least sold me into trying it. Character customization looks very promising. Looks like I'll have to get a better graphics card (something I'd planned on anyway) if I want to play regularly, though.
.
If you see a Doc Hornet running around Secret World, it's a good chance that'll be me.

If I default to WoW, assuming they're still there I parked my "blueside" toons on Undermine:

Leighvulf (worgen hunter)
Vulfsbane (worgen warlock)
Coggles (gnome engineer) (blast goggles up!)

Can't remember which server I was "redside" but toon was Cryptella (undead something).

I think those are my two likely options at this point -- WoW and Secret World.

This game has been a great bank of good times for years and I'm sad to see it go a bunch of the people I ran with in CoH have gone to Star Wars but its still not the same as this game meant to me.

Trying the trial tutorial of Secret World now with Doc "Hornchurch" Hornet (Templar). The very first thing that happens is a cut scene where a hornet (or maybe a bee) flies in my character's mouth.

Perhaps a good omen.

Reminds me of my very first session in Coh. Doc Hornet in his yellow and black striped bee costume (other than adding insect wings left unchaned since day 1 with COH). I ran over to Det. jose in Atlas and he looke at me and said, "With that getup you must be Doc Hornet." For a second I forgot he was an NPC and actually thought he was making a comment about my costume for real!

Don't know when they'll be pulling the plug on the forums, so just a quick Doc Hornet update about what MMO I'm ending up at with the cancellation of our beloved City.

Thanks for all the previous suggestions for MMOs. In the past few weeks I tried out EVE (absolutely requires PVP and backstabbing, no thanks), WOW again (both its graphics and playerbase are just too cartoony), SWTOR (can't figure out flying the spaceships and I dislike the Lucasverse), and The Secret World (great concept, fun action, but too dark a tone for me for long term play).

I finally found one I'm going with. I've ended up switching over to Star Trek Online. I hadn't expected this. I'd tried out STO during pre-launch Beta and Live launch and enjoyed it, but didn't stay with it as COH was my One True Game and kept calling me back.

Reasons I'm ending up at STO:

1) I really enjoy it. I've looked up after starting a morning playing session to see that it's 2 o'clock the next morning. (EVE, WOW, and the rest lacked this little lost-track-of-time effect.)

2) Heroic feel. Not quite as good as battling crime in tights, but close.

3) Character customization. Not as good as COH (nothing is), but I can customize quite a lot. And not just my Captain player character, but his Bridge Crew members as well. I can turn off the "visualization" of loot (armor etc.) so I can keep my look despite what loot I'm using. Heck, I can even design my own alien race for my player character. How neat is that?

4) I love the away team mechanics. Not only do I get to satisfy my COH mastermind fix, I get to customize, train, and equip my bridge officer away team members.

5) I can actually fly the STO spaceships. I have to pass on most space battle games because I can't ever seem to get the hang of flying my ship (SWTOR, I'm looking at you!). I'm not great in STO, but I can get by on Standard difficulty.

6) PVP entirely optional.

7) Lots to do. Open world-events scheduled on regular basis. AE-like Foundry player-built missions. (And I like the daily bonus for playing 3 player-made missions.) Equivalent of radio missions. And repeatable story arcs. And they're adding stuff.

8) The new Duty Officer system mini-game. Good way to help level up your alt characters as you play your main.

9) Stunning graphics, both character art and space scenery.

10) Gameplay mechanics. A sprint that's fast (at least compared to WOW and TSW), no corpse-running...just respawn (and your away team can rez you in ground combat. And dual pistols animated right (sorry COH). And you can run around the bridge and interior of your ship now and actually do a few things.

11) There's a very active COX chat channel that's inter-game between Champions Online and STO. I've been lurking as I've played the past few days. Seems a low drama and a very helpful atmosphere.

12) Since it's Cryptic-designed, a lot is the same. Many of the COH slash commands like bind_load_file and showfps work in STO.

There are drawbacks, sure. It's not COH (sniff), and Perfect World/Cryptic are micro-transaction happy, but I'm enjoying the game and excited to develop my various characters.

I have a human captain I'm outfitting in the canon uniforms of the various Star Trek eras as he levels (he's wearing 1979 The Motion Picture uniform right now). A Caitain (cat-person) captain who's costumed in as close to the old original Battlestar Galactica Colonial Warrior costume as I can get (pretty close actually). An Borg captain and all-Borg crew varying from Seven-of-Nine human to death-warmed-over Borg zombie. A "cute little antennaed free-form" alien girl captain in custom white uniforms. And a retro TOS non-turtlehead Klingon captain and crew.

I'm having almost as much fun developing these STO characters as I did my COH heroes. I'm enjoying STO enough I might even try out Champions.

My account global over there in STO is @Yoshikawa. If any of you move over to Champions or STO, say hi. Especially if you know a good STO fleet to join.

Doc Steele plays LotR, I may join her there out of friendship, I have a life sub to CO from launch, (beta testing the enemy back when) and I am American Valor there also. I will probably take the holidays off once/if the game closes. This year has been rough I lost my Grandpa in May, My sister is in Hospice, and COH is just bad timing. I am thinking I might try Star Wars, and/or dust off STO. My original crew was dressed as the original crew of ther enterprise, the USS Valor, I hope I still have my ship. Okay later.

AV

Thanks for reply, Val. Sorry to hear that it's been that tough a year for you. Hopefully I'll be running into you and Steele in the future.

Your STO account would still be there, especially if you had a life account. My pre-launch characters were (a Federation Admiral and a Klingon starter character) with all their ships and gear. The only difference from when I left was the game has changed its various currencies since launch, so my characters had the new ones at the change-over exchange rates.

Last night in the STO/CO "CoX" chat channel (the two games share private chat channels), one of the CO Devs came on to specifically invite COH refugees to testing some new feature on the CO test server with the devs. I must say that both Cryptic and the CO players are making efforts at welcoming us.

I plan on making a bittersweet short return to COH for the Halloween Event (I missed the Haunted House last year) and possibly a Snaptooth run or two to rescue Baby New Year (my favorite mission in the game). I haven't played COH since the day of the announcement -- too depressing -- but enough time's gone by I think I can pop back in for those events (and grab screen shots of my characters' costumes for the last time).

I fired up COH and logged on today for the first time since the day of the announcement, but couldn't even bring myself to get past the login screens. I took screenshots of all my characters and exited. I'll pretty much be offline for the next week (Thanksgiving and traveling), so I guess this is The End for me as far as my COH days are concerned.

I'll miss the game and the wonderful players I found here on Liberty deeply.

I've found a pretty good replacement home, however, over on Star Trek Online where I play under the global handle of @Yoshikawa. I've joined a themed Fleet (Supergroup) that with a friendly and helpful atmosphere that reminds me of much of what I had found here on Liberty. The Fleet is TOS Veterans and is comprised of older players (ages 30+) who like the old original series. The Fleet's backstory is the Federation of the game-era going back in time to bring back Kirk-era captains and their fighting spirit and savvy. Kind of like what I was doing in my COH supergroup anyway, which was a collection of Golden Age heroes showing modern supers the way to do things right.

STO doesn't completely replace donning spandex and capes to fight evil in City of Heroes, nor does it replace the good times and the friends I've made here. And while STO has become a bit more to me than merely a replacement game or making the best of a bad situation, I'll never forget the heroes here on Liberty I stood shoulder to shoulder with to save the day.

Goodbye, everybody! Here's hoping we met up again someday!

Best,

Doc Hornet



P.S. The graphic above was made from an actual screenshot of my ship, the USS Atlas Park. The game is that gorgeous.

Thank you for serving, Doc.

My last time posting here. Wish everyone good luck, and to be safe in your journeys!

I went back to my old MMO, Asheron's Call which is a 13year old MMO. (launched Nov 2nd 1999) 3rd Major MMO at its time.

Little insight of the game.

Max level: 275

Type of Characters: Anyway you want to play. Melee, archer, war mage, life mage, void mage, throwns, xbow and more. Recently they just revamped the weapons system its now Missile attacks, Melee attacks, and then the mages are the same.

Quests: a lot are soloable - some are group

PvP:1perma pvp server(darktide-redpvp) - 8white(NPK) servers which you
can do PKL(player killer lite) which you don't lose items on death and gain vitae(samething as debt). However you can go full Player Killer by doing a quest, Player Killer is redpvp which killed by another player you lose items on death and gain vitae.

The game is totally different then any other I've looked at or tried. It is a heroic-fantasy MMO.

Unlike many other games in the genre, there are no zones. This means players can cross the world on foot, without loading screens or invisible barriers, and any terrain that can be seen in the distance is a real object in the world. It also has a much longer viewing distance than other games of its vintage, with mountains, bodies of water and other terrain being visible long before it is actually approached.
The world is also dotted with a system of one-way portals which expedite travel. Knowing the location and destination of the portals, as well as lifestones, is of vital strategic importance - especially on the Darktide (PVP) server, where allegiances battle each other constantly for dominance over lucrative hunting zones and trading cities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asheron's_Call