CoH saved my life

There's been a flood of posts here in the past day and I don't really expect that it will get read. But this is pretty much my last chance to say this. So here it goes.

CoH saved my life.


To elaborate I'll have to give a bit of background. I first heard about CoH in an old magazine ad. PCgamer maybe? It was just a blip. A 2' square shot of the old heroes around the original AP globe. Back when it was all wire-framy. It said that there was a new super-hero themed MMO in the works. That magazine sat in my bathroom for a good few months and I kept meaning to look into it. Eventually I did.

I joined the CoH fourms far back, in the days of the Halloween colored forums. Pre-AT days my friends. Pre-everything. I remember before there was a real fourm Mod. Who was it? MacAllen? He was the mod I think. I even remember Kiyotee. I remember Aura, the mod before Cuppa. I remember the ohhs and aahs over the scattered pics we got showing off the shiny spandex(and people talking about the broken backs the poor girls had). I even remember the weekly dev Q/A with good ol' Jack.

I'm rambling a bit, yeah. I'm kinda shellshocked about this whole mess. My point being that I've been around a while. I've watched this community grow from a few dozen to a few thousand. All this time I've maintained this handle. SDragon.

I had never really been to a forum before CoH. I had only made one handle before, for an old Mod for Quake 3(Bid For Power). The name I used there didn't suit a superhero game. So I tried to think up a new one.

My favorite color is blue and my last name is Fox. Simple! Only Blue Fox was taken. Silver then. Silver is my second favorate. It's a good col-- Yeah that won't work. Eventually I dug up an old Monster Manual and looked for something more mythological. Dragons! But Blue Dragons are evil... So...

My first hero.

Fast forward a bit. I'd always been a bit of an introvert... ok maybe more then a bit. I had managed to play on Victory for several years before I ever really made any connection with anyone. I just made my own little stories in my own little head. Slowly soloing my way through all the content. It was only after a few scuffles with some of these freaky "RPers" that I considered trying to meet other people.

So I made a post on the forums on the Victory(My home) sub-forums. Asking if there was any RP going on here. Mostly I got told to go to Virtue. But one poster said a few RPers meet up in GC on the weekends. So... I got up the nerve and I went. That one post. That one poster. That all changed my life, though I didn't realize it for many years.


I did some basic RP. I did what might have been Victory's first RP PVP event right as... what was it? Issue 2? The one with the arenas. Just sorta throwing out RP stuff at the poor random people who showed up. Got into an argument about lovecraftian entities, heehee. But that kinda fizzled out over time. People sorta dispursed or moved onto Virtue I guess.

But I did make some contacts, got onto a global channel(when those came out) and eventually got invited to an SG to help build up Prestige. I don't remember the SG's name. Eventually it... I forget, I think it just kinda broke up? Either way, one of the guys invited me to his SG. Shield of Valor. It was an RP-SG even. I sorta stayed in the peripheral for the most part. Joining in on a few missions. Until one day I teamed up with a certain player. She knows who she is.

That was the first serious RP I'd ever done. Our character's randomly hit it off. Our respective quirks happened to align just right and we the players hit it off as well. Many RP adventures were had and I even wrote a few stories(at her encouragement).

Years passed.


We met up IRL and she eventually facilitated my move, helping me get my first job and car. Which is where I am now. If it wasn't for CoH, I'd never have met the people that changed my life.

...But that doesn't really explain the thread title. To understand that, you have to know what was going on in my life during all this.


When I first went into CoH, back in the beta, I was juuuust under 18. I had my dad sign the NDA for me and what not. I played it damn near religiously. I had no job or school. I was vaguely getting ready for collage and maybe a part-time job. But for the most part? I played CoH.

Being home schooled, I had literally no friends since the 4th grade. Which was when I started home schooling. When I said I was an introvert, I meant it. I played with my younger brothers in CoH(two accounts) and sometimes got my dad to play with me. Not that he didn't play, just not with me mostly. I spent my time in this weird little bubble. We had a half a million dollar home. He was pulling 6 figures a year.

Until he left.

Then, only a month or so after my 18 birthday, my life collapsed. Or the pretense of it. He had skipped out on the last year or so of mortgage payments so we lost the house. Things spiraled down from there.

Our oldest dog, she had Addison's Disease(SP?) and needed constant medication. Which we just couldn't afford a ready supply of. She ended up dying in my arms at 2:10am. I had stayed awake with her the whole night, I could tell this was her last. That was really about the most painful thing I'd ever had happen to me. Maybe that's the sheltered life speaking but it hurt. A lot.

I had no method to deal with the stress. What my family was going through. What I was going through. And it dragged on for years. My thoughts grew darker with time and I considered ending it. I considered it more then once. I'd even planned for it and drafted a few notes for my family afterwards.

Why didn't I?

That player I mentioned, the one who helped me move on with my life? She and I spent long days and nights together. Her job gave her odd hours and I was able to spend the night brainstorming and building stories with her. It gave me, well maybe nothing more then something to do, but it worked. It gave me strength to hold on a bit longer.

If it wasn't for CoH, I wouldn't have met her. If it wasn't for CoH, even if I had we would have had nothing in common to form a bond together. If it wasn't for CoH, I would have spent those years coldly pondering my own mortality until the darkness finally won.

If it wasn't for CoH, I wouldn't be here.

Through every hard time in my life, I've had CoH as the constant anchor and rock. It was always there. The gleaming towers of Steel Cannon would wait for me to sail through again. The gritty rooftops of King's would wait for me to leap from them once again. And now it's going away. I don't even know what to think.

I will survive, that I know. CoH has given me what I needed most, time. It buoyed me up long enough that I can swim on my own now. Developers, I don't know how to express myself to you properly. How much your work has meant to me. How much interacting with you, asking questions, reading your posts. How much all of that helped. How it helped keep me engrossed in this world. In your world. And how it all helped keep *my* world together.

Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I will truly miss this place when it's gone.


To any of those who worked through my self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness, wall of poorly spaced text, thank you. To all the great people I met and played with. To all the people that answered my weird PUG /tells. You helped me through a dark time, even if you didn't know. You helped.

And now I'm all teary eyed, heh.

I read it. It sucks to lose a game, but it sucks a lot more to lose a dog.

But we never really lose the people and animals we love...maybe the games too. They change us a little bit, and we go forward into the rest of our lives as the synthesis of what we were, and what we loved. In that sense they will be with us, because we are different for having known them.

The dryest eyed way to respond to this is that the only thing more supportive in my life is Music. It's the one thing that can litterally turn the desire to push that accellerator to the ground over to a sense of hope and stability.

The game, however, allowed me to express myself (each little bit) to others in a world where it's either too expensive for me to travel to a friends house or even meet new ones. I'm not the most social apt person, but this was one of the few places that I didn't have to worry about work or family hearing about a random rant or anything else that could be misinterpreted. I'm sure that ended up with me being blocked by a few, but that's their choice.

That said, this is probably one of those times where losing such a crutch is probably just as bad as the good it brought.

I was a good kid, I'd always try to do the right thing. I didn't like to complain, I didn't like to do anything to offend or cause negativity, I always had friends to be nice with and everything was great. Then my family split, I moved and it changed. I stopped doing things, I had no friends to be nice with except my two dogs and I started to stop caring about having a good side for much else.

While watching TV one sleepless night, there was a British game p/review show on, featuring an interview with Jack Emmert. My imagination was sparked, I started thinking up Heroes, epic stories and characters of inspiration. Once I was 13 I had saved for a computer, got a steady internet connection (dial up ftw) and finally City of Heroes was mine. I quickly made friends, the Precision Rangers and the 1 AT Coalition of Heroes on the Union server, good people and great friends. They helped me get into the swing of socialising again, I started getting enthusiasm for being good, to be as nice a person as I can, to be a Hero.

But it started near the end of my secondary school. I had a history of over-sleeping and fatigue. When it turned out I had a form of Hypermobility Syndrome it started to make sense. Over time the pain increased, my dogs died and I tried going to college but I couldn't keep up with it, I'd lost the ability to focus and continue with a normal life.

I go from medicine to medicine, treatment to treatment, but nothing works. I went back to City of Heroes full time and my friends were still there, old and new. As much as the pain gets to me, I will always have friends to talk to, to whittle the hours away with both day and night. I've slipped in and out of depression, of dark thoughts and macabre fantasies, but because of this game I will always have friends to be nice for, always having the option of a happy existance even if it's not normal.

Thank you City of Heroes, Paragon Studios, NCSoft and Cryptic for letting this game be around for as long as it has been. You saved my life too.

City of Heroes helped me grow up, i picked this game up after i dropped out of school. CoH has been my life for the past 5 Years, i met with many nice people a jerk or two along the way but it's thanks to all the people here at CoH the Players and Paragon that i know how to be a nice person.

I'm going to miss this game a whole lot when the servers go down one last time but i'll be here till then.

City of Heroes has probably helped contribute to making me a more socially introverted internet zombie to be honest. But I'll miss it all the same.

Powerful stuff. Who says games aren't good for you? If nothing else, this story was worth it.

I won't say as much as I want to -- not now, anyway -- but just chime in with others to say, "I understand." For over eight years CoH has been my escape from some pretty unpleasant circumstances, and while my escape route is being closed, the circumstances... well, they aren't. I'm grateful, though, for all those times when I could get away from a world of pain and powerlessness by slipping into my secret identity and joining other like-minded heroes in bringing justice to an unjust world, if only for a little while.

Thank you for telling your story.

In hindsight, I was in much the same situation as you SDragon.

I didn't have the same things happen, but I was at a point in my life where I was just.....lost.

I would spend 4 or 5 nights a week at the bar, drinking myself into not caring how miserable I was. I was unemployed and broke, but I had generous friends and hung out at the same bar so I knew all the regulars. I'd walk in with $5 in my pocket and leave hammered, with $3 left.

Most of my friends never knew how bad I'd gotten, I've always been good at masking what's going on inside my head. But *I* knew what was going on in there, and it scared the bejeezus out of me.

Now, I've always had anger issues. They're mostly under control now, but for a long time I was a self-destructive mess. I lived in constant fear that my control would slip at the wrong time and I'd end up hurting someone I cared about or myself. I wasn't suicidal exactly, it was just that I didn't care about much of anything.

I was also prone to fits of violent rage, for reasons that didn't make a whole lot of sense. It's more than a little unsettling to be absolutely furious and have no idea why.

That was 7 years ago.

I had bought CoH at some point in 2005, but my parents' computer really couldn't handle running it, so I kinda forgot about it for a while. Then they got a new computer. I was helping them set it up and the game box fell out of a stack of discs I was moving.

I was on one of my "recovery" days, that being one of the days when I wasn't drinking myself into oblivion, so after the computer was set up I sat down and loaded the game into it. Now that I could actually PLAY it, I was immediately hooked.

I kicked around a few different servers, starting on Guardian because that's where my friends older brother played. I never did find him in game, so I server hopped some more, since I still hadn't had a character grab me yet. I decided to check out Pinnacle, for no particular reason.

It started with a name. Claws and Effect. It immediately struck a chord somewhere inside me. I'd been musing on the nature of cause and effect for a couple days and the pun struck me as I was browsing through the Scrapper powersets. From the second I loaded into Outbreak with him, I knew I'd found "me".

Here was something I could pour all my pent up frustration and barely understood rage into that wouldn't hurt anyone. Claws quickly became an extension of myself, a means to act out the violent impulses I was struggling with that actually dissipated them. I took on his personality when I played, but when I logged out it stayed in the game with him.

I wasn't "cured" yet, but I was taking steps in the right direction. I was staying home more and playing CoH instead of going out on my nightly self-destructive rampages. A lot of parents would be annoyed that their 20-something year old son was spending all his time on their computer beating up pixelated thugs, but mine seemed to understand on some level that I needed this. And they were definitely happy that I wasn't coming home drunk every night.

Fast forward 9 months.

I was now spending more time in-game than I was out trying to drink myself to death, and I was starting to make friends. I was working again, and paying my own way, even if I was still living in my parents' basement. That alone was a big help, not feeling so useless anymore. I was working 3rd shift at a convenience store and gaming at 8 AM when I got home. That's how I met Bundle. I was leaving The Hollows on one of my alts and he stopped and commented that I had a cool name. The name was Wraithwind, which is a combination of words that has more meaning to me than just about any other. The reason will become apparent soon.

After chatting for a few minutes Bundle invited me to his newly formed SG, the Night Walkers. It was named that because it was comprised of a group of 3rd shifters that ran together in the morning after work.

Several weeks later I met Kresnik 02, and my life would never be the same again, only I didn't realize it at the time. Since the character was male, I assumed the player was as well. I cannot tell you how thankful I was that I was mistaken.

You see, several years after that day, Kresnik 02 became my wife. Today, we own a house in her hometown and have a beautiful 2 year old son together.

2 names. Claws and Effect and Wraithwind. Claws and Effect set me on the path to healing my bruised psyche, and Wraithwind led me to the woman who gave me a reason to finish the process.

Those 2 characters, and this game as a whole, were instrumental in my ability to make a positive change in my life. If this game had not existed, I can't even imagine where I would be today.

In an abstract yet very real way, NCSoft is killing a part of me by taking those characters and this game away.

I understand Claws and Effect is just a character I made up in a video game. But he's also a very real part of me. If he had never existed, the person I am today would not exist either.

I've never shared this story with any of the people I've met in-game other than my wife. But, given the circumstances, I felt it was appropriate to share it with 150,000 of my closest friends.

I've been crying all day.. I truly believe CoH saved my life on a few occasions. Depression sucks... having a place to turn to.. to forget everything helped me a ton.. Now its like im losing my safe place, and a loved one.
I hope whomever pulled the plug realizes someday how much hurt he or she has caused so many.

I...really feel for you guys...I was never in such a bad place as you both were. But I have been at points where I really needed an outlet for stress, and to just...mentally unwind...spending hours playing this game and letting the weight of the world off my shoulders by smashing hellions or throwing rocks at trolls who throw them back, was a way to disconnect and allow me to get to a place where the stress was less pent up.

I...really...can't say that there are words that are...fit...to express the looming and ominous loss of comraderie and friendship I feel...and I...I know it doesn't make sense in a way...I mean it's an online game, but it was so much more than just the gaming experience...and you just don't find that in other games...

This group of people...maybe because we all liked superheros and doing good deeds...I don't know...but the attitude here is completely different...and that feeling...well...it will just never be the same...sadly.

Bah! I finally stopped sobbing and then I had to find this thread haha.

*hugs*

Carry the strength and lessons with you, my friends.

And thank you for sharing!

This is stupid how hard all this is hitting me..

I'm glad people got so much from this place. I hope the devs walk away from this knowing how much good they did.

This is a good wake.

Props to Claws and Effect, even if he does have a creepy-*** hobby that terrifies me to my very soul.

It is nice to know I am not the only one who in some way owes their life to this game.

Backtrack 6 years I was first introduced to this game by one of my college friends who still plays to this day on Union though he is not the real hero in this story. During the first couple of years of my play time I entered a steep decline into depression and was having a lot of trouble crawling out of it.

During this time I met a player known as Divine Intervention. I became good friends with her and enjoyed talking and teaming with her. She was the sort of person who liked to help others, she never did reach level 50 due to her constant exemping (back when you received no XP)

I was still very depressed and I nearly reached the point of giving up but one day out of the blue she asked if I wanted to visit her. So a month or so later I was on a plane to visit her and it was a fantastic break from my real life and showed me that life was good if you let it be. I returned fresh and happy and finished college with good marks and was off to university.

Sadly I did start losing contact with her at that point as she started losing interest in CoH but I will always be thankful to her and if it wasn't for this game I would never of met her and I have no idea where I would be now.

This is a PM I sent to War Witch after Herocon '08. At the event, I told her that CoH saved my life. She smiled aand thanked me for saying it but I didn't think she actually believed me.

I just reread this and am on the verge of tears. CoH really did save my life.

------

I thought I was going to break down in tears, so it was hard for me to say what I really meant. I didn't want to be "that guy" at a meet and greet that got overly emotional and caused a scene.

I guess it is just hard to hear myself say it because when I look back at that part of my life, it seems so foreign to me. It scares me because I never want to get back to that point of my life again. It's a personal story, and it might be a little graphic, but I wanted to show you what you all, and the CoH community did for me.

I was supposed to marry my highschool sweetheart in Oct. of 2004. We had been dating for close to 9 years and knew what we wanted from each other. She wanted a baby in the worst way and even though I wasn't thrilled with having a child before marriage, I gave in and we tried.

We had been living together for 4 years, so it felt like we were married. Unlike the married couples we knew, we were happy, so we thought we should try for a family while things were great.

On June 3rd of '04, which was our 9 year anniversary, I came home from work and was met with "I don't love you anymore and I've been seeing someone for five months." I was shattered. There was never a fight, never an argument, and nothing that anything was even wrong between us.

I made comments, that I later regretted, and left. I moved back home with my family. I was an emotional wreck. Someone that I spent everyday with for the past 9 years was gone.

Her friend, Shannon, was always nice to me. She was my ex's only friend that ever was. But I felt uncomfortable talking to anyone, let alone her, because the only memories I had with Shannon were memories of my ex.

Shannon called me and wanted to tell me the truth. She said she thought I needed to know about the stuff my ex did behind my back.

I hung up and didn't know what to do. The only things in life that I wanted was to be married and be a father. Both things were gone. So, I didn't feel there was a need to be alive.

I wanted to slowly kill myself. Everyday after work I would eat and drink, eat and drink, eat and drink. I was hoping that my heart wouldn't take the abuse and that it would stop beating. It never did. From the abuse, I gained over 100 pounds in three months.

I stopped talking to friends and family. I was determined to eat and drink myself to death and everyone knew it, but ignored it thinking that it ws my only way to deal with what happened.

Everyone ignored it, but Shannon.

She called me everyday, left messages on my answering machine, always telling me about this videogame she and her boyfriend were beta testing. At the time, I didn't play any videogames. I continued to ignore her for a few months, but she still called everyday.

In October, about the time my ex and I were supposed to be married, Shannon left a voicemail and threatened to never speak to me again. She said that it had been months since I talked to her and that she was giving up on me. That scared me because she was the only person that I new cared enough to call everyday. She said that if I didn't try this game, she'd never talk to me again.

It was "City of Heroes."

I tried it, and at first, I couldn't get into it. All I could think about was dying, so the game didn't mean anything to me.

My first character was named "Kerse." I wanted the name Curse, but it was taken, and I felt that's what my real life was. Nothing but a curse.

The game felt like it was just something to pass the time till Shannon logged off, so I could start drinking again. But, on this day something amazed me.

Shannon and I were in Perez Park, just duoing random mobs. Then the Kraken appeared. I saw Shannon call in Broadcast, "KRAKEN! Send tell for invite." Within seconds our team filled and what seemed to be hundreds more players just appeared out of nowhere. I was shocked. These people all came to fight this monster. Well, it was a long fight since we were all low levels. But the thing that snapped me out of my 4 month long funk was, "You have defeated Kraken."

All of a sudden, everyone started yelling, "Congrats Kerse! Awesome job! Way to tank!"

My heart was racing and I felt like I had a purpose. I felt like I belonged. I felt like a Superhero!

From that point on, when I felt the need to eat or drink out of control, I logged into City of Heroes. As soon as I got home from work, I logged in. When I woke up in the morning, I logged in. City of Heroes saved my life because it made me feel like I had a life worth living. That I could help defeat this "pixelated evil." What I really felt was that I was defeating the demons in me.

City of Heroes is a home to me. The community feels like a family to me. And I have the utmost respect for what you all, at Cryptic and NCsoft, did to make me see that life was living. That I was useful. That I have a purpose.

I play the game, I look for bugs and exploits, I try to write AE stories, but I don't do it for me. I do it because I owe you all everything. I feel that you all saved me and I know it's not something that I can easily repay. So I try to help out when I can.

Like I said, City of Heroes is my home. My one goal is to make sure that my home is around, and taken care of, so that others can find solace when their real lives are turned upside down.

Thank you so much and thank you to everyone at Paragon Studios for giving me my life back.

You never get it, do you, kiddo?

Take a look at the responses to this post, and check out how your story moves people. You haven't lost your touch! You had it from day one. From the moment Silver Dragon and Mal entered the Dream World, I was hooked. Your spelling sucks, your grammar is even worse, but you can tell a story like no one else I have ever met. And while I appreciate the lovely compliments that you've given me in your initial post, I will once again state that I did not save your life. Neither did an MMO.

You did that.

Yes, the game brought us together. Yes, I moved you out and helped you learn to live on your own, but the rest was you. If you want to see a hero, you need look no further than the mirror. I may have helped you move out of a basement. But you, through your stories, moved yourself out of a far darker place. In a way, it was a lot like the way we used to team. I did my best to try to soothe your wounds. But you are the one who fought the battles.

Listen, I know that you never thought much of your stories, but they touched people. Just ask Spack, or Blastblaze, or Aaron, or anyone else who really took the time to read them and let them in. The struggles you were going through in your real life lent your stories a sense of reality, despite the fact that they were, as you put it, "Fictional stories about pixelated characters." A story, be it written, played on a movie screen, or whatever the medium, can have a lot of power. It can make us laugh or cry, make us forget for a moment that all we've got in the cupboard is cheap pasta and that our boss is a jerk. And the stories we did together did that for us both.

City of Heroes provided you with a platform where you could launch and learn to fly. I know it hurts now to see it going. But you are more than strong enough now that you can fly on your own.

Silver Dragon was your hero. You are mine. I'm proud of you, kid.

....


really

I want to like this thread, I really do.

But for some reason...its totally creeping me out.