Until we meet again!

What I like about this game is that it actually seems you guys (the developers) care that this game is going away. I played Asheron's call 2, which was also shut down, and maybe they just weren't allowed to say anything since Turbine still exists, they were just shutting down the game, but seeing the good bye letters and the possible AMA lore edition is very...cool.

I've played this game for just a little over eight years (just a few days, actually), and it is definitely very sad to see it go.

Time to bust out the War Walker costume codes now, right?

Best of luck to you, sir. Though I may not have always agreed with the Marketing department's view on things (and I'm sure I wasn't alone there ;-)), I have the highest respect for you guys and the work you did.

A game may begin with the bits and bytes, but its soul is something beyond the sum of its parts. This is a game that has a lot of soul, and I have no doubt that it started with the developers who poured their hearts into it.

I think you all got a raw deal, and I sincerely hope that your next job ends up being something even better.

Posi,
I don't tweet, but for you, I'll open an account. Thanks for your creativity, your humility, and leadership, in making this fantastic game soo beloved by all those luck enough to play it.

My first MMO was... Ultima Online, actually. And it ended in hurt feelings and my swearing I would never get involved in an MMO or any kind of pay-to-play Anything ever again. Some years later my best friend started harping me about playing this new game he was playing. He knew I was an old comics fan, and he tried to leverage that into getting me to play. I refused. For a few years I refused. "Never again, man", I said.

Eventually he bought me a copy of City of Heroes and paid for the first couple of months subscription, and I relented. And my subscription has been active for the last I'm not sure how many years, and I fell in love with this game. I just kind of assumed it'd always be there. I play, my friends play, my kids and their mother play. It's a central connection that everyone I care about shares. And now it's been killed, and I still - days after the announcement - feel like I've been punched.

Matt, if you guys were able to find a financial backer that could pay everyone at Paragon Studios a minimum living wage while you guys wrote a new engine, developed new art assets to go with it, re-tooled the IP to be non-infringing, and would extend the studio a loan for starting servers (I wish I were that person, if I had the money I would be in a heartbeat)... I would be here when you all were finished with my CC in hand ready to step back on-board with you guys. I know that's a ridiculous scenario, but I hate the idea of Paragon Studios breaking apart as you all find new jobs. I'll miss you guys, and this game, and everything we all had with it.

Nicely done, sir, nicely done... Congratulations on all these years making me proud of being part of such a great game/community. You were amongst the reasons I kept coming back, even if just to say you were screwing up something... hehehe

I still hope the game gets saved someway, but if the lights really go dark... Well, I hope you all get the jobs you deserve with paying checks that are double what you earn now.

I know it might sound fake AND gay but... We love you, Posi. Keep your head up.

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE MMMMM!!!!!!!!!

And just for the sake of it.... DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM!!!!

thank you for everything, posi, would be honored to have you as my GM whether in a virtual online world, or at a tabletop.

Posi, man, your namesake character was such a central fixture in this game that I went and created an homage to him for a Halloween event a couple years back. And I loved the little guy so much that I just couldn't bear to delete him after the event was over. I never leveled him or played him much or anything... I just couldn't bear to erase him. He made me think of how much I liked the dev team who used some of these characters as their community nicknames.

If you're curious, his name is Paws-itron and he leads the Freem Phalanx. Together with his sidekick Valkyttie he battles against his archnemesis, an interdimensional version of himself called Anti-Catter, and his sidekick Beagle Maiden. When he's not saving the world and clicking on bombs, Pawsy likes to spend what little free time he gets on his personal space station. His favorite pastimes are researching prototype defense technologies, chasing laser pointer dots, and collecting bits of yarn.



If you don't mind too much, he's just gonna curl up by your feet in Steel for the big log out, kay? You won't even notice he's there... he's only level 4, he's grey to you.

Good luck with whatever project you take on next, Matt. And I promise this: if you help make it, I'll help play it.

Stay safe out there, hero!

Why don't you guys tell us what you had planned? Tell us some of it - there is no reason not to.

Thanks Posi. you will be missed !

Hope things turn out for you.

Best game ever !

First - Make another MMO, RPG, whatever with super heroes and I'll be there with a life type sub. City of heroes has yet to be rivaled in the MMO world in its ability to let your character actually feel super.

While other games have you focus on 1-4 bad guys, CoH had me diving into piles of 17. Want to solo that Champion by yourself? Go for it! Slug it out toe to toe, build for it, and you come out on top. The game was like a hack and slash dungeon crawler (set in modern times) on crack. Kinetics? Whoever designed this powerset should be a legend within the MMO industry as it let every player run around at super speed and jump tall buildings. Before I came to CoH you walked, you jogged, you sometimes jumped high enough to clear a small fence. After city of heroes, if it wasn't cranked up to 92 MPH run speed it felt sluggish.

The PvP in this game was and still is unrivaled in the MMO community. Nowhere else does it happen so fast in so large of an area. I've sat down with friends and explained "Imagine a 4 square mile underground cave, 16 players moving at 92 MPH, jumping 300+ feet at a time. Mix in insanse spike damage and amazing heals that if you were good, could essentially make you immortal. It truely was super powered combat.

Outside of the mechanics that made the game great, there was the story that I had fun playing along with for 8 years. After I played through that story who knows how many times, there was the option to create my own universe inside yours.

Off the top of my head, friends and I have run campaigns set in White Wolf's Vampire/Mage style universe. Zombie Apoc survivors. Hunter the Reckoning style monster hunters. Firefly's space theme. And plenty of our own super hero story lines. It was all made possible with the amazing base customiziation and the AE.

The saddest part is the game I love is closing down, the second saddest thing is there is no other game that matches it out there. Yet. Feel free to get moving on that one though.

Positron, this isn't just to you, but for all the devs.

In October of 1998 I was in a car accident. I suffered a back injury at that time that is still undiagnosed (another rant for another time). At the time I was working for a store called Computer City which had just been bought out by Comp USA. When I returned to work with a doctor's letter stating I needed a stool at the register (I worked customer service) so I didn't have to stand all day long, they put me on forced extended leave of absence until I was "at 100%."

Six months later a similar thing happened to that store as what happened to Paragon Studios. The Big Wigs came in around 11:00 am. By 1:00 pm the doors had been locked, the lights shut off, and the employees sent on their way.

In the meantime in an effort to make ends meet I had to take a temporary job at the Internal Revenue Service as a Data Transcriber.

In retrospect that was the best thing to ever happen to me. Now, I am a Project Manager, permanent on staff, and doing something I love... working with graphics and writing. Sure, it's not fiction, and the graphics are tax forms, but I love the people I work with (even if we get on each others nerves).

So, while the door to this chapter in your life may have been closed, another is opening. As my main, Mally (an exiled Christmas Elf who is now the personal assistant for a demonic lawyer) would say... "Just because it's something that seems bad doesn't mean it has to end that way."

I have been playing RPGs since the summer of 1981. I've been an observer, a player, a GM, a world builder. I've played Basic D&D, AD&D, D&D 2nd ed, 3rd ed... I've played all incarnations of Hero System/Champions system, Gamma World, Top Secret, GURPS, White Wolf, and so many others I can't begin to name them. Through all those games, the superhero genre was by far the one that appealed to the comic book collector side of me.

For all the gamer girl experience I've had, I was never interested in "paying $60 for a computer game only to shell out more money every month to actually play it." I think those were my exact words when Ultima Online hit the shelves at Computer City.

In 2006 City of Heroes made me eat my words. Suddenly here was a place I could make my amazing characters from a massive stable of work I had. I could tell their stories, share them with other players, and I tried to.

What's more, since my accident, I've lived in constant pain. Walking, even standing, can leave me in tears. Playing City I could transcend that pain and walk, run, and even fly, all while beating the bad guys up and saving the world.

Then I met The Dawn Enterprise Group. I merged my single-person SG with their coalition, and began to earnestly tell my stories and merge them with your game world.

Those stories will live on. The lore you provided, which has shaped the lives of my characters and others, will live on. As in all other games I've run, when something poignant touches the lives, or shapes the characters in such a way as Statesman getting Mally out of the Zig, or Nemesis being behind Serena finding the love of her life (we still swear it was a Nemesis plot!) then that lore has become a part of my game and I keep it there, with your permission, of course.

I will continue to follow you on Twitter and hope that the door you choose to go through finds you in the best of possible places.

And that goes for each and every one of us. We've made friends here and, as long as we make the effort, just because this game is ending, doesn't mean it's the end of this community. For those who have the new Facebook Groups and forums and everything, thank you.

Keep your memories, keep on gaming, and...

Can I haz your stuff?

OMG I bet you were going to let us play on the moon, or better. Its so not fair that this had to happen to us.

Matt,

Thanks for all the hard work, blood, sweat and tears you've put into the game over the years. It's hell of a legacy. Look again at the user list here. 178,000+ people.

Here.

In your playground.

And tens of thousands of them here for YEARS ON END!

I came into this game expecting to fluff it off after a month. This was just after the drop of Issue 12.

Four years later, I'm being driven from the game, kicking and screaming by your publisher.

While my wallet has some rather rude, uncouth words for you, from me, you have my utmost thanks for granting me this experience. My time here mashing badguy-face and subjugating my enemies has been an unmitigated pleasure.

I hope I have the fortune of running across you and the other Paragon Studios vets at some point in the future (My CoH Expat M&Gs next year at GenCon and Origins are open to all of you and your dinner is on me).

Our meeting at the last Player Summit was brief, and marred by an obnoxious smug infection I'd been carrying around vis-a-vis the Magisterium Trial on Beta. I'm sure you had some desire to slap it out of me. I don't blame you. Hell, if it was me, I'd be doing imitating Cary Elwes from Robin Hood: Men in Tights and using a gauntlet.

Here's hoping that the Titan Initiative bears some fruit and you're able to participate again in some meaningful way in the world you helped build and grow over this last decade.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Positron-

Thanking you and your team isn't going to be enough for all the things you've done for all of us through this game.

I think you've proven in your post what I've been thinking these past few days, that this is a game that really shows how much the people that work on it care about their jobs. I would imagine you'd say that each one of them would do their jobs for free just to be a part of the team effort (and really mean it), and to be a part of all of us as we enjoy the fruits of your labors together. There might have been some ideas that didn't go as well as they could have, like any project, but there was always an effort to make it as good and as fun as possible. I can't say that about all of the games I've played.

To have a group of people with that dedication speaks to the leadership and their ability to steer the group through all the trials and tribulations. To create and maintain a game for this long, to survive and thrive being sold from one studio to another, to have both large and small development teams and not skip a beat, that takes someone special.

I hope in your next adventure, you're able to bring along as many of these fine folks as possible to help you tell your stories and share your passions with us again. Thank you for your honesty, not only now, but all through the life of CoH. You've helped create a standard that will be hard to live up to. Many games, including WoW, would kill for the community we all share.

Looking forward to finding out where all the loose threads were going in the lore. Looking forward more to maybe playing them out one day.

Thank you for allowing us to share adventures with you. Thank you for creating a place people could feel at home, no matter where they lived. Thank you for letting us feel a little more super each day.

-White Hot Flash

I said so on twitter, but you've got both my respect and gratitude. This game really does have the best community. I'd like to think that I speak for everyone when I say that you have our support in any future endeavor.

It's been a pleasure having you as a GM.

This was my first MMO - incredible to believe how much time has passed since I subscribed to the game in late 2004. Lots of great memories.

Including the CoH meet-n-greet at Jillians in Boston. What a fantastic night. Highlight for me was meeting and speaking with you, Posi.

Thank you for everything.

- BS17

Thank you, Positron and Paragon!

I really hope the lot of you can somehow stay together. If your super-secret project was CoH 2, then NCSoft isn't going to allow that, but if it wasn't, then maybe what you were working on could somehow be revamped into a kickstarter project or an MMORPG for another publisher.

Please, I hope all those at Paragon leave their Twitter addresses (maybe sticked in one thread at the top?) so we can all follow you to wherever you might land.

Thanks again for having given us all the chance to soar across the horizons while avoiding that daily grind we call real life.

Best of luck to all of you.

PS/ If you wind up making another game, put in an Easter egg villain name with the letters of ncsoft scrambled to make that villain's name, hehe. We'll all know who you really mean. :P

Many thanks for all your work on CoH, Posi. With everything that you've all learned here, we look forward to seeing what you and the other devs produce in gaming.