Until we meet again!

You succeeded in building a game that had nearly everything I could want. I don't know if I will ever find a game that does the things CoH did.

1. Look like whatever you want at level one. Seriously, this is huge. Being able to build a seriously cool character and play them for only five levels or whatever, what MMO let you do that before CoH came along? Ideally, I'd like something with even more customization, but having started out with EQ I can tell you what I don't like about "all newbies look like newbies". Everything.

2. Super-Sidekicking was the best thing ever. Seriously, I hope every game in the future does something like it. Being able to play with all of our friends on whatever characters at whatever levels is a godsend.

3. Casual-player friendly, something a lot of MMO's simply aren't. For a couple of years I worked nights, and I played EQ on their Test Server, which had a very low population, and my Shaman had to solo much of the time. And that was a class that was good at soloing, but it still wasn't a game that was friendly to solo players... most MMO's weren't.

4. Making me feel powerful. One player versus three enemies, I think that was Jack's standard, which I far exceeded since many of my characters are heavily IO'd, but even one on three is better than the old standard, which often meant even 1 on 1 was a tough fight in which you might die. (I can sstill vividly remember being in a team of six or eight on the Plane of Disease or somesuch, waiting for an expert monk using feign death to separate one rat from another bunch of rats, because god forbid you get two or three rats, the whole team would wipe. Sure, they were Plane of Disease rats... but we were all above level 50, and we had to gang up on one rat.) But my characters could solo against many enemies... I may never find another MMO that does that.

5. Cool powers. Some of the ones that came out in the last year were among the coolest of all.

There's a lot of other stuff I could add... but it all adds up to a game that did a lot of stuff differently than anyone else, and was incredibly flexible in what it allowed me to play. I really don't think I'll find another game that does all of those things again... or at least, not until some former Paragon Studios designers wind up somewhere else.

Random CoH factoids about me:

I missed being apart of the first beta by eight spots (they took the first 100 people and I was 108)

When the first beta group shot was taken in front of the Giant Penny (Kings Row), I got yelled at because I wouldn't kneel -- truth is, I didn't know there was a /kneel emote and was just waiting for my Rest power to recharge. If you look at the picture, I'm the orange cat-looking woman.

My beta character was named Tomorrow (Illusion / Kinetics). My first character ever made live was named Emerald Fury (Illusion / Kinetics) on Virtue.

I was an "every day" player for the first four years or so. Then I decided to 'pull away' and killed my account. I deleted all my characters except one. No matter how many other games I tried, I always came home to City of Heroes and thought I always could... When the time comes, I'll log in Emerald Fury one last time.

While I didn't come up with one of the first Hamidon strategies, I did name the team for it: Illusionary Suicide Squad (ISS for short).

Jack Emmert and I got into a spat once about the direction the game was going (near when CoV was released). Years later, I met him face to face at GenCon when he was promoting Champions Online. He misspoke and called it City of Heroes during his pitch. I just smiled and let him ramble on.

When Cryptic left and NCsoft NorCal took over, I thought for sure the game was doomed. Thankfully, I was so very wrong. You guys really got the game going on the right track. Much like some people follow great actors or directors, I will follow you to your next game Mr. Miller. You've earned my respect in the video game world.

I got to FPARN Posi!

And I followed him on twitter!!

Great, now I'm tearing up again.

I remember the first time I ever saw rednames in the game. I was taking screenshots like the most godawful fangirl you ever saw. I've always been pretty meh when it came to that sort of thing, but these was City of Heroes celebrities!

There are so many things that I'm going to miss, just thinking about it hurts.

Thank you for everything. Just... everything.

Matt,

I have to thank you for all you did while I was running w00t Radio and trying to do events in CoH. Your involvement made things always a thousand times more entertaining for everyone.

I still talk about the Cuppathon where we spawned Hamidon in Pocket D on the Test server and even though you'd turned off his ability to attack, you didn't make him invulnerable which lead people to cause a mito spawn and wipe out everyone in Pocket D 8..

Of course probably the funniest part was Manticore having to go in and clean up the mess while we were on doing some other part of the event.

It was you and the entire dev team's attitude towards this community that allowed it to grow into the 'city' it is today and has been since the early days.

I've tried just about every major title on the market and a month ago I came back to CoH full time, my life allowed me to play a game seriously again and I couldn't find a better game to spend my time in. It breaks my heart to see it go before it's time but obviously there are things in life none of us can control.

Thank you for all the amazing times and the constant entertainment all these years. I look forward to being in your next campaign.

/em Salute.
-Michael "Jester" Thies

Dear Posirton and the dev team

I'd like to thank you, i've met so many good people playing over the last 5 years. i met my fiance here and all the members our guild still talk regularly like the family we have become.
keeping this short the members Of Nova Delta Force/Dark Evil would like to thank your and wish you the best of luck

Respect, Grupt and the whole crew

Thank you, Matt for designing a wonderful playground for our ideas, and creating a haven for badge-collecting outcasts, and making us all feel like we could save the day.

Thank you for posting this, Matt. I loved reading this kind of stuff especially when I can related to it. In this case, just the mention of Amber Diceless made me nostalgic. Never really got to play it, but I loved reading the books and Amberzine, and even corresponded a little with Erick Wujcik in those days when that still meant sending paper envelopes with stamps overseas. (Now that I remembered it, I'm still saddened by Erick's untimely death. Coupled with CoH's death, I'm becoming quite emotional. I might have to post to that thread about crying.)

I love that you made these great design decisions that made CoH the game I liked playing the most. I hope you'll find a place where you can make more of them, or, better yet, that you'll continue with CoH and its next generation because someone will save it.

Here's hoping we see you in the next big thing.

As far as those future plans go, can you divulge some of them? To quote the Vapors' song "Bunkers":

I went down the road to see the end of the movie
Cus I really like the part where the heroine dies
She takes away so many million secrets
But she tells just a few before she closes her eyes

...just a few? Don't leave us hangin' bro.

All I can say is, and this goes for every one of you at Paragon Studios, so pass it along:

A job well done, sir. Well done, indeed. I'd shake your hand if I could.

Whatever the future holds, I wish you all well.

I could write a whole bunch here, but I'm going to keep it short and sweet.

Matt, thank you for making CoH into the best, and longest, gaming experience of my life. The fact that I'm not sure what to do now after this is testament to how amazing and important and wonderful the game has become, thanks in no small part to you and your time at the helm.

Thank you, so much.

I couldn't even bring myself to go to the forums this weekend. All those posts saying goodbye. It's just too much.

But now that I'm here, I just wanted to say thank you Positron, for all you've done for and with this game. Our game. It's been an honour playing in your campaign.

I think my best memory of Positron, in-game, was an event in Pocket-D back in... oh, I don't know. Ages ago. A couple of Devs were there in-game, including Positron. And I was there, as my shiny rad/rad defender (I don't remember if this was before or after rerolling him as a corruptor) Anti-matter.

*ahem*

Yeah. See, I'm horrible at ever finishing anything, and I have a severe case of altitis, so I'd never actually reached level 50 with any of my characters at that time (today, after eight years, I think I have three 50s total). So I didn't know anything about the praetorians, but I couldn't help notice that Positron kept hanging out near me and checking out my costume. So, I was like "uhm, hi". Then someone told me about the 'real' Anti-Matter. Yikes!

I actually petitioned myself that night, and got a response from support a few hours later, basically saying "nah, you're fine."

This was long before name change tokens had ever been implemented. The character still exists. He was my first character back in 2004, whom I rerolled back in, oh, 2006 as a rad/rad corruptor. While I was allowed to keep the Antimatter name, it grated on me and I eventually chipped in for a name change.

Today he's Radium Rex. And level 35.

Maybe I should finish up a few more of my characters before it's too late. If I can bring myself to play.

I played most of the MMOs that are out there (I started with EQ1) and I can honestly say COH has by far the best community and by far the best Devs of any game I ever tried (and I tried a lot of them). Other are not even close.

I am so sad... I mean I knew it wouldn't last forever, but now? It was doing fine and I had so many things to do with my lvl 50s, so many new powersets to level. Why has it to be now? It makes me so sad, because this is so sudden.

But then again I think I can keep it in very good memory now, instead of remembering a dying game, but still... I was so 100% sure I will celebrate the 10th birthday of it.

Arcana, you are cool beyond words.

Thanks for everything. I had a blast playing and if u do a mmo again, maybe with heroes or at least none fantasy, without grear grind and add alot that CoX Players loved and wanted, i will join your legion.

Farewell.

Dear Matt Miller,

While I've badmouthed you a lot over the years over the general course of the game, I will still miss you and the game you led to greatness. I'm probably one of the more "unpleasable" fans around here and even I have to say that I just didn't have much to complain about in recent times. Hell, the game was looking up - the best it's ever been, with the future bright and shiny. Then this happened... I know you say you read every post in a thread, and if you read all of mine, you deserve a medal. And if I ever said anything that was personally offensive, I apologise for it.

Others have said it, but it bears repeating - you and the others made what is easily the best MMO out there, and pretty much one of the best games in general. Sure, the graphics were old and combat was buggy and many of the new systems were grindy and the text was full of typos and the story kind of caved in on itself, but these are minor problems. They can be fixed, or at worst ignored. What really made your game shine was that this was a place where dreams were MADE. Let me elaborate on this for a moment.

I've played a lot of games and quite a few MMOs. Most of them tend to centre around catering to people with a specific dream. "I'm in a forest!" MMOs cater to people who dream of a fantasy setting of elves and dwarves and high magic. Sci-fi MMOs cater to people who dream of a technocratic future where science and technology make the impossible possible. Hell, even most "super hero" MMOs out there cater to people who dream of being heroes. Not City of Heroes, not really.

City of Heroes is a place where dreams are made, where none existed before.

When I came to City of Heroes, I had no real artistic aspirations, no real stories to tell, but your game inspired me. It inspired me to think, it inspired me to dream, and it inspired me to create. I've had many problems with your game and your setting, but I stuck around because despite those problems, you let let me create content of my own, such that I would never even have dreamed of before. All of my weird and wonderful creations, I owe to your game and your game alone, for giving me the tools with which to create them, play them and expand on them. You, your team and your game gave me my imagination. And for this, no price is too high.

We can talk about game systems and game lore and programming and maths and so on, but in my eyes, what set City of Heroes apart from all other MMOs is that this is a game which encourages its players to create. We aren't just picking a character and picking a role and grinding through levels. No, we're creating our own characters, writing our own stories and having our own adventures that take place in this open and welcoming world you've created. No other MMO - not a single one - has ever done that. No, those try to capitalise on what people already want out of a game.

For as much as you swore to give players what they want, the fact of the matter is your game - by the sheer strength of its presence - shaped what we wanted right back. And this is something you should be proud of.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Posi, thank you; thank you to all of you.

There hasn't been a time when I've seen CoH mentioned somewhere in internet comments or in RL when I meet people who are MMO gamers and mention it that I haven't piped in with, "Yeah, City of Heroes really took off after Positron took over". It's almost a reflex for me because I believe it so strongly. Strongly enough, as I imagine for many players as well, to give me a pang in my stomach just to read that this game is just stopping for no sufficient reason that we've been told. You and your team did more to give players what they wanted out of their MMO than anybody else I've ever come across in this entire industry so far.

My best to you and to the rest of the team. We'll miss you and I'll always remember that day of laughs with CuppaJo because of the "zone music incident". LOL

God, I hate this. It's a game and we're all adults but, Christ, I feel like we're all saying goodbye to adopted family members.

I don't we ever saw eye to eye on 'what should happen with design', especially the 'Revamping stuff makes it a new shiny!!' stance I had, while 'New shines!' seemed to be the Dev team one, heh.

But gods damn I'm going to miss CoH

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Hahah nerves of steel Matt, nerves of steel...

I always wondered how you devs dealt with the criticism and good to see you were human all along. We used to forget that! I don't think you ever answered one of my many PM's to you and I know for a fact that math wasn't involved =P

Must have been something about similar looks...