Until we meet again!

My thanks and gratitude to everyone that has worked hard to make this game as awesome as it is. This was my first MMO and still my favorite. My thanks to my fellow players. We are a unique group and I have never found anything like this community in any other game. Because of all of you, I found a love for writing; first fan fiction for supergroups, then onto self published novels. I hang up my cape with real life friends from around the world. Again thanks to everyone (Developers and community) for making the last 8 years truly awesome. I know in my heart that this is just another cog in Nemesis' plot and with us out of the way the world will finally end.
Be Safe and Good Hunting.

as a going away present can you turn off HD,TS and DR in pvp zones?..pwease.
(and don't say "sure on 11/30")

I will miss you Posi. I will miss all of you folks.

I cannot begin to say how much this game, and you, Matt, have meant to me. Tears continue to fall this day, as they have the past few. You and this game have awakened and energized a part of my soul I had thought long since gone.

I have forwarded you a PM that best explains how much this game meant.

As a Navy man, our ship (and submarine) Captains are hard-charging, brilliant, masters of their environment, battles and men (and women). It takes a LOT for Captains to earn the respect of their men; most have to exceed their station in every single facet by 100 fold, just to earn a sliver of respect. I have only placed 2 Captains in my life that I would follow again, no matter where the path led.

You are the 3rd such Captain, Matt.

THANK YOU for all you have helmed here. Go forward knowing you have indeed made a difference and have earned my respect.

Fair Winds and Following Seas.

*STANDS ON DESK*

Farewell, O Captain...My Captain.

-Don "Major Deej" Finger
US Navy, Submarines (retired)

Thank you Positron err I mean Matt.

Thank you for letting us adventure in your playground, for listening to our ideas and dreams, and making even more fun for us.
Thank you for letting us fly with the angels and give us the tools to create our own unique characters and adventure.

Thankyou for the AWESOME events! So much variety and so much fun.

This has been a wonderful journey.
It was my first MMO, even I managed to adapt & become quickly a loyal fan.

You & the Paragon Team have raised the bar so high for MMOs, I have not seen anything else come close.
Nothing else comes close to the fun that is Cox.

I would like to say - I am proud to have been a part of your world, and so proud of what you all achieved in making for us!
I wish you all the best & that you deserve the best as well.

Also please don't forget to keep us informed on what you end up doing next. I eagerly hope one day you create another playground, where we can all have fun together again.

Your fish was the best darn tasting fish in the universe.
Thanks for the fish. Also - please, sir, can I have more?

You guys need to create a new super hero rpg using whatever IP protected stuff you can. You'd have an instant player base since NC Soft "fired" this one.

COH was one of the most innovative mmos out there. I've played SW: TOR and you guys' fingerprints are all over that game.

Be proud.

Thank you Positron and all the Paragon team, you've made such a great game and changed the life of a lot of people including me, indeed in 2005 I met my wife in CoH.
So Thank you again and I wish the best for all of you in the futur.

Greetings from Strasbourg France

I want to thank you all for the environment you helped to create and maintain. I know we in our own ways controlled it too. The game was getting better and more beautiful and I was so excited for what the next issue would release and the future of COH.
When my husband started up the free trial, I was a dead set no, we are not going to pay to play a game every month! ( after watching him play first person shooters and GTA, I had no interest in any kind of online multiplayer game.) "No, you'll like this, just try it" he said. And he set me down in front of the costume editor. "Fine, but if i don't like fly by the time our two weeks is up, you can forget it." I spent the first week and a half with my chat window closed, street clearing between mishes, because I thought I needed to. I had to have tells and lfg explained to me. To make the long story shorter, here I am 5 years and 3 accounts later. I fell in love with the game and my characters, but to let my child play was a biggest deal. I knew that the environment was maintained enough that I could let him play, and not have to hyper control his movements or his chat. He loved getting to play along side Mom and Dad's characters. He was so excited when we bought his account. The American Legion Sg helped with that by creating a family friendly atmosphere, but that wouldn't have been enough if the game and the community of players had not been at least respectful. i know there were more shady times of day and locations ( for little eyes.) Now as I sit having to make decisions about what if anything will be next. So far I have not found another I would let my child play, without me sitting beside him and attempting to censor things.

So thanks, we have made great friends here, we have had an escape when we needed it, and we have had family time with it. I said I'd be here till the lights went out, and we will be.

Thank You Matt and all the rest of the wonderful folks at Paragon.

I didn't post on the forums much, didn't get to go to Meet and Greets or Cons and see you guys.

What I did do was play this game. A lot. I had been a PnP roleplayer for years but life had interfered and I was missing it. The best I could do was video games I could play at night when my kids were asleep. My brother (who lives300 miles away) showed me an MMO (EQ) and it looked boring and I declined. Then, October 2004 at a family gathering he brought his laptop and showed me COH. And I was hooked.

I bought the game as well as a computer to play it on and I played and played. More importantly, my children played. My oldest son, Super Surge, made his first toon at 6 years old in 2004 and became an amazingly good player. My 2 year old daughter would imitate the tanker taunts when she heard them.

As they got older we got second, third and fourth accounts for my 3 kids. Our family would have a tiny office filled with desk tops and laptops as the four of us would play and simultaneously skype and play with my brother who got us hooked.

Super Surge told me last night that he wouldn't have gotten to know his uncle as well if he hadn't spent night after night on Skype (and speaker phone before that) playing City of Heroes with his Uncle.

Thats what you brought us. You brought our family together with something we all enjoyed. You gave my 14 and 12 year old sons reason to say, "Hey Dad, do you want to do an iTrial or TF with us?" You gave us numerous friends that we have made in this game who we wouldn't have met without you.

I couldn't understand why I spent this entire weekend so emotional about a "video game" ending. But it was so much more than that to our family.

On behalf of Super Surge, Avenging Elf, Rapinkel and myself, I thank you all. And wish you all well in the future.

@Saturn Green

Matt (and the rest of the Paragon crew):

Thanks for all you've done for this wonderful game, this amazing sandbox you built for us to stomp around in. And thanks for always being accessible, coming on the forums to talk straight with us, even when you were saying things we didn't want to hear.

I have no doubt that some smart studio will snatch you guys up ASAP. And if they're *really* smart, their next game will have a banner headline on the box reading "FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU CITY OF HEROES, THE BEST F***ING MMO IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE!"

Thanks, and good luck.

Thank you sir and your wonderful team for allowing my dreams to become a 'reality' of sorts. Best game ever!

Old school PnP gamer

PS: I loved Amber diceless too.

I know I can't claim to have hanged with you on this eight year long roller coaster ride, or to have been here since the beginning, but I can claim that this is honestly the best superhero game if not the best game I've ever played period, yes, better than even Hulk: Ultimate Destruction or Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I am amazed by just how much vision you possess and am left in awe by your care and investment into this game, whereas most MMO developers never seem to interact with the community in any meaningful way. You are a great person and I wish you luck in your next endeavors. And while I'll never forgive NCsoft for what they did to you, I'll never forget the best month of my gaming career you have given me.

Honestly, seeing you and this game go reminds me of the first time I ever saw Optimus Prime die. After getting so invested into something and then watching it die for some corporate decisions (I haven't a clue as to what in this case, but everyone knows it was to promote Rodimus Prime in Optimus'), it just feels like a punch to the gut like nothing else. But just like how Optimus unfailngly returns to life sooner or later, I know that whatever you'll bring us in the future will be excellent. And while I'm hoping you'll bless us with another great Superhero MMO, I'd be happy with anything you create.

Because even in an age of bad moves in gaming such as Other M, you still stuck to what you did best and it turned out to be more awesome than anything I could have imagined. I know I may seem like just another random newbie, but in the month or so I've had to enjoy this game, I've never met a friendlier or more colourful community, with people from all walks of life with so many different interpretations of what a superhero was. And you helped bring these people together. And to borrow a quote from Optimus Prime to sum up my feelings towards you and all the devs "Thank you, all of you. You honour us with your courage and bravery." I don't expect you to respond, or to even read this, I'm not really that much of a big name here, or anywhere really, but writing this makes me feel a bit less powerless.

Farewell and good luck.

I got into CoH when my brother told me "hey bro, some guys are working on an MMO for superheroes." I'm like "whatevs, that can't be cooler then Final Fantasy 11!" then he says "it says here the game will give you a power that will let you literally rip chunks of rocks out of the ground and throw them at enemies" I was sold. That is actually the bar I have set for MMOs for me: "will the game let me rip chunks of rocks out of the ground and throw them, if no, I wont play it."

I have tried to capitalize on every moment of City of Heroes. I tried to be a part of every event that was ran. I went to every Herocon/bay area meet and greet (except one, where I was moving that day) and I even made sure to dress up for the first herocon. My love for City of Heroes even lead me to getting a job at Cryptic Studios (right after they sold CoH /sadface) and I was a part of the community team that launched Champions Online and Star Trek Online. My experience then gave me the courage to apply for the community team for Paragon Studios twice. Once I interviewed under Lighthouse (who was a really cool guy) and the second time I interviewed under Zwillinger.

Now I write that long paragraph because there was one moment during my second interview with Paragon Studios that I regret to this day, and I want to clear it up.

I was sitting at a table in front of Positron and War Witch not trying to lose my stuff and fanboi all over them. Positron asked me what I thought of the server specific sections of the forums. My City of Heroes career starts and ends with the Freedom server. I lived on the Freedom server, I tried to be a part of just about everything that happened on freedom, including the first time we defeated Hami, the first time we beat the drop ship raid. Half the game to me was the Freedom server section of the forums where were on Freedom would just mess with each other.

Now when Positron asked me this I was in "super professional interview mode" where I'm trying to present myself the best possible and appear to be everything needed. I tried to read what Positron wanted to hear, and I ended up giving him this wishy washy non-answer about nonsense - and I blame my not getting the job entirely on that answer.

What I wanted to say was, Yes Posi, those sections of the forums allowed me to meet and grow relationships with some of the best friends of my life. There are people I met on that specific section of the forums that I may never see again, but will always remember because of the great times we had. Without that one specific spot to go and hang out CoH would have been just a great game, but because you choose to fight and have those forums put there CoH for me went from a game, to a community, to a family. A family that I never wanted to lose. Some of the best times of the forums for me were when servers clashed and it became Freedom vs Champion on the forums, and I knew I had a whole server backing me up in whatever flame war I had started. So thank you for having that, and make sure you put a server section of your forums in the next MMO you run.

Although my forum join date says 2006, reality is a different story. I've been playing since mid-2005.

You see, it all started when I was visiting a friend's house, and he sat us both down in front of his computer to show me this awesome new thing he had found- an online game where you got to make your own superhero and go around fighting crime. He showed me the hellions mugging people on the freaking roofs in Atlas Park, the clockwork scurrying around stealing scraps, the incredibly cool urban landscape. And he showed me the character creator, letting me play with it and showing me how much fun you could have with it. I was hooked right there! I didn't have to play as a pre-set elf or human, or whatever. I didn't have to wear standard level 1 gear, or wear skimpy things if female. I could be anything I wanted, human or non. And I didn't have to be regular human size either, I could go anywhere from 3 to 8 feet, and do all manner of tweeking to my character's head and body, aside from pre-sets. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen.

And then I got into the tutorial. My friend sat behind me, giving me pointers beyond the tutorial's instructions. So I picked up the game PDQ with his help.
Now, at the time, I didn't have a computer powerful enough to run the game, nor did I have high speed internet at home. So I could only play when visiting my friend. Yes, I know that account sharing like that was technically against the rules, but my friend knew that I wasn't the type to make offensive characters, or go into the game and do or say offensive things that might threaten his account.

Needless to say, I got a computer powerful enough to run COH ASAP, (as soon as I upgraded the video card) and as soon as my family got high speed internet, I created my own account, and the only time it's ever lapsed ever since was when a time card ran out and I had to wait a couple of days to replace it.

I've tried other MMOs, and none have managed to hold my attention like this. WoW's storylines are fun, but it gets frustrating looking like everyone else, with the same sets of gear equipped. I tried CO, but compared to the beautiful work Paragon has done in recent years, its costume parts look amateurish and cartoony. That, and at the time, there was little reason to actually team, and there wasn't the social element that I found in CoH. No central places where people gathered to talk or compare costumes, or do other fun things. Most of the time I felt like I was playing a solo game, other players were just in the background.

I'm also a SWTOR player, and while I enjoy that game, I still love CoH more than anything, and I doubt I'll find anything like it. This game promotes and encourages player creativity and gives us a feel that we're shaping its world like nothing else I have ever played.
Thanks for making such an awesome game, Posi! I know I've disagreed with you sometimes, but that's only human nature.

Thank you.

I've posted my story elsewhere and can't stand writing it again - but y'all made a game where I could FLY!!!

Truly, thank you...

You and the game and the other players will be missed - not sure I could play another MMO now I know what has been done with this game - kept me enthralled for many years never got bored and had a blast with other players - including a few I know in RL

Goodbye

Oh forgot to mention a couple of things - despite my first love being fantasy then sci-fi then horror with supers being down the bottom this is still the best mmo out there.

Second as being a long time RPGer of table top and live - please for the love of [insert name] bring out an RPG of the game - would buy it in an instant.

Got to go and cry now

From all of the old people in The Mid-Life Crisis Society Supergroup, Thank you! We wish you well.