Your most loved character to play?

I don't want anyone to look back at the last eight (nearly nine) years of this game and regret the (potential) closing without having a chance to look back and think of what's driven you through this game. Over the long-haul of the game's life, I know I've had sections of time where one character has always stood out for me, and in the end I know there will be at least one that has the greatest impact of all. I've looked forward to playing it for the last several months and it has coerced me back into the game many times over any other character just for the shear thrill and joy playing it has been compared to any other in the long history.

For me, that was my Beam Rifle/Traps Corruptor, the only Corr in my stable, Cailan Gobha. I developed a string of follow-up toons all based on that original concept (Dark/Sonic Troller, Night Widow/Fortunata, and a planned StJ/Bio Stalker) worked and warped around the Incarnate Lore. Even if the offshoots were of the same concept, I always enjoyed the Corr the most and I'll have nearly six months of incredible memories playing with her.

So, if you walk away from this game, what character do you walk away with the fondest memories of?

And, for posterity, her build:

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Her name is Lunaticia, and she is an Elec/Elec/Mu Brute. She was my first 50. She is my only heavy investment into IOs (and siphoned all my other alts money into her ridiculous Purples and HOs +Recharge/Regen/HP build). She's my only Incarnate to get T4 in all 6 open slots (indeed, she has more than one T4 available in each). She is my Badge Hunter, with 1,386 badges, and only six to go that I could obtain without time travel. Her build is unorthodox, but surprisingly effective. While she's not the sturdiest Brute in the world, she has Lightning Rod on a 28 second recharge, and Power Sink cycling so fast that she often fights with Super Speed or Ninja Run active without remembering or noticing any endurance problems.

She is the last Mu Cataphract, the only survivor of the second generation of soldiers trained in that deadly art. She is a Loyal Arachnos Troop... even though Scirocco wishes she would defect and stop being his problem. She's been on semi-permanent loan to Vanguard and Lady Grey since the Rikti Invasion, and her good work there has earned her some goodwill in Paragon despite her company loyalty (Rogue alignment and proud of it). She is the president, founder and only member of the Captain Mako Appreciation Society and Scrapbooking Club. She has put in paperwork for transfer to Mako's command several times, received Scirocco's blessing each time, and always been turned down by Mako's lackeys, who don't trust that her motives are pure. She is recognized by Arachnos as among the Elite of the Elite, one of the strongest metahumans ever to rise in the ranks, and they thank their good fortune every day her personal obsessions continue to keep her docile and obedient.

Right now, she is preparing a portal corps assisted mass-evacuation for the citizens of her home in Sharkhead Island, as the Primal dimension becomes unstable. Her Arachnos superiors disagree with her plan (and appropriation of tech and manpower), but haven't been able to stop her. It seems, here at the end of the world, that she may have been hiding a Hero inside all along.

Delgran, merc/pain mastermind.

Jacob Deyer, Dark/Dark/Soul stalker .....aka Mot's Nemesis

MFing Warshade.

Above all else.

I love all mine equally but most my hours was on an Inv/SS Tank.

Stone Melee / Firey Aura Brute, Volkanik.

I tried building him on CoV (way before GR and proliferation) 3 times because I loved the concept so much but would struggle terribly with endurance problems. Thankfully a Double XP weekend in 2008 got him to level 30 ish and off the ground. From then he's always been the most satisfying character to play.

He's not the most durable, he probably doesn't do the most damage, but he's just a real assault on the senses; the crash sounds and screen shake of stone melee, the stuns and subsequent firey death and throw in some Tier 3 Pyro Judgement slot as well. Whenever I play him I grin like an idiot.

For me he's just the epitamy of what a brute IS. Nothing subtle, no finesse, just an unstoppable force of SMASH. I'm going to be spending the next couple of months getting as much video and still footage of him as I can and I already have one Deviant Artist doing a commission for me, and certainly plan on getting a few more.

I'm not the most talented videographer in the world, but I did a video of him here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMHxaoWJr-0&feature=plcp

I've had a number, and they've changed over time.

My first character(4th 50, Power Overload) was an energy/energy blaster, but I never really loved it. My first 50, my nin/dark MM and namesake was in a similar boat.

The first character I really loved was my EM/Elec brute (2nd 50, Speed Demon Shinobi). This was the character I got into pvp on, won my first tournament on, and was just in general a total beast (until they nerfed ET)

Then came my Rad/Psy defender (Psionic Shinobi) which carried me from i8-i13 pvp. This is the character I played with that got me really good at pvp, mostly by dueling with and against my friend's ice/storm controller. Won me a massive number of PvPEC tournaments on champion while I played it.

Then there was my Fortunata (Sunset Shinobi), which I made when they released the AT and carried me up to when I quit pvping shortly before i14.

Then there was the mass of my PvE toons, of which many got deleted. Favorites were always my fire/kin corr (Sanaki) and fire/cold corr (Kisaki), unarguably the most powerful powerset combinations in the game when built and played properly. Were the characters that landed me almost all of my game-wide TF speed records.

I also really enjoyed my fire/kin troller(Naota), mind/fire dom(Project NHK), ill/emp troller(Shinobi Holy Savior, short stint emping in a pvp league post i13), fire/elec (Trethen) and fire/em blasters (She no Bee), and ss/fire (Murdantix)and tw/elec brutes (Sacaen) and plant/psy dom (Apathetic Bystander/Synca (had 2 of em))

Iguane. My first 50 and one of the first burn tanks. He went from being a pariah on teams because fire tanks were too squishy and couldnt hold thier own to being everyones best friend because they wanted a pl. He pled so many peeps it isn't funny, and not because I necessarily wanted to pl people, but just because I wanted bigger spawns. Course, then he went back to being a pariah because He and his ilk were ruining the game. Pretty much stopped playing him after the burn nerf, but has come back out and is played quite often these days.

Didn't find another toon that could match up to him till Wyvurm, my spines/fire scrapper. He was squishy, but hell if he couldnt rip a spawn apart in seconds.

Then came Atropos Moirea. Fire/traps corr. I never would have thought I could have so much fun with a "squishy". It's in quotes because squishy she is not. Opened my eyes to the benefits of playing debuff characters.

Plasma Assault, my fire/shield scrapper... I wish I rolled this combo long ago. It will be a fun few months playing this toon.

And probably my last 50, Clotho Moirea. A dark/sonic defender and my second of three fates. Came up with the idea while incarnates were in development, but didnt roll another of the sisters till a couple weeks ago. Clotho has exceeded all expectations. To the point that I used her while I led my first team in about 4 years destroying +3 Maria praetorian arc with a bring whatever 8 man pug. Ended up with no tanks, brutes or scrappers for alpha soak and she tanked just fine.

I will save my last fate for when the servers pop back up.

My main, and most loved character, is Durahell. Named as a play on the popular battery Duracell, he's an SS/Elec/Pyre Brute. With 644 hours of play time logged, I can say I had way too much fun with him. He was the only character I made tier 4 incarnate powers for. And even now, I'm still tweaking his build (thanks again, New Dawn) after some much needed updating.

If you ran on Protector, you may remember him from quite a few iTrials. Here he is in my favorite costume for him. Yes, I know Samus Aran is a girl, but the armor is unisex, I checked the tags on the inside of it to make sure.



Click this DataLink to open the build!

I felt I had finally created my best character on the Beta: Project ANTITHESIS, a Praetorian Dual Pistols/Martial Combat Blaster cyborg that had "Rogue" written all over her. Got her to 41 in three weeks, spent months getting her costume just so. I don't have a screen cap on hand, but I do have her 1,023 character bio:

Lenore Grayce was a promising freedom fighter with the Resistance until Calvin Scott ordered a raid to liberate her father Henry, a brilliant biochemist, from Cole's service. During the raid, Henry panicked and accidentally became exposed to the Hamidon sample they were studying. He was transmogrified into a monster, and although neutralized by Powers Division, he first decimated the Resistance forces and ripped his daughter, literally, limb from limb. Observing the tactical brilliance she had shown prior to her tragic end, Praetor Keyes reconstructed her as a potential solution for complex field operations requiring higher-order thinking than automatons could provide. Unfortunately, she remembered her death and was abandoned as a gibbering, pitiable catastrophe. Praetors Berry and Tillman salvaged the failed "Project ANTITHESIS" with extensive mental reconditioning and a fail-safe explosive device to ensure her loyalty.

Worst part is, I can't think of another game that I could feasibly create a similar character in. Dang.

All of my eleven 50s are something I really enjoy playing. For me, by definition, that's how they managed to get to 50 - stuff I don't really enjoy never makes it that far.

However, in contemplating what character I'd want to be logged in on when the lights go out, I decided that it would have to be my Dark/Dark Defender, Nightfall.

Nightfall was a very early character of mine, made before Issue 1, back when I didn't know much at all about the game's mechanics. What I didn't know at the time was that Dark Miasma wasn't a very good Defender Primary. Issue 4 changed that dramatically, making Dark much closer in nature to Rad Emission.

I got lots of playtime on Nightfall. She's the characters I did most of my early teaming with, and that teaming was with Real Life friends or on-line friends that came from other games, so people with whom I had strong bonds. I think that created a kind of proxy bond between me and the character - I associate her with the good times of playing with those friends. Eventually, most of those those friends left for various reasons, and I spent a lot more time soloing melee ATs, which are, in general, my favorite things to play in CoH. (I consider Scrappers my favorite AT.) But I never forgot Nightfall, and I would come back and tweak her build as various changes in the game made that sensible - something I do with all the characters who, eventually, made it to 50.

I eventually started attending Hamidon Raids with her. Justice has a long history of regular Hamidon raiding, so I attended many, many raids. I got the badge for healing 10M points of damage mostly just from using Howling Twilight on masses of people who wiped at raids. If there was any one power that could salvage a pre-I9 raid that was going sideways, Howling Twilight was probably it. There weren't a lot of DDDs at raids, and people were always glad to see Nightfall there.

Over the years, more stuff changed and was tweaked, but what really turned Nightfall into a powerhouse was IOs. This build is the one I had ready for I24. (If you can't follow the link, the data chunk is at the bottom of the post.) Basically, I built for moderately high ranged defense, high global recharge, and aggressive endurance management.

Dark Miasma's fear cone, Fearsome Stare, is large and powerful enough to give Defenders (and, to a lesser extent, Corruptors) a taste of the power of Controllers, even though it is "soft" control. It lets them manage large spawns in great safety. Also, Tar Patch is amazing at managing critters that are susceptible to slows. It allows you to clump them in one place - a place that happens to badly debuff their DR. While Dark Blast is certainly not known as a powerhouse of damage output, its cones are excellent for taking down large spawns caught in Tar Patch, and keeping Tenebrous Tentacles in the rotation keeps the critters in the patch. Once you have a few cycles of the cones applied, you can usually slack on refreshing Fearsome Stare, depending on the foes, just because you're debuffing foe toHit while you defeat them and keep them in place. So I would slap Darkest Night on some dangerous foe, drag the spawn to a Tar Patch, let them clump a bit, then lay into them with Fearsome Stare and the two Dark Blast cones, inserting Gloom and Dark Blast into gaps between recycling the cones.

Oh, and there's usually a Dark Servant running into the middle of them, usually absorbing alpha strikes (which he's not that good at, at least if they're ranged) and generally diffusing aggro so I can establish my pattern of mezzes and debuffs. He dies a lot, but better him than me! (I actually preferred Dark Servant with ranged AI. He stayed alive a lot better, and was far more prone to stay where you summoned him as long as he had a target to fling attacks at.)

Many players of Dark Miasma advocate using Howling Twilight as a stun, and take Dark Pit to stack with that. Using the build and tactics outlined above, I have never found that compelling. Both Dark Pit and Howling Twilight have long recharge times and fairly short base mez durations. While I'm not above flinging a HT at an unfortunately-timed ambush, I normally reserve it for foes whose regen I want to debuff.

Because of the above synergies, I think Dark Miasma/Dark Blast really a great combo. Nightfall obviously has nowhere near the damage output of some my Scrappers, Brutes or my one Blaster can dish out, yet she is without question one of my most powerful characters, able at times to survive things that the melee characters could not. With Clarion to keep mezzes from disabling her, I solo this Defender on 54/x8 as a matter of course, against both standard and Incarnate foes, regardless of the critter group involved. I can solo crates/containers in Lambda with her.

Nightfall has T4 Alpha (Cardiac Core), T4 Judgement (Pyronic Core), Interface (Reactive Core), Lore (Phantom Core), Destiny (Clarion Core, Rebirth Radial and Barrier Core), and Hybrid (Control Radial and Assault Core). She also has a T3 Ageless Core.

If you're wondering why I took Assault Core on a Defender, when DoubleHit can be such a big boost in damage, it's because DoubleHit has much reduced average damage in cones and AoEs in general. Core gives more average damage per cast in the cones. Since slathering foes in cones is such a big part of how I play Nightfall, it made sense to build Assault Core. Assault Radial would be better for hard targets using my single-target attacks, but barring I24's fast snipe changes, Defender Dark Blast was never particularly good at single-target DPS, so I focused on what I was already good at.

T4 Control Radial Hybrid is sick on Dark/Dark. It basically turns the character into a full controller for 2 minutes. 70% chance that a foe who's already immobilized and terrorized gets a mag-4 stun? On a character who's predicated on stacking fear and immobilize? Yes, please! Against all but the most obnoxious of foes, this is 2 minutes of sheer domination. If foes can't kill you before your first cycle of attacks and mezzes go off, they never will.

Edit: Oh, by the way, the energy resistance in Shadow Fall is terribly useful in Incarnate content. In a pinch, I have pulled Siege and Nightstar in the BAF, and (get this) Antimatter in the Keyes iTrial. If I really needed to do that for more than a few seconds, I would use Force of Nature to really drive up my resists. Darkest Night was usually involved as my "taunt". Being able to do absolutely ridiculous stuff like that only endeared me to the character even more.

Trivia: Nightfall is the first female avatar I ever had in any video game. Before CoH, I played FPS games, and my in-game avatars were intended to be projections of myself. A female avatar made no sense for that. In CoH, I finally learned to create characters that were not such overt projections, but stand-alone characters with personalities of their own.

Nightfall has the most playtime of all my characters, at 2699 hours. In comparison, my badge character (created late in Issue 1) has 2182 hours.

I'm particularly proud of Nightfall's bio. Over the years, particularly before we had Global Names, this backstory apparently made many people think that I was female, a roleplayer, into goth stuff, or some combination of the three. This is the original bio - it has not been changed in many years. It's actually impossible to edit this bio in the modern text field, because it will not accept the accented "e" in her last name.

Not all heroes are inspired by a sense of justice and honor. Andrea Duprés was 12 when her parents gave her as an offering to dark entities in exchange for wealth and power. More wise by far than Andrea's parents, the forces of shadow saw in Andrea more use as a tool than as a sacrifice, and they fueled the feelings of hatred and betrayal she felt for what had been done to her. Trained to use this hatred to call up dark forces, she was molded to be their agent among mortals; an assassin and spy - a hunter of the night.

But her new patrons underestimated Andrea's will, and she eventually mastered the dark arts well enough to escape her bonds of service to them. For five years Nightfall evaded the agents of her patrons, eventually coming to Paragon City, where her powers draw less attention. She now uses her status as a licensed Hero to vent her rage, using her dark powers on those who break the law, all while gaining the protection of other Heroes against the forces of her one-time masters.

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Betsy Ross was probably the character I had the most fun on. I didn't even intend to play the character that long; she started out as a joke for a Fourth of July costume contest.

I have no idea how she ended up a spines/WP scrapper, but the combination was particularly awesome. She was my go to character for recipe farming and my principal marketeer. Most of her fortune is gone.



Her final build:

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<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

Some really great stuff in this thread. I can't go into as much detail as I'd like to at this moment as I'm at work and on my iPhone. It's wonderful to see other's detail and flesh out their beloved toons to share with the community. My personal favorite character was my Plant/Storm/Ice Controller. Hemlocke by name, his backstory was fairly generic (he was a defrocked member of the luddites) but his playstyle was anything but. The sheer carnage, scope of control and epic flavor this guy created will, in my opinion, never be duplicated in any other game.

Since I began playing MMOs back in 1997 with Ultima Online, I've yearned for a Druid-esque/Nature themed character that could provide a boon to teams, look amazing and fullfill my RP needs. Hemlocke was that character. I can't fully express my inner hurt that I'll no longer be able to slip inside his skin and live my digital dream. At the risk of sounding a touch corny, I LOVED the feeling I got every time I would summon a Lighting Cloud. Using Hurricane to push and keep mobs (even bosses) into corners made my chest tingle a little. Don't ask me what spawning Creepers would tingle :P.

When Incarnate Powers were released, I had only one goal. Bring Hemlocke closer to the Nature god he was meant to be. Ion Judgement was an easy choice and the Storm Elemental Lore Pets was a no brainer. I felt it really pushed Hemlocke into the stratosphere (no pun intended). I don't mean to drone on and on about his powers. I just wanted to convey that he was my digital avatar for the past 5 years. I don't know of it is possible to love a bunch of 1's and 0's but I sure as hell will miss them.

When I get home I'll post a pic and his build just for posterity. Thanks for letting me share his existance with you.


Organ

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Crossed Streams - Beam/Traps Corruptor. Made on a whim and was a joy to watch the character develop.

Theyes - Street Justice/Energy. Ahh the Stalker Proc, who would have thought one IO could change the world.

Delta Waves - Mind/Kinetic Controller. The joy of sleeps and confuses.

Nor'easter - Ice/SS Tank. All around fun taking on the Wall in Cimerora.

Paulaceblo - MFing Warshade.

Honorable Mentions to:
Blue Sonja - Katana/Willpower
Abysmal Cloud - Dark/Dark/Dark Defender
Sporadic - Plant/Fire Dominator

- I shall really miss this game.

Some of the most fun I had in this game was solo leveling my burn tank back in 2004-2005. He wasn't my first character, but he ended up being my first 50. Years later, he became my main, when I realized that he was capable of doing things that none of my other characters could even dream of. He's the only one I ended up fully IO'ing, and the first I took on all the iTrials. He also tore it up in PvP zones for many years.

His name is Knockout Moe, a Fire/SS tank, and my most powerful character.

That said, I don't think I will miss him any more than my other characters. I will miss all of them

I actually have two "mains"... Palrah, my hero-side WP/DB tank, and Grey Kestrel, my Rogue villain-side DB/WP stalker... as well as half-a-dozen other alts that I would call Favorites. But Pally (pronounced "Paulie"-) was my first serious City character, and so he'll always have a special place in my heart.

He was the first character I learned to solo...
He was the first character I ever played with a full-sized team...

He was the one who had to suffer through me, a novice gamer with notoriously bad coordination, learning how to control the motion of a character who could fly.

I absolutely adore the guy, and always will.

This is the version of Palrah that I'm going to lose when the servers go dark...


That's not the only version of Pally that exists, though...
I was fond enough of my goof-ball, boy-scout of a tank to invest in another version a couple of years ago.

I also have this one...



... and he'll be with me forever.

(Resin!Palrah is a 70cm Iplehouse EID Akando, with custom wings and face-painting. I consider him sort-of the ultimate action-figure.)

kind of on the same alignment of this thread is this news article which popped up on massively very recently:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09...oes-character/

I can think of two:

The first is my DM/Shield Scrapper, Dark.Enforcer. The first toon I rolled as part of a leveling pact, and the first set of characters that my sig-O (now wife) and I planned on having a joined lore and synergy. She rolled a Kinetics/Dark Defender, Dark.Vixen. Most fun ride up to 50 and through incarnates, ever. If she is on in the last few days and we can find time to play, expect to see us around Pinnacle beating stuff up.

The other is the oldest toon currently on my roster (second oldest overall, he had IH as a toggle), a DM/Regen Scrapper, Shadow.Reign. He is also my first 50 and my general "badger, lore, and event" character. This is the base character I thought of when I think "If I could be a superhero, what powers would I choose?" (the total character would also have some splashings of Martial Arts and Super Reflexes. That is why I stuck with positional Defense through IOs even though I could have gotten better numbers going typed). On the last day, when everyone else is on their mains and having their going away parties, I will be joining them on this guy. Shadow.Reign will be the last character I log into the City.

I have two, pretty much tied. I play them depending on which mood I'm in.

When I want to bludgeon things to death while laughing at the futile efforts of the pathetic enemies to kill me, I go with my Nin/Time/Mace MM, Shadow of Kronos.. Which Barrier active he has 59% def and another -13% tohit on top of that. I can generally just barge through an entire map with my ninjas slaughtering everything without ever getting hit.

When I want something with a little more finesse, I go with my MFing Warshade, War's Herald. The constant mantra of finding more bodies is really hard to beat, and even bleeds over to some other characters. Very, very addicting.

While I of course like all of my characters to some extent, my two favorites are my very first Brute, Thunder Glove, and my very first Mastermind, Dr. Bodog.

I created both of them when I this account was just a Trial Account. I didn't think I'd seriously be sticking with the game, I just wanted to try it out. So Dr. Bodog is a Bots/Storm/Mace MM who is very much in the mold of Golden Age mad scientists. I'm actually surprised he never got Generic'd, because he originally looked very much like Captain Marvel's nemesis Dr. Sivana (I have since changed his costume to black and red, given him lab goggles instead of specs, a goatee, and cybernetic gloves). I generally play him like a "real" Mastermind, too. The robots do the real work, he stands back and entangles enemies with his webs, or slows them with his winds.

Thunder Glove was also going to be a Captain Marvel villain - in this case, Black Adam. I was originally going to make him straight-up SS/Inv, with tights for his costume (but with blonde hair and no lightning bolt emblem), and a Magic origin, but then I saw the Robot Arm category, and .. I had to have it. I instead went with the Tech Wired pieces and a giant oversized right fist, and Elec/Inv powerset. I had a vague "intergalactic conquerer depowerd and exiled to Earth" backstory for him in the back of my mind, but when I realized I'd forgotten to change his origin (still Magic!), a backstory of him being a former hero named Thunder Knight who had nearly been killed in a rescue attempt, resulting in the loss of his right arm and needing to be on constant life support, but who still kept his powers (granted by gods of lightning and the sky). The name change came from the hospital tech who weakly joked that his new prosthetic arm "fit like a glove", which was the last straw before his mind snapped and he broke out of the hospital and went on a rampage, and subsequently looks out only for himself. He still has lines he won't cross, even now, so I made him a Rogue once I got the ability to change alignments.

Though I have other Brutes, he's my favorite, the only one I've written such an elaborate backstory for. (As of the announcement of the shutdown, I have made one of his alternate costumes Black Adam)

I'm currently having a lot of fun with my Grav/Elec/Mu Dominator, too. He's 47, and I want to try to get him some Incarnate slottiness before this is all over. I don't have any sort of backstory for him at all, I just wanted to try a Dominator. He was loooosely inspired by Sinestro.

My favorite Tank is my Stone/Stone/Energy guy, Sgt. Greenstone. I wrote a joke background for him (he was originally part of the rock that Buddha imprisoned Sun Wukong in, but then he came to life and joined the army). He originally looked like a cross between the Thing and the Hulk (despite being based on neither, oddly enough for me) but with a soldier helmet, camo pants, and bandoliers, but then I slimmed him down and used Organic Armor pieces to give him a more military but still inhuman look. (And then when I got Omega, I brought back the Rock Guy With A Helmet look, but more elaborate. Still camoflage pants, though). One of my only "main" characters who has no lightning related powers whatsoever.

And BluePulse. Poor BluePulse. My very first character, an Elec/Elec Blaster. I was so very looking forward to I24 to get him up to 50 for reals. He's 33 now (he was 20 before the double XP weekend a short while back), so I can probably get him up to 50 before the game shuts down, once Gravity Hold is 50, but ... well, we'll see. There was supposed to be more time.

Three way tie for 2nd:

Earth/Rad troller - Atomic Tera
MFing Warshade - Shadow Huntress
Plant/Fire Dom - Edenfire, my first villian to 50

My number one fav: Katana/SR. I had about 15 lvl 50 scraps, but this was my favorite simple combo.

They are immortal in my memories anyway and when they go to that great big hero/villian place in the sky...

Lot of awesome characters all! Several MFing Warshades popping up in there too

Thought I'd toss another character's story in to the pot. My namesake, John Printemps. He was what I rolled on my first day in the game and I remember everything about that first experience in the game. I didn't know anyone else who played and CoH was my first MMO, so a lot of what I was doing was totally on wild guesses. I didn't really know where I wanted to start, but Scrappers seemed like the most fun, and trying out toon to mimic a comic character seemed like a quick way to initiate myself into the game. I never realized that your first character (back then) was also what your Global ended up being. I rolled a Claws/Regen and gave him one of the most horrible costumes ever (black leather with red tribal overlays and a cigar).

After the game spit me through the tutorial I loaded into Galaxy City (inorite?!) and took my first real look around, amazed at the sandbox environment I was being dumped into. Sitting not too far off from where I loaded was a DM/DA Scrapper, level 15, and toggled into darkness. They warm-heartedly welcomed me to the game, offered me 50,000 Influence (which I had thought generous, no knowing anything about Inf) to get started and gave me a few tips. They were one of the original driving inspirations that pushed me to make a Dark Armor Scrapper (which ended up being my ~4th or 5th toon). Shortly after my conversation with them, another flighty player offered me to join a Super Group and I spent the next two hours running lowbie missions in Galaxy.

The community in this game has been awesome since day one, and that I will never forget.

Incidentally, I struggled to get my first character to 20, used at least two respecs on him, burned the lvl 24 respec trial on him, and several more freespecs up to 29 before I ever really understood who the character was. What kind of personality he had, what drive to play the game there was. He spent a long time at level 29 collecting dust. I probably earned about three or four fifties before I went back to him and pushed to level 46 where I level-locked him for a while as a Bridge (remember those days?!). Eventually he became my eighth or ninth 50, and right before Enhancement Converters is when I finally worked out his ultimate build and slotted him up. And this: I Promise this isn't a Rick-Roll is my favorite piece I've done for him.

Man, my favorite? I'd say probably Shekinah Oldsoul. A character honestly imported from Gaia Online (yeah) originally started as a Mind/Rad controller, but then quickly re-rolled as an Illusion/Sonic Controller... I would swear by Ill/Son, recommend it to anyone who asks. The character concept was just wacky enough to keep people guessing, but limited enough in the game to stop her from being the big Mary Sue that most Gaia characters eventually become.

I loved the idea of a character that used raw and unpredictable reality warping, and Ill/son really captured that. The ride from one to 50 was smooth and enjoyable, as was her long 50 career soloing in the Shadow Shard until the Incarnate system gave her newer and bigger challenges. I never did hit reliable perma-PA on her (if Force Feedback procs I hit it, otherwise, no), but I got close enough that nothing else has begun to compare combat-wise. Though when I hit perma-hasten on my Bane Spider, it felt pretty close... God I wish we could have gotten Minimal FX Hasten on live...