Am I the only one not upset?

The biggest effect this had on me was surprise. I did not see this coming because Paragon Studios did not see it coming. You expect that the development team have at least some idea about how their game is doing, and they spent the whole week prior to that announcement grinning ear to ear and dropping hints of the cool stuff they had planned for us. Oh, and by the way, the game is shutting down. The who of the what now? It simply came out of nowhere.

As for gameplay, I like City of Heres' the best of any MMO save for those "action" ones. City of Heroes has something pretty much no other MMO does, and that's "feedback." You whack someone with a giant sword and you FEEL the force behind it. Between sound effects, visual effects, screen shake and animation speed, there really was a sense of contact in City of Heroes. The same isn't true for any other MMO I'm aware of. I'm not even sure if other MMOs give their critters reel-back animations.

WoW is probably the worst about "feedback." It plays like an RTS - you basically loop a short, spastic animation and numbers show up over your enemy. It doesn't feel like you're fighting, it feels like you're swatting the air while your enemy's health is draining. It's astounding to me why every MMO out there insists on having attack animations that last no more than a quarter second and have to be done while moving. It just looks so bad.

Honestly, I see City of Heroes as very much the only game out there that puts an emphasis on what looks cool to do at the expense of what you CAN do. An that's a major reason why I'm here eight years down the line.

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.

This is not something I want shut down. I had a lot of friends who vanished like smoke from the game post-announcement.

My two biggest issues are how the PS issue was handled, and the abject lack of communication between NCSoft and PS (and very likely NCSoft NC).

I love the game. I play on victory and have a blast, with groups between 2-8. Farm, no farm, who cares. It is about having fun, and for me, communicating and bonding with others. Nowhere else will you have the breadth of friendships form than in this game. Ages 10-70 (not joking), lawyers to grade school students, you never know who you might make friends with. And the community is just night and day when compared to other communities as far as generosity and maturity.

I was taken aback by the announced closing, it was too sudden. I think I will really miss it, an the OP will too when that day comes where you cant actually log in. Thats when it will hurt worse. But hopefully we all will have something else by that time to ease the pain.

For me it wont be a new MMO. I am looking at a new bicycle. I was in a crash 2 months ago and broke my collarbone and had to have surgery to repair it. I am nearly ready to return to riding, and hopefully the new bike will give me some joy.

For a lot of the people upset, there are two factors.

The first factor is that you seem to assume that people would have had the same reaction no matter when CoH had shut down. Perhaps a few people would, but the problem here is that this shutdown is extremely dramatic. Server populations had been relatively stable for a very long time. Revenue was on a very gradual decline. There were active plans from the dev team for easily a year into the future. A lot of the reaction you're seeing is because the shutdown was not clearly signaled at all. If the game had gone into a visible maintenance mode spiral, far fewer people would be as emotional about it.

The other factor is that CoH is the MMO that a lot of people who don't otherwise play MMOs actually play. That means its the only similar time sink that they indulge in, and when its gone, many of them do not expect to be able to replace it. Some folks spend 2-4 hours a day on this one thing, and have been doing it for 4-8 years. That's a big chunk of a person's time to suddenly have become a vacuum.

Then you consider that, for those same people, most of them weren't just spending all that time grinding in some AE mission. They were teaming, chatting, participating in forums, participating in the community, forming events, leading SGs, etc. It was a hobby and a social experience that will now end, or at a minimum be forced to dramatically change.

I think it's pretty clear you no longer had an investment in this game. The people who are upset still did, and got no graceful wind-down so that their expectations could adjust.

"Not upset but shocked" - lump me in that group.

I'm slowly realising I grew bored of MMOs about 3 years ago, but just felt so comfortable in CoH with my little group of friends I kept to these habits.

Everytime I try a MMO since 2009 or so, I log in, play for maybe a hour or two, log out, never log back in. There's just something missing, I just can't get immersed in these kinds of games anymore.

Inevitably, we all grow up. Not to say MMOs are childish, that would be silly; but, for example, when I started playing Warcraft 2, EQ and T4C, I was in my early twenties, and I could relate to most other players, as they were probably in the same age group. Now, at thirty-...something, the average MMO player age hasn't changed too much, and most people I meet are young enough to be my kids. This makes it much harder to connect with them, to develop meaningful friendships.

One of the draws of MMOs, to me, have always been that it made me feel like I was part of something bigger, an entire virtual universe, an unknown world to explore, with different rules and logic. Now? I feel like I'm a stranger everywhere I go, and I feel like I see the code behind the game rather than the game itself. These are not bestial critters trying to rip my flesh open, these are mobs of the same level as my character, mobs who move and attack in a very specific way. This is not a sword and a shield, this is loot generated from a table according to the mobs' level. This isn't the most beautiful city of the land, this is a hub for quests and NPCs, who are in turn nothing but quest givers and captain expositions. And so on. The immersion is gone. The magic is gone.

People point at the industry, and perhaps it plays a part, but objectively, looking at older games, you can have that same disappointing outlook. A MMO is a bit like a magic show, it's fun to be impressed at first, and it's fun to figure out the tricks, but once you have done so... There's little left to do, save for following your friends jumping ship from new game to new game, hoping to recapture an experience that can only be experienced once.

That looks cheesy as hell.

Upset? Yes. Going to lie on my back? No. There's still stuff to do to show support for the game, to make ammunition for the negotiators.

Like TF running. The first Positron's Ally event is tonight! Run the first TF, be Positron's ally!

Also consider sending NCsoft an e-mail urging them to sell the game if you haven't yet. They set up an e-mail just for us at COHSunset@ncsoft.com

Is it a black hole? I don't know! I sent one anyway.

Tell anyone who doesn't know about these. And the Titan Forum is also a good source of organization/stuff to do.

Wanna talk about cheesy how throwing a rock at someone here in COX they ducking behind a wall and still getting hit now that is pure cheese.


Anyway so long COX community who thinks they are better then everyone else have fun with your holier then thou attitude. I'm done here and with this game like it matters it will be in it's grave soon and no one wants to buy a 8 year old MMO with a 10 year old game engine. Just to obsolete.

I moved past being surprised into being wistful. But never angry.

Surprised because I thought the game had a very, very dedicated base that, like Jack once said, would subscribe pretty much through anything.

Wistful because the last time I was subscribed, June / July, I recognized ones of people in my globals and had trouble getting together a single run through the new raid. I've had some amazing times here and enjoyed the community -- I'll miss that. But ... not enough to maintain my sub. Or, honestly, log in for some FTP action.

I am, however, pissed that there's a chance I won't get to see, let alone read about, The Sekrit.