So what really makes you sad? What really hits you?

So, I hadn't played CoH for over a year: I had played the hell out of it since launch, but sometime around the Freedom announcement I decided to take a break. In spite of this, I've still always loved this game, and hearing the game was ending gave me a fierce urge to play again.

For some reason, the Atlas Park music hits me like a punch in the gut. You know, the music that plays when you first get near City Hall? Ugg, nothing else in the game makes me feel like that: that's the music I'll always associate with my first few hours of CoH, and the game that kept me going longer than any other.

RIP CoH, I'll miss you.

Probably quite an obvious one, but just the knowledge that I'll never be able to play Volkanik again. Stone Melee / Firey Aura brute.

Took me three goes to get him past level 12 (because of the insane endurance problems he had) and thankfully a double xp weekend got him to level 30 ish.

He was always a bit squishy (until IOs and Incarnates) and often had sideways insults levelled at him by a few of my SG mates as in, "Oh I'm sure he's a fun as a solo toon" just because I couldn't solo Statesman with him on a LRSF.

Now, as a +1 incarnate he tears through +2 x8 spawns and is the most fun I've ever had with any MMO character ever. Playing him is almost therapeutic. After Nov 30th, I'll probably never be able to play him again.

That's a real ******, let me tell you.

I'm sad that Ivan Turgenov will never get the Bug Hunter badge.

FPARN!

Also, how are you supposed to get that badge??? I've sent in more bug reports than I can count.

I'm sad about that as well. The real kicker is that yesterday I stumbled across something that made me think, "Damn it! I could probably get Bug Hunter for this if the game weren't ending!"

That as a die-hard sci-fi and hero fan, that there was finally a game for me to expand my creative sides. I've been gaming for over 40 years, and no game, and I mean no game has close to feeding all my needs of creativity.

Add a world class community and devs who loved the game as much as I do, and I feel like I'm losing family.

When I was 18, I had a character concept I always wanted to implement. As a writer, she only thrived within msword docs and in the form of typed out origins(with a typer-writer, yeah I'm that old).

Next was for her to grace canvas and paper, and although she now had visual life, she lacked animated existence.

Then comes COH almost 2 decades later, and she became alive, with a fleshed out origin and even the comics I made about her back in the day came alive with MA. I think I will miss MA the most from COH.

COH brought to life a thought, a concept and vision. I consider COH my dream maker.

And her existence will end just when she became fully evolved. This. this is what makes me the most sad and what hit's hardest.

That this comes shortly before a huge update to the game; one that had what we wanted for so, so long. Pool customization, the new IO sets that rocked the house...there are so many things.

The fact 80+ people all got fired on a friday

The fact that we'll not get to see the rest of the incarnate tree.

We'll never see what battalion looked like; unreleased art that by contract must remain unreleased.

The fact that all 42 of my characters will disappear at the end of November.

That I will never Fly through Paragon again.

The fact that this was my bastion for 8 years; my outlet when things got bad (I had just lost a good friend 2 weeks before NCSoft made the announcement to end CoH forever).

The fact there were--are stories that are going to go untold.

The fact an amazing amount of work done over the last year isn't ever going to be used.

The fact that on my Birthday I planned to put down a good chunk of money for Points for Super Packs 2.

The fact NCSoft ended a game that was going stronger than it had ever had, for reasons that are secret.

The fact that even if saved, the game will not be what it was before Aug 31.

Besides seeing a game I've loved go, hands down it's the layoffs of the studio staff in this economy and the effects that has on their lives.

Getting my refund. Had a one year subscription, a birthday gift from my wife since she "knew I'd use it for a long time."

Seeing the Paragon Studios staff go their separate ways.

Having a limited time to demolish the mobs of DA on my TW/WP Brute.

Never again being able to argue the power of Dark Armor to anyone who denounces it.

Letting go of a game that shaped the past 6 years of my life by seeing me through high school, a bad relationship, college, a great relationship, marriage, four crappy jobs and two good ones. No more coming home after a bad day and letting off steam by pounding Council to paste.

The loss of my stress relief still has me panicked.

The fact that there's no other game out there that "feels" like City of Heroes. CoH was pretty unique in how it played. I'm going to miss the hell out of that. The game, your character, they all felt sturdy. Other online games, the character I've played always seems weaker in comparison.

As I mentioned in another thread, the worst thing for me is when I log on to character selection to my home server (or, these days, to Beta, where I've been doing virtually all my playing). Top of the list is a character called Mirka, a WP/DB tanker. Mirka's been through it all, and while I can't say she never gets knocked to the ground, it doesn't happen very damn often...and she always gets back up again. I'm a roleplayer, and that character's core "shtick" is that she she never, ever gives up and embraces the Tanker ideal of "first in, last out."

Now, when I log in, because she's at the top of the character list she's staring at me and seeming to say "I can't beat this. I can't even fight it. Please...help me." And then I start tearing up...like I bloody well am right now.

So I haven't been logging in a lot for the past week or so...

80 people at Paragon getting shafted. That still just burns my a** - job fairs and whatnot notwithstanding, it's still just... argh.

Realizing that despite five solid years of trying desperately to get a job there, now it can NEVER happen.

All the videos I will now never be able to make.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

City of Heroes was unique in many respects, what I will miss most is the level of creativity and individuality you could express in the game, not just the costumes, which were incredible, the bases, the Mission Architect, all of it. There is nothing comparable to this system, and it's developers and players. It will leave an absence that cannot be adequately expressed.

I'm sad to be losing a game that finally scratched an itch I've had since I was three years old.

Let me bring up Superfriends. Remember Superfriends? Now, for a moment, forget all the jokes about it. I watched a bunch of episodes recently, and it occurred to me - it's painfully obvious to us, as teenagers or adults, that Superman is a lot more powerful than pretty much anyone else, Batman was still in his Adam West phase, Wonder Woman was reduced to "girl with lasso", and this is the version of Aquaman that created the (arguably unfair) "Aquaman is useless" meme.

But in the show itself, that didn't matter. The team considered Batman and Aquaman just as useful as they considered Superman or Green Lantern. (The Kid Sidekicks had their moments of incompetence, but even they could get it together) Everyone on the team was just as important as every other member of the team.

And this was finally the game where I felt that. With rare exceptions (most of which involve powerleveling on AE mobs), nobody in a team is useless.

In contrast, let me digress to tell another story:

A couple of weeks ago, I was teaming in another game, one I've been playing for years. I knew everyone on the team, so they weren't exactly mocking me, but I was still dozens of levels below everyone else, in gear that was, at best, average. Somewhere in the middle of the dungeon, due to game mechanics, we had to split the team into higher-level and lower-level halves (to meet again in the middle). This meant me and one other person of about the same level as I was. (This person was also playing a new class, just introduced to the game. Nobody really knows how to play them yet, and they had power-leveled their character)

Well, first fight we got into (against five enemies of approximately my level), my character - who I've been playing for years and have multiple strategies for depending on the situation - died almost immediately, while the other character - the one playing the new class who had been powerleveled - soloed all five of the monsters. At the end of the fight, I was revived. Next fight, after I'd healed myself up, the other player said "Hey, could you kill the one monster out of the five that's resistant to my attacks?" I said sure, figuring that I could do THAT much before dying. The fight starts.... I died almost immediately, while the other player soloed the map, including the monster that was highly resistant to their attacks, who I'd barely managed to dent before I died (despite them being NOT resistant to my attacks).

Then we rejoined the main group to fight the actual boss of the dungeon, and ... well, I didn't die, but I didn't exactly have much effect on the fight either way, with my attacks doing 10-20% as much damage as everyone else on the team. (And, bear in mind, I'm playing a DPS class. I was doing less damage than the healers and support types)

What I'm leading up to here - I like to feel that I'm a contributing member of a team, and CoH let me be that, all the time, regardless of which character I was playing or what level I was. Whatever I brought to the table is always more than enough. It's the only situation (game or RL) that's ever let me feel that way.

And I am going to seriously miss that.

Clicking on the launcher is hard to do. Teaming is still fun. Last night was a blast but I can't solo anymore. If I'm alone, I just stand there staring at everything.

One of the last things to do is take dozens of screenshots of our bases. Some were works in progress for years at close to twenty thousand items. Clicking on that portal door is something I'll have to psyche myself up to.

Edit/Add:

- I had just made a monster popmenu before the announcement. I wince when I use it.
- I had nearly finished our tech base and was excited about refacing our barracks. The balconies had a space station, Jetson's like face with balconies being built in the back. Again, all a week before the announcement.

For about a year, I didn't have a computer that could run CoH. I only just got back in mid-August, so I had basically all of the Freedom-era content to experience for the first time. Before the announcement, I was playing through it slowly, and afterwards, I was playing it with a little more urgency. And it's just so good.

First Ward, Night Ward, Dark Astoria, the new mid-level arcs, the SSAs - they've all been taking my breath away. Some of the content is telling the same kind of story we've seen for years, but with skill and an ambitious use of new mechanics. Some of it, though, is outright surprising. Night Ward in particular is just so amazingly weird that I can barely believe it got made. Why are the ferryman of the dead a bunch of Doctor Who monsters in Victorian police uniforms? I don't know, but I'm cool with it. Everywhere you look, you can see the love, enthusiasm, and creativity that went into making the new content. It just breaks my heart that we won't be able to see what else this team would have come up with.

So, what really hits me about COH going away?

Thinking about my main, Dr. Turgenev, and realizing that, as a Paragon City superhero, he'll never have another adventure. He'll merely "end". No glorious death, no vindication of his existence, no tangible residue of his in-game attitude, impact and achievements, beyond my memory of him.

Dr. Turgenev was me - the man I strive to be. Seeing him on death row, beyond no fault of his own, is a slam on my own aspirations to be better, to be heroic, to lead when needed, to support when wanted. To be good, and to do good. While these challenges are woven into everyone's lives, Dr. Turgenev gave it a singular narrative that appealed to me.

I have a story to write before the end, of my last conversation with him. I hope to share it here, or perhaps on one of the social media sites.

@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE

Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
Turg Fiction: IX is now LIVE on Architect Entertainment!

what makes me saddest (besides the layoffs that affect real peoples lives) is the fact that CoH, and the friends we made here helped my wife though a rough patch in her life, it kept her mind off of her having breast cancer.

No, that's not what makes me sad, what makes me sad is they found cancer again Monday, and there wont be CoH to help her though this time. (we wont know the extent until Monday)

I hear that a lot nytflyr from a lot of players with medical conditions, people on disability retirement that can't go 8 hours a day, but can take their mind of reality for minutes maybe a couple hours. Then there are disable vets, who get to vicariously be heroes again in a game that jerks the carpet out from under them again. Considering my game play cost less than 50 cents a day, its cheap entertainment when you have no or limited income.