Here is why I play CoX.

I play for my armies. I can have up to six individual pets under my control full time and order them around independantly. This is just plain fun for me.

GreatRock- the game you should be moving on to is Eve Online. If you have the stomach for it, join the something awful forums first (costs 10 bux, but you may find it worth it). Spend 4 months posting and making friends, then make a move to join goonfleet in eve online. If you get in, you'll live out all your villainy d
esires you can possibly imagine. Word of caution: during your first 4 months don't let on that you want to join goons or you will be blackballed as a j4g (joined for goons). If that happens you're screwed.

2chars

I've always loved the superhero comic as a genre from when I first discovered 3 colour reprints of Marvel comics as a kid. I would have been about 8 or 9 - so the very early 70s.

Marvel set up in the UK with several weekly comics that were black and white with a colour wash - green for the Hulk, blue for the FF, red for Spidey... and I loved them. Before that I'd really gotten into the mythologies, Gilgamesh, Thor, Beowulf. There was little difference to me - these guys were the same in an urban setting (that went double for Thor of course) and from then on I was hooked.

I'd put comicbooks away from my teens - I was too busy teararsing around with outlaw bikers and avoiding trouble - then mortgages and horribly boring mundane stuff got in the way. But I found myself finally able to reboot my life and almost at that exact time I discovered I had a) disposable income and b) an independent comicbook retailer on my doorstep.

I was something of a kid in a sweetshop and spent several thousand £££ on trades and figurines - and I often read about CoH in adverts in the comics I bought. But I'd never encountered a pay to play MMO - the closest I'd come was Mech Warrior years previously - and I was mistrustful of handing over my bank details.

So I waited a couple of years then thought "Buggerit" and bought CoH from a retailer (remember back in the day when you actually could buy it from a shop, in England? I know right!)

From that moment I was hooked. I loaded it up made a toon and even in Atlas Park, beating Hellions I was like "wow this works" - all those nostalgic feelings came back.

Then the breakdown hit me and without going into details (because you're not interested and I don't want to recount it even if you are) I was in a pretty rough place and it was pretty tough to cope. I ended up losing my job and feeling pretty bad but through all of that, I was able to escape to Paragon City (and occasionally Grandville) and forget about reality and the rocks in my head.

And for that, I will be eternally grateful because it proved to be the best painkiller ever and kept me going in the bleakest time of my life.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

redacted

There's really not much to be said about it. These narrow columns that have become all the rage these days for internet communication make everything look 10x longer than it really is.

I wasn't the one who referenced the length of his posts. I was the one who asked a stupid question.

Ah I give up. I'm deleting that post from these forums. Maybe he'll stop on his own.

All teenagers think they are different from everybody else and that they are having to undergo trials and tribulations that nobody else could possibly identify with.

Also no teenager is even remotely related to the person they will become.

When you are 20 you look back at yourself as a teen and think "Wow, I can't believe I was that clueless."

When you are 30 you look back at yourself at 20 and think "Wow, I can't believe I was that clueless."

The human brain (and thus identity) is not fully developed until sometime in the mid to late 30s.

And last but not least since somebody up above brought up schizophrenia and because I have a mind that is filled with useless trivia. Go here and watch this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbKw0_v2clo

It's weird but only people who have the potential to become schizophrenic can see the concave side of the mask as being concave and continuing to spin in the same direction. If you don't have the potential for schizophrenia then you will see the concave side of the mask as being convex and it will appear to turn in the opposite direction.

Not seeing the illusion doesn't mean that you will definitely become schizophrenic. Just that you have the potential to. Or that you are drunk or stoned. Anything that distorts the ability to perceive reality can temporarily allow you to see the reality rather than illusion.