Last Dance

I could go on forever.

This game has been a special one for me, and whatever happens in the future, it will always have a special place in my memories. As an MMO, as a game design, as a software implementation, it got practically everything wrong. Everything the players saw, and so much the players didn't see: so many errors, mistakes, failures of design. Fundamentally, it really got only one thing right, but its a thing virtually all other MMOs get wrong. It let us play the way we wanted to. Not always in every detail, and not always to the same degree we wanted, but we could look like what we wanted to look it, go where we wanted to go, see what we wanted to see, be who we wanted to be in the game. This is still something most MMO designers believe you simply cannot do and make a good game. They are all wrong, in a way they will never understand, and possibly will never learn. But we know better.

I've mostly said what needed to be said about the dev team in the many threads that have sprouted up since the shutdown announcement, but as with the game itself I think its important to state that none of them were perfect, in fact many of them were very flawed. I still think some didn't know how to add. But I think they all collectively believed not just in the game, but in we the players of the game. They believed we always deserved more than we were getting and tried to get us more. They believed we deserved to participate, to the extent they could allow, in the direction of the game. Until the day comes when an open source MMO springs to life, City of Heroes will be the example of a dev team and a playerbase working together to shepherd the development of a first-rate MMO. And I think in the final analysis, we did a pretty good job there.

I've played many MMOs since the release of City of Heroes, and I've seen the forums of every one of them. Compared to us, they are cavepeople with stone knives and bear skins. The collective community of players that over time played, investigated, tested, analyzed, and deconstructed the game and then educated the playerbase has been far and away the best, period. Only the spreadsheet jockeys in Eve Online compare analytically, and no game anywhere compares to the overall effort to analyze what is actually one of the most complex MMOs out there in terms of game mechanics. I'm very proud to be a part of that community that stretches all the way back to beta and all the way to the present day.

I'm not going to get all sappy with the goodbyes. And in fact, I'll probably become more active on other forums like the Titan Forums after the holidays. For those asking, I honestly don't know where I'll be next. I wouldn't have even predicted being here back when I first started playing: I thought this would be a nice couple month distraction when I rolled that first alt. I have lifetime subs to Champions Online and Star Trek Online, and with some of the devs moving to Cryptic I'll probably at least try those out again. A lot of people are strongly suggesting Secret World to me, and I did play some in the beta so I might go that route. But to be honest, its hard to imagine a game taking up my time and attention like City of Heroes. In the final analysis, I was here as much for you as for me. I liked playing the game, but I also liked contributing to this community, and that's not a role I see myself leaping into again soon.


As to the shut down itself. I wish the whole entire truth about the shutdown was public knowledge. It sucks knowing it was not inevitable, and yet also probably unavoidable. What I will say is this: this game was not a failure. This game did not have to end. This game could have been completely self-sufficient. The game, our developers, and our playerbase could have continued on indefinitely. There are no *real* numbers that charts to an inevitable demise at any future date. This game did not die: this game was killed.

I can't prove it of course, like many things over the years I've asked people to trust me when I've said them. So some people will reject this as being baseless, and some will reject it just because its me saying it. But for the rest of you, this is the straight truth: we did not need to die. We were not even close to death, or projected to die. The game you loved and the game I loved did everything it needed to do to succeed except to avoid falling into the crosshairs of idiots. Our game was a good game, good enough to be a commercial success. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. They are wrong.


Lastly, I will just say that I've been working on something for the past couple of weeks with a couple of other players, and I still don't know if I can pull it off reasonably, but enough pieces are in place for me to at least make an attempt. Some time next week, if everything goes well, I'm going to try to pull off an end of game event run by the players for the players on the beta server. There are limits to what I can do there, but those limits aren't necessarily what you think. I have a story I've written up** that encapsulates (what I hope to be) the backstory of the event: its my take on The Last City of Heroes Story. Confession: I work with numbers and analysis every day. But what I actually enjoy doing is writing. I've simply never had the time given the work I did on the analysis side of the game to work on fanfiction. I thought the AE would provide an outlet for that, but the honest truth is that all the patching and breaking of arcs permanently damaged my enthusiasm for writing in the AE. Outside of those early AE attempts, this will be my first, and possibly last, actual City of Heroes story in writing. I hope you like it.

So start copying characters to beta, and install the beta client if you haven't done so yet. If we pull this off, this can and will only happen on beta.


I wish I could go on forever.




** Part one, The Immortal Game, is posted here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4426369
** Part two, The Kings Gambit, is posted here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...2&postcount=13
** Part three, Removing the Pin, is posted here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...6&postcount=15
** Part four, The Sacrificial Castle, is posted here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...4&postcount=33
** Part five, Endgame, is posted here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...7&postcount=37
** Part six, Destiny, is posted here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...1&postcount=47
** Part seven, Time's End, is posted here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=165
The last part will be posted tonight or tomorrow morning.

BZB was on beta earlier tonight, so I'll keep an eye out for your event.

Just in case I never said it: Thanks.

Farewell Arcanaville, it has been a pleasure.

You'll always be the Doyenne of Digits to me.

If you ever decide to give Lord of the Rings Online or RIFT a go, look me up. And I will be there on Beta as Johanna Sinclair. I'll be filming til the connection's lost.

Cheers from the Duchess of Directing!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

One of the big things I will miss from this game are your posts on the forum. Hopefully I can manage to be awake when this event is run, I'd love to see what you're going to do.

There's a part of me that wishes you are really her. I know you're not but dreamers can dream.

If our paths don't cross in real or virtual life in the future, I wish you good fortune.

There was a time when I didn't appreciate what you brought to the game, and more importantly what you brought to the forums.

The truth is, you have been the definition of a pillar of the community. Thank you for years of pleasant posts, insightful observations, and enjoyable wit.

As Father Xmas has said, I don't know if I will ever see you on another forum, but I wish you well. I know that any community you join will be better for it.

Good luck with your end of the City event.

Cryptically intriguing as always, Arcanaville.

Schedule permitting, I'll be there for the event. This I have to see.

Ooh, doing it on beta means I get to use Bodysuit costumes...

I hope we cross paths again, Arcanaville.

Instead of attempting to formulate a better response (why break habit now? Besides, perfectly-worded expressions are your territory), I just wanted to quickly chime in and somehow show my appreciation and enjoyment of who and what you've been to me (and us) for the years that I've been lucky enough to be here.

Your in-depth knowledge of game systems and the code was always impressive and lent a great deal of respect and appreciation for any tidbits you may offer...

However, your wit and, even more so, you're incredible ability to word and convey things (whether they happened to be complex analysis of maths, advanced systems or game mechanics or coding... or expressions of complicated human traits, philosophy, dissections of debates/discussions or a magnificent delivery of humor) left me with delight in being able to enjoy just these textual snippets of your sublime mind.

I honestly and truly hope that our paths cross again in the future. Of course, I hope, perhaps, I may offer you some form of return enjoyment (okay, please don't take that the wrong way!)... However, you are one of the very few cases where I'm just happy to have gotten what I have from a distance.

Beyond all of that... because, screw these half-goodbyes... I hope we both find ourselves on the shores of this wonderful game's return... even if not... It seems like we'll both be, at the very least, hovering around Titan and all that.

Also, thank you very much for your vague words about what you know regarding the closing.
I already had my suspicions and impressions from my own distant observations as well as from other people's accounts, but the first moment I saw you mention things such as you did in this thread... I didn't need any more confirmation.

I know you're not perfect (I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of you likely being somewhat wrong once or a few more times), but I do very much trust you and your word on such things. I always appreciated your willingness and ability to relay certain things without giving anything away, but just enough so that we might better feel our ways through the dark.

Blah, blah, blah... I hope some of my words added up to convey something of some sort of tiny significance and as sign of utter appreciation of your offerings and of you and that damn fantastic mind of yours.

Oh, I know... Here ya go...

Good job.


Also... I look forward to reading through and checking out this story and event of yours!

Thank you for being you. God speed.

I don't post much but I read a lot.

Your posts were always informative, funny (in a "ha ha" way) and often got me thinking in ways I hadn't thought of thinking.

It's a gift to translate complicated things into a language people understand and your posts helped me understand some of the more difficult concepts of the game.

CoX was/is a complicated game with some concepts that are difficult to grasp. I tried STO last week and very quickly got confused by the currency systems, kept crashing my starship, and spent a lot of time swearing at my away team member. This experience is common to the other games I've tried and I'm not sure I have either the time or the inclination to re-learn everything all over again.

Anyway, I wish you well for the future and hope you find an MMO home that suits.

Thanks again.

-H

I keep thinking I've reached the Acceptance stage, then someone else says good-bye, and I go back to Stage 1 all over again.

I generally didn't comment on your topics or have any interaction with you whatsoever, but I'm going to miss your level-headed posts from someone who actually knew what she was talking about.

I'll just echo: good job. You'll be missed.

You may not now who I am maybe you do but I always loved reading your posts Arcanaville.
I always pictured you working at NASA like being a part of the Voyager 1&2 working along side Carl Sagen or something similar.

Adiós Arcana you have my utmost respect.

I disliked you, to be honest.

But I respect you. I respect you a lot. Without you, we might not have made it this far.

Godspeed, Arcanaville. We owe you.

Thanks for helping me with the Energy Orbs powerset ideas and everything else.

Perhaps I could have said it better by simply stating that - based on the experiences of the past few years - Arcanaville could type my reply to this thread and I would read it and only be left capable of saying that she conveyed precisely what I was thinking, feeling and wished to express.

I've never encountered anyone that I could say that about, even for just a few rare circumstances or topics... Never mind someone that continuously and consistently did so over this entire period.

Thanks for your hard work, Arcanaville -- you're one of my all-time favourite posters on ANY forum I've used.

Confession: I've taunted posters in the defender forum who claim to have developed metrics to measure defender performance to show us the numbers, Arcana-style. They never did, but would sometimes persist in proclaiming that they had the numbers just for the attention. Or the feeling of superiority in having spooky knowledge we didn't.

You will ALWAYS have my respect because you either backed up statements with proof, or at least gave us a plausible reason for why we couldn't handle the truth.

In some odd way, you helped keep me interested in the game -- I had WAY more fun playing with IOs than I thought I would (honestly, I was in the i9 closed beta and traded a post or 2 with Castle about why I'd skip IOs) ... mostly because you helped me understand the game.

Also: no sane dev team would allow a CC specialist to have enough recharge to have nearly perma-RoF, a spammable mez and root, high DPS, pets, and mez protection. And for this, I thank the devs for Burning Up, my beloved Fire / Fire dom.

I'm going to miss you, scary numbers person!

While I certainly didn't always agree with the tone of many of your posts, I will say I always respected the information you brought to the table. I always had to shake my head when people argued with you over "the math."

You were an invaluable asset to the community, even though many didn't see you as such. It was always interesting hear how the Dev's occasionally leaned on you to explain "their" game to them. Arcana-Time being one example.

I hope your event goes well and much fun is had by all, Arcanaville.

As others here have said, I've always enjoyed reading your posts. In fact, not being able to read your posts is one of the things that I will miss the most.

Take care all and Happy Thanksgiving.