So this is the way the world ends...


Omnium

 

Posted

Hearing that they were going to shutter City of Heroes both stunned and saddened me. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise; all things end. But it’s always sad to lose a community; packing up and leaving friends, family, and neighbors behind and moving away. Some you keep in contact with, others you eventually lose track of, but the scenery and the cast of your life have been changed. And you can’t go home, even if you can go back. Such is the way of all things mortal.

/em is melancholy.

CoH was my first MMO (I know, there’s a lot of that going around), though I had plenty of experience RPing on various MUSHes in college. My best friend was in the CoH beta, and so I created my first character on his beta account to try it out. When the game started up, he reserved that character’s name for me and I set about scraping together a computer to run it. Took me a few months, but I was soon in game. We never had any doubts about what server to be on.

For something like 6-7 years, CoH was my main recreation. I’d come home from work, hop on for an hour or two of play, read the latest page or two of the forums, and then grab some sleep. Though eventually other activities (and other MMOs) would draw some of my time away, COH was always there and, at least until the past nine months, I could be relied upon to pop on at least a couple times a week. While other MMOs did draw me away, I never encountered there the RP family which I found here, on Virtue. There have been good times, there have been bad times, there has been drama of both flavors… but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Some memories that come back to me now, as we near the curtain call:
• Lurking about the fringes of the “RP Community”, all the way back to the Gemini Park days. I was only peripherally part of it (at least as I perceived it), but I shared teams and moments with a number of the “big names”, and I had a ball doing so.
• The IC Positron Task Force run by Major Disorder on a three-man team, with the strictly-baseline journalist Calvin Meeks along with us and never using anything more potent than sprint and brawl. Back in the days when you couldn’t do a TF if you had outleveled it. And dropping connection would drop you from the TF. We slogged away at that thing for over 6 hours. And we won. Finally. And then Calvin Meeks wrote a newspaper article about it.
• The random street sweeping team in Perez Park that encountered my 5-year-old hero Spooky Child trying to be helpful. And kindly escorted her out of the zone and back to Atlas Park because none of them in good conscience could let her run around in such a dangerous place, no matter what her hero license said.
• The Spooky Taskforces that sort of became a tradition whenever I had a holiday from work. Always fun doing all-IC taskforces with friends.
• Wandering by a pay phone while The Ascendant was standing next to it. I had to clean off more keyboards due to him…
• The week-long RP operation where Joint Task Force Hero, the Shinsengumi, and allies took down every single Council archvillain in the game. Felt like a great accomplishment.

Things I never got to do:
• Any of the Shadow Shard TFs
• Get a villain all the way to 50
• Get to know, interact, and play with more than a small fraction of the great people that passed through here over the years.

Thanks to the many characters, players, and Supergroups who made my stay great. Those that I remember… and those whom I can’t bring to mind right now but were no less an important:

The members of Joint Task Force Hero, the Shinsengumi, the Paragon City Police Force, Aurorae, S.C.O.R.P.I.O., The Peacekeeper Initiative, the New Porter Institute, the Campus Alliance of Preternatural and Exemplary Students, and the Templars of the Abbey.

Adamilia, Albino Knife, Arctic Wolf, Ascendant, Beacon, C. Nightshade, Captain Adept, Captain Galacto, Capt. Starfall, Captain Valor, Caya, Celara, Cog Sprocket, Comrade Smersh, Cyber Yojimbo, Day-Star, Diamond., DipSet, Dr. Neutrino, Dragonberry, Galacto Girl, Galen Mentalis, IV, Kadekawa, Kestrel, Kid Valor, Korrick, Lt Frank Warner, Lucianna, Lux, Mazin Wystan, Moggie, PFC Idaho, Prototype Eve, Psylum, Questing Eagle, Rayvn, Sazanka Hikari, Scape Kid, Serge Ta’Null, Sgt. SmallUnit, Shinsektor, Skilla, Supreme Soldier, The Killer Whale, Train Wreck, Twilight Thorn, Vagabond Mage, Vandellia, Vesperi, Veteran X, War Cat, and many, many others.

Goodbye and good luck to you all from:

Major Disorder, Captain Artemis, Armor Corps, Clandestine Ops, Overpressure, Psych Ops, Spooky Child, Bacchanal, IvanTheMountain, MacHeath, NUDET, Mr. Malles, Et Damnatio Memoriae

A.K.A. @Omnium

A.K.A. Chris

(I’ll be there, in one form or another, when they pull the plugs, so if you see one of me, say hi!)


Joint Task Force Hero (Recruiting!):
Major Disorder, Captain Artemis, Armor Corps, Overpressure, Psych Ops
also on Virtue:
the Spooky Child, Clandestine Ops