Not as well as I thought...
Since the shutdown, I have good days and bad. On the bad days nothing seems to help, so I figured I'd try something different, writing about CoX and why I miss it so.
For starters, I never pegged myself as a guy who could possibly get so attached to a 'game'. Well, until now I never really realized just how much of it was the 'game' and just how much of it was the family and community. Funny how it takes losing something for you to realize just how important it is to you. So, fwiw, here is a brief history of how I came to be a resident of CoX and ultimately how I am where I am today.
In 2007 I was in the middle of a nasty divorce, one that left me in a single bedroom apartment with a phone and internet connection for company. On weekends, my kids would come over and we'd spend time together, weekends were fun, and we played a lot. When they went to bed, I'd log onto work and write code until I got tired... basically just loosing myself in that work till the wee hours of the morning. One night, while not really feeling like working I got to browsing around on the internet and ultimately ended up at EvE Onlines' website. In the interest of brevity, I downloaded and started playing it as it gave me something to do other than work constantly.
Fast forward a couple of years, and I started to get tired of ganking/being ganked so I found myself back to either watching Netflix or working vs. signing onto EvE. I missed the social aspect of it the most, chatting with people my age, the teamwork, etc. So, one night after work in January of 2009, I stopped by Gamestop to see what I could see, and browsing the bargain bin I found, City of Heroes: Good vs. Evil edition for 9 bucks, so I snatched it up and over my meal of ramen, installed, patched and created my account.
I decided that I'd try a Dominator to start with. I had never been a frequenter of forums or even bothered to research the different classes outside of what you could read of their descriptions in-game back then. She ended up being a Fire/Fire domi (talk about a hard road to start on) that took to the streets of Mercy Island in Guardian with a vengeance. I played solo at first, not knowing that the Hero side of things was more populous and then eventually made my second toon. This one was a Rad/Rad defender, who was pretty fun to play despite the fact I hadn't learned to really leverage my powers and their side effects yet. I was enjoying CoX solo, but it was hard going given my selections of starting toons. I vividly remember my first teaming; it was for a mayhem mission. There were 5 of us and I had just gotten the 'hover' power, not knowing any better I hung back and blasted from the sky as we mowed through the cops.
I played CoX on and off for a year as I got settled into my new life having just gotten remarried. Once things settled into a good routine, my wife sat down and started to play with me, as did my older kids. That was shortly after I had transferred from Guardian to Virtue, which turned out to be the clincher for me, as time rolled on I took over a very active SG and met some awesome people and friends. About mid 2012 I heard about GW2 and pre-ordered it because it looked awesome and tbh, I was getting a bit burned out on being in charge.
"Besides, CoH will be there for me to hop onto when I'm bored with killing dragons"
Yeah...
That was the thought anyway, because it always had been for the past few years.
After NCSoft announced the shutdown, I admit, I felt pretty guilty. Now, I know that the actions they took were not my fault directly but, I couldn't help feeling that way. I was going to (and had for the beta) take a break from my home to try something new and now my home was going to be yanked away. It was hard to log on anywhere. So, now my home is gone, and while Tyria is pretty... I just can't get into it as I did CoH... EvE, nah, I'd rather help people now than shoot their faces off... And ya, I beta'd both TSW and CO and even Conan... again, none of them are home... and since the shutdown I've gone to each.
For now, I've settled on CO... I've settled for not re-making any of my CoH toons, not because I don't miss them, I do. I miss my KM/Fire Scrapper; I miss her mother the Fire/Kin Troller that could make most scrappers jealous of the damage she put out. I miss my Mind/Psy/Mind Dominator that could walk into anything and come out unscathed. I miss them because they were more than that, they were Leah and Tina Redmond, they were Jennifer Hu, Daughter Dawn and Mindwing. They weren't perfect, but I really put all of my creative juices to work and made tons of pages of back story for them. I want to remember them for the fun I had with them, and leave them rest until I can walk with them again in the streets they (and I) call home. I won't remake them simply because if I never get to play with them again (I pray I really do that CoH will come back) I want to remember them the way they were.
Thanks for reading, hopefully I didn't bore anyone to death. I just needed to vent it somewhere, to put it out there amongst my peers and not feel 'judged' for being so attached.
Thanks.