Did you play much towards the end?

[therain93]

In that last 90 days, I probably played about 75 days for several hours at a time.  I went from being a very casual pop-in on the Monday Night Freedom Horde runs to a pretty hardcore player.  It was fun, but exhausting mentally, physically, and emotionally.  I absolutely respect the OP's (and others') decision to cut back on the playing, but I saw it as "the game isn't gone yet, so I'm going to enjoy it".  I'd sure as heck prefer to still be playing though...

[Rotten Luck]

I tried to play.  But always ended up standing in Atlas park with my torch.

[houtex]

I played a ton.  I played every night I could after the announcement.  I made two more 50s, out of 8 total I ever made, during those three months.  I had a complete blast, even to the end.  It was glorious.

[saipaman]

I played like it was my last chance ever.

[JWBullfrog]

Every. Single. Day.
 
I had far too much to do that was on the list of "I'll get around to it."
 
In that time my wife and I got through Night Ward, WWD hero and villain side, pandoras box, revisited some old favorite missions, and managed to lv two of our long time characters to 50 (only took 5 years to do it.)
 
We also took screen shots of anything and everything. Splash screens, scenery, NPC's ect. We wanted to have as much of that world saved as we could manage.
 
There wasn't enough time.

[Optimus Dex]

The annoucemet of closing the game sucked most of the fun out of playing.  I started taking screenshots of characters and places.  A two eek period went by when I just shifted thru 60 some alts looking at them and thinking about costumes and powers. I played more on the beta server. I really enjoyed some of the new powersets and costumes and the revamped Kings Row stuff. The last day I played a lot - I was still playing when the server went down and managed to log onto another to see it go away. I miss the game. I miss my characters. I miss Paragon City.

[SerialBeggar]

I also finally respeced several older characters into Inherent Fitness.  I even used a lot of my long hoarded high-end enhancement drops. Unfortunately, I was still too cheap to buy some of the pieces I was missing, though.

[therain93]

I also finally respeced several older characters into Inherent Fitness.  I even used a lot of my long hoarded high-end enhancement drops. Unfortunately, I was still too cheap to buy some of the pieces I was missing, though.

there was a brief time from about Mid-October to Mid-November where the market became a flipper's dream.  It took some time, but people eventually started dumping pvps and purples for shockingly low prices and, thanks to tons of enhancement converters that had sat long unused, I actually managed to amass about a billion inf (also in part due to a cash injection from Lydia as I was cash poor at that time) while people were still willing to buy the more coveted pieces.  I never really played the market before -- It was very satisfying to check sales every morning for a while there....yet another thing I was glad to do before the end. 

[FlyingCarcass]

I played quite a bit towards the end. Heck, I dinged 50 on a tanker on the last day, after which I logged off for the last time (after completing the ITF I was on, of course). Good times, wish I could play CoH some more.

[AlphaFerret]

I played like crazy.  My primary sg abandoned the game to start up on DCUO.  I played over there for a bit, but felt dirty.  I knocked out 6 or so 50s in the final months.  There were some concepts/power sets that I had to try before the end came.  Like many of us here, I was holding a torch in Atlas Park when the servers went dark...

I can't wait for the comeback:)

Word

[Thunder Glove]

I played it like crazy for the last few months, though I did actually spend a little time in (of all places) Disney's Toontown when it got too much, and I prepared for the end by making a Champions Online account.

I spent more and more time in CoH as it got closer to the end, and I was on near-constantly for the last week, finishing up characters (including getting my first-ever character, an Elec/Elec Blaster I'd neglected for too long, to 50) and playing my favorites.

When the game went down, I was logged into my favorite character, my proudly-villainous Bots/Storm Mastermind, standing in front of Lord Recluse's statue in Grandville.

I miss the game every day.

[Golden Ace]

The annoucemet of closing the game sucked most of the fun out of playing.  I started taking screenshots of characters and places.  A two eek period went by when I just shifted thru 60 some alts looking at them and thinking about costumes and powers. I played more on the beta server. I really enjoyed some of the new powersets and costumes and the revamped Kings Row stuff. The last day I played a lot - I was still playing when the server went down and managed to log onto another to see it go away. I miss the game. I miss my characters. I miss Paragon City.

sounds a lot like what I did.

[Lucretia MacEvil]

Right after the announcement, I thought I might be too depressed to play. 
That didn't happen.  I was determined to enjoy every possible second that I had left in CoX.  Every single second was bittersweet, but I don't regret any of them.  If anything, I played more than ever, a sort-of CoX Sendoff Campaign.  I didn't worry about lvling, I just played the characters that were the absolute-most fun.

I look forward to a CoX Restart Campaign. 

See you there!

[Lady Luck]

I had played sporadically the 2 years previous to the announcement but that summer I was getting back into COH with the new power sets and was really starting to enjoy it again when Black Friday hit. I then played as much as I could. I missed out on a lot of sleep and started feeling a little fried by the end but it was worth it. I ran full teams every night and had a blast. I completed 5 lvl 50s in those 3 months. Some were older toons that I'd said I'd finish "later" and some were newer toons with the new power sets that I just had to get to 50. Since I teamed every night, I helped quite a few others hit lvl 50 as well but my favorite was this player who stopped playing COH several years ago but came back when they heard about it closing. They never got a toon to 50 but on the last day she managed to ding 50 and we then had time to run an ITF with her. I miss teaming and I miss COH every day. 

[Kistulot]

I played a lot near the end.

Being that RP was a huge focus for why I was there it was kinda depressing as the high amount of death cults that sprang up just were meh... but I was on as much as I could be without being a miserable pile of sad.

[Ironwolf]

Near the end I had a thought that had never occurred to me in over 8 years. All of the players who were left and still playing were my friends. They still loved the game enough to continue in the face of certain defeat.

To still stand and spit in the face of certain death is my kind of person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-RnI8W4xY

For those struggling to get by without your friends - Johnny Cash can carry a piece of your darkness away for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXRmJyIyJbM

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

i played slightly less towards the end, but i still played quite a bit. In the last month there were a lot of in game friends who rarely logged on, so on the lower population servers teaming became less easy to do; on those servers i mostly stuck with characters that soloed well, like my Defenders and Stalkers. Still, on Justice and Virtue it was pretty easy to find teams right up until the end. Even in the last week i was still cranking out new concept alts and trying new powerset combos.

Every so often i still get a flash of annoyance when i come up with a character concept that i could only easily realize in CoH. Like just last night i wanted to create the character Clockwork Dali, who would've been perfect as an illusion/time, but guess what?... 

Now i wish i'd gotten more screenshots of "my parole officer" and "general incompetence" taking on enemies. Especially the NPC dialogues.
 

[Xev]

I played like it was my last chance ever.

This.

I played my brains out so hard that I barely saw the end until it was there with me standing in a daze with a torch in my hand in Atlas.

There was a crap-ton of moaning in the channels on Liberty server, those last months.. So much so that I even closed my chat box more than once. There was a lot of cool stuff, too.

All in all I'd say we handled the end of the world pretty well. Seemed like eotw practice almost for the hardcores as the virtual world we all shared counted down to the end and we all were finding ways to cope. The end was near, we all knew it, and no one could do a thing about it except try and find a way to go out as best as possible. (Or moan..)

The market was mentioned before. I was amazed how active the market was in the last months. I farmed my butt off (and raided and power leveled newbs and jumped in anything challenging or warm-fuzzy that was going on and etc and etc too) and couldn't keep up with the demand. Talk about a farmer's dream come true : ) It obviously wasn't about the profit, for me. It felt more like performing a public service at that point. Giving back in some small way for all the stuff people did for me. I barely raised my prices from normal and only did so because I had stuff I still wanted to buy too and a slight raise in prices wasn't slowing the market down one bit..

[Perfidus]

I played it every day. Every day. Even as my friends grew disillusioned, I kept going. It made me sad to see everyone leave by Sept. 1st. But I wasn't done with the game or the community.

Still aren't.

[srmalloy]

I played almost every day all the way up to shutdown, and was with the group on Guardian that was in the middle of a Rikti Mother Ship raid when the shutdown hit -- a collective decision to go out acting as if the game would go on, and not let the faceless minions of NCSoft turn us away from continuing to defend Paragon City.