As for myself, it hit me harder initially than I thought it would.
I'd been holding the emotion at bay ever since about 3-4 days after the announcement by the simple fact of buckling down and doing as much of the content as possible. I had slacked off and been away from the game for 3-4 month stretches twice in the last year. And I had been missing out on content. In fact I'd been kind of casual about experiencing everything in terms of the important lore arcs since I always figured "there's time". But now there wasn't.
So I shoved it all aside and with the singular purpose of experiencing as much of the game's lore and content as possible and to get as many badges for my mains as possible, started playing the HELL out of the game. On it several hours per day more than I ever used to do. Taking so many screenshots and demorecords that I swear I must have added nearly 3-4 gigs of filespace just in my screenshots and demorecord folders alone in the 3 months between announcement and shutdown.
I regret that because of that I didn't have as much time to spend on the Beta server as I would've liked. I would've liked to try out more of the new powersets and costume options. But I did the -most- important parts to me. And those important parts were - running the Brickstown/New Praetorian arc with my original Praetorian former Loyalist. And running the final Praetorian Arc of the incarnate series with Cyberman 8.
All told I think I added somewhere around 300+ badges, mainly to C8, but also some to my other mains as well. And I at least successfully completed all the I-Trials and almost maxed out C8's incarnate slots. (And oh my god was he RIDICULOUS at that power level!)
And all of it came to a crashing halt at 2:04AM Central time Dec 1st. And... I've posted how that went over here -
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,6493.0.htmlSaturday and Sunday... very bad.
Monday... Well, not -good-. But I felt like I needed to help my SG mates who were mostly over into CO.
In fact, not to say I've been -boosting- CO. But I recognized early on that it was the closest thing to COH for many people. And I liked it and had been playing it off and on since it launched. It's not COH. It never will be. But I KNEW it. Knew it well enough to help people acclimate. Understood how to make the process of learning it's quirks go easier.
So on Monday I started resuming helping people around over there. The Cape Radio is there. A lot of friends are there.
It helps. A lot. As I said earlier - a good community can make even a mediocre game a good place to be. And CO is inheriting a good chunk of the COH community.
And I can help.
And in so doing, I find my pain eased a bit.
I can help. And in some small way, I can live up to the ideal of the hero in that way.
So... that's how I'm coping. I can't just deal with it on my own. But I can by helping others.
It's not the fate I would have asked for, but it will do.