I think, the most ridiculous thing about my time at CoH was this crazy perception I had of how mediocre of a player I was. In my sig, I have a quote by John Cleese, who, in my mind is one of the wittiest men on the planet. I really had no idea that I was mediocre. Probably less than mediocre because in the first couple of years, I was playing on a laptop that barely met the minimal requirements. I'd enter a mission, and by the time I'd "zone in", I'd be dead. I'd look to see what killed me, and there'd be nothing. Off to the hospital, and a long hike back to the mission entrance. This time, I'd have a wakie, just in case.
I re-entered the mission, and again, I was dead when I zoned in, but I couldn't see the first mob. So, I popped my wakie, and then I took a couple of hits from some invisible mobs! No idea what they were. I called in a support ticket, and explained to them that I was getting clobbered by invisible mobs. He completed the mission for me, and that was that. Only later did I realize that my laptop was acting up, with all manner of issues, hard drive, integrated video card - I think playing the game for 12-14 hours a day was working that laptop too hard, getting it too hot. In any event, I was glad when it died so I upgraded, making my own desktop after weeks of careful planning and shopping, with kudos to Father Xmas from the forums for his guides to building a machine by myself.
The really ridiculous part was that I wasn't using the computer for anything else but playing coh. I mean, I had an email address, but I wasn't in the habit of emailing back then. There was no facebook, I don't even think MySpace was out back then. I spent that ridiculous sum of money to make a computer just so I could play CoH much better, and decrease those insufferable 2 to 4 minutes of load time (per each zone - shadow shard tfs were excruciating before I upgraded) and more importantly, actually not be the guy who was zoning in as the mission was being completed. It was nice to actually arrive at a mission door first or second, instead of being dead last. Gave me more time to go get cookies and stuff.