A Brief Essay on City of Heroes and Why We Should Fight

[Steampowered Thund]

Still rather new, and not sure if it is quite the place to put this.  After I read some of the stories on this thread: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=5070.0 I felt inclined to write something I'd been mulling over for the last few days.  I'm not sure if there's a good use for it, but I figured you'd be the folks to know.  I signed it as a gamer, and if there's some use for it elsewhere that's how I'd like to be credited.  It still feels a bit odd using such a serious tone when writing about a game, but it seemed appropriate.  It's a little long-winded, but I hope my diatribe will be useful at some point in the next three months.

A Brief Essay on City of Heroes

   Throughout all of human history, we have had heroes.  Whether they are real historical figures, characters that sprang from the imaginations of storytellers, or some mixture of two, they have found their way into the very fabric of our civilizations.  Hercules, Odysseus, Beowulf, King Arthur, Moses, George Washington, Robin Hood, and Tom Sawyer; some are real or have historical basis, some are completely imagined, all are important to us.  They come to stand for things we believe in and qualities we admire; courage, faith, hope, truth, justice, perseverance, wisdom, wit, and cunning.  Heroes are a part of who we are as a culture and part of who we are as individuals.
   In 1938, Action Comics #1 introduced us to a new sort of hero.  These fictional men and women fought crime, often with superhuman powers or extraordinary gadgets.  They wore outlandish, colorful costumes, often-featuring tights, masks, and capes.  Since then these heroes have captured the hearts and minds of people all over the world.  Although the how and the why varies among characters the ones that last manage to touch people in some deep way.
   These heroes, like all heroes, stand for many things.  They are symbols of justice, of strength, of courage, of morality, of freedom but perhaps most importantly they are symbols of hope.  They have come to stand for the belief that tomorrow the sun can rise on a better world if only individual men and women have the strength and courage to take a stand against what is wrong in the world.  They are beacons of a brighter tomorrow, men and women who make tough choices and painful sacrifices to make the world a better place.
   People who play MMO's tend to be portrayed negatively in the eye of the public.  They are often depicted as a mixture of the socially-inept and cynical trolls, people spending countless hours pursuing fake treasures in a virtual world.  It would be a disservice to the reader's intelligence if I pretended that depiction was entirely false.  Whether we play World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: the Old Republic, or City of Heroes it is true we are playing a game, just like people playing poker, chess, or baseball.  It is also true that some of us have poor people skills, some of us are trolls, and some of us forget that our game is still just a game.
   It would seem obvious that when City of Heroes hit the market in 2004, it would attract a certain type of person.  As most would expect there were trolls and cynics in the mix, but it also attracted people intrigued by the concept of becoming one of those iconic costumed heroes so many of us have grown up with.  It asked us to become, in some small way, a hero in a virtual world.  Even when, in 2005, we were given the option to be villains, we were always asked if what we were doing was right.  In 2010, we were given the ability to reform or go rogue, to make a choice and consider our actions.
   For eight years, City of Heroes has asked us to be the heroes of its virtual world, to save Paragon City from countless threats.  It should surprise no one, then, that the community that would respond to such a call and grow around such a game would be, overall, more optimistic and friendlier than the prevailing stereotypes.  Anyone who has had even a passing encounter with the CoX community can tell you this.  After all, if you spend eight years pretending to be a hero it's bound to rub off on you at least a little.  It should surprise no one, then, that such a community would fight for the game they love.
   City of Heroes offered us all a chance to be heroes.  It created a warm and welcoming community.  It brought friends and families together, provided a welcome relief from life's troubles, and allowed the homebound freedom to fly.  I'm sure there are other points to be made, I know there are a few I meant to make but didn't, but I think I've hit my meaning.  Yes, at the end of the day, City of Heroes, like World of Warcraft, poker, Monopoly, and football, is just a game.  However, for the opportunity it and Paragon Studios has given us, the good it has done for so many of us, we couldn't possibly let it go without a fight.  It would be a shame to simply let it be put up on a shelf to gather dust when it could remain to offer such opportunities to other players.
A Gamer