Having just shared the last moments of City of Heroes in the Echo of Gemini Park on Virtue, with a crowd of other roleplayers both from opening months of the game and all the times onwards, I wished to share something that I truly believe about this, and about any other such ending for a community. I, as Uldi Skadisdottir, said this- but I say it also as myself.
Strange legacies we leave one another, woven into the very fabric of our beings. The changes we have made to each others' natures and realities will last far longer than we can ever know. This is not the end, because we are still here. Even those who left long ago, they are still here as well. Do not worry that you will forget, for we have already changed one another so much. Both our characters and our very selves. We will never be the same, and that's what matters, isn't it? That's the real point. It is sad what's happened here, but it is not the end.
I first logged in on the day CoH was released. I have not been around as forever as Beta players. I missed huge amounts of time in the middle of the game's existence. I am not as well known as Ascendant or Captain Valor, I am nothing as impressive as the first at anything in the game. But I know I have had an effect on people.
And they have had an effect on me. This is not just about a game, but a greater community, of which there are subcommunities like this one, all of which are communities in their own rights. And no matter whether any of these ends or not, the effects go on in all of us and, through us, in all those to come after us.
We did lose something today. But we did not lose the most important thing- these legacies. These changes. We pass them on, even when we don't know it, through how we affect others, and they through others beyond them.
So the game no longer exists as such- but nothing is really over. Efforts to revive it, Plan Z, the Phoenix Project- these are all results of the changes we wrought in one another by coming together as people and playing a game that was just as much a gigantic conversation and novel as anything else.
I just wanted to express this.
Thank you.
-Chaos' Orderly, AKA:
Uldi Skadisdottir
Terrafissa
Soaring Heart
Jaganaatha
Hard Pill
Indigo Drift
Lyryll Shiroi
Violine
Kouryou Yume
Amphisbaena
Mistaradrax'thilmarandivarius (Mist)
Fatal Fracture
Celeste Ekshi
Tarantelle
Elli Gujar
Kimiko
Selene Starblade
Sarai Smythe
Pyra Star
Fushigibana
Violet Comet
Janda
Megaton Impact
Verdanta
Thunder Jackalope
Alopexa
Taikra
Glacier Waif
Brilliant Barrage
Granice
Janet Reimi
