Author Topic: A goodbye and hello from I L L Y R I A (Virtue)  (Read 1826 times)

corvus1970

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A goodbye and hello from I L L Y R I A (Virtue)
« on: December 01, 2012, 06:32:11 PM »
Greetings friends!

I just thought I would share a greatly-truncated account of what I did over the last few weeks of CoH's life, and about the character I spent most of those last weeks living within.

When I turned the calendar-page to the month of November 2012, and with the end of CoH barreling down upon us all in less than a month, a mass of desires hit me (aside from the small hope that the world of CoH would be preserved), and I felt compelled to follow them. I wanted to create another character that I would enjoy playing a great deal over the last few weeks, using a recent powerset or one I had scarcely used before, and I wanted to get this character to 50 before the world went dark.

The easiest part was deciding WHERE to build this new toon. I chose Virtue without hesitation, largely because it was the most populated server in these dying days, and would be the place where I could most easily find teams and thus accelerate the XP-gain the character would need to get to 50 quickly. So with that in mind I used some of my accumulated extra character slots on Virtue so that I could build the character there.

Now, as a confessed Alt-A-Holic, I already had LOTS of characters. On Champion, every slot (and more, since its one of the two servers where I had purchased additional character slots) was filled with mostly-original characters and small handful of homage-toons, all of whom were part of my largest supergroup, the "Guardians of the Firmament". Victory was similar in that it was filled and this too included extra purchased slots. However, Victory was the home of my second-largest supergroup, "Angel Investigations", and every single slot contained a character that was a direct homage to Joss Whedon's Buffyverse.

From Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles, to Angel, Spike, Cordelia, Wesley, Lorne, Gunn, and Illyria. There were also toons for Buffy's ex, Riley Finn, Angel's son, Connor, and the electric-charged mutant, Gwen Raiden, along with redside toons Lindsey McDonald and Marcus Hamilton.

I'm very big on homage characters, and I'd say 2/3rds of my sizable CoH character-pool was comprised of homages, both direct and those who were simply mildly based upon a prior character or idea. Heck, in recent years I'd built homages as varied as one based upon the Doctor, from Doctor Who, and a group of toons based upon the characters from "The Authority". So yeah, not only am I alt-crazy, but somewhat homage-crazy as well.

Now, with that in mind, the character intended to become my 5th and final level 50 was going to end up being an homage. And once again I would turn to my favorite Buffyverse character: Illyria, the one-time God-King of the Primordium age; a demon-goddess reborn in the shell of a human woman who had been dear to the characters on Angel: Winifred "Fred" Burkle. As a reborn ancient "Old-One" who had been been born before we were even primordial ooze, who had died hundreds of thousands of years before, and walked around inside the shell of the woman she "murdered", Illyria was an Archetype I had always loved: the eternal outsider, a character that stands outside of humanity and looks upon it with a mix of revulsion, pity, and occasional awe, and an oft-teller of brutal truths. Since childhood I have always loved these types of characters, and I do to this day.



Sure, I had other versions of this character already: "Illyria the First" on Champion (though that had not been her original home...I have long since forgotten where she was moved FROM), my 2nd level 50 character: A Willpower/Energy tank, and the only toon to that point that had dabbled in the incarnate pool. And over on Victory, there was "Illyria", another tank version of the character with a Willpower/super-Strength powerset, who hovered at level 45 (46 before the month ended).

However, I was never completely satisfied with either offensive powerset used in the above versions of this character. For one, neither had any kick-attacks, and kicks were a very visible part of Illyria's skill-set. I'd dabbled with a scrapper version of the character on another server, using the Martial-Arts Primary, but that wasn't quite right either. So, for this new version I decided to use the recent powerset "Street-Justice", a set with which I had dabbled and had the best combination of punches and kicks. For her secondary I chose Invulnerability, which would enable her to survive Alpha-Strikes better than she would using Willpower. And for her Archetype I ran with a Brute: not quite as tough as a Tank, but tougher than a Scrapper, and able to dish out more damage than a tank.

And so, on the morning of November 2nd, I rolled up "I L L Y R I A", and started playing. By Sunday the 4th she was already level 37. By early, early Saturday the 10th she hit level 50 (In a cool, non-farm AE mision to be exact). And by Thanksgiving weekend she had unlocked and empowered every one of her incarnate slots. In the end she got her Alpha and Lore slots to Tier-3, her Hybrid slot to Tier-2, and her Interface and Judgement slots maxed-out at Tier-4.

With this version of Illyria I did things I was usually loathe to do: I gathered my own teams more frequently, and started running the Freedom Phalanx Task-Forces, something that I had never done before. What's more I made some good friends and acquaintances in the handful of weeks she was around, in-part due to all the Incarnate Task-forces I joined again and again. She was the toon with which I planned to watch the darkness fall, although because of Virtue's server-issues that did not come to pass. As last night progressed, I was cast from Virtue twice (as many were) when the server crashed. I returned, but in the waning minutes I was cast from it once more and was unable to get back on in time.

However, I'd planned for this possibility, and sat in the body of my very fist 50, "Avatar of RA", on the Pinnacle server. I had days before moved him to Virtue, and had to rename him "Ra's Avatar", and after Virtue crashed the first time I had the foresight to move him BACK to Pinnacle, just in case Virtue became unavailable. This was, perhaps, the most fitting of ends for myself as Paragon bid us its big goodbye. At 12:59 PST I hit "self destruction" on the Atlas city-hall steps, and then, as a reflection of my hopes for a possible future with this game in it, I hit "Rise of the Phoenix", and stood once more...until the server shut down for the final time.

All that said, the reason for this long-winded post is this: Over the past month I had more fun with more people than I can recall having over the very fun 7 years that preceded it. I punched and kicked a lot of foes in the face, thoroughly enjoyed the power of "Ionic Judgement", and laughed at a lot of great player-comments. I saw such wonderful innovation and originality from the community and its player-base: from superbly-realized characters that ranged from the serious to the hilarious (Are you out there Captain Bacon?), to some very well-written non-farm AE content. I even got to see War Witch when she returned to Virtue, and that was a real treat.

And so, as I sit here and type with "Wandering Soul" by Alex Parks playing in the background, and as the tears flow: to those of you out there that spoke with, teamed with, laughed with I L L Y R I A on Virtue in these last few weeks, I wish you all my very sincere best. May you and yours be well, and be content, and may you find another place that fires your imaginations in a way City of Heroes had done. May you find a place with good friends, good fun, and a way to take to the skies once more and fly free.

Or Teleport...or Super-Jump...or run really, REALLY fast :)

I shall abide here for now, so feel free to drop me a line. I had an absolute blast, and miss you all already.

Sincerely,
@El Corvo

« Last Edit: December 08, 2012, 04:25:40 AM by corvus1970 »
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