How are you handling the loss?

[Thunder Glove]

I still laugh at being able to make Superman in CoH but not being able to make him in DCUO.

Not to get into another round of CO-bashing, but I found a similar case there.  On various freeform superhero-themed roleplay MUXes, I used to play a villain named Aquarius, a weather controller who was directly taken from an old Champions module called The Zodiac Conspiracy.

I could easily make Aquarius' exact powerset in CoH (where he'd be an Electric/Storm Corruptor), but not in CO.  Aquarius used wind for defense, not offense, and CO's wind-based power framework is entirely offense-based.  Similarly, Aquarius used fog for stealth and ice to make the ground slippery, both features of the Storm Summoning set that have no equivalent in CO.

Of course, Aquarius (and the other members of the Zodiac that I can't make on CO - Cancer needs Stone Armor, Pisces needs Sonic Blast and Sonic Resonance, and Scorpio needs Dark Armor) isn't as iconic as Superman, but the similarity is there.

[onyxprincess]

Of course, Aquarius (and the other members of the Zodiac that I can't make on CO - Cancer needs Stone Armor, Pisces needs Sonic Blast and Sonic Resonance, and Scorpio needs Dark Armor) isn't as iconic as Superman, but the similarity is there.

Actually you can! Stone is the primary powerset of THE MOUNTAIN, one of the Premium Archetypes. Also in the Premium Archetypes is THE VOID, whose powers stem from Shadows and Darkness. Or even better, make heroes of your own using the 2 FREEFORM slots granted in the Gold Package- Just $14.99+tax a month or, for a limited time, $29.99+tax for 3 months. Or, if you can, put together $299.99+tax and get the Gold Package for your entire LIFETIME! Yes, you heard me right- for your entire LIFETIME! 500 Zen per month, access to 12 Character Slots, 5 Costume Slots per Character and all the archetypes until you die in your real life!

[Thunder Glove]

Actually you can! Stone is the primary powerset of THE MOUNTAIN, one of the Premium Archetypes. Also in the Premium Archetypes is THE VOID, whose powers stem from Shadows and Darkness. Or even better, make heroes of your own using the 2 FREEFORM slots granted in the Gold Package- Just $14.99+tax a month or, for a limited time, $29.99+tax for 3 months. Or, if you can, put together $299.99+tax and get the Gold Package for your entire LIFETIME! Yes, you heard me right- for your entire LIFETIME! 500 Zen per month, access to 12 Character Slots, 5 Costume Slots per Character and all the archetypes until you die in your real life!

.... I don't know how much of that was sarcasm, but if you're serious, you missed some key words in my post.  I didn't say that CO has no Stone or Darkness powers.  I said it has no Stone Armor or Dark Armor powers.  The only defensive power in CO's Earth set is Defiance, which is shared by all the Brick frameworks and is not specifically stone-related.  Darkness has no defensive powers at all.

I subscribed to CO for several months right after CoH closed. I know all about making freeform characters.  And no matter how much money I were to give them, Stone Armor and Dark Armor don't exist in CO.

[srmalloy]

How truly versatile the City of Heroes was.
-You could play it as a single person, linear story game, and still never play the same story twice, and get all the way through it each time. (minus incarnate task forces of course)

And this is the thing that's dragging at me playing SWTOR. You have eight base classes (four Republic, four Imperial), doubled to sixteen advanced classes, and each advanced class can pick skills from three trees... but every character in a given advanced class gets exactly the same base abilities, and there is only one class storyline for each base class, so even if you have a dozen Smugglers in a mix of Scoundrels and Gunslingers with different skill tree selections, every single one of them goes through exactly the same core missions -- and there are so few non-core missions that you pretty much have to do all of them to keep up with the level requirements of the next planet in sequence, so you're doing the same peripheral missions again and again with each of your characters in a faction -- and in some cases, such as the last few missions of the "The Thing Czerka Found" arc on Tatooine, both factions get exactly the same missions (the different classes do, however, get different glowies for the second-stage bonus objective in the last mission, @whee), which lowers the variability even more. And with the world design, there really isn't any way to retrofit some sort of random-mission system to give players the ability to get off the railroad for a little while.

[Cinnder]

You know what I truly miss? now having tried the other flavours of MMO out there in a desperate attempt to fill the gap?

How truly versatile the City of Heroes was.

*snip*

+ 1 zillion

This is what makes efforts to create a worthy successor so challenging, because there were so many ways to play CoH.  From the way some people describe their experiences, sometimes I'd almost swear they were playing a different game, because they really enjoyed spending most of their time on stuff I avoided.  But that is what was so cool about the game.

[Nightwatch]

Argh!!!  It brings it all back!  It brings it all back!

My first toon was a illusions/forcefield controller called "Lightsmith".  He came from an Intergalactic Guild of Lightsmiths who are able to craft structures out of light - forcefields, avatars, etc.  This started out as my Green Lantern homage but over time I grew to think my Lightsmiths outgrew and were superior to Green Lanterns.  Over the years I built about 5 Lightsmiths on different servers and took them all to lvl 50.

Now.  The latest issue of the Green Lantern comic (#23) has this text on the cover, "The Lightsmiths called the event, the Dimming!"

O well.  Full circle.

[General Idiot]

From the way some people describe their experiences, sometimes I'd almost swear they were playing a different game, because they really enjoyed spending most of their time on stuff I avoided.

Speaking of things some people avoided - CoH remains the only MMO in which I could often log in and play all night without talking to another player or killing a single thing, and still not be bored. Which is to say, logging in and spending all night base editing. :p

[Triplash]

CoH remains the only MMO in which I could often log in and play all night without talking to another player or killing a single thing, and still not be bored.

Oh yeah, there were a ton of things you could do and not get bored. I often killed an hour or two at a time just ninja running all over the place. Especially on a character with weapons. (Especially especially Vanguard katanas. Glowy swords ftw!) That running animation... with the flippy-jumps and the whooshy-noises... holding your weapon out behind you and just racing down the street. That was so freaking cool.

Or super jumping around... pretty much anywhere, really. Same with flying. Checking out the scenery or hunting down explore badges. Heck I would just do laps around my SG base over and over again, stopping here and there to admire things I had made. I was no master designer but I was getting better. I certainly enjoyed practicing it. Like I saw someone's pic where they had set the beacon screens into the front pillars of the tp pads, and once I figured out how to do that I just kept coming back to stare at it. Never got old.

And the outfits! I think I spent more nights in the tailor than anywhere else. It was just so amazing, the variety of looks you could make with that costume creator. I spent so much time refining outfits that I actually made it into Hero Dawn's hall of fame for most improved costumes    (My first ones were... well I'd say "abysmal" but it's too nice a word.) Course that was the last cc they held, so the results never got officially posted on their site. But it totally happened! I swear it did! I wouldn't just make up something like that!  >.>  *whistles innocently*

Shoot, this one Halloween, just for giggles, I kicked a leftover pumpkin from an Eochai spawn from the west side of Atlas clear across to Ms Liberty. At first I was just having fun kicking some junk around. I do odd things like that; I'm an odd guy. But then I gave myself a challenge to park it at Libby's feet. I did it too! It was beautiful. (I felt like I should've gotten a badge for it... "Time Well Wasted" would be a fitting name, hehe.) Getting it up the stairs was the hardest part. That and taking my time... if I kicked it too hard it would go flying and despawn, and then I'd have to start over. And I mean, forget that. That nonsense was way too silly to do twice.

But yeah, awesome and interesting and cool and fun stuff was all over the place. You didn't have to look very far to find a way to spend a few hours out of combat. It was glorious.

[Twisted Toon]

Speaking of things some people avoided - CoH remains the only MMO in which I could often log in and play all night without talking to another player or killing a single thing, and still not be bored. Which is to say, logging in and spending all night base editing. :p

speaking of base editing...

Here are a few shots of the Bouquet of Roses' base.









I'm sure you would have been more impressed if you'd actually been in the base.
Too bad I couldn't get decent shots of the teleport room though. It was really nice. With an indoor pool and everything!!!

[damerell]

Now is not the time to mention Debt is a Feather's, which looked like a facility for storing the maximum number of salvage racks and teleporters in the minimum space. :-)

[nataliaofvirtues]

I am still not handling the loss of COH worth a crap. I have tried everything to fill the emptiness and as of yet nothing. I am hoping that one of the successors will prove fulfilling.

[Thunder Glove]

Yeah.  I mean, don't get me wrong.  I'm not suicidal or anything drastic.  But I seriously miss my heroes and villains more every day.  I've been crankier and sulkier than usual since December 1st.  I've lost the best combination creative outlet / stress relief outlet (and many other things) I've ever found in my life.  It's still my favorite game - not just MMO, not just video game, but game - of all time.

Knowing that maybe in 2014 or 2015 if everything goes exactly according to schedule there may be a game that kinda feels vaguely like CoH and that might run at something resembling full speed on my old laptop doesn't at all comfort me on those nights when it's 4 am, I can't sleep, and I'm thinking "All I really want to do right now is run some iTrials, like I was one year ago today."  I need to play now.

I'm so desperate, I may just go back to Champions Online for a month or two, just to be able to play superheroes again, rather than a cat guy wearing a dog-shaped hat.

I'm just hoping that an I24 emulator (sorry, "compatible community server") is being actively worked on and is nearing completion.

Edit: there, see what I mean about being cranky?  I came back and re-read this, and it sounded like an attack on the Plan Z projects.  It wasn't intended as that.  I'm just feeling very impatient, and very worried that my poor old computer won't be able to handle all the Plan Z goodness when it finally does arrive.  (Buying a new computer, unfortunately, doesn't look to be in the cards for quite a while, unless I get lucky with the lottery)

[Golden Girl]

I'm just feeling very impatient, and very worried that my poor old computer won't be able to handle all the Plan Z goodness when it finally does arrive.  (Buying a new computer, unfortunately, doesn't look to be in the cards for quite a while, unless I get lucky with the lottery)

HaV is being designed to be playable on the computer of anyone who was playing CoH at the time of its shutdown.

[healix]

I want my City back....more than ever

[Thunder Glove]

I realized, I was also unfair to the other games I play.  Actually, I have nothing against the cat guy or the dog-shaped hat - I even based a CoH character on him, a MA/SR Scrapper with the full Leaping Power Pool - but the game itself is very solo-unfriendly, leveling is painfully slow, all the critters are extremely overpowered compared to players (the head developer has explicitly said that he doesn't want the players to be too powerful, so "the monsters can play, too"), and each individual quest has multiple steps, each of which would be a full quest in itself in most other games.

Edit to snip out the giant multi-paragraph list of steps for just one quest, and then another giant multi-paragraph list of steps for a different quest.  Too long, Clanky, too long.

So, what I'm sloooowly leading up to here is that I seriously miss the way CoH handled quests/missions.  I miss being able to play for a half-hour and complete multiple missions, rather than having to play for literally days to complete a single quest.  I liked that just about every mission was "go into instance, beat up everything you find there, maybe click on a couple of glowies" (and took no more than ten or fifteen minutes at most) rather than a Bear Ass Hunt or running back and forth between two people on opposite ends of the world a dozen times.

[OzonePrime]

rather than a Bear Ass Hunt or running back and forth between two people on opposite ends of the world a dozen times.
So you've played WoW, also! Lol!

[Eoraptor]

I certainly think CoH could have done with one or two long-form quests (Shining Stars I think was a step in that direction by having a series of thee short arcs strung together by one story and one set of characters, and the cape mission that had you hauling ass all over paragon was another) but yes, I too liked the punchy door-mission style of play where you could pop in and see "mission accomplished" in between five and twenty minutes.

[JaguarX]

I certainly think CoH could have done with one or two long-form quests (Shining Stars I think was a step in that direction by having a series of thee short arcs strung together by one story and one set of characters, and the cape mission that had you hauling ass all over paragon was another) but yes, I too liked the punchy door-mission style of play where you could pop in and see "mission accomplished" in between five and twenty minutes.

well I think the shard TFs and three Hero side TFs (posi. Original, Synaspe, Citadel) were forms of the long quest. Then the missions where you had to talk to various people or do the phone check thing, fly across maps for nothing much. Hell, most civilian contacts required flying (or what every travel power) through different maps and rarely the map the contact was on. Luckily they shortened the phone contact. I remember when it was that you had to do 3-8 missions before they even allowed the phone or the main arc for that matter all the while hoping by the time they got to the story arc the character wasn't out leveled it yet. Think they nullified those issues with Ouroboros mostly besides the fact that the character had to then exemp. down and still create a backlog of arcs, but then they added the turn off xp thing to alleviate that too. The devs were on their stuff as time went on in that game. Although looking back, I wish the community as a whole wasn't "speed run" fanatics. where one could actually slow down a bit and get major rewards while enjoying the storyline. One of the reasons I wished TFs were soloable. Too much speed runs. I guess people were short on time all the time. Nothing like getting into a mission and two seconds later it's complete because the invisible guy ran to the end of the mission sometimes before all the team was able to load into the map.  It just seemed like more people treated the missions and the TFs more as an inconvenient chore to level. It sucked the fun out of it for me. Now I aint saying I wished it took all day, but it would be nice to kill something every now and then. Which seemed to be the only time I was able to, was when I played solo. Then people ask, Why play solo in an MMO? So I can actually kill some stuff and enjoy the game instead of doing map tours and hanging around people that is always in a rush.
Apparently there is a lot of people now coming forward that also enjoyed doing the actual missions and TFs and looked at the missions as an adventure and not a chore to hurry up and rush through and get it over with for the end bonus only. Only if I came across them while the game was up I might have a less cynical view on teaming with others and the importance of it and enhance my COX playing experience and thus probably would have lasted to the end. But it's heart warming knowing even when it's too late, that people like that exist and give me hope that COX game will be replaced and I will have second chance to meet them instead of coming across only people that want to speed run.

There probably were many more, but usually been sped run to death.

[LadyShin]

I came upon this little page in some odd corner of the interwebs...

It featured an image of Vietnamese citizens paying tribute to fallen war heroes...




This strangely reminds me of the Statesman emblem/Paragon Studios logo..Especially with that banner in the background.

[Randomvector]

Had a dream last night that I joined with Nemesis to fight a plague in Paragon city. SO...not handling stuff so well even now.