On August 28th, not long before Black Friday, I was removed from my job. Soon after the other shoe hit the floor. Many of you don't know me because I let my YouTube partner speak on the forums because she had a bulk of the play time on the account. When I did play it was to film for YouTube and support my fledgling channel, our goal was to make something akin to TotalBiscuit's Azeroth Daily. We had actually relaunched the channel for the new format the week of the announcement. I was going to buy a secondary account and let my partner retain the other because I was feeling renewed with the oncoming Issue 24: Resurgence. Saldy, we were cut short.
For me City of Heroes was a creative outlet, one I shall sorely miss and hope it gets into someone's hands (if not Disney I say pester Activision because heck, then they'd have BOTH 8year games in one house.) However, more recently, I discovered I have not only Aspergers, but Bipolar Depression. It is a nasty mental disorder combination. If you ever watched the show Monk, that's me in a nutshell. I even have a 190 IQ with extremely high spatial correlation skills. I have been told it is a wonder I am functioning as well as I am.
My parental figures were too busy to understand that my future would need to be directed and maintained. My father ignored stress inducing issues and my mother refused to acknowledge anything that might be an embarassment to her. My role models, growing up, came from comic books. In 2004 along comes a game where I could be just that. I loved it! The game inspired me to create my own world, something people with Aspergers usually feel is way outside their comfort zone. Every time I would log in I would get new ideas and write them down as I played until I realized I had a fully functioning dynamic world in my noggin. City of Heroes brought me to life and gave me purpose.
Now granted, I'm trying the self-publishing bit at the moment, but my creations are still my children, as any author will tell you. I love them and I loved the game that gave me a reason to create this new world. However, my inspiration was stripped away from you like it has everyone else. On top of that I lost my bill paying job and now, it seems, I'm compounded with depression that years of trying to mask what's really going on has induced.
With that I am stating, please fight the good fight, but be mindful of casualties along the way. NcSoft deserves a kharmic backlash, true, but remember the higher ups will take it out on others before taking blame themselves. Thank you, my City of Heroes community, for helping me shake away from my comfort zone. Thank you for continuing to prove you are the heroes I know you to be. Thank you, everyone for your future support as I struggle with what is really happening to me. Thank you and I will see you all, "...in the near future."