At what point did City of Heroes become more than "just a game" to you?

[Atlantea]

This is a thought that's been bouncing around in my head fairly undefined until recently. Let me see if I can explain where it came from and where it's going.

First - most recently I've been keeping close track of conversations both here on Titan and on MMORPG and Massively. There's always this group of nay-sayers who mock us (often it's the same bunch of under-bridge dwellers whether it's Massively, EGM, or MMORPG - funny that) who keep telling us "Get OVER it already it's just a game! Move on!"

Also - a similar group (often overlapping, but not always) defends NCSoft's decision as some form of the argument "it's just business" (and like some of you, I've come to LOATHE that phrase just for it being used so god damn often like that.) despite us pointing out over and over that COH was profitable etc.

Both the above points may often be thrown in our faces in the most obnoxious under-bridge dwelling manner, or they may be used dispassionately by people who are well-meaning but really don't have a clue as to the actual experience of this game and community and don't understand why it's different.

So - understand that this leaves the realm of logic and into subjectivity to a point.

Because as is patently obvious to many of us - this is NOT "Just a game". It's become something a lot more than that. And to those paying attention, such as many of the former Paragon Studios devs or many MMO website article writers such such as those at MMORPG and Massively, it's frankly astonished them how MUCH we care. Has there ever in the MMO industry been an outpouring of grief and love and a willingness to fight doggedly on for an game like ours?

So - to get to the point of the subject line - my question is, to any of you - is this: At what point in the past 8+ years did this become more than just a game to you or your friends?

I'm not going to ask you to pin down a specific place, time, or event where that happened. Mostly that's not going to be possible. I doubt very many of us had an "epiphany" about it. Or even thought much about it.

But if you look back retrospectively, can you see it for yourself? Tell us a story if you like. Or a set of them. Or just do a quick eyeball summary. Whatever suits your style.

For me - it happened relatively late, considering I had joined in Oct 04. Sometime between when Issue 10 with the second Rikti Invasion and the time of Going Rogue release is when it happened. If this game had been closed down then or a little before, I think I wouldn't have been nearly so heart-broken and willing to fight for it. I would have "moved on".

I can't pin it down much more than that. But I think in retrospect, it was the realization of just how deep the stories were. How invested in them my characters were. The combination of Ouroboros flashback missions and completely new player generated content from AE that made things fresh in terms of content. And it just kept getting better and better. Culminating in Praetoria and and the Dark Astoria arcs. (As an aside, at first I looked askance at including those "personal story" missions because they amounted to extended "cut scenes". But later I saw them as pure genius for their ability to draw you in to the universe.)

I'm not a heavy RPer, but I enjoyed the company of many. The move from Justice server to Virtue in 2006 also helped facilitate the immersion factor.  At the same time, many of my friends from the Drunkard's Walk forum boards got interested in City of Heroes (mostly due to my enthusiasm, I think) and we formed the core of "The Legendary" supergroup. And that formed the core of an online and in-game social group that's persisted.

So all told - I'd say around by late 2008-2009 is when it changed for me from being "just a game" to something more.

How about any of you?

[JaguarX]

I like this post because it can bridge the gap between the lack of understanding between the many groups. To some it may be just a game and they dont understand why people view it as more than just a game/ Then on the other end, people that view it as more than a game dont understand why people dont view it more than a game and call those that say it's just a game, trolls. That is not good for communication nor understanding. Right here, I'm glad you brought it up because it may help people to understand why it's more than just a game to some people.

I've seen aggressive behavior on both sides to be honest. People that say it wasnt just a game and comparing it to killing a child, while some people lost a child for real and states it trivialize the death of said child and when someone speak up about it, it turns into a flame fest back and forth and the word troll is thrown around. Ive seen some people target those that miss the game and I've seen some that is still hurt about the game go to places and conversations and really just kill the "mood" and when someone speaks up they lash out and call them a troll. I think the problem is that people are too short and not trying or just dont know how to understand people that is not viewing it as they do.

I think some of the up coming stories and views will show how this isnt just a game. To some, it was many things and maybe to a few, it saved their lives and gave them the strength to face another day or to do better or to improve themselves.

Like I said, I'm glad you made this topic. And I think it will help. And even I look forward to seeing how the game made a difference in the lives of others and how it became more than a game to them. I wont kid you or anyone, my experience was more mundane, regular gamer playing a game for the time being, but seen a few touching stories that really make me wish the game wasnt ever closed when otherwise I would have shrugged, said it's just natural part of life of an MMO and moved on to another game.

[ArachnosCommander]

The second I logged in.

[Aggelakis]

When I found Paragon Wiki. Before Titan Network, before Wikia...

No, honest, I'm not just saying that as an editor.

If Paragon Wiki hadn't been there for me to answer my questions in my first couple months, I wouldn't be here right now. If Paragon Wiki hadn't been there for me to begin editing, I wouldn't be here right now. If Paragon Wiki hadn't been there for me to tinker with even while I wasn't actually playing the game, I wouldn't be here right now.

So pretty much, I owe everything to TonyV.

[houtex]

For me, there is no 'point'.  It is like a romance, or labor of love... at some point it was "just something fun to do", and then it grew into the thing it is.

The Devs themselves, with their attention to us, was a big part.  That one Halloween, and the big custom maze... So much fun that day!  And we cared about the Devs and they us.  It wasn't just some money maker thing for them, although that didn't hurt, yeah?

The community, of course, the willingness to (mostly) not be meanies or obstinate jerks... just people wanting to play or chat or both.  Solo artists would still talk.  Teams would have a blast.  And everyone wins.  Pinnacle's Monday Night Fights were some of the friendliest and most fun PvPs I ever did, as it wasn't about beatin' other people to a pulp... it was more about having fun talking about the builds, and seeing how you measured up, and such like that, and always friendly and GFs everywhere. 
 
And that was in game... in the forums, it pretty much continued (with a little modding to keep it friendly and topically aligned.  I'll admit, sometimes, I was thankful for the mods, and sometimes... but hey, it worked overall.)  I wound up hanging around in the Tech forums a lot to help others to get their computers ship shape and cleaned up and ready to play CoH... and that was a hard job sometimes.  There were plenty of us, but... sometimes there were overwhemlingly bad setups or configs or bloated/virused... HJT logs anyone?    Doing that became a little bit of an obsession for a while, but I really REALLY wanted to help people enjoy what I saw as the best damn game around.

And the creativity.  I mean... you could make MISSIONS, which is phenominal!  A game that lets you build, if you really wanted, a 15 mission arc over three sessions?  AND custom enemies?!  Not to mention the costume creativity that could be had, either one you made, or just roll a random look until you said "Oh... a little tweakin' but hey, that's damn good!".  And bios.  I was a big bio writer, almost every character, once they got to 10, had a bio for them.  It was important, even the very last build I made, which was a couple of weeks from DOOMTIME had a bio.  I wasn't an RPer, but it helped me to understand why I played that character the way I did, and build it the way I was building it.

I don't know exactly what point... if I had to say, it was somewhere during the time I was being a Tech board dude, probably 4-5 years in?... but I do know the why of it.  Just... everything, after a while, and it's something that I really do miss.  For all kinds of reasons.  I can't wait for it to return, even if frozen in time, and I have to restart all my characters.  It'll be FUN to do it, and I would be just... ecstatic.

[cohRock]

I picked up and bought CoH on a whim in early 2005.  I'd been playing Ultima Online (UO) regularly for years, but since I used to collect comic books, I thought, why not take a look?

I did.  The character creator was fun.  Other players would talk to you as a matter of course, not just guild recruiters and those few who go out of the way to be social.  Teaming was easy, with friends or strangers.  If you got bored with one character, you could make another and keep him around.  You had dozens of character slots among the various servers.  There were task forces and open world events.

And before I knew it, I hadn't played UO for weeks.  That's when I knew CoH was more than just a game.

[General Idiot]

For me I'd say it was a few months after I joined the game, the point at which I wrote my first bio. Because here was a character that was really mine. She wasn't just generic elf/troll/orc/whatever #68089, like in any other game. This was my specific character, with a unique story and power set that no one else had. And that made it more than a game to me.

[Tenzhi]

CoH was more than just a game to me before I ever started playing it - and, indeed, before it even entered beta.  I was one of the earliest people to join the forums.  Before long I had joined a superhero group and was roleplaying on the message boards - and thus it was a community for me before it was ever a game.  Unfortunately, due to technical limitations I was unable to get the game at the start and by the time I got into the game (just after Issue 4, IIRC) the supergroup I was in was already in terminal-illness mode.  And the game did not really live up to my expectations.  However, I had an attachment of sorts to the community so I stuck with it.

[Electric-Knight]

I'm going to answer this with something a little different than I first thought. I might come back and add more of a point in playing that really transcended my loyalty to the game, but for now...

Honestly, you've only just made me realize this truth into words, but I really don't look to play anything that is "just a game". Oh, maybe a few old school pong-like games for mindless dexterity/hand-eye reaction... but my focus for any advanced video game that I play is to get lost in it and play make-believe. If I can't get fully absorbed into it, then I'm not really interested.
So, I went into it looking for something that was more of a game. It passed with flying colors.
City of Heroes did that pretty early from my first log-in, really.
Perhaps the real moment that I discovered that this game would deliver on those aspects was when I gave a whirl at attempting to create my old pen and paper imagined character from many moons ago, the Electric-Knight. When I found a look that matched (close enough) what I used to draw him to look like and when I started zapping enemies with electricity and ran around, seeing my character animate and look like I always imagined him to look like... Kaboom. Never a doubt that I'd love losing myself in Cit of Heroes.
So, pretty much as soon as I logged into Paragon City. 

[Feycat]

The moment I met Haunt.

Which I think was... I dunno, 6 months post-launch, maybe less.

Pretty much since the first time I begged in SG for someone to come help me with missions (soloing defenders at launch... ouch) with no response, until one of the officers was like "sure, let me invite you," and took me on a whirlwind of... well, both of us dying. All the time. He was a D/D scrapper before shields stacked and pre-stamina. I was an emp/dark with poorly slotted attacks. Things were very bad. And yet, every day we got together for another round.

Since that day, there's been very few 24 hour periods in which we are not in contact for several hours, usually for a large chunk of the day. We never really left COH, but we bounced around to other MMOs, staying for a few years, joining or founding RP guilds, moving on when the game got stale. We've created hundreds of lovely characters together, written millions of words in scenes and RP, and have been best friends. I don't know what I'd do without him. So many of our life's milestones - college graduations, jobs gained and lost, my marriage, rat shows, the death of pets, the divorce of parents - all spent supporting one another, and would never have happened without COH.

And we've only met in person once, yet I do not hesitate to say he's my best friend, aside from my husband.

It's not just a game because it does stuff like that.

[Mister Bison]

Several things, the most determining of them being "meeting IRL with people you never really met before but still knew a lot about them". I mean, before I talked with people IRL about games, not people in game about IRL.

The other things are pretty moot next to this, but creating your character and playing it with (newly made) friends is the second. Every role player is behind this statement when I write it.

The sheer amount of possible personnalizations making possible not only to dream a character but experience it, would be the last. The empowerment was nothing like any other game out there, where you were playing someone else's dream. In City, it was yours.

[Victoria Victrix]

When I discovered my core group of RPers, the RPCongress, and discovered that I could not only write my characters, I could live them.

[Golden Ace]

oh wow.  so many things.

There was a time deep within the history of the City when Atta and the minions experimented with a teleportation device. This device, once activated, The minions would upon spotting an enemy to the first intersection in Atta’s tunnels and somehow keep them there (So obviously it was not working as intended. Well what do you expect from minions?). I believe this was back in January 2005, it was the Atta Teleport bug.

In any case I don’t recall my level, I was on Ace back before he got invulnerably so maybe 15? 16?  Or lower. I was invited to a team, the leader was all excited about Atta, said it was now a great mission for leveling quick.  He was a hard of hearing superspeed scrapper as I recall. No I don’t remember what kind.  He told us all to stay in one area and he would bring all the mobs to us. He started zooming through the caves and suddenly all the bad guys would appear right on top of us.  LOTS of them.   I remember the shouts of “That’s Enough!” “No More!” “ATTA!” etc… to no avail. Five of my teammates died within seconds, I being a Tank was a bit sturdier, and I survived long enough to get out from the middle of the mobs.

So it was me, hard of hearing superspeed scrapper (who was busy aggroing more mobs so they would teleport to me) oh, and a spunky little defender by the name of Sugar and Spice. She had died with the rest of the team, but she somehow got away from the mobs so she could pop an awaken (I think she had to use several to get far enough away).  She didn’t have a teleport back then so she couldn’t teleport anyone out of the mobs to raise them. But boy could she heal, She didn’t give a darn about her own health I saw her go down to next to nothing a lot, all she cared about was keeping me alive. I would have died dozens of times without her.   I went from a sliver of life to nearly full health over and over again, when she didn’t have the big heals she would run close to me and use her healing aura taking damage while she did it. Meanwhile the dead were feeding me all kinds of inspirations.

My only AoE was Frost, but I would still use my single target attacks too. The mobs were stacked so for every mob I seemingly killed dozens would go down. Finally our illustrious leader zooms back, dives in, and faceplants with the rest of the team, then gets mad at Sugar for not healing him. So she rezzed him right in the middle of the pack… only to see him die again. I then get a tell from Sugar “Serves him right” (or something to that effect) at that time I’m laughing my ass off.  She did it on purpose. Lol.  As I remember she did it to him 3 times and he kept accepting the rez. Finally the mobs thinned out enough for a blaster to use an awaken and back away. The three of us made short work of the reminder.  It was actually very good XP I think everyone got at least 2 levels or more.

The Bugged Atta Mission that’s when if first went from being a just a game to being more than just a game to me.

After that, Sugar and I teamed all the time. She was awesome. These were the days before global names and as it turns out she was also a high level blaster ‘Valeron’ that befriended me a few days later. No global names, so I had no idea they were the same person. These two characters of hers would constantly snipe at the other one. Val would say “Were you playing with that two-bit hussy Sugar and Spice again?  Next time I met Sugar she would say “Don’t tell me that high level bitch was pestering you again”. I honestly couldn’t figure out why they didn’t like each other, and I could never get them to meet.  But they would come back with stories of how they teamed with each other while I was offline. Val would come back and say how Sugar was the worst defender ever, and Sugar would come back and say Val was all uppity so she let her die a few times.

A while later I started trying to destroy the Protector server and kill everyone on it.

Ah those were the days.


ok who changed the filter to make T.r.o.l.l.s into unicorns?

Changed the T.r.o.l.l.s/unicorns to minions in the above.

[Ironwolf]

It all started during the first ever Halloween event.

I was on my Fire tank and with our SG Sin. Suddenly in Founders Falls they spawned an Eochai! We attacked it and everyone in the zone killed it. We were talking and laughing and suddenly there was 2 Eochai! Again I go back to tanking and a couple of other tanks join in and the smackdown starts. We defeat the 2 of them and suddenly 3 Eochai are stomping us!

I laugh and say in Broadcast if one of the Devs are doing this - I can take it - bring it on! Suddenly the other tanks are starting to die - but my little Fire tank was well built even before IO's and he keeps on going. Now 4 Eochai are stomping on me! Then 5 and finally at 6 Eochai everyone dies and for a short while I actually survived tanking 6 Eochai before I died and I said in Broadcast - You win oh wise and powerful Oz!

Obviously a Dev was watching us and having fun!

When the makers of a game love having fun with the players - that is when it became more than a game to me.

[Sajaana]

For me, it was when I joined the Villains of Paragon City, the "black sheep" of the Virtue roleplaying community, with Femme Fencer (Jean Depallier).  They showed me how this was more than a game, it was a platform for storytelling.  I swear, we were a bunch of hardcore CoH fanatics, text fighting and using the chat system to do things that the engine couldn't.

We were, as we said, "the most famous, infamous group" on the Virtue server.  The "serious" RPers on Virtue took issue with how we would jump into places like Pocket D and force a roleplay scenario, like filling the place with mutating gas.  But the VoPC way was, "haters are going to hate, but we're shaking things up anyway!" And we did!

We ruffled not a few feathers.  But I believe Virtue was better for it.  For example, there was one event where we pretended a monster was consuming City Hall, and we had to stop it.  We shouted our narrations in /yell in Atlas Park.  Some people took issue with us, but for every one who did we had another who thought it was cool.  We had people not even associated with our group or the Virtue roleplaying circles join in.

To those who only knew us from our antics, people ought to know what we did behind the scenes.  We were a hardcore roleplaying group.  And when I say hardcore, I mean that we spent more time logged on to CoH than logged on to reality.  Then again, it was summer, I was housebound, and I had a lot of time to waste between the spring semester and fall.  So I dove right in and didn't look back.

The key to our fanaticism for the game was our leader, John Starkweather.  For those who knew him, he was one of the best idea men and GMs in the game...and possibly in the world of MMORPGs.  He would have his group and our enemies playing in his plots for days, weeks and months.  The reason he was the best SG leader I've ever known is because he constantly pushed himself to ensure we were never, never, ever bored. Nothing was too wild or outlandish for John.  He could turn two hours of dead time into four hours of excitement.

I was one of the people who was responsible for turning John's ideas into reality.  If he wanted a tank for a roleplaying event, I'd spend two days straight building a tank out of ramps and vents in our SG base. If he wanted a five mission story arc that tracked down sniper bullets, I'd spend the whole night working on an AE arc.  You wanted to work hard for this group, because we knew--as villains--that we had to be the ones who got the ball rolling.  Only by being so tenaciously evil could the other hero SGs have an opportunity to save the day.

To me, the VoPC was more than a place to have fun.  It was a calling.

[SirKittles]

There was no specific event. It was just a feeling, an aura, that overwhelmed you and sucked me in.

This was my first true MMORPG, and it was a fascinating experience. I looked nothing up, I went in blind. I didn't know, nor care that Ninjas/Dark Miasma probably wasn't the best powerset combination for a new player. I didn't know, nor care to ever bind hotkeys. I didn't know, nor care that you weren't supposed to get the attacks, you were only supposed to focus on the minions.

The character never got past level 26, mostly because I, in my youth, was so distracted and had hardly any leveling strategy at all. Plus, the character creator was so cool.

There were only a few people that I ever truly got close with, close being a word too flimsy for the true meaning of what I'm trying to convey. But it wasn't a specific person that dragged me in, or a specific super group--It was just the community in general.

Everyone, everyone, was great. I think that I might have met maybe four unkind people in the game since I had started in i7. While I had demands that forced me outside of the game for much of my life (sports, injuries, school) that prevented me from getting too close or dedicated to any person or persons, I always made sure to come back to it, just because the people were so great.

Oh, but the Barracuda strike force was epic. Epic.

....

Oh god, now I can't remember if it was the Barracuda Strike Force or a strike force where you had to fight Barracuda. It was that one in Sharkhead.

[Aggelakis]

Oh god, now I can't remember if it was the Barracuda Strike Force or a strike force where you had to fight Barracuda. It was that one in Sharkhead.

Barracuda Strike Force was against 5th Column. It starts in Grandville and is a level 50+ SF.

The strike force you fight Barracuda ended in the Eye of the Leviathan chamber. It starts in Sharkhead and is a level 25+ SF.

[FatherXmas]

Oddly for me, it didn't have anything to do with the game itself, at least in the conventional way.  I got into the early CoV beta and since there were some graphic engine upgrades as well as other requirements and players needed help upgrading their graphics driver and in some cases their system.  BillZBubba was handling the ATI crowd but nobody was helping the nVidia players so I stepped in.

Soon there were a core group of people like BillZ and me fielding questions and for the most part that's how I got addicted to the forums.  It was the forums that made this more than a game for me.  It became a place with fellows with similar overlapping interests with the game being only one aspect.  The last time I felt that comfortable around a group was in college, which was an engineering/science college (plus hockey!) and nearly everyone was steeped in the same set of interests that to the rest of society would consider niche.  Like comics, D&D, science fiction, world domination, personal computing (Atari, Commodore, TRS-80, IBM PC era), Monty Python, video games (Mule!, Tempest), British Sci-Fi, etc.  You couldn't suggest a "nerdy" topic without half the people in earshot chiming in with their opinion.

And I got the same feeling here.  The culture forum was full of people who followed show and movies that most in work wouldn't even be aware of.  You want to talk about Farscape and Stargate and they want to talk about Friends or Seinfeld.

[AlphaFerret]

Once it was taken away....

[Terwyn]

The moment I picked up Hover for the first time.

I don't care how *slow* it was back in the I7 days... I could fly.

[Ashen Fury]

The first time I stepped into a game with a character of MY design, who could be what I wanted them to be. The first login to Outbreak.

[TimtheEnchanter]

When it really hit me that there was something special here, was briefly after CoV came out. My main Villian formed a VG and I decided to write a back-story to explain its origins. I expected a 10-page summary. After 2 days, I had a rough draft of a novella. Since then, another of my toons is waiting to be immortalized as well. Roleplay had inspired stories like this many times in my life before, but all of those incidents were back in the late 80's/early 90's, at the peak of my pre-teen childhood. To have that wide-eyed creative child sparked back to life again in the most unsuspecting of places, is still amazing to me.

The same happened to my wife. Within weeks of playing, one of her characters sparked a story.

I've always referred to CoH as the "Crayola" of MMO's. And instead of giving us a coloring book with boundaries to draw within, it gave us a blank sheet of paper.

[srmalloy]

I think the point for me at which this became more than just playing the game was when I had an En/En Blaster and I heard chatter on the main chat channel about some people down in Atlas Park playing Hellion Golf -- back before ED when you could six-slot Power Push for Knockback, and then Power Boost that distance, to fling low-level Hellions all the way across the zone if they didn't hit a building partway across (one of the reasons for Atlas Park -- really low-level mobs flew further, and Atlas Park had that big empty area in the middle, so you could get good distances easier). Trying to get the mobs to land in a particular area of the zone, with all the jockeying for angle and target choice, then watching them flying off like Sir Robin blowing the question from the Bridgekeeper when you hit them with Power Push, was endlessly hilarious...

[Thunder Glove]

I can't think of a single moment, but I'm sure it was during that very first two-week trial (back when they had two-week trials, before they shortened it to one-week with Going Rogue, and then got rid of them altogether for Freedom) when I created my first "mains".

I've said this before, I'm sure, but I've loved superheroes since I was a kid.  I grew up, not only on Superfriends, but on every weekday afternoon and Saturday morning superhero show there was.  Plastic Man, the Drak Pack, live-action and animated Shazam, Electra Woman and Wonder Girl, the Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Mighy Man, the Mighty Hercules, Mighty Mouse, the Mighty Heroes (... awful lot of "mighties" in there), the list goes on and on.

So, basically...

The first time I hit the character creation screen, my thoughts were pretty much "eh, whatever, might as well try this game", and created a fairly random character.  The second time I hit the character creation screen, my thoughts were pretty much "the entire universe is at my fingertips."

I cracked my knuckles and never looked back.

[Menrva Channel]

The moment I could be one of my favorite characters and hang with my friends as /their/ favorite characters--when I watched them come alive and grow and change--and when I realized I would never see my toons and online friends again. >.<

[Kuriositys Kat]

For me it was when I was around level 25+ ish on my namesake and I got a tell from AA(Alien Abduction) asking if I wanted to join a team they would SK me up.  I join the team we meet in IP and one of the players  "The Grey Wanderer"(WS) says "Hello Lunch, we're team mates"    That introduction brought home to me just how immersive  City is/was. We can be other selves  create a character with his/her/its own dream, make it look the way that it should look.

The player behind that character, "The Grey Wanderer", became my husband in 2009, three years to the day I created my City of Heroes account 
I may have flirted with other games but City was my home and I miss it terribly, even more so now that my relative options left are not as optional friendly as City was.

[healix]

I think it was when I stopped feeling like a third wheel/noob when teaming in the early days. My dear friend Painstake (an awesome tank) said he thought I was one of the best healers in the game. I actually cried, to hear that from such an accomplished player. I felt like I really became a part of everything after that.

[MaHaBone]

I quit playing after ED dropped, and I beat myself up a lot about the time I had spent playing up to that point.  I could have learned a new language or written a novel or gotten in amazing shape, etc etc etc.  I could have been productive!

A couple years later I got lured back by one of those free reactivation weekends.  Despite ED, the new CoH experience seemed to be moving away from grinding and was more about the breadth of experiences you could have - not just grinding door missions or street sweeping.  I re-upped, but there was that old familiar guilt about wasting my time.

Then I sort of had a little epiphany - it was okay to not be productive, to do something that was not immediately useful and gainful.  I could take a little time out of my day and have a pleasurable experience, that was simply fun and relaxing for its own sake.

Once I gave myself that permission to just play, City of Heroes became a part of my life rather than at odds with my life.

[Ceremonius]

Any questions left?

[Lady Arete]

Getting flight and hovering in the air of the city. No other game has this.
The community, the stories, the tenacity of the players.
The Devs, the comic books...
But CoH was also the only game in where I created and roleplayed a character and as my character interacted with others her personality and story grew.
Granted nearing the end I did not play it much, but my sub had never once been cancelled since I began the game. BUT it WAS there. It was a safe thought, it was there. I could take a break and return to the game when I wanted. That was important.
It was a unique game, no other game comes close and that is the frustrating part of it.
It was about heroes, their foiboils their hardships, their quirky personalities, about saving the day and the world. Something I did read about in the comic books and now I could experience it myself.

The devs did not want to quit, for them it lived and it lived with us their players. Its just when the "third" party, someone that is thinking of just money, not the experience itself decides it all.

CoH was a game, but it was unique, it was something more and became something more to the players. And that... I've yet to see in any other game, and maybe I will not ever.
Unless its a game where the players are the backers.

[Stone Daemon]

Hard to say, really. I know after I first flew in the game, it was an experience that sealed my love for the game. Of course, I took breaks here and there, but I always came back. I suppose, for me, it was after I got into using Mids' to make my characters silly powerful. I stopped taking breaks after that, and made a whole slew of themed alts with builds that tried to pull off different things.

Of course, the friends that stuck around to the end also helped make the game more than just a sometimes distraction.

[jsndolly]

I saw a box that said City of Heroes, read it, and figured it was just some cartoony game for kids.  Next day, I returned and saw only one box of CoH left and said, "what the heck! Why not? Maybe the kids and I can play together".  I installed the game during its first 14-day free trial, spent 5 hours on game character creator (if I can make a character, I want it my way!), and immersed myself in a new world that I never realized I never escaped from....my imagination.  My mains in all the servers were as diverted as I wanted them to be. Although I had a few villains, they were just as different as my heroes even though I could never figured out their psyche.  My kids played whenever I let them and finally, the game became my world after their turns.  CoH became my world since then without any breaks in subscription.  I found real interaction from caring devs that answers my pleas of "help! I'm stuck at..." to questions to other players in "can you help me in this mission of.....". coH is the first and only online game that allowed me to become a super...healer, controller, defender, blaster. It is the only game that I know that other players would actually teach me how to melee or even patiently explain to me how to do a task force.  CoH is the only game where the real operator behind the mask can be whomever they pleased.  I will miss CoH. Nothing will meet CoH's high standard of mmoprg or developer's caring.  CoH. The. Best. Game. Or. World. Ever.

[DashaBlade]

So the game had been out for about six months. An online buddy of mine said, "Hey, you should check this out - it's got superheroes!"

For about the first month, he and I and another buddy spent our time making up goofy heroes, fooling around with low-level missions, and generally being noobs. And then we discovered TFs, and nothing would ever be the same. We made a SG that consisted of just us and a couple of other guys we knew online.

Those two buddies moved on to other games, but I stuck around. They came back for a little while - I was in the CoV Beta test, and I enticed them with stories of eville - and they left again a little while later. For me, there was no other MMO, though. I got quite good at soloing, and at running with random pickup groups. And I paid the darn rent on that SG base even though I'm the only one who lived there at the end (well, mine and my husband's and my son's toons, anyway).

But I'd have to say that the point when it stopped being just a game was when I had to let my subscription lapse the first time due to low fundage, and I dreamed about CoH nearly every single night until I was able to resub. While I have to be honest and say that CoH was never quite as awesome as DreamCoH was, it was still pretty awesome. And yes, I visit DreamCoH from time to time these days, as well.

[TerminalVelocity]

Hey, Bullet Barrage here. You may remember me.

For me it was when I joined the forums, or maybe when I met Braal.(Who introduced me to tons of other friends.)
It was the community. I had some of the best friends I've ever had in the game, and I've lost contact with them all now.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Offhand i would say it was about month in, so around late June 2004.
Or at least that's when it started. Initially it was about enjoying the game's storylines and teaming with the people i'd met, but then it gradually became more about the larger communities both in game and in the official forums.

And the enormously diverse ways i could design and play characters, both in appearance/concept and game mechanics.
That actually overshadowed a lot of the game's storyline for me after a few years.

But most of all it was the community/communities.
Running with the Pingus and B.O.S.S. members on Champion, Ars and Antibellum and Brickhouse on Virtue, and then the Justice channels...
Most of the time i would log on and poll the various channels to see what was happening and then server hop depending on what caught my eye.
Server based communities aside i had fun socializing with at least four separate groups of active players, each of which had a distinctly different feel and attitude.

[Epelesker]

It was when I started roleplaying. I had started my CoH career on Triumph but my breakthrough moment was on Virtue when I actually made a character for the purpose of RP.

From there, I pretty much never went back.

[LadyShin]

A game of Checkers is just a game.


Without the players, developers, GM's and story writers, City of Heroes would  have just been a banner on a webpage: City of Heroes was a deeply immersive world.

I fail to see any comparison.   

[Steelclaw]

Shortly after my first spreadsheet dedicated to it.

[Ironbull]

Simple answer so it won't be a long post.  I realized it when the team I was on, the first day I played, celebrated every accomplishment, answered every question and welcomed me with open arms.  Community, what a great word.

[Nebularian]

I think it became more than a game and more a collection of friends the day I moved from the Champion Server to the Virtue Server.   

While the people I met on Champion were nice....there just wasn't enough of them and very rarely on at the same time.   But the day I moved to Virtue (and I admit that I later tried to sway those people I had become friends with on champion follow me) I just happened to fall in with the greatest group of people (I still keep track of them on face book and miss them a lot).  And nine times out of ten, when I was on, one or more of them would be on.

And even those people that I did not team with regularly were a fantastic bunch of people.....

[LadyShin]

Hard to say, really. I know after I first flew in the game, it was an experience that sealed my love for the game. Of course, I took breaks here and there, but I always came back. I suppose, for me, it was after I got into using Mids' to make my characters silly powerful. I stopped taking breaks after that, and made a whole slew of themed alts with builds that tried to pull off different things.

Of course, the friends that stuck around to the end also helped make the game more than just a sometimes distraction.

I think that raised things to a whole new level - getting the ability to fly, and earning the right to wear a cape while doing so. Flight and combat flying in my opinion made super speed, leaping and teleporting unnecessary. (Of course though, team teleporting to mission target was mighty convenient..)