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

[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.....