I actually think it's a testament to City of Heroes, Cryptic and Paragon Studios that I might not come back to a world in which my story, my history, my characters have been irretrievably erased. Before City of Heroes, I played at least a dozen other MMOs. I'm an old-schooler. My first account in an MMORPG was created in November, 1997 (Ultima Online). I still play Ultima Online occasionally, when the itch visits me, despite having nuked my stable of characters half a dozen times. So what's so different about COH? What's different is, COH turned out to be the game that I was always looking for; one in which my stable of characters didn't feel like disposable units of stats, casually overlaid on top of game fiction that was just as disposable--just an excuse for boss fights and XP.
I'm well aware that COH is exactly that for many other players and well-loved for it. I'm not hating. That's more or less what I'd done in many other games. But I always wondered what a more immersive experience would feel like, just like pre-launch ads always promise. In COH, I was finally given all the customization tools I had ever dreamed about. I saw each new character as fresh paint on the same canvas the game's story was painted on. And almost immediately I was lucky enough to fall in with a group of other players who approached roleplay just as creatively and imaginatively. Without that final piece, I probably would have lost inspiration, eventually, caught up in the same mad rush for XP that can be found in every class-based MMO on planet Earth.
COH made this veteran MMOer less-jaded about MMOs than he had any right to be. Which is why, "just roll some more alts", isn't a respectable solution to the empty holes left on that old canvas. Remember the cartoon that was circulating around after the game closed? With the kid having his old dog taken away, his parent saying, "Here, you'll like one of these newer ones?" I took great care in character creation to carve something meaningful and worthwhile into my corner of that universe. Believe it or not, I never deleted a character, and I knew mine and my friends characters very well, like people in a story that you don't want to end. NCSoft deleted every single one of them. If they could simply be replaced, after everything I just told you, what would that say about me?
I'm not one of those people who came up with an apocalyptic tale to excuse NCSoft's digital book-burning. After all, the world of COH was an apocalypse--of epic proportions, zombies and extradimensional aliens and giant monsters--and yet we didn't think of it like that; places like Paragon City sat in the middle of it all, well-defended by our heroes, even by our villains. And in my mind, that's where I left them--defending that oasis, cleaning up Primal Earth.
Before COH closed, I easily could have played for another five years, maybe more. I don't generally put that many years into one MMO; that's testament to the game being able to keep people invested. But if I ever went back to a COH without my characters in it, there'd have to be a reason for my doing so that made sense in-universe. There are many ways that that could happen, creatively speaking. But will it serve the story, or just serve as an excuse to go back?--As an author or director might say, one of these isn't good enough. Also by that time, the launch of one or more of the game's successors might be imminent, too.
