Hello everyone, I'm Toe Tagger ( I know it says Baja but shh ), I played on Virtue since the release of CoH including the closed beta. I started playing this game at the age of 14 and only took breaks for work or other real life situations that required my full attention. Some of you might even know me from when I played as Tore or Operative Tagger, those were my mains. Tore being my favorite, he was a PvP Night Widow, yes I actually used a defense based setup after the crazy i13 changes. I'm straying a bit off from the point of this though.
When this game first came out it was absolutely breath taking, I'll never forget Gemini Park in Galaxy City. That was my first time making a horrible attempt at what could be called Role-Playing, I had a blast interacting and hearing all the in-depth stories people had come up with. I had played other games back then, but nothing of this scale, my mind was literally blown. You could tell it was blown by the first name I chose, "ice-ninja", I still had that character on my account, and I would always laugh at how I decided the dash made it cooler. I still remember times like the Winter Horde event glitch that allowed people to power level with sidekicks, or the first alien invasion that made everyone pause and fall into pure awe, until they face planted. Or my first super group, The White Knights, a heavy RP group with some awesome people. Some of the very first that organized RP events and story lines were set up by us and a very limited amount of others.
It was the sense of friendship and ability to willingly accept a slight amount of Puer aeternus. I think anyone who has played this game from the beginning knows of that excited "new toy" feeling we all got when the issues were released. The wars began each time, forcing developers to question even the simplest of decisions, in hind sight it seems like it would have been so simple for all of us to take a step back and really appreciate how lucky we are to have experienced such a fun and diverse world. I feel somewhat special to be quite honest, in a weird way I'm one of the very few people that literally "grew up" with this game, I know there were other kids just like me in CoH. To me though growing up playing WoW or some other knock off of D&D really turned most into horrible trollz or anti social online and off, at least in the beginning years of CoH the social structure was the most beautiful thing in online history without question.
The community to begin was open armed to everyone that dared take a crack at RP, or any other sub genre of fun you saw fit to your needs. People were skyping/venting, using MSN, and some flat out started calling/texting each other. It was literally a utopia of super hero fans from all over, and it couldn't have went better. As things progressed there was a slight shift, I noticed it right away being somewhat of a group hopper, the trend was turning into clique oriented behavior rather than just friendly people looking to have fun. Suddenly if you didn't meet certain standards you were no longer accepted and more often than not were outcast in a sense. When Pocket D first opened this trend seemed to slow drastically for quite some time based on the influx of new RP'rs. We'll get back to the RP subject a bit later though.
In the PvP sector things were phenomenal. It was fast paced, people were having fun, sure there were those that used cookie cutter builds but even they tended to go easy and just enjoy the chaos. I remember quite a few of the pvp crowd, back when Sirens Call was the place to be. I think around that time the game had hit it's true "peak" of greatness. It seemed that everyone was generally pleased despite the regular crying on the boards. However I can't say I was deeply involved into the PvP portion quite yet. At that time I could use my lvl 30 katana/regen stalker and clean house. ( His name was Baja by the way ) I would hop between him and my RP toons constantly. That to me was one of the most beautiful things a game has offered, not only was the world vast and well thought it, it managed to be small enough so you didn't become just another face.
As I matured through out my CoH career I learned so much, not just from other players, but it allowed me to develop a way to blend into crowds that I normally had no interest in. We all have a mask in real life in my opinion, and to me this game gave me the ability to remove mine and simply be me. I think for a lot of us we can agree that personalities flourished in this environment, and for the most part it was in a very good way.
There were some bad moments as well, which will forever remain burned into my brain like a traumatic event in real life. The one that stands out the most to me was on the CoH forums, when I warned people how the clique mindset and constant ignorance shown towards the general population would lead to an eventual demise of this game. I made the post on a Saturday night, by Sunday morning there were 18 pages of intense discussion. I won't lie it got personal, even some people that I had great respect for tried challenging my real life. Beelzebub (if I'm remembering his forum name correctly) who was a whiz with numbers and a leader on all things cookie cutter went so far as to call me out on my fighting abilities. I now know why so many people got angry by the threat of this game falling into what it is today, non-existent. The worst part of all of it was I was right, the game was on a decline that it would not recover from unless things took a very drastic turn. All things considered at this point I wish I was made a fool and was simply wrong.
I think what a lot of us even today ignore was how the role playing community dominated this game like no other. In many ways that was for the better, but in so many others it lead to a downfall. When I say this I don't mean it to insult any of the "e-famous" players, if I was given the opportunity to have direct say as to which direction the game should go I would have been childishly giddy. However when things like pvp changes were handled by people who clearly had no idea what pvp was to that set of people, it became extremely clear there were those that were pulling the strings in a very bad direction. "The path to hell is paved with good intentions." is how the saying goes, and I think that's what very well happened here.
I knew, like many others, that if one set of the community is ignored then there would be a fall out. The focus of the developers was so clouded by very specific requests they had no real creative ability. It was simply "how can we make this work" whether those requests would fall under the category of power sets or aesthetics it seemed very odd to me to add things onto what was very old and cluttered system. In my mind if they would have focused on simple QoL improvements for an entire year this game could have competed with the rest. They chose not to, and instead kept packing on content that was simply not needed at that time. The developers were simply hostages being held by our demands. They wanted to provide the game that was being asked for, and I cannot blame them for doing so, when in that kind of moment I think the majority of us would have made the same decisions.
That's all gone now though, and I miss it more than I think a lot of people can really understand. I know many of my close real life friends have no idea what it's like to have something you grew up with torn away from your fingers. To me this was like losing part of myself, a part that I wish with all my heart I could get back. This game had more meaning to me than any other game has or will for the rest of my life, which is sad on more than one level. I'll never forget logging on and spending time sitting around the D, just watching the in-depth conversations and story lines roll out as if they were being directed by an actual production crew. Or the people I was so lucky to interact with, I wish nothing but the best to all of them, and somehow I wish I could express to them how much of an impact they had on my life.
Just like a beautiful melody we love and enjoy, the final note of this song is one I wish I could repeat. If anyone took the time to actually read this all, I appreciate it very much. If you disagree with any of my thoughts, please know they are simply mine, imperfect as they may be. I do not wish to offend anyone, merely express the emotional storm the end of this game has caused to myself and many others like me. If anyone does find a way to somehow resurrect this monster I'd love to be apart of it. I'm not rich so unfortunately I cannot offer money, and alongside my lack of funds is my lack of ability to code. However if you're ever in need of a true City of Heroes fan, I'd be more than happy to fill the spot if welcomed.
