In 2003, I began playing Star Wars Galaxies at launch. Despite the company's really terrible handling of the game, I fell in love with it and played it a lot!!
When CoH came out, I wasn't interested in jumping ships, but, eventually, I found enjoyment in visiting the CoH forums and seeing the great interaction that the Red Names took part in there (and the great humor and wit that was on display amongst them and the rest of the community).
In November of 2005, SOE trashed the SWG that I loved and replaced it with a completely different game that I despised.
I gave it some time, but it was no dice...
My wife and I took a break from playing any such games... came back and gave SWG/NGE one more chance, before deciding to venture on a Free Trial exploration of all the existing mmorpgs in April of 2006!
Foolishly, I chose the City of Villains Free Trial first!
I say, "foolishly", because we both fell in love with it and, within days, agreed that we should buy the game (both games, CoH and CoV)!!
We ordered them online (grabbing the Good Vs. Evil editions), loved it and enjoyed it greatly... And when I made the super hero I had created as a child, in this game, Electric-Knight, and the powersets and AT and gameplay worked out so perfectly for him... I pretty much soloed my way to the low 20s (the old fashioned way!) and learned the ins and outs of the game as a Blaster.
As much as we loved it though, a few months in, we both realized that it was too soon, as our love for the old SWG (seriously, our favorite game ever) and our sadness in missing it made enjoying CoH a little more difficult.
So, we both canceled our subs to take a break, believing full well that we'd be back shortly. We visited some friends in other games and tried trials of games, but we didn't really enjoy any of them.
I can't remember exactly when it was (maybe a year later!), the time seemed right and we were about to start up our accounts again. We actually made new free trials, just to test it out and make sure that the magic would be rekindled (I guess. We were both pretty confident though, hehe)...
Unfortunately, I started suffering from a health issue and everything got put on hold. (Although, when the intense headache and pain began, it served as the launching point for my favorite and main villain, Malfaz... As I had the costume created in the new free trial, but couldn't quite decide what powers to give him... until an intense bout of head pain and anguish inspired the Mind/Psi Dominator that suffered from chronic, perpetual migraines, which he then mastered to share with his opponents! So, good from bad!)
After over a year of dealing with these health problems, I finally became well enough to play games at the computer again around April of 2008... and we gleefully reactivated our accounts and never canceled them again!