How are you handling the loss?

[JWBullfrog]

Never played an Invul, so I don't know how to be invulnerable.

We support players never had that as an available powerset. All we had was the sheer bloody-minded determination to jump into harm's way no matter how much it was going to hurt.
And it always hurt.
 
And if anyone has been jumping into harm's way recently....

[Dylan Clearbrook]

going back to school to get my BA LOL  and finally listening to people griping at me about it and trying to get back into fan-fic writing again......

[Palladiamors]

Playing other things.   I also have a lot of writing and planning to do.  I miss CoH,  but I wasn't able to make myself play much in those last three months.  I won't be able to scratch that particular itch unless something gets done.  So I will be in this for the long haul until we get out City back in some way form or fashion.

[JanessaVR]

How am I handling the loss?

In March, my kitty, Ninja, who was my constant companion for nearly 17 years and was essentially a surrogate child to me, died of cancer.

In June, my roommate and best friend Dorian died suddenly in the hospital.  She apparently neglected to prepare a fully notarized will.  The county took her away, cremated her, and won't even tell us where she's buried, citing "confidentiality reasons."  She was disabled and CoH was a major part of her life as she could only leave the house in a wheelchair with medical transport.  If she wasn't already dead, this would have killed her; she loved her Claw and Broadsword Regen Scrappers (signature class for her).  She was also a big Mercedes Lackey fan and owned many of her books.

In August, they announced the closure of my 2nd home – City of Heroes.  Then in November, they did it.

How am I handling the loss?  There's not much left in life that I care about.  My entire household is dead.  My home is gone.  In the course of one year most of what I cared about in life is gone.  A year ago at this time I had a good life – now all I see are its ashes.

Outside of my job, I have nothing left to care about now but the fight against NCSoft – and if that takes all my spare time every day for the rest of my life, well then so be it, my calendar is clear.  As far as I'm concerned, that's my 2nd job now.  I'm 41 and longevity seems to run in my family – I've probably got another good 4 decades to devote to this fight, even if I end up the last person on earth doing it.  My hatred for NCSoft knows no limit – this is my personal crusade now and I have nothing left to lose.  Sacrificing the rest of my life to it is a price I'm willing to pay.

As for switching to another MMO – that’s not an option for me.  I understand that other people may be moving on to other games – and I support their choice to do so (as long as it’s not to an NCSoft game as that is real treason) – but for me, that would be a betrayal of CoH, and I will not do it.  I've heard people discussing other games and I’ve even briefly looked at a few, but I always remind myself – do NOT betray City of Heroes.  The new replacement toys may be shiny and look cool, but I remember where my real loyalties lie.  If that means never being able to play another MMO again for the rest of my life, so be it.

And really, I don’t expect that I ever will play another MMO again.  Why should I?  I devoted 4 and half years of my life to CoH.  I spent over $2,000 on it, probably closer to $3,000.  I poured blood, sweat, and tears into it.  And then one day someone flipped a switch and took it all away from me.  Give me one good reason why I should ever put myself in that position again?  You can't – there isn't one.  I won't let someone do that to me again.

Someone on EGM Now pointed out that NCSoft has poisoned the well for all MMOs by driving home this point, in the most brutal and public fashion they could imagine, that players of MMOs own nothing and have no rights.  When that attitude really starts making the rounds, what does it say for the future of MMOs in general?  Why should anyone spend money on them?  I'm Exhibit A – I won't switch to another MMO as I now have no trust in any other company that they won't do the exact same thing to me.

So it’s time to make NCSoft pay.  It’s after November 30th, and the gloves are off - the time for playing nice with them is over.  We have been heard by them – and dismissed as irrelevant and unworthy of their attention.  So we must not let up on the campaign of negative publicity.  They want us to dry up and go away now that the game is closed – we must not let that happen, we must not hand them that victory.  We need to make this worse than ever for them.  Every place an NCSoft game is reviewed (or has been reviewed and is still online), we need to be there, in force, reminding people of just how NCSoft treats their customers and how what happened to us will eventually happen to them as well if they continue to support NCSoft’s games.  We must similarly hound anyone associated with them – relentlessly.  The very label of NCSoft must be thoroughly tarred as poison, and we need to figure out how to hit them in Korea and Japan as well, where it will hurt more.  Getting their senior executives fired over their bungling of this should be a real goal we work towards as we do our best to hurt their stock prices and taint their public image.

To NCSoft – Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering MMO Killer; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!  I'm not going anywhere, and I will not stop – you took away the only place I had to go away to and I have nothing else in life left to look forward to.

TonyV has said "We are heroes.  This is what we do."  Well, I'm not.  Hero was never my preferred alignment.  I'm a Vigilante – and this is what I do.

[ukaserex]

I've stayed really busy, so I guess I haven't really felt it yet.  I did log into Champions Online since they posted such a nice message to us and played through the tutorial earlier today.  It was just so... different.  Not bad, just weird.  Not being intimately familiar with the interface, not being able to just jump in and do stuff, being the n00b for the first time in almost a decade while everyone else seemed to just "get it", I dunno.  It was a really bizarre feeling.  I don't know if I'll stick with it.  I do plan on trying out Neverwinter when I can get beta access; at least then, everyone will be the n00b and I have a chance to grow up with the community once again.

I've also been working on various web site stuff, and another little non-CoH project that I can't really talk about, and watched a bit of football today.  (What's up, 49ers?  The Rams are your kryptonite or something?)  The Falcons played on Thursday night (and beat the Saints by 10, woohoo!), so I didn't even have them to take my mind off of things.  I also hung out with Belle, did a bunch of Skype chatting, and miscellaneous stuff.

But yeah, I'm a bit down because I'm not seeing or talking to the usual crew of people I hang with, but I'm still convinced that we'll be able to bring the game back somehow, so I'm more pissed off at NCsoft and determined than down or depressed.

I shared the same experience with Champions. It's so odd being a noob, lol. And, I'm a Saints fan, so that loss was pretty ugly for me. Well, we got the first one.

[Menrva Channel]

I take everything in stride. I remember now what life before Paragon was like--Boring. Quiet... Lonely. You might never meet someone you befriended online--but they are your friends still. I got horribly ill and spent most of yesterday sleeping. That was almost a relief from Saturday. I spent Saturday going through my files, trying to find some comfort. With the beginning of the school week, I'll be hunkering down... but I can't shake feeling down.

It's stolen my excitement over other things too. Playing other MMOs is hard--because I don't have my city to return to. I am a /huge/ Tolkien fan and I can't even muster excitement over the Hobbit right now. :/ And I've been looking forward to that for /years/. I am angry. I am hurt. And I am sad. I'm moving on because I have to. But that doesn't mean I've stopped thinking about Paragon. I regret taking it for granted. I thought it'd always be there... I was wrong.

[faith.grins]

[snip]
How am I handling the loss?  There's not much left in life that I care about.  My entire household is dead.  My home is gone.  In the course of one year most of what I cared about in life is gone.  A year ago at this time I had a good life – now all I see are its ashes.

Outside of my job, I have nothing left to care about now but the fight against NCSoft – and if that takes all my spare time every day for the rest of my life, well then so be it, my calendar is clear.  As far as I'm concerned, that's my 2nd job now.  I'm 41 and longevity seems to run in my family – I've probably got another good 4 decades to devote to this fight, even if I end up the last person on earth doing it.  My hatred for NCSoft knows no limit – this is my personal crusade now and I have nothing left to lose.  Sacrificing the rest of my life to it is a price I'm willing to pay.

I recognize that the first stage of Loss is Anger, and that's probably what informs a lot of this post, but given that you've got some other things going on in your life, I seriously recommend you start some form of counseling or therapy.  It doesn't seem like you're dealing with all of this in a healthy fashion.  (Granted, I'm just some random person on the internet, possibly over-analyzing something you said which you didn't entirely mean.  But, yeah, if you've lost someone close to you and a longtime pet and a community which was important to you, and you seriously want revenge for it?  I really think you could benefit from talking to someone.)

((hugs))
Please, know that we don't want you to throw your life away on this.  We love you, even if only because we shared something with you which is no more.

[LT. Couper]

Not sure how I'm handling it.

Literally not a day went by since I found out about the anouncement that I didn't have CoH in my thoughts (folding paper cranes day after day likely had something to do with it). I had been playing CoH longer than I had originally realized, by putting different memories together I discovered that I had been playing on and off for at least 6 1/2 to 7 years. It's also a little hard because my friends at school don't seem to understand what I'm going through, even though I'd been able to convince most of them to at least try the game.

After the shutdown (3:00 AM Eastern) I kinda stared at the "Lost Connection to Mapserver" screen for a minute, not sure what to think. I didn't cry then, as I thought I would, instead just shutting down my computer and going to sleep. After getting back up, I (naturally) tried launching the game, I guess in some futile hope that it had all been a bad dream. Obviously, no such luck. Every second of Saturday was spent with my mind thinking about what had happened Friday night. I kept thinking about taking that one last Super Group screenshot in Pocket D and realizing that it was the way I would have wanted to go out; With my friends that I had known for years (although, unfortunately, hadn't had much contact with recently).

It was only once my dad asked me about the Sunset that I started to cry. And then again once I got back home and turned on my moniter and saw my SG screenshot already up. I kept kicking myself for not realizing sooner that my SG was what I'd miss the most about CoH.

I havent cried about it since then (although I just started to tear up while writing this), but when I get home from school, I just stop, not knowing what to do with the rest of my day. I think about playing some other game but I feel as if I'm betraying the memory of CoH by playing something else so soon after the Sunset.

[Daimyoshi]

I am not, I going through a stage much like Doctor Doom must have after he was scarred. So much anger and hate. I live to Dance on the Grave of NCSOFT.

[therain93]

I'm kind of coping, but not totally out of denial yet I think.....tonight is Monday Night Horde night on Freedom, or rather was. / ' :   Titan Network has turned into my security blanket, as evidenced by the uptick in postings.
I've spent a tremendous amount of time batch compressing FRAPs video down using Xvid.  I've actually just finished, ultimately reclaiming about 360GBs of space, but I've yet to really catalog what I have there.  I've replayed some of it and smiled and I've pondered next steps.  I've set up dedicated youtube and imageshack sites for my coh stuff and have started uploading raw footage.  I have a ton of demorecords and likely will spend some time demoing, playing with older clients that have sound, and setting up videos of final resting places for various heroes and villains, at least those that I've got.  Sadly, I didn't actually grab all of them.
I miss my toons and I miss PUGs  ) ' :

[Dylan Clearbrook]

I Titan Network has turned into my security blanket, as evidenced by the uptick in postings.

Ditto!!  LOL

[Sajaana]

I started the process as soon as I knew the game was going to end.

My SG helped, I suppose.  Starkweather and the VoPC cut all ties to the game within days.  They left to go to TSW together.  Myself, well, as much as I loved them, I loved CoH more.  And I knew it wouldn't be the same anywhere else.  So I bid them farewell and continued on here.

A few of the friends I made over the years formed a new SG, the Storm Riders, to have someplace for people to go.  I remember the recruitment spam, "We're the Stormriders, a brand new SG created today for those who want to ride out the storm with us.  Wish us luck!"

The way I saw it, everybody had a right to their happy ending.  I had three months to make it happen for myself and everyone else.  In the meantime, I started getting out more, diving into my research, and taking some time away to go to the gym.  I knew that if the end was coming, it would be a whole lot easier if I had rebuilt a life outside of Coh before it ended.  And, believe me, it helped...a lot.

A lot of my time in game was helping others adjust to life outside of CoH.  And while I won't get into the details, most of the advice I gave amounted to the same thing: start reconnecting with the world out there, because that's the world that'll hold you together when the world in here is taken from us.

A lot of people--myself included--came to the game because of something that happened out there that drove us to CoH.  Perhaps it was a stint of unemployment.  Perhaps it was a tragedy.  Perhaps it was simply a time of supreme stress and overwork.  Perhaps it was an injury or medical condition.  When things out there get so bleak, we tend to escape it by finding something like CoH, something that makes us feel important to others.  Something that makes us feel like we are doing important things.

Is it wrong to escape in that way?  I think it's the most natural thing a person can do.  And what is so tragic about the closure isn't so much that it kicked us back out there.  I mean, after all, we really ought to be living life out there more often.  The tragic thing was that the closure forced people to be thrown back out there before they were ready, and that is just too cruel for words.

I didn't like losing CoH, but I slept well on December 1.  I might not have done everything, but I did enough to where I could say, "I played the heck out of it," and move on to the other things I've been doing.  But I consider myself one of the lucky ones.  It was through luck, not character or strength, that made my transition easy.  A lot of people I know aren't able to move on, because their situations were so dire, unrewarding or bleak that they simply had no desire to move on at all.  We owe those people some sense of purpose and hope.  If NCSoft won't give that to us anymore, who will?

[ladyluck523]

Plus I have weird QoL issues that nobody else in the world seems to have.  (For example, when I activate Flight, my character drifts downward instead of flying straight ahead, until I adjust the camera.  Then when I land and take off I have to adjust the camera again to avoid drifting downwards.   The default camera position for Flight is "character slams face into ground", and I don't know why.  When I tell this to people over there, they just say "That's not supposed to happen" and don't actually tell me how to FIX it)

Are you speaking of CO? I have the same problem! I can't fly straight. And I don't know how to fix it either.

[DrakeGrimm]

I'm not.


I put on a face. I go through the motions. I'm a skilled enough actor nobody knows something is wrong...but the truth is? Part of me died when the servers went offline. I'm fighting for more than to get a City back. I'm fighting to restore myself. I've barely written a thing recently...and if you know me, and you know how enthused I am about writing and my current project, you would realize how much that makes me want to cry in frustration.

[Tubbius]

I teach English at a local community college.  I ought to be in bed right now, actually.  However. . . .

City was always the one MMO that I said I'd give a shot some day when I could, back when I had a chump computer with dial-up for a connection thanks to living out in the sticks with a meager parental income.  The computer came first; the fast Internet happened later.

Then, September 21, 2008, I started playing City of Heroes on a cold/cold defender.

I quickly found out that defenders weren't exactly my speed.  Controllers, though, most certainly were!    I ultimately made a couple of blasters and a single thugs mastermind that I never did get to 50 (my girlfriend and I were pacted to the end, and we got to a block or two from 48).  Apart from playing with her, which we did for many, many weekends for the past few years, I spent my time hanging with my SG members in The Omniscients on Justice, hosting funny costume contests, and writing my series of Mission Architect arcs (The PENGUIN series, City of Ho Ho Ho, This Costume Contest Sponsored by Tubbius, and Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City).

Now, though?

I was up until about 3:30 the night the game closed.  I woke up around noon on Saturday to hurry to judge/play in a HeroClix tournament at the local game/comic shop, taking the 3-0 first place win with a team of Thorin Oakensheld, Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, and others of the Company of Dwarves.  After that, I had a concert to attend with my girlfriend, and then I went home to chill out, role-playing online with a few friends, occasionally glancing at HeroClix Online. . . and really feeling the loss of City of Heroes.  I was up until about 1.  Sunday, there was church in the morning, and grading papers and chatting with friends online until time for bed, which came around 1:30 after some family drama.

Today, I was at work, teaching and tutoring from 8 a.m. to 8:45 p.m.  I came home and had to take care of some work on the computer, and I sat down to look around on here.

So how AM I handling this loss?  I have plenty of DVDs I can catch up on viewing, and I have a few games (Lego Batman 2, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Resident Evil 6) that I either haven't touched much or haven't started.  Shoot, there are a LOT of games on the XBox 360 alone I need to finish some day, not to mention all of the other systems.  There are numerous games installed on the computer that I could beat or unlock more stuff in.

But I miss City.  The CCG cards, the Clix figures, the downloaded quick start of the RPG, the comics. . . these are good, but these just aren't the game.

I really do hope we can work something out.  My whole life didn't revolve around the game, per sé, but a large chunk of my time, both alone and with my girlfriend of now four close to five years, was certainly spent there.  I never thought CoH would close before I would give it up.  Even in the semesters where I was overworked and couldn't play much, I always knew it would be there to get back to.

Then again, I don't guess many of us thought that it would go first. 

Here's to working together to seeing City brought back somehow if at all possible!

[JWBullfrog]

final thought here before bed.
 
Misery shared is Misery halved.
 
That's what this thread is all about. It has become a virtual therapy session. This is a good thing. We're all coping at different rates but we share one common trait... we all understand how everybody else is feeling.
 
I'm not going to throw platitudes (or Platypi) at you and try to tell you everything will be alright. It's going to take time before everything resets. My best (completely non-medical) advice is keep talking and try to get back to normal things.
 
How am I coping? Terribly, but doing normal things is helping me refocus. I'm restarting my writing and trying not to obsess quite so much. I know that sooner or later I'm going to do something or say something or see something that is going to set me off and remind me of what has gone missing. All I can do is be as normal as possible and time will do it's usual trick of making memories less painful.
For now though, it's off to bed and work in the morning. I'll expect to see everybody again here tomorrow? Yes?
 
 
 
 
 

[JaguarX]

I'm handling it pretty well. Sad that it went down the way it did but I have my game face on about trying to do what I can to get the successor up.

I'm outmatched in technical game building skills.

Outmatched in celebrity status. (Thanks alot VV!!)

Outmatched in journalism.

But I'm going to do what I can even if it's a mere drop in an ocean.

[Twisted Toon]

Sgt Morris. I would like to extend a hand of gratitude for your distinguished military service. I wish you well.

Plus I have weird QoL issues that nobody else in the world seems to have.  (For example, when I activate Flight, my character drifts downward instead of flying straight ahead, until I adjust the camera.  Then when I land and take off I have to adjust the camera again to avoid drifting downwards.   The default camera position for Flight is "character slams face into ground", and I don't know why.  When I tell this to people over there, they just say "That's not supposed to happen" and don't actually tell me how to FIX it)

That would be because of the "default" camera position/angle in relation to the character. When you fly, you fly straight away from the camera, which is set slight above your character. Therefore, you fly into the ground. CoH had the same issue when a camera distance/angle toggle setting was turned on. I have found that if I use the mouse to (right mouse button) to look around and both buttons to move, I will fly where I want to, and not into the ground.

how to fix the default camera position/angle in CO, I haven't a clue. I haven't really looked that deeply into the settings for the game. I just log on occasionally to defeat some bad guys.

Inviting to a team is easy, I just type /invite suchandsuch.

Also, you may have been in different world maps for your mishes not to affect each other, if you click on their portrait in team then it should let you jump to their world map, going into map can do the same thing I think. Teaming in TOR isn't actually that bad, I think, though I try to have friends that I play with regularly.

EDIT: I didn't ever care for WoW, to me it was just a game I hated that took a lot of friends I enjoyed playing with away. CO .. I tried getting into that but I don't care for the gameplay and it's so.. subpar compared to COH, DCUO isn't enjoyable to me at all, I'll never play Marvel as it's just a diablo-esque style of game, and I hated combat in TSW. I actually am really enjoying TOR again, the best selling point for it is the story, the missions for your character.

I have found that if you are running 2 troopers (for example) you'd have to do their class missions separately. All the side missions, or the general kill x number of mobs missions can be done together. Plus, the game isn't all that great for re-playability. Since the story line is very linear. That was one of the things I liked about CoH. I could make 10 different characters, and not be doing the same set of missions by level 2 (or level 1 if I didn't go through the tutorial) every time.

I'm also an STO lifer and a TSW lifer as well. I do like to play games on my computer.

The last fantasy based MMO that I played was...WoW. Before that was LotRO, and before that was DDO.
They never really held that much appeal for me though. I got tired of playing fantasy based MMOs after the Realm Online.
I'd try them, but just couldn't get into them.

I'm not really sure how often I'll actually play TSW, since zombies and the occult isn't one of my interests.

[healix]

I am still sad that I can't sit down and login to the City. I miss my little creations. I even miss seeing the CoH icon on my desktop  I miss it all....the tears still come too easily. The thing that has helped is coming here to be with kindred souls and old friends, or I'd feel very isolated in my grief. There is much gratitude in my heart for Tony V and all that he's done/trying to do. It's true that we don't know what we've got until we lose it, but it's also true that we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives. I won't give up hope.

[corvus1970]

I'm not really sure how often I'll actually play TSW, since zombies and the occult isn't one of my interests.

I pretty much agree.

Sure, I liked playing games like Resident Evil or some other Zombie/Supernatural affair on consoles and the like, but for an MMO? Ehhh, not so much, and this is coming from a guy who ran a Buffy-based RPG campaign for 3 years.

If I can be a Vampire that hunts other Vampires on TSW, that might be cool, but even then the novelty would wear off.

When it comes to MMO's, Superheroes are what I live to play.