4 minutes past midnight

[Stunrunner]

That's how far we got before the mapserver took us.

And now I have no home.

[Starkzilla]

No home, but you're not alone.

[NecrotechMaster]

i feel ill always have a home with the titan network, at least all of us still have a place to go to talk

seeing that forcibly disconnect from mapserver message almost made me start to cry

[srmalloy]

As best as I can make out, Guardian got to 0005 before the mapserve hit; my last screenshot from the Rikti mother ship raid was twelve seconds after midnight, but I have a Sentinel+ save from two minutes later for Pakfront, my first character, created on May 8, 2004, who went down fighting the Rikti invaders to the end.

City of Heroes was an escape; it was a refuge, where I could be, for a time, greater than myself. It was a place where I met hundreds of people I am honored to have called my friends and my compatriots... and I despair of ever finding a community as fine as we built, unless City of Heroes rises from the ashes. But, to steal from the Polish national anthem:

City of Heroes is not yet dead,
Not while we yet live.
We will fight for all
That our enemies have taken from us.

[Knightslayer]

i feel ill always have a home with the titan network, at least all of us still have a place to go to talk

seeing that forcibly disconnect from mapserver message almost made me start to cry

I'm sure it managed it for many of us... there were tears shed on my part, especially when I checked the official site and saw the new sunset page there...
The hardest shutdown I've ever had to endure by far...
On the bright side, the worst part is over now, right?

[HeliumPhoenix]

AP5 on Virtue....5:30 after midnight PST.....
No mapserver message.  I was logging back in at the last moment (due to having been dropped repeatedly through the evening by my ISP)

Only 3 people still there on the steps of Paragon City Hall

I lit my torch.  I waited.

Suddenly....

PROGRAM ERROR dialog spawns right in front of me.

Before I can attempt to Mez it, it says:

"You have been forcibly disconnected from the server.  The server is shutting down."

My only two options.....

"Copy to Clipboard" and "Close"

It didn't matter which I chose, the world disappeared, screen and all, and I was left staring at my desktop.

[TargetOne]

I'm sure it managed it for many of us... there were tears shed on my part, especially when I checked the official site and saw the new sunset page there...
The hardest shutdown I've ever had to endure by far...
On the bright side, the worst part is over now, right?

It is... now let's look forward, to the resurrection...

[gypsyav]

I cried through the last hour knowing stories I was playing out with a friend would now never see their end.

[Inkitgee]

After I got mapserved I had to immediately come here.

All the times I went to Paragon to get away from my life when it was awful creep up on me.  I never thought I'd take it so hard but here I am teary eyed.  Not bawling but a piece of me is gone.  My heroes (for now) are gone.  I hope that Titan doesn't mind someone like me lurking around the forums until she can feel better.

[CoyoteSeven]

[Olantern]

I teared up a little, too.  But here are some thoughts that I hope comfort everyone:

We fight against despair, and we have hope, and hope can never be taken away from us.  - paraphrased from the Dream Doctor's final speech in his arc, which I ran for that message tonight

The world is a vast, black abyss, a place of cruelty, misery, and pain.  Against that endless night, each love is one light, a tiny flame struggling against the dark ... I'm a hero.  I uphold those lights.  Together, they light the world!  -Kid Eros, "One Light" (one of my online comics, now no longer extant)

[In the heart of winter, they offered a reminder] that the sun would return, and with its light, bring joy. -Brendan LeHane et al., The Book of Christmas

There is more day to dawn.  The sun is but a morning star.  - Henry David Thoreau, Walden

They can take our home, but they can't take our feelings, our memories, or our characters ... My characters aren't just a bunch data on a server someplace.  They will live as long as I do. -Olantern, one hour before shutdown

[Quinch]

[Twisted Toon]

I was fighting the Freakshow in one of the portal corp missions with a couple of friends and my brother.

For some reason, I just felt like using Tha'Kaz, my Psychic/Mental Blaster.
He was only level 22 when we started tonight. Managed to get to 26 before the Freakshow mission and got my SOs.

I was in the middle of an aim/build-up boosted Psychic scream when the servers were brought down.

That was a lot of fun.


I'm sorry for screaming the servers away though guys... 

[ladycat924]

Took them a few to get that image though, I had forum pages open at the time it went down and when I refreshed the page I got a 404 Page not found error. It was a few minutes later that the glossy "closed" page went up.

Oh...and Hello. My first Titan post.

[Purgatori KillerkittyCat.]

Farewell to City of Heroes(R) from Paragon Studios(R) and NCSOFT(R)

(C) (TM) - A nice corporate middle finger up to everyone to try remind us all who owns "us"...

Funny thing is, there's no copyright laws in many countries, and in those that do, often work very differently - I mean, ask the THOUSANDS of lawyers who were put to work trying to close down sites like The Pirate Bay for example. In the end suits are often just left screaming, shouting and stamping their feet with impotent middle-aged male rage.

... A new Paragon is coming, not some cheap rip-off. Paragon is coming back. Lets not call them "private servers" and be realistic - public, open, community-run servers that no one owns or makes a profit on

There's a good analysis of NCSoft's shallow marketing spin-doctoring over here from VictoriaVictrix(Mercedes Lackey) here:
lurkingrhythmically.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/an-update-on-city-of-heroes.html

[Memorandum]

Actually... this is shoking for me. I never saw a company pushing everything so fast into the dustbin like NCSoft did. Usually the forum will be held online for some months to keep the community together and offer them another product. But like everything was done now with COH, this is just ridiculus. 

[Quinch]

The shock wore off for me months ago, replaced by floundering incomprehension, gripping a life preserver of depressing evidence.

The evidence is that NCsoft wanted City of Heroes to go away quickly and quietly, but more than that, it expected it. The game, the developers, the players, they thought it would take nothing more than a letter to the studio and a flip of a switch for something that is to become something that was. In assuming so, they made a mistake, one in a long, long line, and not even the latest. The latest mistake was to pretend they made none to begin with - to defend their conviction with fanatical zealotry, to decide, against all evidence, that City of Heroes will and has simply ended, with no loose ends, no consequences for them. I don't see them admitting it - not publicly, not to themselves. It would shatter their pride, and the loose ends they're being whipped with and the flood of consequences washing their house away, if they close their eyes and cover their ears, they can believe, honestly believe, that they were, and always be right.

[Colette]

"A nice corporate middle finger up to everyone to try remind us all who owns 'us'..."

When I first read this, less than twenty minutes after the game terminated (and despite the fact I had grown to loathe the boards and hadn't posted anything there in years) I felt a surge of inarticulate rage. Thank you, Purgatori, for articulating it.

"...the game and community will forever remain in our memories and hearts?" Good God, now they mock us!

No you don't, Mister Kim! You should have just put up a "Closed" sign and walked away. Have you no sense of shame at all? Can't you shut up and at least pretend to a little decency, or aspire to an authentic human emotion?

You do not get to trivialize our feelings and play-act that we're all one big happy family enduring the death of Ol' Yeller, together. You do not get to "refocus" your company away from anybody who doesn't have eyes shaped like yours, and still  talk to us like we're best buds. You do not get to sugarcoat everything with this repulsive, condescending, patronizing treacle while we're busily making and publishing "we effin' hate NCSoft!" memes.

We are not going away, you do not get to pretend us away.

[Quinch]

This sums up my assessment of NCsoft's little platitude.

[Jetfire99]

Ya know looking at that sunset image from the COH site? I say we make use of it in the MMORPG serial killer MEMEs they just handed us some materials I say we use them.