<snip> ... I have yet to find a great community like the one from Champion server.
Indeed ... I had started out on Champ (it was the first in the list). I created an Eng/Eng blaster [Purple Lantern -- later gen'd & renamed Cosmic Purple]. I was such a noob (CoH was the first MMO I ever played) that at about level 12, I abandoned him as he kept getting pawn'd by everything & I felt like he had the Glass Jaw of Hit Me Right Here Attraction.
I decided that I wanted the ability to heal myself (I don't think here was any self heal at that point or at least at those low levels other than green pills) & made what would be my main, an Emp/Rad defender [Neutrio] and he seemed to at least be able to heal himself enough to get me outta most of the trouble I got into & I slogged through those level bands (some were pretty tough) to about level 33.
I was starting to consider quitting CoH (FF was turning out to be a lot tougher to play in) when I met the leader [Jayle] of what would be the SG [ - Heroes Inc. - ] that I was to join (she invited me there on the spot by the fountain in FF next to Numina -- I must have seemed clueless (I was). I didn't have a clue what I was getting into or what an SG was. I'm lucky & happy she invited me. Then, I met Stark Fist shortly after & he helped me become less of a noob - ever so thankful he did as the game got factorially more fun to play & the game really opened up for me at that point.
Even at that time, I wasn't aware of any of the channels in the game other than the standard ones & our SG one. Then I happened to come across a comment someone made about joining the "Champion BMT" channel -- though I think it had a different name at that time. At that time, I was really becoming quite the Badge Whore
and was lucky someone invited me to that (not sure if that was Cobalt Azurean). From there, the game really expanded for me.
While there was some significant drama in the early years due to some of the more ardent populous -- such as Lord Stryker & his plethora of Stryke-Force SGs ... man that guy stirred up a lot of hate towards him & his guildies -- I really felt like Champ was a good, helpful, mostly polite & friendly place to hang your cape & cowl. Perhaps that was only true inside the Champion BMT channel & a couple of others I was fortunate to be a part of. I didn't really use local or broadcast chat -- usually disabled that in a new MyChat tab I made on every toon.
I have read in one of the HMTF threads that several people felt Champ was an elitist community & for things like iTrials, only invite people who were +3 or other types of restrictions. Perhaps they ran afoul of what I hope was a small group of such TF leaders. There were some iTrials that you couldn't really do anything in if you didn't have a certain level of +'s. Most of the ones I participated in and/or lead would usually let you in if you weren't at the + level the trial was designed for - provided they had enough people with the designated +'s or higher. I know I did that for the ones I led (mostly MoDD). Especially folks like Amygdala & Viking Queen (I know there were many more, just can't think of names as good being 2 years out).
The Champion player community's helpfulness & teamsmanship was the part of the game that I miss so much & what, IMHO, made CoH so superior & cherishing and which created such devoted players. No other game has been able to capture that (at least to me -- I ventured off to WoW, SWTOR, NWN, ESO, CO, etc.) To me, that is what the "spirit" of the game is to me.
I did try out every other shard & had a toon on almost all of them -- there was one server where pretty much everyone I ran into had negative things to say about either my character, play style or something else they felt was wrong. I delete the toon & left that one toonless just so I would know not to create a toon there again for a while -- never did get back to that shard.
Anyway, sorry for making this a TL:DR post. I just wanted to say thank you to all of those who helped me out both as a noob & as a mature hero.
