Yet another Massively article telling us to Get Over It!

[GuyPerfect]

So basically: Expect a bunch of "MMO's die, get over it folks" articles from the folks at Massively over the next couple of months. Ones that, of course, aren't actually directed at the CoH community, but all of which will have at least one CoH screenshot and/or have some other reference to CoH.

I'm going to hold you to that. Do you like your crow barbecue or teriyaki style?

[Peregrine Falcon]

Breetoplay isn't just a mod, she's the editor and chief at Massively, Brianna Royce.  And she's been one of the staff there that have played CoH for a while, wrote many an article, video piece and was one of the hosts for their last night live stream coverage.

I know who she is. Who she is doesn't change the fact that her statement; "Normally I'd delete this post for unicorning, but..." was still a passive-agressive statement, just as I said.

This is the kind of reaction that hurts us PF.  You turn on a group that have supported us where other MMO websites barely noticed us because you now feel like they are dissing us just because they bring up a legitimate issue about MMOs, it is a website about MMOs, that they close.

I haven't turned on anyone. All I did was ask two legitimate questions - "Am I the only one who's tired of Massively articles telling us to get over the City of Heroes shut down?" AND "So how many Massively articles that 'just happen' to use a CoH screenshot, that 'just happen' to be talking about MMO's dying, can I expect to see on Massively over the next couple of months?"

Neither one of which has Ms. Editor-in-Chief even attempted to address, instead she just dismissed my comments as unicorn posts.

C'mon! Massively posts yet another article talking about MMOs dying, right after CoH's 9th Anniversary with a CoH screenshot as the first pic, but I'm supposed to believe her when she says 'Oh no! It wasn't targeted at the CoH community!' It's just a series of coincidences, right?

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

I don't care how helpful Massively has been in the past. When they start posting multiple articles telling us to get over it and move on then they're no longer helping us. So who's turned on whom?

EDIT: Yes, my MMO died. And no, despite what Massively says, it's not ok.

[Rust]

I'm not familiar with Massively nor am I going to let an Op-Ed article affect me.

[Captain Electric]

Honestly Cap, why the FRAK would you do that to his #9Reasons article?

Well, you'd really have to go read the very brief back-and-forth between me and him to see how I got from point A to point B. I actually started out by complimenting him and thanking him for his article, and made another little comment about a part of it that really struck a chord with me (for which I received a lot of "likes"). Perhaps I should have copied and posted all of the comments, there weren't too many. For my part, I wish Eliot could know how much and for how long I enjoyed his City of Heroes column. He, no doubt, sees my response in a vacuum, and that says nothing about how much respect I also have for him. Still, I have my own mind about things, and the point where I stopped thanking him was the part where he stuck to his guns about last month. He was actually the one who brought the previous article up beneath his "9 reasons" article, not me.

As for everything else, I'm not ignoring the meat of your comments, FatherXmas. I'm just giving myself a day or two to mull 'em over before I reply. I might disagree with you on some things, but I respect the fact that your thoughts almost always come from a deeply well thought-out origin.

Some of the people here who knew me before the closure have expressed a bit of surprise at my occasional brashness. But the knee-jerk reaction that feeds a reply like mine to Eliot is really just a strong defense of something I don't have any desire to buckle or compromise on: when I see people fighting for something that seems honest and decent and good, I see nothing wrong and everything right with that; and when I see others making a move to step on their toes for it, I can become very protective, even angry. If people want to keep saying, "Save City of Heroes", well City of Heroes and Paragon Studios were honest, decent, good things.

If you're wondering "Why?", well that's part of it, at least. The biggest part, probably.

Maybe I lose perspective sometimes, or maybe more people actually ought to share my perspective. I don't know. The result of your post was that it cautioned me to think about that for a bit.

[FatherXmas]

I know who she is. Who she is doesn't change the fact that her statement; "Normally I'd delete this post for unicorning, but..." was still a passive-agressive statement, just as I said.
I haven't turned on anyone. All I did was ask two legitimate questions - "Am I the only one who's tired of Massively articles telling us to get over the City of Heroes shut down?" AND "So how many Massively articles that 'just happen' to use a CoH screenshot, that 'just happen' to be talking about MMO's dying, can I expect to see on Massively over the next couple of months?"

Neither one of which has Ms. Editor-in-Chief even attempted to address, instead she just dismissed my comments as unicorn posts.

You sort of left out the part where you accused them of accepting bribes from NCSOFT.

Please excuse my poor attempt to copy/paste that exchange here, I had to take some liberties formatting it.

Peregrine_Falcon 3 days ago
Am I the only one who's tired of Massively articles telling us to get over the City of Heroes shut down?

I hope that NCSoft is paying you well for all of these articles.


------------------------------------------------------

   MikedotFoster 3 days ago
   @Peregrine_Falcon It was a beautiful day on the Massively yacht.

   ------------------------------------------------------

   Evil1 3 days ago
   Lol

   ------------------------------------------------------

   breetoplay [moderator] 3 days ago
   @Peregrine_FalconNormally I'd delete this comment for unicorning, but come on dude -- he mentions a bunch of
   games, not just CoH. He's clearly not picking specifically on CoH people.

   Also, since you appear to read selectively, let me select an article I wrote that says the opposite:

   http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/01/24/ask-massively-we-dont-need-another-hero/

   Staff members are allowed to have different opinions and write about them. Crazy, huh?


   ------------------------------------------------------

      Peregrine_Falcon 2 days ago
      @breetoplay The first pic in this article is a screenshot from CoH, which just recently closed down. It's pretty
      obvious that it's at least mostly directed at the CoH community.

      And I'm completely ok with staff members having different opinions, I just hope that you're ok with commenters
      having different opinions instead of just deleting those comments because you perceive them as unicorning.


      ------------------------------------------------------

         MikedotFoster 2 days ago
         @Peregrine_Falcon @breetoplay I picked that screenshot because I thought it was prettiest. <3

         ------------------------------------------------------

         Peregrine_Falcon 1 day ago
         @MikedotFoster

         Fair enough. So how many Massively articles that 'just happen' to use a CoH screenshot, that 'just happen' to
         be talking about MMO's dying, can I expect to see on Massively over the next couple of months?

         I'm sure it'll be quite a few more as it brings in the web hits!


         ------------------------------------------------------

         breetoplay [moderator] 1 day ago
         @Peregrine_Falcon @breetoplay When you accuse writers of being paid off, you're unicorning.

         ------------------------------------------------------

         Peregrine_Falcon 6 hours ago
         @breetoplay

         Ok, I was a bit upset when I saw the article, but you're right. I shouldn't have accused the author of being paid
         by NCSoft. I apologize for that.

         You didn't answer my question though, which was: "How many Massively articles that 'just happen' to use a CoH
         screenshot, that 'just happen' to be talking about MMO's dying, can I expect to see on Massively over the next
         couple of months?"

Bree actually told you why she thought about deleting it, you sort of glossed over that part.  At least you apologized.

Honestly the worst thing a news and review site can be accused of is accepting payoffs from the companies whose products they review.  Also since Bree is the Editor, she knew first hand what the article was pitched to actually be about and it wasn't about telling CoH players to STFU.  So you can sort of see why she mentioned that she hovered over the delete button on her screen for a moment when she first read your post.  But she quickly realized that deleting it would just convince you more that they had it out for CoH players now so she thought better and tried to real you back in.

C'mon! Massively posts yet another article talking about MMOs dying, right after CoH's 9th Anniversary with a CoH screenshot as the first pic, but I'm supposed to believe her when she says 'Oh no! It wasn't targeted at the CoH community!' It's just a series of coincidences, right?

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

I don't care how helpful Massively has been in the past. When they start posting multiple articles telling us to get over it and move on then they're no longer helping us. So who's turned on whom?

EDIT: Yes, my MMO died. And no, despite what Massively says, it's not ok.

And it's pretty damn freaking obvious why a screenshot of City of Heroes was included in an article talking about MMO closure.  Hmm, lets think now.  What is the first game you think of when I say "closed MMO"?  Okay that may not work so well here but I think it's safe to say that our game's closure made a whole lot of news.  Our rather massive and well publicized attempt to convince NCSOFT to reverse their decision kept in the news.  Our tribute videos continued to make news even after zero hour.  It's safe to say that right now CoH is the poster child for MMO closures and will continue to be until another well known, award winning game is shut down out of the blue.

Also, there were five pictures in that article, only one was CoH.  Everything is not about us.

[FatherXmas]

Well, you'd really have to go read the very brief back-and-forth between me and him to see how I got from point A to point B. I actually started out by complimenting him and thanking him for his article, and made another little comment about a part of it that really struck a chord with me (for which I received a lot of "likes"). Perhaps I should have copied and posted all of the comments, there weren't too many. For my part, I wish Eliot could know how much and for how long I enjoyed his City of Heroes column. He, no doubt, sees my response in a vacuum, and that says nothing about how much respect I also have for him. Still, I have my own mind about things, and the point where I stopped thanking him was the part where he stuck to his guns about last month. He was actually the one who brought the previous article up beneath his "9 reasons" article, not me.

What I reacted to was the statement "hey look what I did to Eliot".  You were excited and proud that you did that.  That's the kind of sad boast you normally see from bullies trying to shore up their self esteem.  I realize that there are a lot of people still here that haven't moved beyond the anger stage of the grieving process, actually more like circled back to it again once bargaining failed.  But do we really need to fan the flames?

And yes he brought it up, in the comments, not as part of this article.  But only after you called him out about them.

captainelectriccoh 2 days ago
Mr. Lefebvre, it sure seems these days like you couldn't care less whether any City of Heroes fan actually likes you; but just in case there's a part of you that cares what other people think--thank you for writing this. I suspect it rather accurately describes a lot of other peoples feelings too, and it makes up for a lot (albeit coincidentally, I'm aware of this).

Of course he would reply.  He took the bait and then you opened up on him with the Kirk Double Fist.



Not cool.

[Peregrine Falcon]

Honestly the worst thing a news and review site can be accused of is accepting payoffs from the companies whose products they review.

Yeah. I just meant it as a snide remark, but I later realized that she took it more seriously. That and I'm starting to think that you might be right, that making the folks at Massively angry with us is probably not the wisest thing to do. So I apologized.

And it's pretty damn freaking obvious why a screenshot of City of Heroes was included in an article talking about MMO closure.

Yeah, fair enough. And frankly I hope that CoH continues to get mentioned anywhere anyone talks about an MMO closing.

But that's not what this article was about. This article is entitled: "Your MMO is going to die, and that's OK"

This article isn't about MMO's dying. This article is all about telling me that it's ok that CoH is dead. But you know what? I don't care if the folks at Massively want me to move on and start clicking on some of their ads so they get more ad revenue, or play other games so that they'll get more credibility with the game publishers. It's not 'ok' with me that CoH died and I'm not 'ok' with Massively repeatedly telling me that it's 'ok.'

I'm sure the folks at Massively had to know that a title like that was going to generate some heat, and since it also got them the page hits that they so obviously crave, my sympathy for any of their feelings that I may have hurt only goes so far.

[Peregrine Falcon]

Here's something interesting. Victor Barreiro, of mmorpg.com, wrote an article in response to the Massively article in the OP.

The Devil's Advocate: Dead MMOs and Emotional Connections

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/7396/The-Devils-Advocate-Dead-MMOs-and-Emotional-Connections.html

He talks about his reaction to Mike Foster's article on Massively, and why he disagrees with it.

[dwturducken]

Yeah, I just made a thread for that. Maybe I should have been less silly with the subject line...

[FatherXmas]

But that's not what this article was about. This article is entitled: "Your MMO is going to die, and that's OK"

This article isn't about MMO's dying. This article is all about telling me that it's ok that CoH is dead. But you know what?

The article can be summarized by the following lines.

The side effect of this online requirement is that every online game, no matter how popular it may be at the moment, has a finite lifespan. Eventually, your favorite game is going to die.

This is a good thing. Here's why.

[snip] - (heart of piece)

One of the stupidest things about being a person is that we really like doing the same things over and over. Comfort and familiarity are more enjoyable for us than fear and insecurity, so we stick with what we know. As long as our favorite MMO keeps chugging out expansions or new content updates, we're content to let our gaming tastes languish in a stagnant pool of familiar mechanics and ages-old macros.

All of this changes when a game shuts down. Suddenly, we're thrust out of our comfort zone and forced to find a new game to play -- sometimes even with (gasp!) new people. We find ourselves dumped from the noble rank of legendary healer to the drudges of serving as a noobish spaceship captain, and this scares the living hell out of us and makes us long for the days when we knew what our keybindings did and our mounts were prohibitively expensive.

Sure, we miss our characters, their assets, and those old familiar settings. But every hour we spend in our normal MMO is an hour we could have spent experiencing something completely new. Something different. Something that challenged us as people and as gamers. Not all new experiences are good -- some are awful -- but living a full (gaming) life is all about stepping out of our little boxes and forcing ourselves into the unknown. Even bad experiences are valuable.

When a game dies, the publisher helps us start new adventures by shoving us out the door.

[snip]

Every MMO player is a phoenix. Every shutdown is a flame. We carry our memories forward, reborn from the ashes as new avatars in new worlds. Our digital experiences, much like our real-life ones, are special because of their impermanence, because they are fleeting.

So when the time comes for your game to go dark, do not mourn. Don't create a thousand-page forum thread explaining why the publisher/developer is evil. Just say your goodbyes and prepare yourself for the next great adventure.

MMOs die. Stories end. But we players live forever.

I can understand why the article upset you.  That next to last paragraph could be looked at as directed at us specifically as oppose to anyone who felt passionately about their game and are upset at their closure.  I'm sure that hate threads were found on the boards for Star Wars Galaxies, The Matrix, Glitch, Warhammer Online, Earth and Beyond.  It's only natural.

And I can see why you and others think it's a get out of jail free card to publishers.  But it's not about telling publishers that it's OK to shut down their games.

What I see is as an attempt at trying to comfort players after their game is gone.  I know right now you and others aren't going to like these analogies but here goes.  It's like a parent giving the "change is scary/but you will make new friends" speech after you tell them the family is moving.  It's like a friend/family member giving the "I know right now it feels like you will never be able to fill that hole in your heart but in time you will meet someone new" post breakup speech.  It's HR's "look at this as an opportunity" exit interview speech.  In all three cases something out of your control happens and someone tries to help you to come to terms with it.  I know, you don't want to leave your friends, you want that person to take you back, you like working there, but that's not your decision to make anymore.  Now it's about coming to terms with what happened. 

Mike's take on MMO closures is that of a foodie when a restaurant they like closes.  Sadness still but also excitement to try out new places.  Me, I'm the guy who grumbles and begrudgingly looks for a replacement.  I liked the food, I liked the staff, I liked being recognized when I walk in.

[dwturducken]

When my wife's and my favorite restaurant closed (actually, they moved to Minneapolis, but splitting hairs), we started figuring out how to make some of our favorite dishes from their menu. 

[FatherXmas]

Here's something interesting. Victor Barreiro, of mmorpg.com, wrote an article in response to the Massively article in the OP.

The Devil's Advocate: Dead MMOs and Emotional Connections

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/7396/The-Devils-Advocate-Dead-MMOs-and-Emotional-Connections.html

He talks about his reaction to Mike Foster's article on Massively, and why he disagrees with it.

Mike is like that guy who after breaking up from a long term relationship can find someone new in a week or two and start another long term relationship.  As someone who can't do that I question how could another person do that.  Didn't the previous relationship have any meaning for them?  How could they just move on so quickly?  It's not that they are horrible people (well maybe some are), it's just that they can accept the situation and move past it.  It's just a way to deal with an emotional scar, quickly fill it with something else.  It still hurts when you think back on it but that's the past.  You can't change what happened but you can live in the present.

A lot of us can't do that easily.  A lot of us preserve these scars.  Build little shrines around them.  Take them out every so often and play them back like an old sad movie.  Perhaps this is the far opposite end of the scale from Mike point of view, I'm sure there is plenty of degrees between these two points of view.  And as I've stated before, this is grief we are feeling.  And some of us can work though it faster than others.  And those of us who take longer, tend to become angry with those who can.

[ukaserex]

I'm seeing both sides to this coin - but when I read the article, it seemed to me like the writer was trying to comfort, not provoke.

But, hey, we each have our own filters that we see things through, and for each of us, perception is our reality.

[JaguarX]

Mike is like that guy who after breaking up from a long term relationship can find someone new in a week or two and start another long term relationship.  As someone who can't do that I question how could another person do that.  Didn't the previous relationship have any meaning for them?  How could they just move on so quickly?  It's not that they are horrible people (well maybe some are), it's just that they can accept the situation and move past it.  It's just a way to deal with an emotional scar, quickly fill it with something else.  It still hurts when you think back on it but that's the past.  You can't change what happened but you can live in the present.

A lot of us can't do that easily.  A lot of us preserve these scars.  Build little shrines around them.  Take them out every so often and play them back like an old sad movie.  Perhaps this is the far opposite end of the scale from Mike point of view, I'm sure there is plenty of degrees between these two points of view.  And as I've stated before, this is grief we are feeling.  And some of us can work though it faster than others.  And those of us who take longer, tend to become angry with those who can.

hear hear.

And that is where a lot of the fire being thrown around at the other side seems to come from. Some seem to dont understand and or become angry when someone can move on quicker than them.











But the funny thing, I see a few people complaining there are too many "negative move on" articles about COX. Prior to that outside of here, there was common complaints of there being too much praising of post-COX. So I decided to do a count. And in reality there are many more articles praising this movement, the game, the community, and how the shutdown sucked more than those two or three depending on how it's counted articles about moving on. SaveCOXers are not the only readers of massively and yet, certain people seem so self-centered to thing they are the only readers and massively is supposed to cater to us, when we say, how we say, and what we say. I doubt we even make up ten percent of our readers and I dont think majority of us have that mindset at all. Sure they will write some things that is coodles to savecox and the effort but some things will be "alright, look, is it time to move on?" And to tell you the truth, trying to twist that article especially as "oh he mentioned COX and used ONE pic that means the entire article is about us." Is really a slap i nthe face to those other games that have been shut down and those players that know like we know what it's like to be kicked off and those devs of those teams that also lost their jobs. It looks very self-centered as if COX is the only game that is worthy of mentioning that has been shutdown. I thought our goal was to get people together especially the ones that went through a shutdown and maybe eventually change how MMO companies shutdown games and if they even should? Looks like many dont give a crap about what other players went through or if their game got shut down all they care about is that COX got shutdown, screw everyone else. And all the while doing it under the premise as someone who supports Savecox movement. Last I check to my understanding while COX did get shutdown, it's more than about COX in these company practices and overall about MMO players that have to go through that. What happened to gettign the word out so other players dont have to go through the shutdown. What happened to the PLAYERS Bill of Rights?  And on that article and people making it all about COX and some people general behavior really do seriously, play into exactly the type of behavior that many of our dissenters been saying about us. Seriously, cool it. There is way to get the point across without being a total d-wad about it. And if ya must, it's a free country, please leave savecox and Titan out of it because most of us are not like that and do not act like that and it is not an image I dont think most of us want to portay. OK done with the rant. Thanks for listening. 

[RioJustice]

Didn't bother reading the article... I don't care, I've read a dozen like it before. Each one is the same: The author is stressing over the fact that people are trying to revive something that they lost. Apparently this irks them so much they have to write whole columns and spend ages preaching against whatever it is...Simply because it didn't happen to them and thus doesn't matter.

To anyone who wants the COH community to keel over and die.... Get over it. Ain't gonna happen.

Exactly.  Thanks for verbalizing the sentiments of those of us staying in touch through other venues.  We miss CoH because it provided a unique blend of attributes ranging from amazing movement capabilities and freedom of movement among zones to a wonderful collaboration of friends that is not available elsewhere.  We remain regardless.

[Little David]

Personally speaking, Mike's article (and the majority of responses to the rebuttal posted by The Devil's Advocate) irk me for a number of reasons. This could also be said of the usual peanut's gallery that hangs around every CoH article on Massively.

#1. Not everyone who is a long-time player of an MMO plays only that MMO, and thus is not incapable or unwilling of trying new things. I tend to play MMOs in cycles. I might pay and play for one for a few months, then get on another, and come back to the original one a few months afterward. My love for games like City of Heroes didn't stop me at all from wanting to try out other new MMOs that interested me, and I highly resent the implication that being a loyal fan of an older MMO is mutually exclusive of trying new games out.

#2. I completely understand that MMOs require a steady flow of income to operate. They've got to pay the utulity bills at the very least. MMOs that can't support their own financial weight will collapse. There's a big difference between that and someone up in corporate kicking the whole thing down, though.  Not that it seems to matter to Mike and the cruder naysayers the CoH community's had to endure. I get the impression that any MMO, regardless of how long it's lived (or how brief in many cases) or how much new content or revamps it was getting, is automatically seen by them as a worthless dinosaur that only people wearing nostalgia goggles could love.

More than that though, Mike's line of thinking fully embraces the idea of games are strictly a service and not a product. Before MMOs became a thing, games were nothing but products. If you bought a copy, you owned that copy. It was yours. And provided you still have the hardware to play it, you can pull it out any time you like and enjoy the game once again. You can't do that when an MMO is killed off, unless the company either publicly releases server software to its community or does something else to ensure it lives on.

I think the most disturbing thing was seeing one of Mike's supporters commenting on Victor's rebuttal, showing their disapproval for people who fight to keep favorite MMOs alive by comparing them to historic buildings that "should" be knocked down to build something "new and better." I really don't want to see society adopt a Brave New World ephemeral mentality.

#3. The popular naysayers' mentality that "MMOs die, grow up and get over it, go play the latest new shiny" is only going to encourage publishing companies to treat all games this way. Electronic Arts has already attempted this with the latest SimCity. Maxis tried to do PR damage control by announcing "In many ways, we built an MMO."

I can't help but think that Electronic Arts is trying to take advantage of gamers' attitudes towards MMOs with a claim like that. Banking on people to forgive the unreliable servers, the bugs and glitches, the removal of features just to try and get the servers to manage the load properly just because they say it's an MMO. I don't think it'll stop there, either. If they decide to pull the plug on the SimCity servers a few years from now, no big deal! It was an MMO, MMOs die, that's a good thing! All you upset SimCity gamers should grow up and play with the latest shiny toy.

[LaughingAlex]

Whats saddening is how mmo's are treated in general as a game genre that should remain in the 1990s.  City of heroes, turns out was way ahead of it's time, almost a good decade.  It kind of remained that way to, and I think thats what people truely overlook about the game.  And because of that it does have potential to be saved, and showed alot of signs that it could.  The servers were indeed PACKED when CoH was shut down.  And there are people who still protest that it shouldn't have been even developers say it shouldn't have been shut down.  Only a few people and people who generally disliked CoX are saying it was shut down cause it was a bad game even though everything else says otherwise.  I see City of heroes in the same light as fallout.  Fallout is a game series that came back alive and very well to, CoX's revival may well be more popular than it was before it was "killed".  I only ask that it doesn't end up "just another mmo that requires me to have a tank and a healer in every situation", but that it stay true to itself.

[JaguarX]

Whats saddening is how mmo's are treated in general as a game genre that should remain in the 1990s.  City of heroes, turns out was way ahead of it's time, almost a good decade.  It kind of remained that way to, and I think thats what people truely overlook about the game.  And because of that it does have potential to be saved, and showed alot of signs that it could.  The servers were indeed PACKED when CoH was shut down.  And there are people who still protest that it shouldn't have been even developers say it shouldn't have been shut down.  Only a few people and people who generally disliked CoX are saying it was shut down cause it was a bad game even though everything else says otherwise.  I see City of heroes in the same light as fallout.  Fallout is a game series that came back alive and very well to, CoX's revival may well be more popular than it was before it was "killed".  I only ask that it doesn't end up "just another mmo that requires me to have a tank and a healer in every situation", but that it stay true to itself.

Yeah the servers was packed when it went black. But kind of too late. It should of been packed long before. Hindsight is 20/20 though. How would the people that left prior knew that others left and the ame wouldn't be there when they returned? They couldn't have. But like a relationship when on says its over its sometimes too late to buy flowers for the first time when they arrive with moving truck to retrieve their stuff. AP33 should have been long time ago. While it was a very noble gesture and show of force, it also showed many wouldn't have bothered logging on in large number if shutdown wasn't imminent. In short the servers should have been packed all along.

[Lightslinger]

Funny story about AP33 and one of the unsung heroes of our game...that most people hated Don't worry he liked the hate.

Tommy played the game...unlike most of you. He liked having the biggest, most garish, offensive to the eyes as possible characters he could create. Tommy was once banned from a costume contest for simply arriving. Seriously all he was doing was standing around, his costumes were that good, HA! He enjoyed schadenfreude and was a lot of fun to play with. Tommy was also a goon, so was I :duck:

On the night of the vigil APs started spawning like crazy. The goons decided to see how many APs we could help create, so along with people just logging in for the vigil, the goons started filling one AP, spawning the next then all of us moving on. I'm not saying there wouldn't have been 33 APs without the goons helped, but we definitely sped it up.

That night after the vigil AP33 was a success, but as everyone started logging off Tommy parked his Huge model, rainbow themed character at the tram so AP33 would not disappear. On two occasions he did searches and was the only one in the zone. AP33 remained and quickly became a symbol we as a community latched on to. That symbol would not have persisted if it weren't for Tommy, or what one person on the official forums called "the horror at the train station".

[JaguarX]

Funny story about AP33 and one of the unsung heroes of our game...that most people hated Don't worry he liked the hate.

Tommy played the game...unlike most of you. He liked having the biggest, most garish, offensive to the eyes as possible characters he could create. Tommy was once banned from a costume contest for simply arriving. Seriously all he was doing was standing around, his costumes were that good, HA! He enjoyed schadenfreude and was a lot of fun to play with. Tommy was also a goon, so was I :duck:

On the night of the vigil APs started spawning like crazy. The goons decided to see how many APs we could help create, so along with people just logging in for the vigil, the goons started filling one AP, spawning the next then all of us moving on. I'm not saying there wouldn't have been 33 APs without the goons helped, but we definitely sped it up.

That night after the vigil AP33 was a success, but as everyone started logging off Tommy parked his Huge model, rainbow themed character at the tram so AP33 would not disappear. On two occasions he did searches and was the only one in the zone. AP33 remained and quickly became a symbol we as a community latched on to. That symbol would not have persisted if it weren't for Tommy, or what one person on the official forums called "the horror at the train station".