I Have Come to Watch the World End

[rowyn]

koogrr IM'd me earlier today and reminded me that City of Heroes was shutting down tonight. Koogrr planned to be there, to hold a torch for CoH one last time. "I'll be on Virtue, in Atlas Park 33. When NCSoft first announced they were shutting City of Heroes down, so many people logged into Virtue to protest that Atlas Park reached instance #33. They have kept that instance going ever since."

Even in City of Heroes' heyday, it was extremely rare to see more than two instances of a zone; normally, there was only one.

I canceled my account in January of this year, because the truth was that I had not played since October 2011. Even when the game went free-to-play, I didn't come back to look at it. Not even when they announced they were canceling it.

But at 10PM tonight, I decided to go in.

kagetsume was on too, so I chatted with him for a bit -- we haven't talked in ages. I couldn't get to Atlas Park 33 -- it was full -- so I went to Atlas Park 6. I didn't know where to go, so I flew up to the top of the globe that rests on the giant shoulders of Atlas's statue. There were three other people up there. One of them was DJing a tribute to CoH on Dimensional.Net, so I tuned in. His selection was broad, including instrumentals and a wide range of rock and eras. Almost all with a theme of heroes, rescuing, etc. Related to the theme.

Lut suggested I get some screenshots, so I brought in different characters, my favorites from across several servers. Virtue kicked me several times and crashed once. The queue to log in at one point was over a thousand.

I hadn't meant to stay to the end -- it's three hours past my usual bedtime -- but it's only 24 minutes away now, and oddly I am not sleepy. The music and taking screenshots, getting shots of Lut's characters, talking to people, has kept me up. I logged out Kasadya to bring on another character, Alice Bocor, to get screenshots of her. It's ten minutes to the end now, and I am in the queue to log Kasadya back in after getting kicked. I got back in, and got kicked again in less than a minute. Five minutes to go, and Virtue cannot bear up under the weight of its players' grief, the thousands who want to be there in the end. I am position 84 of 370 in the queue for Virtue, and it's 2AM CST, midnight Pacific: closing time.

At 2:03AM, three minutes after the servers were set to go down, I reconnected with Kasadya. She rose into the air and broadcasted a triumphant "I'm still alive!" An instant later, the server went down for the last time.

But you know, I cannot believe this is the end. Even if NCSoft never sells the game or resurrects it, when I think of all the bootleg WoW servers out there, I have to believe that somewhere, someone -- some hacker or dev who managed to sneak it out -- is running a CoH server. Paragon City is still out there, even if I can't visit it now.



Farewell, City of Heroes. You were the best of the MMOs; I fear we will not see your like again.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I spent most of my time thrashing, getting on the server and falling off.

When I was there, I saw poignant farewells, people apologizing for being griefers and an amazing solidarity and friendship.

I couldn't get Johnni to Atlas Park 33, because I'd kept her a villain. Someone was desperately running alignment missions, trying to switch back to a hero before the game closed. I had my alternate catperson, Gunkatta, and while he's male I used one of his character slots to duplicate Johnni's costume long ago to simulate her borrowing his squad of thugs for RP purposes. So, Johnni was there, holding a torch, until one of the disconnects put me in a different Atlas. Someone was broadcasting a Matrix room in Peregrine. I'd been there once, on some mission, a bright blue circular room with a pillar of light in the centre. Perhaps not the most visually thrilling place, but appropriate, although the AE buildings would have been better.

I'll miss... everything. Flying, knockback, pets than can talk, the costumes, the crazy plotlines. That they were willing to make massive changes to their canon, that at the end, players were canonically equivalent or better than the game NPCs. A far, far cry from grinding to level 95 in WoW and 'finally graduating' to a basic unit popped in Warcraft 3 along with a dozen others each turn. Even the NPCs that taunted with praise as you walked by, referencing your last mission. The zones, everything.

In a small way, the Aztecs were right. The world ended in December, 2012, just not this one. City of Heroes/Villains will always be in my mental space.

- Koogrr (who is having password troubles right now)

[rowyn]

Being able to group any character with any other character. That's what I will miss more than anything else. They got so much right -- everything you said and more -- and I suppose I won't see most of that in any other game either. It doesn't seem like it should be so much to ask.

Superjump.

I spent at least 20 minutes in Steel Canyon last night, just jumping Tabitha Cat around like a superball. Best travel power EV4R.

Sigh.