The last months and days of City of Heroes - a life of wonder inside a world that made sense.
Its going to come up in forthcoming posts, because it really affected me. So, I just thought I would share a greatly-truncated account of what I did over the last few weeks of CoH's life, and about the character I spent most of those last weeks living within.
I was very upset about this during the game's final months. I played CoH for 7 years, and I absolutely loved the game, and over the game's final two-and-a-half months, I played it more than I had in a while. To this day I'm upset about it.
This was, to me, a home away from home. Within the boundaries of Paragon City and the Rogue isles I could be anyone or anything I wanted: A Vampire with a Soul, a reawakened Old One wrapped in a human shell, the living Avatar of the Egyptian Sun-God, or a cosmic, shape-shifting hero from across the Galaxy who had come to Earth to save us.
There I could run faster than any car could travel, leap over tall-buildings, or soar through the sky unfettered by the tug of gravity. I could fire beams of energy from my eyes, heal the injured, or shatter the earth with the power of my limbs. There I could be a Hero or I could be a villain: I could help the helpless or walk along the edge of darkness and exploit them. I could switch back and forth as I chose, from one character to another, and let childhood fantasies wash away my troubles for at least a little while.
Now, that place, that world, is gone. But the memories and the feelings remain.
When I turned the calendar-page to the month of November 2012, and with the end of CoH barreling down upon us all in less than a month, a mass of desires hit me (aside from the small hope that the world of CoH would be preserved), and I felt compelled to follow them. I wanted to create another character that I would enjoy playing a great deal over the last few weeks, using a recent powerset or one I had scarcely used before, and I wanted to get this character to 50 before the world went dark.
The easiest part was deciding WHERE to build this new toon. I chose Virtue without hesitation, largely because it was the most populated server in these dying days, and would be the place where I could most easily find teams and thus accelerate the XP-gain the character would need to get to 50 quickly. So with that in mind I used some of my accumulated extra character slots on Virtue so that I could build the character there.
Now, as a confessed Alt-A-Holic, I already had LOTS of characters. On Champion, every slot (and more, since its one of the two servers where I had purchased additional character slots) was filled with mostly-original characters and small handful of homage-toons, all of whom were part of my largest supergroup, the "Guardians of the Firmament". Victory was similar in that it was filled and this too included extra purchased slots. However, Victory was the home of my second-largest supergroup, "Angel Investigations", and every single slot contained a character that was a direct homage to Joss Whedon's Buffyverse.
From Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles, to Angel, Spike, Cordelia, Wesley, Lorne, Gunn, and Illyria. There were also toons for Buffy's ex, Riley Finn, Angel's son, Connor, and the electric-charged mutant, Gwen Raiden, along with redside toons Lindsey McDonald and Marcus Hamilton.
I'm very big on homage characters, and I'd say 2/3rds of my sizable CoH character-pool was comprised of homages, both direct and those who were simply mildly based upon a prior character or idea. Heck, in recent years I'd built homages as varied as one based upon the Doctor, from Doctor Who, and a group of toons based upon the characters from "The Authority". So yeah, not only am I alt-crazy, but somewhat homage-crazy as well.
Now, with that in mind, the character intended to become my 5th and final level 50 was going to end up being an homage. And once again I would turn to my favorite Buffyverse character: Illyria, the one-time God-King of the Primordium age; a demon-goddess reborn in the shell of a human woman who had been dear to the characters on Angel: Winifred "Fred" Burkle. As a reborn ancient "Old-One" who had been been born before we were even primordial ooze, who had died hundreds of thousands of years before, and walked around inside the shell of the woman she "murdered", Illyria was an Archetype I had always loved: the eternal outsider, a character that stands outside of humanity and looks upon it with a mix of revulsion, pity, and occasional awe, and an oft-teller of brutal truths. Since childhood I have always loved these types of characters, and I do to this day.
Sure, I had other versions of this character already: "Illyria the First" on Champion (though that had not been her original home...I have long since forgotten where she was moved FROM), my 2nd level 50 character: A Willpower/Energy tank, and the only toon to that point that had dabbled in the incarnate pool. And over on Victory, there was "Illyria", another tank version of the character with a Willpower/super-Strength powerset, who hovered at level 45 (46 before the month ended).
However, I was never completely satisfied with either offensive powerset used in the above versions of this character. For one, neither had any kick-attacks, and kicks were a very visible part of Illyria's skill-set. I'd dabbled with a scrapper version of the character on another server, using the Martial-Arts Primary, but that wasn't quite right either. So, for this new version I decided to use the recent powerset "Street-Justice", a set with which I had dabbled and had the best combination of punches and kicks. For her secondary I chose Invulnerability, which would enable her to survive Alpha-Strikes better than she would using Willpower. And for her Archetype I ran with a Brute: not quite as tough as a Tank, but tougher than a Scrapper, and able to dish out more damage than a tank.
And so, on the morning of November 2nd, I rolled up "I L L Y R I A", and started playing. By Sunday the 4th she was already level 37. By early, early Saturday the 10th she hit level 50 (In a cool, non-farm AE mision to be exact). And by Thanksgiving weekend she had unlocked and empowered every one of her incarnate slots. In the end she got her Alpha and Lore slots to Tier-3, her Hybrid slot to Tier-2, and her Interface and Judgement slots maxed-out at Tier-4.
With this version of Illyria I did things I was usually loathe to do: I gathered my own teams more frequently, and started running the Freedom Phalanx Task-Forces, something that I had never done before. What's more I made some good friends and acquaintances in the handful of weeks she was around, in-part due to all the Incarnate Task-forces I joined again and again. She was the toon with which I planned to watch the darkness fall, although because of Virtue's server-issues that did not come to pass.
I had a very busy last day on the game, almost too busy. There were some things I wanted to do that I still managed not to get done, but I accomplished most of what I set out to do.
I spent most of the final day as as my newest level 50 "I L L Y R I A", over on Virtue. After midnight EST as the 29th turned into the 30th, I was part of a successful TPN trial, followed by successful BAF and Lambda Trials. The BAF got me a Very Rare that I needed to get my Interface slot to T-4. Following that I hopped over to AP33 to see the crowd gathered on the steps, including the ever-present and indefatigable Captain Bacon. From there I headed to Perez Park and began to lay waste to the assembled mobs of Skulls there. I quickly got the "Bonecrusher" Badge, and before signing out I got myself 10 Skulls away from the "Kill Skuls" badge.
By this point it was after 4am, and I was tired. So I logged out there in Perez, went to bed, got up and started again at around 11am. I immediately logged on, wiped out a final mob of Skulls for the badge, and from there I went to PI and called for players to join me for PI radio missions and quick XP. I quickly filled the team, and for the next 2 hours I we started clearing out the PI radio missions easily, and eventually switched up to doing Tips missions. Anytime I lost a player, I would call for more and would quickly get the replacements needed to keep the team at a full 8 players. During this time I got 1 level 49 player to 50, and had a wonderful time all-around with players like Blight Dire, Karina Valentine, Lady Kimiko, Kinetic Motion, Cyndi's Last Defendr, Circutron 3000, and Brick Shield.
From there I went to the Victory server to get shots of my characters there in their multiple costumes on their Character ID page. Unfortunately, PSP crashed and I lost about 70 screenshots, so I had to scramble after that, and ended up setting for shots of single costumes instead for most of them.
That done, I went back to Virtue, where I joined Xian Talon, Sway Archer, and Evil Brain Eraser for an Eden trial which we completed successfully, and after that I joined a group to take down Lusca in IP and soon after saw War Witch in AP 3, and then joined a MoM Trial that failed. I followed that with a mission in Dark Astoria, and planned to join an UG Trial, and that's when the first big server-crash took Virtue down. After getting logged back in, a second crash took Virtue down again, and then I realized that my plan to end the game with "I L L Y R I A" was in possible jeopardy. So, I moved my first 50 "Avatar of RA/Ra's Avatar" back to Pinnacle where he had originated as a backup measure.
From there I captured more images of my alts on Virtue, breezed through a demo-recorded street-sweep and tour of Atlas Park as "I L L Y R I A", and spent some time in the "Matrix Room" as "Pete P. Powers", before leaving Virtue to say final goodbyes on Victory, Pinnacle, and Champion, where I did more screen-captures and fly-by demo-recordings. That done, and with only 28 minutes or so remaining before the world went dark, I again returned to Virtue briefly, until cast-off by another major server crash.
With 8 minutes to spare, I tried to return, but the delay proved too great to risk for long. I backed up, logged onto Pinnacle to spend the last minutes as "Avatar of RA". And as I said in another thread, this was, perhaps, the most fitting of ends for myself as Paragon bid us its big goodbye. At 12:59 PST I hit "self destruction" on the Atlas city-hall steps, and then, as a reflection of my hopes for a possible future with this game in it, I hit "Rise of the Phoenix", and stood once more...until the server shut down for the final time.
All that said, I feel I should share a few screenshots from the final day...
ILLYRIA awaits the start of the early 30th I-Trials on Virtue:
Her final TPN trial:
Her last visit to AP33:
At last she heeds the call to Go hunt. Kill Skuls:
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce says farewell to the Rogue Isles:
And Vamp Angel says farewell to Atlas Park:
ILLYRIA tackles her final epic trial in Eden:
And then she tackles her final GM, Lusca, for her final badge:
She then pays a visit to War Witch in AP3:
And then takes a shot of those gathered in AP3, managing to look like "Disaster Girl" in the process:
ILLYRIA's final mission is taken solo, in Dark Astoria before the server crashes begin:
Pete P. Powers visits Virtue's MATRIX room:
Avatar of RA salutes Pinnacle:
And he hopes that someday, the city shall rise like the Phoenix:
On Champion, General Supernova says farewell:
ILLYRIA returns to Virtue for her last sweep of Atlas Park before the final server crash:
And so, Avatar of RA joins Pinnacle for the game's final moments, and one final group-buff upon the stairs:
And then, it all comes to an end:
Thanks for looking folks.
I was very upset about this during the game's final months. I played CoH for 7 years, and I absolutely loved the game, and over the game's final two-and-a-half months, I played it more than I had in a while. To this day I'm upset about it.
This was, to me, a home away from home. Within the boundaries of Paragon City and the Rogue isles I could be anyone or anything I wanted: A Vampire with a Soul, a reawakened Old One wrapped in a human shell, the living Avatar of the Egyptian Sun-God, or a cosmic, shape-shifting hero from across the Galaxy who had come to Earth to save us.
There I could run faster than any car could travel, leap over tall-buildings, or soar through the sky unfettered by the tug of gravity. I could fire beams of energy from my eyes, heal the injured, or shatter the earth with the power of my limbs. There I could be a Hero or I could be a villain: I could help the helpless or walk along the edge of darkness and exploit them. I could switch back and forth as I chose, from one character to another, and let childhood fantasies wash away my troubles for at least a little while.
Now, that place, that world, is gone. But the memories and the feelings remain.
When I turned the calendar-page to the month of November 2012, and with the end of CoH barreling down upon us all in less than a month, a mass of desires hit me (aside from the small hope that the world of CoH would be preserved), and I felt compelled to follow them. I wanted to create another character that I would enjoy playing a great deal over the last few weeks, using a recent powerset or one I had scarcely used before, and I wanted to get this character to 50 before the world went dark.
The easiest part was deciding WHERE to build this new toon. I chose Virtue without hesitation, largely because it was the most populated server in these dying days, and would be the place where I could most easily find teams and thus accelerate the XP-gain the character would need to get to 50 quickly. So with that in mind I used some of my accumulated extra character slots on Virtue so that I could build the character there.
Now, as a confessed Alt-A-Holic, I already had LOTS of characters. On Champion, every slot (and more, since its one of the two servers where I had purchased additional character slots) was filled with mostly-original characters and small handful of homage-toons, all of whom were part of my largest supergroup, the "Guardians of the Firmament". Victory was similar in that it was filled and this too included extra purchased slots. However, Victory was the home of my second-largest supergroup, "Angel Investigations", and every single slot contained a character that was a direct homage to Joss Whedon's Buffyverse.
From Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles, to Angel, Spike, Cordelia, Wesley, Lorne, Gunn, and Illyria. There were also toons for Buffy's ex, Riley Finn, Angel's son, Connor, and the electric-charged mutant, Gwen Raiden, along with redside toons Lindsey McDonald and Marcus Hamilton.
I'm very big on homage characters, and I'd say 2/3rds of my sizable CoH character-pool was comprised of homages, both direct and those who were simply mildly based upon a prior character or idea. Heck, in recent years I'd built homages as varied as one based upon the Doctor, from Doctor Who, and a group of toons based upon the characters from "The Authority". So yeah, not only am I alt-crazy, but somewhat homage-crazy as well.
Now, with that in mind, the character intended to become my 5th and final level 50 was going to end up being an homage. And once again I would turn to my favorite Buffyverse character: Illyria, the one-time God-King of the Primordium age; a demon-goddess reborn in the shell of a human woman who had been dear to the characters on Angel: Winifred "Fred" Burkle. As a reborn ancient "Old-One" who had been been born before we were even primordial ooze, who had died hundreds of thousands of years before, and walked around inside the shell of the woman she "murdered", Illyria was an Archetype I had always loved: the eternal outsider, a character that stands outside of humanity and looks upon it with a mix of revulsion, pity, and occasional awe, and an oft-teller of brutal truths. Since childhood I have always loved these types of characters, and I do to this day.
Sure, I had other versions of this character already: "Illyria the First" on Champion (though that had not been her original home...I have long since forgotten where she was moved FROM), my 2nd level 50 character: A Willpower/Energy tank, and the only toon to that point that had dabbled in the incarnate pool. And over on Victory, there was "Illyria", another tank version of the character with a Willpower/super-Strength powerset, who hovered at level 45 (46 before the month ended).
However, I was never completely satisfied with either offensive powerset used in the above versions of this character. For one, neither had any kick-attacks, and kicks were a very visible part of Illyria's skill-set. I'd dabbled with a scrapper version of the character on another server, using the Martial-Arts Primary, but that wasn't quite right either. So, for this new version I decided to use the recent powerset "Street-Justice", a set with which I had dabbled and had the best combination of punches and kicks. For her secondary I chose Invulnerability, which would enable her to survive Alpha-Strikes better than she would using Willpower. And for her Archetype I ran with a Brute: not quite as tough as a Tank, but tougher than a Scrapper, and able to dish out more damage than a tank.
And so, on the morning of November 2nd, I rolled up "I L L Y R I A", and started playing. By Sunday the 4th she was already level 37. By early, early Saturday the 10th she hit level 50 (In a cool, non-farm AE mision to be exact). And by Thanksgiving weekend she had unlocked and empowered every one of her incarnate slots. In the end she got her Alpha and Lore slots to Tier-3, her Hybrid slot to Tier-2, and her Interface and Judgement slots maxed-out at Tier-4.
With this version of Illyria I did things I was usually loathe to do: I gathered my own teams more frequently, and started running the Freedom Phalanx Task-Forces, something that I had never done before. What's more I made some good friends and acquaintances in the handful of weeks she was around, in-part due to all the Incarnate Task-forces I joined again and again. She was the toon with which I planned to watch the darkness fall, although because of Virtue's server-issues that did not come to pass.
I had a very busy last day on the game, almost too busy. There were some things I wanted to do that I still managed not to get done, but I accomplished most of what I set out to do.
I spent most of the final day as as my newest level 50 "I L L Y R I A", over on Virtue. After midnight EST as the 29th turned into the 30th, I was part of a successful TPN trial, followed by successful BAF and Lambda Trials. The BAF got me a Very Rare that I needed to get my Interface slot to T-4. Following that I hopped over to AP33 to see the crowd gathered on the steps, including the ever-present and indefatigable Captain Bacon. From there I headed to Perez Park and began to lay waste to the assembled mobs of Skulls there. I quickly got the "Bonecrusher" Badge, and before signing out I got myself 10 Skulls away from the "Kill Skuls" badge.
By this point it was after 4am, and I was tired. So I logged out there in Perez, went to bed, got up and started again at around 11am. I immediately logged on, wiped out a final mob of Skulls for the badge, and from there I went to PI and called for players to join me for PI radio missions and quick XP. I quickly filled the team, and for the next 2 hours I we started clearing out the PI radio missions easily, and eventually switched up to doing Tips missions. Anytime I lost a player, I would call for more and would quickly get the replacements needed to keep the team at a full 8 players. During this time I got 1 level 49 player to 50, and had a wonderful time all-around with players like Blight Dire, Karina Valentine, Lady Kimiko, Kinetic Motion, Cyndi's Last Defendr, Circutron 3000, and Brick Shield.
From there I went to the Victory server to get shots of my characters there in their multiple costumes on their Character ID page. Unfortunately, PSP crashed and I lost about 70 screenshots, so I had to scramble after that, and ended up setting for shots of single costumes instead for most of them.
That done, I went back to Virtue, where I joined Xian Talon, Sway Archer, and Evil Brain Eraser for an Eden trial which we completed successfully, and after that I joined a group to take down Lusca in IP and soon after saw War Witch in AP 3, and then joined a MoM Trial that failed. I followed that with a mission in Dark Astoria, and planned to join an UG Trial, and that's when the first big server-crash took Virtue down. After getting logged back in, a second crash took Virtue down again, and then I realized that my plan to end the game with "I L L Y R I A" was in possible jeopardy. So, I moved my first 50 "Avatar of RA/Ra's Avatar" back to Pinnacle where he had originated as a backup measure.
From there I captured more images of my alts on Virtue, breezed through a demo-recorded street-sweep and tour of Atlas Park as "I L L Y R I A", and spent some time in the "Matrix Room" as "Pete P. Powers", before leaving Virtue to say final goodbyes on Victory, Pinnacle, and Champion, where I did more screen-captures and fly-by demo-recordings. That done, and with only 28 minutes or so remaining before the world went dark, I again returned to Virtue briefly, until cast-off by another major server crash.
With 8 minutes to spare, I tried to return, but the delay proved too great to risk for long. I backed up, logged onto Pinnacle to spend the last minutes as "Avatar of RA". And as I said in another thread, this was, perhaps, the most fitting of ends for myself as Paragon bid us its big goodbye. At 12:59 PST I hit "self destruction" on the Atlas city-hall steps, and then, as a reflection of my hopes for a possible future with this game in it, I hit "Rise of the Phoenix", and stood once more...until the server shut down for the final time.
All that said, I feel I should share a few screenshots from the final day...
ILLYRIA awaits the start of the early 30th I-Trials on Virtue:
Her final TPN trial:
Her last visit to AP33:
At last she heeds the call to Go hunt. Kill Skuls:
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce says farewell to the Rogue Isles:
And Vamp Angel says farewell to Atlas Park:
ILLYRIA tackles her final epic trial in Eden:
And then she tackles her final GM, Lusca, for her final badge:
She then pays a visit to War Witch in AP3:
And then takes a shot of those gathered in AP3, managing to look like "Disaster Girl" in the process:
ILLYRIA's final mission is taken solo, in Dark Astoria before the server crashes begin:
Pete P. Powers visits Virtue's MATRIX room:
Avatar of RA salutes Pinnacle:
And he hopes that someday, the city shall rise like the Phoenix:
On Champion, General Supernova says farewell:
ILLYRIA returns to Virtue for her last sweep of Atlas Park before the final server crash:
And so, Avatar of RA joins Pinnacle for the game's final moments, and one final group-buff upon the stairs:
And then, it all comes to an end:
Thanks for looking folks.