First, I wanted to say "thank you" to all the people who have put in the hard work over the past six years to bring CoH back. And I have a little story to go with it.
I started playing CoH back in 2004 when it was in Beta. I got in about two weeks before it went live. I was in my 20s working in NYC in a job I really didn't like. I had a small circle of friends who I played with. And so when I moved from NY to appalachia (WV) in 2005, CoH was, by far, the easiest way for me to reconnect with the people I'd left behind. It was there while I went through grad school at WVU, found love and marriage and started a family. My son was six in 2012 and would occasionally look over my shoulder when I'd play CoH. He loved it. And I told him when he was old enough he'd be able to play and we'd play together.
And then NCSoft pulled the plug.
Like almsot everyone we went through our stages of grief and we all moved onto other things because.. it was gone. My son and I played Minecraft, Don't Starve, Portal, Supreme Commander, and most recently Rocket League. We looked at other MMOs, but the negativity and griefing were something neither of us wanted to be a part of. And we went camping, played baseball and did all those things that families do. And once in awhile, particularly after watching a Marvel movie, he'd ask me why there wasn't a game like *that* that we could play. And I'd tell him there was... once.
We played Valiance Online (because we could get in on that aplha) and it was ok. But like every other successor it remains so unfinished. And he'd ask "Why don't all these people get togeteher and just make one game so we could play that?" (you have to love the wisdom of children) and all I could say was that for some people it's more important that they do something than to have something done.
And then this happened. At first, I didn't want to tell him. What if it was awfully done? What if my memory was too gilded? Would it even work? On his Win10 machine? So i tried it out one night on my own... and about 20 minutes later I was calling him into the computer room "Look! Caver's back. The city... is back."
He just stood there, open mouthed, looking at fifteen year old graphics, like us old people stared at the dinosaurs the first time we saw Jurassic Park back in 1993 in the theaters. "I want to play!" he said. And an hour later he had his own account set up. That night he came to me after we'd run a few missions and about all the remakes he said "now I see what they were trying to do".
So again, thank you. We both know this can be taken away from us at any minute. But even if it is, you should know you've touched thousands of lives, young and old. Good job.