The year is 2004...

[Redlynne]

13 hours ago, NNDeepdish said:

What AT and powers did you try out first and why?

What costume did you make first?

MA/SR Scrapper

 

 

Redlynne started out fighting 9 foot tall neo-Nazis.  She's 5 foot nothin' in that pic (and still is here on Homecoming).

 

Later I added a Mini-Vest to her costume and put her in Pants and Sneakers.  The "Red Line" (usually a Stripe of some kind) however remained the defining signature for her costume designs that used a Black and Red color palette.

[Call Me Awesome]

3 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

I made Heraclea a tanker because the little pamphlet in the box said that tankers were the class with the most survivability and I wanted more than anything else to avoid frustration. 

That was kind of my thought when I rolled CMA.  I'd played 20 or so levels with a blaster with a severe fetish for munching carpet (and not in a good way either) and wanted to stay alive.  The first time I jumped into a group that would have flattened my blaster instantly and noticed my health didn't even move I was hooked.  Tankers were tough!  Then I found the early Invuln guides for issue 2-3 and respected... I was INVINCIBLE!  I think CMA only died once or twice the entire 1-50 trip... a huge change from that blaster who died multiple times per mission.

[Outrider_01]

Assault Rifle/Device, just a soldier doing a job.  Shortly after release, felt like a god.  I4, beat down...affected more so then other blaster sets with no Aim/Build Up, 3 cones vs a lot of AoE for the other/solid single attack chains, lethal damage highly resisted, 2 toggles slightly more useful then dots/slows/drains, long set up time for mines and not very group friendly while best solo set is not a good identifying  factor, who wants to solo the entire time. Auto turret non mobile then floats from a buff which breaks stealth.

 

Then the only buff was a situational / conditional AR/ primary that paired snipe with a TD or Cloak (I forget) from /Dev;  were as no other primary required a certain secondary except a themed reason.  Here you go we buffed a lesser played pairing...a middle finger in my opinion.  AR/Dev didn't get any nerfs outside I4 really, but didn't see many buffs.  And now, just fucking stupid amount of changes, I won't touch it in memory of my old Main.

 

Still love the set, but just can't look at it any more.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Outrider_01

[_Kai_]

It was 2004, I didn't play MMOs because I tried to follow Thrakna around in Everquest and that uh....yeah we never got past me getting lost.  A bunch of our friends from on online community bought this superhero game so he gave it a try.  He said 'hey they got a lot of costume stuff, you want to make a character?' so I made a fire/energy blaster version of an old Dark Conspiracy character called Wildfire(she became Wyld Fyre on Virtue), who was a pyrokinetic, basing her looks on old art from Elfwood(yeah if you remember that place you are officially old too, sorry) because eh, it was something I knew, and surely I was just going to mess around a bit before getting bored.  A week later, Thrakna was like "look, you need to get your own account because I want to play too."

 

 

I used to have a color version of that ridiculous old art, but no idea where it went

Edited January 21, 2020 by _Kai_

[Razia]

I did make an AR/DEV Blaster for the same reasons as you as my first toon :-)

[Harlequin565]

September 2004

 

Energy/Energy Blaster. Because that was my first Champions character from way back in... 1984... So 20 years after her creation, she lived again in CoH. I street swept in Atlas to about level 5, then joined a street sweeping team in Perez. Ended up getting lost in the park with no way out. Pre vidiot maps and definitely pre any kind of teleporter. I ended up finding a hole in the trees and hovering out. This was pre speed buff Hover. When it was bad. That was when L14 and a travel power was a major milesone. But not as major as Stamina at 20...

 

And in 2019, 35 years after her creation, and 15 years after she first walked into Paragon City, Catherine Voss (Originally 'Powerbolt', but 'Voss' in CoH because the name was taken, then changed to 'Powerslinger' when name changes happened, then I snagged the name 'Powerbolt' on Excelsior with Homecoming) stalks the streets again.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Harlequin565

[srmalloy]

My first, created on May 8, 2004, was an AR/EM Blaster that I named 'Pakfront'; I picked /EM over /Dev for a couple of reasons -- the auto-pick secondary power was a useful 'reestablish range' power to put an attacker back away from me (this being before all mobs got ranged attacks, so you could get a ranged shot on them while they closed again, then repeat as necessary), and Boost Range promised to let her stay even further out of melee. She wound up being the character I was playing, down in the bowl in the middle of a mothership raid, when the servers were shut down, defying the idea that the game was going away. And she was the first character I recreated when I found out about Homecoming.

[NNDeepdish]

Seems like AR and Energy blasters were pretty popular for people to try first

[purexedz]

I read the manual and thought Scrappers sounded badass. I then chose Katana/Super Reflexes. Started out slow, but became a solo god in the 30s. 

[Aracknight]

It wasn't 04 for me.  It was I8.  I was a veteran of MUD-style text dungeon games and SWG.  I read about CoH, and that I would need to get off dial-up to make it work well.  While I waited, I read the manuals, read the forums, and devoured everything I could about it.  I was a MA/SR Scrapper because I read "On the care and feeding of your scrapper (which I reposted elsewhere)" and a MA guide that said:

 

"So you may be asking yourself, "What is Martial Arts good for?"
Well, a few facts are in order to answer this question...

1. MA Scrappers are mammals.
2. MA Scrappers fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the MA Scrapper is to flip out and kill people."

 

I was a MA/SR scrapper before I was a MA/SR scrapper.  It sounded bad-ass.

 

Like everyone else, I spent too much time perfecting my costume, believing that I just had to have a piece from every option (shoulders, etc) before learning sometimes less is more.  A huge Spider-Man fan, CoH helped me bring the Aracknight to life, and I was cah-rushed when it was shut down.  I straight up copied Spidey's actual costume, ran a +4/x8 Council warehouse police band mission, and refused to log back on even though there was a month to go until shutdown.  I was so heartbroken I couldn't actually bring myself to be here at the end.

 

Then I found Homecoming ( a recent Spider-man movie title) with a shard named Excelsior (the recently departed Stan Lee's catchphrase)  and I was indeed home.  And my main (and truth be told, at this time ONLY) character, is that MA/SR Scrapper that I was before, during, and after I was an MA/SR Scrapper.

 

I'm very grateful.

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

My brother and I played the PnP version of Champions (and D&D and Gamma World) way back in the day. One day he calls up to tell me about this incredible video game that was like Champions but it's an MMO and yes you have to pay a month subscription and it's online 100% and ... no, bro, I'm not doing any of that it sounds awful. Have fun, kthxbye.

 

Very little time passed before he came over one day and forced me to install it so that I could run around in this pay to play weird online garbage as some freaky short dwarf wearing green and has stone chunks all over him and he's got this big battle axe. Fine, bro, let's see. I'll run around a bit and then explain again that this just isn't my... wait a minute... I can build what? This is the character generator? You can super speed and jump or fly or teleport? WTF?

 

Ok, fine. Account created. I'll build somethin stupid to learn the game and then trash it. Heh, white spiky hair, black skin, sure, why not... ooo claws like Wolvie, nah regen doesn't sound good... super reflexes? Never get hit? Probably not a bad idea... need a stupid name... HA, sure Bill Z Bubba. He's getting deleted anyway...

 

That was right after Issue 1 went live.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Replacement]

I'm frankly amazed at how many people here seemed to have, right out the gate, built their "main."  I still haven't.

 

My brother got into the closed beta.  We didn't know anything about MMOs, except we had seen Everquest and Asheron's Call boxes in the stores.  But we had been following CoH development for literal years at that point.

 

We tooled through the character creator together, and we made some nordic tanker with ice armor and no shirt on.  We both ran around as him some and beat up guys.  Then my brother made a different character and I mostly just watched him play.  I remember people in the zone cheering him on for immediately, like in Hour One of the beta going live, figuring out how to walk on powerlines, and exploiting building lips for vertical leaps in a way I'm sure we all still do.  But we didn't have the money for a sub.

 

Years later, we would get another roommate (my bro was also my roomy through college) who played, and I'd make a character on his account to mess around.  That was enough for my brother and I to get a sub for a while, and then I would finally make a character that I felt like was "mine" but I still was sharing the account with my brother -- Dark melee/Super Reflexes Scrapper.  I mostly just remember solo-grinding the hell out of Faultline for so long, the zone changed.

 

Eventually, I'd get my own sub. I built a billion other characters and the only one I remember with any regularity was my sonic/en blaster, but I never stuck with a single toon long enough to get above the 30s.

 

Edited January 21, 2020 by Replacement

[Fan Mail]

I honestly don't recall my very first character but the first character that seemed to stick was Fan Mail, Fire/EM Blaster.  There indeed was life after the numerous PuGs in Perez Park!  When I started playing CoH, I was on dial-up.  It actually wasn't too bad to play at the time.  I picked up Hover as my first travel power. 

 

Does anyone remember when the Council or whatever they were at the start of Issue 2 or 3 doing the invasion in lowbie zones?  I started CoH a few days before that invasion thing went live.  Maybe it was Issue 3.  I should check the Paragon Wiki page

[Myrmidon]

Raven Mortus

Revenant of Vengeance

Dark/Dark Scrapper

 

This being my first MMO, going with a mystical character that I then tied the Circle of Thorns as part of the origin story. I never did take that one to 50 before The Snap, however, that was rectified here on Homecoming.

[Wintercat]

I can't recall the first character i made, but I believe it was a claws/something scrapper. I remember getting her all the way to level 6 in only three days!!!!! It was the end of beta.

 

The wipe happened, and I decided a defender sounded good, and since the first screenshots/videos I'd seen had been a storm defender, that looked absolutely awesome to me.

Alas, all the cool names were were taken, and so Lady Breeze, storm/elec defender was born, and after a few weeks of running, she cuold finally FLY!!!!!. And deleted a couple of years(?) later to be re-born as Lady Breeze, fire/storm controller, powerlevelled via the Winter Lords to level 22, and later, my first and only level 50.

I was, however, enamored by blasters, and decided to have one of each matching set, en/en, elec/elec/, ice/ice etc. Blasters quickly became my thing. Never got one to 50 though, 44 was my highest.

[AWOL]

I didn't do beta but bought at launch and rolled Lord Giro who was a kinetic/electric defender because kinetics just sounded awesome (and in my opinion it still is pretty amazing although endurance and health aren't the constraints they one were). He was built to drain and it worked well although drain didn't have quite the effect that I thought it would. In my memory the screen flooded with blue, green and a little red and the good I did was visible. It seams less dramatic now. I don't know if the effects were toned down or my memory is exaggerating then.

[VileTerror]

Endurance Drain is still strong, AWOL.  It's just that now, the AoE DPS meta is stronger than ever, and you don't get to reap the rewards of any other style of play when everything is just getting nuked and melted in under 3 seconds.

[0th Power]

Energy/Energy blaster like several others.  Recreated here on homecoming and still my main.

[KC4800]

I started in 2005 as an Inv/WM tanker on Victory named Phrendon Largo. Did about everything wrong with that character I could. He survived because I had a good friend, a Fire/Fire blaster named Praxitas who helped murder things for me. War Mace was not as strong as it is now. But I was invulnerable, once I knew to take mez protection and not just eat break frees. Phrendon wore a baseball cap and blue jeans to start out, with a t shirt. His back story was an ex policeman(was forced to retire) who lost most of his hearing in a bomb explosion which gave him bad headaches and ringing in the ears. He still wanted to protect his town though. So he fought the good fight. 

 

Phrendon Largo now plays on Indomitable. He is Radiation Armor/War Mace. Say hello when you see him. He likes that.

[WillowManson]

On 1/21/2020 at 9:43 AM, Harlequin565 said:

September 2004

 

Energy/Energy Blaster. Because that was my first Champions character from way back in... 1984... So 20 years after her creation, she lived again in CoH. I street swept in Atlas to about level 5, then joined a street sweeping team in Perez. Ended up getting lost in the park with no way out. Pre vidiot maps and definitely pre any kind of teleporter. I ended up finding a hole in the trees and hovering out. This was pre speed buff Hover. When it was bad. That was when L14 and a travel power was a major milesone. But not as major as Stamina at 20...

 

And in 2019, 35 years after her creation, and 15 years after she first walked into Paragon City, Catherine Voss (Originally 'Powerbolt', but 'Voss' in CoH because the name was taken, then changed to 'Powerslinger' when name changes happened, then I snagged the name 'Powerbolt' on Excelsior with Homecoming) stalks the streets again.

I remember getting lost in their on my first day as well with my fire/fire blaster. I had to do the hover thing as well. Good times.

[Megajoule]

Before this game, I wasn't an MMO player.  I'd played text MUDs back in college, in the 90s, and UO and EQ were just more of the same but with eye candy, in "sprites" and "low-polygon 3D" flavors.  I had no interest in more MUD-style gameplay, or a setting that was Generic Extruded Fantasy Product, or paying a subscription rather than buying a game outright (I mostly played offline, single-player games back then).  Even Star Wars Galaxies failed to catch my interest, despite being a big fan of the movies, because I knew the actual experience wouldn't be like them.

 

My gateway into online, multi-player, subscription games was a fun and silly little browser game, Puzzle Pirates. Then, about the same time that left Beta, CoH also launched.  And despite its long and troubled development, I started hearing from friends that it was actually good.   I held out all summer of '04 before finally giving it a shot, borrowing a friend's account to do so.  My computer was close to minimum spec, and at first I couldn't even run it, until I updated my video drivers.  But I finally got into Outbreak, made a test character... and I was hooked.  (When I got my own account a few days later, I kept up that sub for the duration - even when I wasn't actively playing every day, and even after the game went F2P - right up to the end.)  My entry date was about the middle of Issue 1, so the level cap was already raised to 50, but I got to see iCon, capes, and respecs added to the game.

 

My first "real" character and main, per my userpic, was a Force Field/Energy Blast defender, based on a tabletop Champions character I'd made years before but hardly played.  "Inspired by" might be a better way to put it; while the powersets were nearly an exact match, I had to make changes that ended up grounding her in this game, this setting, and making her someone distinct.  After NCsoft killed "sunsetted" CoH, I did entertain the notion of bringing things full circle by re-creating her in Champions Online; but after trying that game out, I realized I had no interest in continuing - certainly not enough to justify paying to unlock the archetype ("The Impulse", for the curious).

 

At the end, 8 years later, I had a total of 18 characters, all on Virtue (I've always been a roleplayer) and all 50 (though it was a near thing; my Fire Melee/Fire Armor broot, who I made shortly before the announcement, got leveled in an awful hurry - in one day I pushed him 15 levels, 26 to 41, and that was without double xp or AE).  I've recreated some of them here, including Miss (now "Ms.") Megajoule and the Spirit of the Row, Stone tank and protagonist of "Faces of the City" ... but in most cases, their story has ended.  Mostly I've made new ones, concepts and/or powersets I never had a chance to try out back then, and I'm profoundly glad and grateful for the opportunity to do so.  More than that, I'm glad that everyone else has the chance too.

 

 

Edited January 23, 2020 by Megajoule

[Coyote]

I wanted a magician character, so I went Illusion/Radiation as these seemed like the most "spell-like" effects available.

[pawstruck]

You guys are gonna think I'm making this up, but...

 

I had always liked animal-themed superheroes as a kid. Animorphs was my jam. When I first got CoH in '05, I made this ice/ice blaster named PolarCatt. (Creative, eh?) Back then, only female characters could wear cat ears, so... female it was.

 

At this time I had never heard the word "furry" in my life. I soon "met" a """girl""" in-game who lead a guild called <Kitty of Heroes>. I had no idea what I was getting into. Needless to say, my life became weirder and weirder as this guild full of furries RP'd their characters and tried to suck me in. I'm also a bit of a troll, so I loved to get them going. Especially with the cat puns. "Right meow," "telepurrt," rofl. Still, they PL'd me and my two friends practically all the way to 50, so..?

 

Where u at, Purramedic?

[Guardian]

As with many others here. I went with En/En blaster. It was based off of Champions that I had played. 

On that day "Cosmic Herald" was born again.
I still remember that inner 'glee' that I got when I hit the hover button for the first time and could FLY! Upwards to the top of the Globe, The buidling.. ALL the buildings, that taunting blimp!!!

Sooo slow but I lived every ever loving, long, drawn out, slow movement of Hover.

Progressed him to 40, then hit the 40's! Far too many times I hit the pavement and worked up a Scrapper! Took his silly little DM/Regen all the way to 50 and then, went back to finish my first.. my main!

Very good times even through all the changes both good and bad. 

 

[FourSpeed]

In spring of 2004 (March or April, I think?) a good friend, work colleague, and experienced gamer got me into the CoH Beta.... 

I'd never played an MMO before (I was mostly, and still am, a flight sim guy), although he and I had played several other PC games together (Diablo series, Mechwarrior series, Age of Mythology, Battlefield 1942, and a bunch I don't even remember anymore).

 

Like Bill Z Bubba  (Hi Bill!), I was a bit reluctant, but I decided to give it a go.

 

My first character was my namesake. He was an Electric / Electric Blaster, and I picked that because Blasters were (advertised as) damage kings, which sounded good to me, and firing arcs of electricity like Emperor Palpatine looked cool as hell.  😉

 

His costume was pretty rudimentary, but I liked that the "circuitry" motif was available, so his suit was covered in "micro-circuitry" to amplify his powers (based on his backstory).

He was my main in the Beta, in Live, and even today in HC.   In Live (on Guardian), he was my first L50, and when I  heard about HC, I recreated him and once again, he became my first L50 here as well.

 

It's fun to be back in the City once again, although I don't get to spend quite as much time in here as I used to back in Live (Heck, I don't even have an L50 Kheldian yet -- but I'm working on that too, and a few of my other former characters from Live), but my Elec/Elec blaster was, is, and probably always will be the character I think of as "My Main".

 

 

Cheers,

4 

Edited January 24, 2020 by FourSpeed