Say a thanks? Share a memory!

[DoctorHugh]

Dear Homecoming Team:

 

City of Heroes has stayed on my PCs, even been ported forward to two new ones since The Day That Shall Not Be Named, lurking quietly in the shadows. Because I knew that somewhere, somehow, there was a medi-porter chugging away, trying to revive The City in all its' glory. Patience is a virtue, they say, because...

 

Who Put the Bomp?  (

)

 

YOU DID! *

 

And Guess Who's Back?  (

)

 

I AM!

 

And I cannot thank you enough!

 

GOOO TEAM!

 

 

* (with additional thanks to all the Cryptic/Paragon CoX developers, past, not-so-past, and present!)

[Abraxus]

This was the very first in-game footage video I ever saw, and I think it perfectly captured the spirit of the game:

 

Justice: 

[Malgee64]

Just found out that this was up and available, and am beyond happy. 54 years old, haven't played an MMO since the moment we were all in front of City Hall and the lights went out. This is just fantastic. Skullbuster, Carve and Chrome Molly will be reborn! Thank you so much to the people who got this up and running again.

[Nimruht]

It has been a little over a month since I have come back. Most of that time getting familiar with an old, lost friend. Being able to visit all the old haunts has been, very helpful. Like many of us, the loss of CoH/V was a heckuva blow. The game allotted for so much more than just Go, Kill Skulz.

 

Initially the loss was mournful. Over time that loss lessened but never really left. Then moments of reminiscing would bring it all back.

 

Logging back into the game, hesitant but hopeful, only to hear that familiar music was magical. It soothed, it elicited excitement and it rekindled the fading fire of love for this game.

 

To all of you, who worked so hard, for so long when many of us had hung up our capes, I thank you. Deeply.

[dexterm]

What can I say.....being able to fly over the tall buildings of atlas and run around cherry hills in the hollows again really is quite amazing.

 

I played COH when it first came out on subscription based play and although very buggy and at times very laggy, I was instantly amazed by it's content.

 

I missed it terribly when it was closed down. But now thanks to some quite amazing individuals it's back and it's bigger and better than before may I say.

 

Also the heroes and villains I've met in game play are courteous, polite and I've never seen any bad chat since I've been back, which has to be credited to the type of people that are attracted to this amazing restored online game.

 

Thank you to everyone involved including the players for making this game play so enjoyable again!..

 

Gush over!

 

Dr Kumasi (Hero extraordinaire)  (with no Phd) ;-)

[Trak]

Big thanks to the dev team for making this happen. Now, if you don't mind, a short story of my time with CoH.

 

I was really little whenever I saw my dad play this game (I'm really close to graduating high school now), and I remember asking if I could sit in his lap and watch him play for a bit. He said sure, and I ran around with his characters from time to time. Even though my memory of this game is extremely hazy and clouded, it has always had a place somewhere in the back of my mind. In fact, I think it was my dad showing me this game that got me into MMOs in the first place. It feels nice to be able to jump back into this game and see just what I missed when I was a wee lad.

 

So thank you, homecoming team. You're all awesome!

[Frostbiter]

I wanted to add my own thanks to the list. I played off and on for 9 years (mostly on with some breaks of a few months here and there) and coming back to Paragon City was truly like coming home. Thanks to Laandro and the team for making the city be alive again.

[FriendlyGamer]

Thank You Creators, Devs, Programmers, Flunkeys, Minions and Donators!!!!!

 

I have all the excitement I got the first time around waiting for the game to even come out the first time!  Only better, because I now know was is waiting for me (I am still letting the Tequila DL, I have not even been on the server yet). 

 

   I am a Maniac from the Red-Eyed Turkey-Fighting BETA Days of CoH.  Every Hero game before or since CoH has let me down.  CoH Nailed It,  This is a very important game to me personally.  The freedom it allows (while maintaining a suspense of disbelief) is still unparalleled in gaming.  This is a longtime dream achieved, I thought I would never get to play again for the rest of my life.

 

    Thank you so (very) much

[n107]

Today, I played my first two hours of CoH in about 10 years.  I spent about one hour recreating my original character I had since the game launched, though she ended up in a slightly updated version of her second costume.  After that, I jumped into the tutorial and I was back in Paragon City feeling all the nostalgia.  Soon the muscle memory was kicking in as my hands were trying to do things that my keys weren't mapped for, so I made the adjustments as necessary.  

 

I'm just so happy to have a chance to delve back into the game that means so much to me.  Thank you for your hard work and thanks to the community for making the world populated again.  

[Midnight Blue Mage]

I am so happy that City of Heroes is alive (and goddamn thriving!). I have never quite loved a game like this one, and I'm having more fun than ever

 

Here's our Pinnacle crew confronting Ghost Widow in a special Pocket D event on April 28th, 2006...

 

 

...and then of course it devolved into a dance party shortly after :]

 

 

Shout-outs to my lovely Lethal Ladies and Deadly Dudes homies; I miss you, and thanks so much for everything ❤️ and to the Homecoming Team, I cannot express my gratitude in words. You guys are just the best

[Iscilla]

Well, I absolutely must pay my thanks to all involved in bringing this gem of a classic back from the rubble. I fought tears when I entered Atlas park as a level 1 once again when I saw a group of heroes gathered around the spawn point to welcome me. No other game have I ever experienced this.

After trying many other MMOs after CoH have ended, I could never recapture the sense of community and the magic of City of Heroes. All the others were just a bunch of "nice tries".

Starting this game back when Windows XP was the standard all the way up to now with Windows 10, the game is still ahead of its time.

I am truly lucky to have experienced this phenomenal game and once again I thank you all.

[Yoru-hime]

I need to add my voice to the chorus. I've been back about a week and there really hasn't ever been anything like it. So happy to be flying again.

[Abraxus]

Champions, tried it.

 

DCUO, tried it.

 

SWTOR, tried it.

 

Since 2004, when this game became a reality, I tried these other games.  The were graphically "prettier" in certain ways, but none of them ever made me feel I was playing a superhero like this one did, and now does again!  There really is no substitute, and I will be here, creating more alts, and playing for as long as this effort lasts, which hopefully, is a very LONG time!

[gems]

So wow, I just found out yesterday that CoH was alive and well. I didn't hesitate to start downloading and promptly threw myself back into the game. Prior to the cancellation I spent a lot of time in the game and made a lot of friends, some of which I am still friends with today.

 

Its weird to be back running around in Atlas Park but am grateful to be able to do it again as I have so many fond memories and can't wait to make new friends and new memories.

 

Thanks so much to have this opportunity again which I never thought I would have again!

 

gems

@gems

 

ps if anyone remembers me, I'd love to team up again!

[Healix]

[Mai Retsama]

Thansk for bringin the game back! so much~!

[wjrasmussen]

I want to thank the team for giving us back this amazing game with all the wonderful combinations of character powers.

 

Now I want to curse the team for all the alts I am making!  Haha

[miaasma]

endlessly thankful that i get to play this game again.  i appreciate what you guys are doing more than words can express, as this game was a huge part of my teenage/adolescent years and being able to enjoy it now as an adult is a wonderful feeling

[TheOtherTed]

I doubt I can say anything that other people haven't, but figured I was overdue for saying "thanks."  So - thanks!

 

CoH was my first subscription MMO.  I picked it up as a lark - I was no fan of superhero comics or movies, but it stood out amongst the sea of fantasy games on the market, so I figured, why not?  Had no idea that this would become the MMO against which I'd measure all other MMOs.  And looking back, no other MMO has yielded anywhere near as many "war stories" as CoH has (with apologies and respect to any reader who has actual war stories...).  So glad to be able to play this again.

[Evercent]

I mean, I gotta say thanks to whoever the original developers were, and more so to those that bought this game back. I'm a new player, only started this year. It's amazing to see all these people coming back and being so happy to have something they held so dearly again. I'm enjoying this game and the community so much. Everything is fantastic and I owe a thank you to everyone that made it possible, that of course includes all of the players.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Evercent

[fauxfire76]

Okay.... buckle up. This is going to take a long while...

 

So me and my roommate were playing waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back around just after i2. I was running a fire blaster with devices and super speed. This was back when super speed had a cloaking element to it. My roommate was running assault rifle, flight, and I think devices as well though I could be wrong. That's not relevant.

So we made it to needing to do things in Perez Park and our mission entrance after zoning in from Atlas Park was all the way around the top of the map to the other side. I started running for it. Now I made a macro that when hit, would make a snarky comment about the targeted player. This was after I'd seen one too many cloned character and was a bit fed up (petty I know, I was young). As I started to run I spotted yet another clone, targeted them, and popped the macro. They started haranguing me in tells and I put them on ignore.

I moved on and again started to head to the mission. I got just around the NE corner when I ran face first into a mob of 5th Column (this was before they were Council) that were level 35. Thank the gods I had cloak and super speed going as they would not aggro on me as a result. Now I'd _never_ seen mobs like these up to that point so I was zoomed in pretty close checking out the detail of the big robot looking mob. Next thing I know, it suddenly opens fire right at me!

I fully expected to die but all the shots went around me. I turned 180 degrees just in time to see the cloned character I poked earlier fall over dead. I snarked off one more time in general and my roommate decided he was going to try something that was pretty stupid in hindsight but hey, that's how we roll. He targeted the big bot from a distance, flew as high as possible, queued snipe, and then slowly sunk down until the attack went off. He had just enough time to turn and try to start flying away when he was one shot outta the air by the tiny little floaty bot that was in the group.

We were cackling with laughter and he dared me to do much the same. Welp, I backed up, targeted the large bot with a fireball, then ran up and past with super speed. Somehow I actually managed to wind up on the other side of the map with a sliver of health left. lol

By this time someone had come across the body of my roommate and gave him a rez. We were shouting at each other across the apartment with excitement. When he decided he was going to try it again I announced in the general channel "Everyone back up! He's doing it again!" and the map literally CLEARED! LMFAO it was an amazing moment of the sheer level of stupid hijinks we could get up to in the game that people were actually totally game with us doing. Everyone in the general chat were cheering on our silliness and just getting a kick out of it all. I don't remember what happened as a result of my roommate taking a shot at the mobs again other than being dead. I think we decided to go somewhere else at that point.

 

Still, one of my most vivid memories of the game. 😄

[EscherVox]

I met my best friend playing this game... we were both level 7 newbies in Perez Park... His character was Deaconess a dark / regen scrapper back in the day when those toons were GOD like.  I was a stone / stone tank.  We started seeing each other quite a bit in the following days and along with my former wife made quite the trio...

 

Today, 15 years after we first started... and for the first time in 7, Deac / Onus rode again. 🙂

 

Thanks Devs and everyone else who has brought our city back!

[Oubliette_Red]

Thanks again to all the folks donating their time to making this project happen and keeping it alive! 🎉

I have to say that my most often relayed story of CoH to those who actually never played it didn't occur in the game but in the forums.

 

🥞

 

At one point in time in the Legacy forums, someone posted a f*bomb-laden post railing about something, don't even recall the subject. The moderators, upon seeing such a violation of the EULA edited said post with the obligatory ****. When the OP saw the damage wrought to their glorious rage-post they PM'd the Moderator with a message containing all the previously censured words along with a string of invectives demanding that said post be restored to its original form.

The Moderation, upon receipt of the PM, expected a similar tirade within the forums, took the added measure of setting a filter that whenever and f*bomb was detected to instead replace it with 'pancake'. vBulliten, being rather simpleminded at the time (or perhaps a missed setting by the Moderator) took **** and replaced every letter of the word with pancake so that posts were appearing with pancakepancakepancakepancake.

[Healix]

That's why I made this LOLOL

 

[Abraxus]

I'll share a memory, and it's a pretty recent one.  Like last night recent.

 

Synapse TF, being the "weekly", is not surprisingly being run every few minutes.  I had just completed a run with a L15 blaster, who ended up L20 at the end, and it took only 1 hour 20 minutes.  About that time, a friend got online, and wanted to run the same TF.  Well, I had another character in that range that I wanted the badge, the XP, and the merits for, so I said "Sure".  15 minutes later, nobody had started one, so we formed it ourselves.  Got a team of 8 very quickly.  All good so far. 

 

A couple of missions in, someone went AFK, and never returned.  Then a few minutes later, another member DC'd, and never came back.  So, now we are looking at fighting on, with a team of 6, comprised of two Brutes, a Defender, three Dominators, and a Controller.  Given the nature of the Synapse TF (which is that the majority of missions are "kill all"), we started feeling the "slog fatigue" at around the two hour mark.  It was getting late on the east coast, where a few of our team members hailed from, and they were dozing off at their keyboards.  But, we fought on!  We didn't have anyone with Stealth/TP to find the bosses in the last few missions, and teleport us directly to them to save time.  Nope.  We slogged through it all to get to them.  When we finally got to Babbage, we didn't have the damage with just the 6 of us to even make a dent!  Fortunately, since he is outside, we were able to call for assistance from others in the zone.  It took longer than is typical, be we finally prevailed.  The final mission with The Clockwork King, slogged it through the lair, finally got to him, and took him down quicker than expected, given what happened with Babbage.  

 

So, at three hours, and 20 minutes, we were finally done, and feeling like we had earned every one of those 116 merits!  It was not the finest example of an efficient, well balanced Task Force.  But, it was a great example of perseverance, and dedication.  It would have been easy for more to just say "You know, this is taking too long, and I'm done".  But, nobody did that.  They fought on, and prevailed.  Not unlike the CoH community itself has done all these years since the game shut-down.  The reason we are playing again at all, is because we never gave up hope, and believed against all odds, that someday, we would be back to tell stories like this again someday.  I'll take playing a less than stellar Task Force experience any day of the week, over just being able to remember the good ones from days gone by.

Edited August 10, 2019 by Abraxus