OK, I have a somewhat nerdy confession to make. I sometimes play an MMO. If you have no idea what an MMO is, it stands for Massive Multiplayer Online (Game). Think World of Warcraft. But, I'm definitely not nerdy enough to play WoW. (I do have standards!) My MMO is City of Heroes, where you make up a Superhero and go around and fight crime. Awesome, eh? I started playing it about 5 years ago because my brother, who then lived in Connecticut, played it. It was a chance to talk to him and "hang out" with him online. Plus, it was fun, and I got hooked pretty quickly. Not long after I started playing, Steven had his famous operation that put him in a coma for 4 months.
During that time, I kept playing and found a few new friends through the game. By chance, I ended up going through some sewer missions with a guy named Radmind. He invited me to join his SuperGroup (I know I'm throwing out a lot of City of Heroes-specific terms here, but they aren't really that important to "get" the story, so just fight through it if you don't "get" it!) The group I joined was called Superheroes, Inc. They were a big, awesome group of guys who played nearly every night and were funny and fun to be around. Guys like VirtuBob, BlackSpectre, hguoR, Green Goat, Baggy Bones, Nrgon, War Torch, PsiGale, PencilGuy, Rilayna and many many more. This was in the days before FaceBook, so we knew each other mostly by our character names.
The character I was on when I met them all was named Bubba, and the name stuck. Pretty much all of my characters since then have been named Bubba [Something] - There's been Bubba Zero, Bubba Ghanoush, BubBQ, ExcaliBubba, and many more. Bubba has a pretty distinctive look. A big green guy with purple (sometimes red) hair. Even though these days most of the guys know my (real) name, I'm still Bubba. I have a feeling if I ever meet any of them in person, thats what they'd call me.
I never really got very good at the game. Playing by myself is very frustrating for me. My brother Steven seemed to prefer playing by himself. Though he never turned me down if I wanted to tag along with him, which was always.
I'm always the guy that dies, aggros big crowds by mistake or runs around the corner too fast and throws off the whole plan. Luckily, the guys I play with are pretty patient for the most part and laugh it off.
The more we played together, the more we got to know each other. During our time in Paragon City, Superheroes Inc members have gone through divorces, had children, lost jobs, gotten married, moved their families and have had loved ones die. You know, real life stuff. Through all of that, we were able to log in for a few hours and hang out and forget some of the bad stuff waiting for us when we logged off. There have been times that I've been logged in for hours and never fought a single bad guy, but just sat in our base and talked to people. Kind of superhero Skype. There were other times when I would sneak on to the game at work and Baggy Bones would fight off a zillion demons while I just stood around (online, working in real life!) getting leveled up.
When Steven died, I made a character in memorial to him. He wears a kilt and has long hair and a beard just like Steven. He carries around a giant hammer and is invincible. I don't play him a whole lot because its tough.
These days, we don't get on much. At some point we've all gone away and come back to the game through the years, except for maybe Radmind, who has been pretty consistently there. Me and VirtuBob and BlackSpectre have recently gotten on a few times a week and it's good times.
So, anyway... so what? Whats the point here? Well, a couple of weeks ago, the company that own City of Heroes announced that they are closing the game down on November 30th. Its got me (and many others) pretty bummed. I mean, the game is fun and all, but CoH is much more than a game to me. I always joke that my CoH friends are the best friends I've never met. We "know" each other these days through FaceBook - and I have to admit, "meeting" someone you've known for a long time as "Goat Green" or something and then finding out their real name is Joe Smith (not really his name!) or something is kind of weird at first. And then seeing what they really looked like was strange as well. They were all normal. More normal looking than me!
I kind of realize I'm starting to ramble on a bit here. Guess I came here mostly to say I'm going to miss CoH. There is a way you can tell how long you've played the game. I logged in to every character I had on the Justice server to find out. It was more than 3,000 hours. And that doesn't include all the characters I've deleted over the years. Thats a lot of time. December 1st it will all be gone.
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| BUBBA! |
I never really got very good at the game. Playing by myself is very frustrating for me. My brother Steven seemed to prefer playing by himself. Though he never turned me down if I wanted to tag along with him, which was always.
I'm always the guy that dies, aggros big crowds by mistake or runs around the corner too fast and throws off the whole plan. Luckily, the guys I play with are pretty patient for the most part and laugh it off.
The more we played together, the more we got to know each other. During our time in Paragon City, Superheroes Inc members have gone through divorces, had children, lost jobs, gotten married, moved their families and have had loved ones die. You know, real life stuff. Through all of that, we were able to log in for a few hours and hang out and forget some of the bad stuff waiting for us when we logged off. There have been times that I've been logged in for hours and never fought a single bad guy, but just sat in our base and talked to people. Kind of superhero Skype. There were other times when I would sneak on to the game at work and Baggy Bones would fight off a zillion demons while I just stood around (online, working in real life!) getting leveled up.
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| GuruDude, in memory of Steven |
These days, we don't get on much. At some point we've all gone away and come back to the game through the years, except for maybe Radmind, who has been pretty consistently there. Me and VirtuBob and BlackSpectre have recently gotten on a few times a week and it's good times.
So, anyway... so what? Whats the point here? Well, a couple of weeks ago, the company that own City of Heroes announced that they are closing the game down on November 30th. Its got me (and many others) pretty bummed. I mean, the game is fun and all, but CoH is much more than a game to me. I always joke that my CoH friends are the best friends I've never met. We "know" each other these days through FaceBook - and I have to admit, "meeting" someone you've known for a long time as "Goat Green" or something and then finding out their real name is Joe Smith (not really his name!) or something is kind of weird at first. And then seeing what they really looked like was strange as well. They were all normal. More normal looking than me!
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| Bubba Zero in Superheroes, Inc Uniform |
I kind of realize I'm starting to ramble on a bit here. Guess I came here mostly to say I'm going to miss CoH. There is a way you can tell how long you've played the game. I logged in to every character I had on the Justice server to find out. It was more than 3,000 hours. And that doesn't include all the characters I've deleted over the years. Thats a lot of time. December 1st it will all be gone.
Comments
But just like a superhero, it will go out fighting, check www.cohtitan.com or www.paragonwiki.com for status of the efforts to save City of Heroes.
We are Heroes.
This is what we do.