City of Heroes - A Retrospective

    City Of Heroes - A Retrospective

 

This is a story about my time spent playing a game that was near and dear to me. This is a true story.

I started playing city of heroes in April 2004 when it hit shelves. I remember it vividly. I went to Best Buy to try and find a new game that was like "Freedom Force". I saw City of Heroes and figured "looks like a third person action title where you get to make your own hero, neat". When I got home and loaded it up it prompted me for my credit card info which was surprising. "Why would you need my credit card?" I asked the computer. After a Google search I learned it was an MMORPG, a type of game that was played exclusively online with other people. This interested me as the only other MMORPG I had play at this point was Asheron's Call, and that was 1 time, at a friends house. I gladly paid an extra 15 bucks to get it going. I mean, I had already spent 50 on the game and installed it. I told myself I can always cancel it if I want.

I looked through the class types that were available. Blaster - ranged damage dealers, Tankers - melee damage takers, Defenders - support and healing, Scrapers - melee damage dealers and Controllers - crowd control and support. After mush deliberation I rolled out a Controller named The Telepathy and started playing. It was great! I had some good teammates who worked well with me and each other. This was a great game with people who were my "friends". 3 months later my girlfriend moved in with me and the most common phrase heard at my home was "Are you coming to bed tonight?" Which was normally followed by a grunt and a slurp of coffee. I had talked a few of my "RL" friend into playing at this point too and we would play all night until the servers went down for maintenance at 7 am. Then we would go and eat breakfast and I would visit my girl, who was working the morning shift at Starbucks at the time and apologize for the night before, normally explaining that we got into a "thing" that took way longer than expected.

I was addicted. I bought guides, spent all my free time on the online community boards, came up with tactics for missions and assumed leadership off my own supergroup, The Mongrels. I even wrote down all my ideas on how to make our characters better by playing off each others power sets. Then out of the blue I ran out of money to pay for it each month. You see, I had quit my job because they refused to promote me to a leadership position. Stupid move on my part but luckily I had saved a few bucks from the work I was doing so I could live for a few months without issue. A few months quickly became a month and it wasn't long before I was mooching off of the girlfriend. I switched over my account to her card without her knowing, but unlike me, she checked her statements. So that didn't last. I was left with no choice but to find a new job.

Next thing I knew I was playing again, and my efforts were redoubled. I had enlisted all my friends and we played daily. What a great time we had, we each picked a class and power set that would work well with everyone and we tore the game up. By this point, I had somehow gotten married. With the release of City of Villains I knew I had to upgrade my computer. Downside was there was no way the "wife" would let me. I was so addicted that I went and got a 1k limit credit card from Best Buy and bought a new computer without her knowledge. I told her my old one died and I needed to get a new one. She was wary but ultimately there was little she could do, it's not like it could be returned and I knew a lot more about computers then her. The addiction got worse, almost every night until 7 am, then leave for work to arrive by 8. Sleep during the day after work. Two months later she found my old computer in the garage and booted it up. That was a fun 2 weeks of the silent treatment. Then at last the day came.

"Quit the game or I'm leaving" she said. It had been over 3 years of playing. I told her "No, I'm not quitting and your not leaving, I'll slow down". I started going to bed by 2 am. It's important to note also that by this time I had ballooned up to 315 lbs. I exited high school (2003) at 200. Around this time (late 2007) I decided to join the Army. This was the nail in the coffin. I quit the game with a couple level 50 characters and didn't look back. After basic training I re-started my account. I played for a few months but it failed to live up to the memories. I stopped playing for good. I've had the itch in the back of my head for awhile to replay it, but I knew I would get sucked in again. So I was content knowing that if I ever did want to go back I could and my characters were there waiting for me. That was until November 30th 2012, when NCsoft closed its doors and killed City Of Heroes.

I was heart broken, all that work, all those fun times, deleted off of a server and forgotten forever. It was like not talking to a friend for years then finding out they have terminal cancer and by the time you get to the hospital it's to late. I felt bad, for everything I had done in the name of this game that no longer existed, hundreds of hours of my life I'll never get back. I took one hard look at the shut down on YouTube and when the servers went down I knew, the addiction was finally gone.It's funny though, I've never been fully addicted to something like this before. I understand that I can't get it but the itch to play is still there, like I could just boot it up and go whenever I wanted. The shut down has made me realize just how badly I want to play. I guess its true what they say about always wanting what you can't have.