Goodbye Rogue Isles.
Goodbye to the Freedom Phalanx, and to the Vindicators. Goodbye to Arachnos, to Ouroboros, and to Vanguard.
Goodbye Statesman, Positron, Manticore, Synapse, Sister Psyche, Numina, Citadel, and Penelope Yin.
Goodbye to all the contacts, and most of all goodbye Detective Jose Brogan.
Goodbye Atlas Park, goodbye Steel Canyon. Goodbye Shadow Shard, jump pads and all.
Goodbye Mercy Island, and Nerva Archipelago. Goodbye Grandville, goodbye Sharkhead.
Goodbye Praetoria. Goodbye Resistance. Goodbye Loyalists.
Goodbye Heroes.
Goodbye Vigilantes.
Goodbye Villains.
Goodbye Rogues.
Goodbye Jury Ct., goodbye University Ave. (x2), and goodbye Leghorn St.
Today marks the final day that City of Heroes will grace the internet with its bandwidth. Most of the nearly 2 million people who tried City of Heroes won’t even notice its passing, as they left the game long ago, or simply never got into it to the level that our die hard fans did.
But those die hard fans are what makes today a most difficult day for everyone who worked on City of Heroes. We knew we delivered something special to you, something that spoke to you, something that inspired you, and something that you loved.
Taking that away from you is something I NEVER wanted to happen. I wanted to grow old with you, continue to give you new content and to take your characters places they have never been before. I loved hearing your stories of playing the game, the amazing characters you all made, and the friendships you forged. Again, I never wanted this shutdown to happen.
But happen it did, and now we’ll have nothing but fond memories of our time in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. I really thought I had come to accept the closure a couple months back, but here we are on the last day and it is just now hitting me that this is the end.
Tomorrow we will all wake up on a planet that no longer has a Paragon City to visit. This is a sad thing, it’s ok to be sad about it. I applaud the time and efforts you heroes (and villains) put into trying to #SaveCoH, and I do wish that those efforts had worked. But lets all keep our chins up and our pride intact. We (the devs and the players) together made something amazing, and the world will be at a loss without it.
I’ll be in Paragon City until the final Mapserver disconnect. Watch my twitter feed () for more information today.
You said it well. Goodbye from S. and the Protectors of Paragon City.
Good-bye Zergling Ninja, my first toon.
It was nice to be here. It was nice meeting some of you at HeroCon. I. Had. Fun.
I will miss you. I got a bag from the last HC I visited. It is blue and has the game logo on the bottom. I took it for granted and srsly abused it. It was my goto bag for wallet n stuff. I’m taking it out to the store for one last trip then it will be retired, along with my CoV glass, my t shirt and costume card I never used. My son and I used to play. We wont anymore. My son is 43.
This is my second sunset. This one is worse than the first.
Zerg had a backstory. My friend told me not to write it down. I remember that she was average. She didn’t grow up in a broken home. She hated being average. She never stuck with anything because the result was always average. She felt invisible. Average is invisible. The journey was a long one. Too long to tell here. Mercy Island saw her beginning and will watch the sun set over her average life. She will disappear into the shadows, never to return.
I,ve been playing COH for 7 yrs non stop almost every day, except when my PC broke and had to buy new one, as soon as I got new PC I downloaded the game and continue playing until now, I,m very sad to see it go away for ever, I was introduced to the game by my friends son and never stopped . I,am 70 yrs old and I made COH exclusive to play after I tried other mmo games, I realized there is nothing like City of Heroes, is unique , I will miss all the friends I made in game some of them became personal friends , getting in touch by phone or e-mail, I played so much I ran out of slots in all servers, had to delete some characters to make new ones, tried them all, tankers,defenders,blaster, etc. I hope the game surface again by another company, if that happens I will get it in a heartbeat. Thank you to all the staff you did a terrific job on designing COH, will miss you tremendously . (sniff,sniff,sniff).
Jose Medina
I would like to say goodbye to “Mothership Mondays”. Its the one true group activity I could actually plan around work and family around.
Goodbye to the Costume Contests.
Goodbye to all the Supergroups.
Goodbye to Big & Little drums.
Goodbye to Influence.
Goodbye Accolades & Accolade Powers.
Goodbye Blyde Square & New Thebes.
Goodbye Atlas Park Blimp.
Yours Truly,
Hordax, Pole Vault, Jim Bright, Shane Shifter, Jack Victory, Nick Napalm, Fx7, Night Breeder, Casting Bubbles, Agent 803, Mind Gamez, Wally Watts, TJ Thunderstrike, Jett Blakk, Sonic Tricks
Truly a sad day. I’ll miss Paragon City so much. Thank you to the devs for making a game world and engine so engaging and fun. Thanks to the friends and fellow players who brought so much enjoyment to the community. Know that what we all shared was memorable to me. Best wishes.
Having been with the game for a loong long time ( 7 years ) its a very sad day for me. Ive had some awesome times with the game. And made many friends because of it. And it leaves me sad and nostalgic to see it end. Lets hope there will be a game like it in the future.
To everyone who worked on the game, i salute and thank you for 7 years of fun. To everyone who has played the game, I hope you had as much fun with it as i have.
I’ll end this post with these famous words: Heroes may come and go, but true heroism never dies.
It was a GREAT ride!
I will certainly miss CoH and CoV. I was in on the early beta and told ANYONE who would listen what an AWESOME game this was!
I got my teenage son and his best friend to play. While I played on and off for quite a while, my son and his friend continued to play (Stickman Gunner and other variations of Stickman ) on and off. Whenever my son was on break from school, he’d come home and play until all hours of the night. And we’d reminisce about the times that I’d power level him (which is really what we as parents do for our kids, right?). GREAT GREAT MEMORIES!
This year, my son died. He was 21. For me, I guess it’s appropriate (and profoundly sad and weirdly ironic) that CoH is dying too.
This game will ALWAYS have a HUGELY fond place in my heart as I cherish the times that my son and I played CoH together.
Like Bubba, this is my second sunset. But for me, this one is easier to take than the first one.
It’s… been a long run. City of Heroes was the first MMO I ever played. The first game I actually ever bought for myself. I thought it’d always be there. Sadly, that was not meant to be… I didn’t meet too many people in the game that stayed long enough to actually be called friends, but I do remember the few that I actually enjoyed playing with. God, why did this have to happen the moment I actually create my first aesthetically-pleasing character!? I finally got my outfit mix down right!
Matt,
It was great to hang with you at the Player Summit. Nice karaoke! (I sang that night, too! – “I don’t want to be”)
I just had the most sobering chain of reasoning.
COH was my first online game and my first exposure to a forum community. I started COH when I had recently moved my wife and I to the Atlanta area. We were so broke because it was difficult for me to stay content at a job for very long. During my job hopping, I became very involved with the Triumph forums and was even a helper on the Titan Network team for a short while. I ran many community events for our server for several years.
A bit before the Going Rogue / Incarnates announcement, I became temporarily bored with COH (after being a Hamidon raid leader for quite some time and running with some serious min-maxers). I attached myself to a new community for a game being developed by a local company. While their MMO attempt paled in comparison to COH, it was a change of pace that got me hooked for several months. I became a forum warrior there as I had been on the Triumph and Titan Network forums. After a few months of community involvement, I interviewed to be part of community management at that company.
Why is all of this sobering? I have been at that company for over 2 years now. While it has the same ups and downs of any job, I have remained content to stay at the company allowing my family to be financially stable. Because of this, my wife and I finally felt confident to start having children. My beautiful daughter is in our lives today thanks to the chain of events that all started with the creation of my City of Heroes account.
Thank you for leading a community-minded team that inspired me to this career and so much more.
It was not getting the best gear or hitting 50! It’s the journey getting there, along with friends. The game brought our essence into the game, may it be in a good way, or the dark side. Almost a decade of my life was invested in this game, that it already became part of my life. A game that I will always be proud of, like a father trying to teach his son the beauties of fishing while the son holds a PSP. Like I always tell people, dreams may never be reality, but the experience gained and emotions felt are real, the same goes for this game. It will live on in our memories, and in our very soul!
I remember when CoH came out in stores. I wanted it so bad. However, funds were tight and I couldn’t afford it at the time. Years went by. I met a friend online and he let me use his account. I loved it! He even surprised me by making my heroine for me. Then as a gift, he purchased my own account. I loved playing and he was patient as he taught me how to play. I ran with him and another friend. I would stay up late running missions. I made several heroes and villains and I loved each of them. My friend hit some rough times and both of our accounts lapsed.
While my time with CoH was brief, I loved it. Seeing it go is something I never thought would happen. I figured someday soon, I’d reactivate my account and continue where I left off. Thank you for the opportunity to play. I hate to see you go. Losing my heroes and villains feels like losing family. They will live in my heart, but I will miss them. Thank you again. Take care.
SparrowsFlame and others
Goodbye to weird nights in pocket D
Goodbye to racking record death counts in late night TFs
Goodbye to doing YMCA in Sharkhead with Halloween costumes.
Goodbye to a lot of great people, and an awesome game.
From a few days post-launch, all the way to the last night.
Best MMO there ever was.
@ Bit-Player
Alloy Girl, Roxy Rebound, Warbird Ticonderoga, Myrrha, Wildcharge, Hydrashock, Leslie Saunders, Seer Kerrigan, Sahiri, Antonina, Liquid Blue, Skyraider Sandy, NachtDrachen, Adaptable, and Under-Tow.
Goodbye Paragon, from the Maidens of Mercy (guardian server). I know this is just a game, but the kindred spirits I met along my journeys in Paragon have made a definite impact on my life. Some of these friends I will take with me as I hang up my cape and move onto a more mundane world. There is something special in the people who bond over a game. A common interest that spans the miles between lives and allows people who would never meet to not only get to know each other, but to form the bonds of friendship and in some cases, love. I have met and gotten to know people from all over the country in Paragon and those are the memories that make it hard to accept that the servers are going dark. No more will I be able to loose the grip of gravity and fly, no more will my battlecry echo through the streets and strike fear in the hearts of evildoers. My cape is now hung in my closet, waiting for a possible future where I can once again join the fight against the darkness. I salute you, my friends, my heroes. We were with it until the end and our fight was not in vain. We fought, we played, we laughed and we loved, as heroes.
*hugs all* EM.
COH has been a truly incredible game.
Cryptic and then Paragon both did wonders with this, it will not be forgotten.
The sadest part, is that COH and Paragon are going away,.
NCsoft and possibly Nexon are responsible for this.
Both will be remembered and neither will ever be forgiven for their part is this.
Matt,
Thanks. Just thanks. To all of you.
There’s a saying that goes: “Imagination is the highest kite you can fly.” I want to thank Paragon Studios and it’s staff for allowing my imagination to super jump, super speed, as well as fly, with wings and a cape into the cosmos. You have brought me so much happiness these past 6 years. I thank you and wish you well.
CoH was my first MMO and no other can really compare to it. I met a lot of new friends on community forums pre-beta and when I was given 3rd wave beta invite I was beside myself. I fought along side my fellow heroes during the Rikti invasion on the last day of beta. Taunted the hell out of the Dev who lead the assault in Founders Fall. He dished it, we took it and drove them off. I still have screen shots of the mother ship crowding the sky above the city. Then going live was another fresh step of fun… We fought all that was given to us to face and now we face the twilight of a great game. A fight we cannot win, apparently. The one time that Paragon City is truly in danger and not one hero can do a thing about it…
I will stand with my fellow heroes on this very eve (virtue server)… I love you all… Those I fought side by side, those I saved or was rescued by, the good, the evil and those who I happen to leap past in town and greeted with a friend nod.
I will be moving onto another MMO with GAMMA-MAN… Millennium City, here I come….
Thank you and all the Devs for 8.5 years of THE MOST AMAZING MMORPG EVER!
It was my first MMORPG and I was hooked right away. All others I’ve tried pale in comparison and I find them quite lacking. I hold onto all hope and faith that the City will rise and reopen again soon. There may be other superhero MMORPG’s in the future, bu there will only ever be one true City. Even though the plug is being pulled tonight, the sun will never truly set on Paragon City, or the Rogue Isles, or even praetoria as long as we remember them and hold them in our hearts. LONG LIVE PARAGON!! Tomorrow the real fight begins for our beloved city!
Although I joined the game in 2007 well after it’s inception, I had a blast playing it while I was subscribed. Some of my favorite character designs were made in the amazing character creator you guys had. It was awesome to be able to zip around Steel Canyon with my friends as a Tank. It’s sad to see CoH go, and it will be missed by many fans. It offered countless hours of fun and content for millions and it will remain one of my favorite MMO’s.
Thank you guys for all your hard work and awesome game content, you deserve a great deal of praise for everything you accomplished.
Red Coyote signing off….
Thank you sooooo much! COH was my very first MMO! This guy I met on eHarmony who lived 1500 miles away from me suggested that we might get to know each other fighting vaz in the sewers. Basically our whole courtship took place in Paragon City and as marrieds we spent many many hours making many many alts and going on some wonderful wacky wild adventures. COH, will ALWAYS have a very very special place in our hearts. Thank you Devs and players for making our time in Paragon so very very special. We’ll miss you!
Mezmeara and Captain Courageous (Virtue)
City of Heroes, the only MMO i could ever really get into. You will truly be missed.
NCSoft were fools for canceling CoH. Not only was it a profitable MMO that had years of future development being being planned out. They also alienated many fans from ever trusting them again.
Sigh… goodbye indeed, “City of” has been my online home for the past 7 years and while I’ve vacationed elshwere, nothing could hold my interest like “City of” Logged in for one last rikti invasion this evening in Pinnacle at Talos and now I’ve parked my main toon hovering right above the Storm Palace awaiting the inevitable turning out the lights. I’ll miss you City of Heros, Vigilantes, Rogues and Villians
And to the devs, thanks so much for your efforts its been a great ride filled with some of my most memorable gaming moments
Thank you Matt, for everything over the years. I wish you the best of luck.
Thank you, Positron, for pouring so much of your life into this game. Thank you, everyone who played and loved CoH, for making it a wonderful experience for us all.
This is a quote once said by somebody I know that I think is appropriate here.
“There are two things that matter in life: what you leave behind, and what you take with you.”
It was an amazing run. The community was uniquely hospitable. I really enjoyed the years I spent there. Thank you, you and everyone that made this game possible and kept it going all this time.
Our heroes are saved on our computers, I think, so long as you don’t delete the COH directory. Who knows, maybe someday the servers will open up again and we can play our beloved toons once again!!!!
I will never forget the first time I flew.
I’ve played with my kids from the original beta. They grew up with this game.
Thanks for all your hard work, Matt.
I would like to say goodbye to all the great friends I have made in the game. You will all be missed.
Thank you so much for all of your hard work, Matt! You and the whole dev team are the best! It’s a sad day for us all!
Not sure if you’ll ever see this, Posi, but thank you so much for City of Heroes. I played for 4 years and the game made me a better person. I don’t think i can put it better than that. You and your team shaped who I am today and I’ll never forget you.
I’ve played COh from begging to the end tonight, Stayed on untii the final mapserve. We had a regular saturday night game with friends, Co-workers almost every weekend without fail, What I loved about the game was that everyone in my family could play, From my 5 year old nephews and neices to my 80 year old mother (she was a regualr on our Sat night group for the past 5 years). It was a great run and we will miss it greatly. I’ve tried a number of other MMO’s out there and none have been as enjoyable as COH. It was in a class all it’s own. Thanks, to all the devs, Community and friends who made this such a unforgettable experience. Mayhaps we’ll team up again, some where down the line.
While I’ll stay in touch with the important few, and our characters will survive in one form or the other, nothing will replace the game they orignially came from, and the millions of possibilities they might have seen. Thank you for everything, Matt. I, for one, will be a loyal follower, unless you work for NCSoft again, that is
Mourned, Bloody Carrie, Time Incarnate, Destiny Blinks, Arbiter Pocyk, Ken-Po Tengu, and so many others, signing off.
I have played a few mmo games since 2004, but CoH was my first and is still my favorite. The devs made an outstanding game that did a lot of things differently from other MMOs, and the more games I looked at, the more I appreciated CoH. The game mechanic was fun, friendly and made teaming better. As a gamer, and comic nerd, the dev team hit it out of the park IMO, and every mmo I play now gets the “how does this compare to CoH” test. From the closed beta until the final “Lost connection to map server” I have enjoyed it. I say thank you for a great game that was always being added to. The devs made a fabulous platform, and the players made a great community, which combined for a wonderful experience.
Matt,
Thank you for everything you and your colleagues have worked on and provided over the years. Thank you for making a game that allowed such an amazing community to flourish.
And thanks to everyone in the community who made this such a great experience!
To Paragon, the studio and the players who have inhabited this virtual home for the last eight and a half years. My membership was not always 100%, but as a teenaged military dependant, who spent four years of my life at three different middle schools, as well as two high schools, thank you. For having been a steady factor during the turbulent times in my life, where the social awkwardness of being the new kid could be forgotten by prowling the streets of Paragon and later the Rogue Isles. Now as I’m in college and long past that social awkwardness, I’m saddened to see one of the greatest, most unique, and most incredible games, group of devs, and communities say goodbye. Will always remember all of you and wish you the very best in your future endeavours, as well as hold out hope that one day I might see you all under Paragon’s skies once again.
Incendian, Operative Ces, and the Magnitude Mason.
I haven’t been able to get to sleep. My 2-year-old daughter will undoubtedly ask me at some point today “Want fight bad guys?” and I will have to tell her that there won’t be any more bad guys to fight again. She used to love watching my (or my husband’s) characters fly, fight, dance, you name it.
I wasn’t the most socially active player out there, but I have to add my voice to the many others out there who say that this game has the best community of any major MMO that I know of. There were some bad apples, but the overwhelming awesomeness of the community made the bad apples easy to ignore.
This game was there for me before I left college, got a job, married and startred a family. My life has been great, but it’s nice to be reminded of when things were simpler sometimes, and this game was a very big reminder of that time for me.
I’m too sad to look at the screenshots I’ve made over the past weeks, but I am glad I’ve made them and when the sting of the game’s ending dulls a bit, I’ll be happy to relive those memories again. Thank you for all the amazing memories.
Thank you, Matt.
While you say goodbye, I will continue to say: until we meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when…
Thank you so much for talking on twitchtv last night. I know the closure caused you to lose much more than us. I have so many hopes that City of Heroes gets purchased but it won’t be worth playing without you and your team back, too.
Well it was 3am when the lights went out. Really couldn’t sleep well after that. So in order to not continue shedding tears (I have things to do today) I thought I’d just tell you a bit about myself, my Coh and my toons. I started somewhere around Nov 2004 so I’m VIP old enough (I even got invited to beta and I still have the email). My friend showed me this game. LOVED it instantly. So hence my arrival on Guardian as a storm/gravity troller named Laana. Slowly I was mentored by KickEmInDePantz on the rules of game play and keyboard speak. (ie ppl, lvl, sk, mt, ect). As I climbed the leveling ladder and was teaming with other hero’s I came upon a new fav, the dark/dark def. Thus the alt-ing began. I was in love with my dark/dark def and I could not get enough.
Now about myself, I’m not one who was on forums or reporting bugs or going to meet the makers. I allowed others to lead the the team, I mentored newbies, I stayed in the shadows. I was there to play and have fun. This game, my coh, was my life saver. I was in the darkest place of my own doings and this community got me through it unknowingly. As I learned the powers (from the official book nonetheless) and became friends with ppl things started to change. I played regularly with the same ppl, and a trust was soon built all stemming from howling twilight. HT you say? Why? Because as we teamed together more often my team learned to trust me. My running away to use tp friend, HT to rez them, I would take the fall, and once the baddies were down, one or two would pass on a rez to me. I needed to learn to trust myself again. My teammates were relying on me. This game, no this life, and the people in it really helped bring me through and back out into the open.
For the past few years, I admit, I have not played as much. Life has been good and has been happening. Plus my pc is so old it can barely run the game without dcing me to “lost connection with mapserver”. I even played the game with dialup. That’s right. Dial up. It was always nice to know that, as a paying participant, I could come back whenever I wanted though. Every few months I would start having dreams of my toons on mission maps and I knew it was a sign that I had to get on. Lots of things have changed. Some good some not as good. Nothing worth complaining about as far as I am concerned. (PS the door to door tot idea….AWESOME!!!) Most of my original teammates had already gone. Life happened for them as well. So I dabbled in Villians for a stint but kept coming back to heros. What can I say, first love.
So I learned something from all of the choices I have made on Coh. My two choices of servers, Guardian and Protector, (toons moved only because my rl friend wanted me to move over to a more populated server). Characters made, defenders and controllers with some type of healing powers. Yes I dabbled with tanks and scrappers but always I came back to def and trollers. What did I learn? These toons are not just toons. For me they were and are an extension of me. They are part of who I am in rl. I am a protector, a guardian, a healer, a backup, a support role. I take control when I must. And I am a defender. It took time to see it but, for me, it really is true.
So this battle is not over til the Mayan calender commences (then we have zombies to contend with not just NC Soft). I have your back Positron and all the other devs. Whatever becomes of Coh in the future, wherever you may go to start anew, I will support you. I will continue to protect and guard this game as it protected and guarded me in my darkest hours. I was there til the end with my original toon Laana. but
I am a lvl 50 dark dark defender originally from Guardian. I am TrueConsequence. I am a stone/emp controller lvl 50 originally from Protector. I am Better Days. I am a lvl 50 WS originally from Guardian. I am InternalConsequence.
I am Longer Nights, HasBeenOnce, WillBe, Never Will Be Again, Alaana Lee Night, Travena, SureThing, QV. I am FalseConsequence, ExternalConsequence, Dire Consequences, Consequently, and One Last Consequence. I am a player that you don’t know about but I will continue to fight for you. NC Soft has a lot of consequences coming their way.
Its so odd, waking up to a world without a City of Heroes. Its like the Anti-Christmas.
dear devs , i am sad,but have many happy memories from the 5 plus years i played COH,this was truely a great game,i dropped off about 2 years ago,but for personal family reasons not because i lost interest in the game,
took me a year to get main charactor Darkest hood (rifle baster/fire control) to lvl 50 damn that was a proud day,
all the TF;s we did the respec trials that lasted for days lol we had dedicated heroes then : ),
goodby to my super groud Super Heroes Intensive Trainin team,,,(the S.H.I.T.T) lol and all the sister SG’s that got thier names nerfed some how the S.H.I.TT. never got nerfed and goodby to virtue
Ciao every one,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Darkest hood
Actually, Arcana, last night felt to me like watching an old friend on life support getting unplugged…
Matt, a hearty thank you to you and the rest of the team! I have played COH/V for the last 8 years and throughly enjoyed the game play, vast content and great community. I will surely miss all of this. My hope is that another company will buy the game up and hire you guys back to continue your excellent work.
To me, it was like seeing the local church shutter, or the local neighborhood bar close down, depending on how you spend your weekends :). In the end, I wasn’t thinking about the game. I was thinking about the community. And while we’re all still here, we’ve lost something important.
But I like to think while we could not stop the end, we went out on our own terms. Some went out swinging, some went out chatting, most of us went out just hanging out and being with each other at the end. And being complete smartasses while the ops people looked for the right plug to pull.
Which reminds me. Hey Matt. You’ve seen my numbers fiddling, what did you think about my writing skills at the end there? Think I had a shot at getting the cube next to McCann?
After putting more thought into it, I would like to correct what I said earlier. It felt more like watching a friend get executed for a crime that was never committed.
City of Heroes was the second MMO I ever played right after WoW, it came out right when I was going through a tough divorce and at the end of the day, Paragon City is where I would flee to escape the real world. I loved the character designer, hand down the best one I have every used, no other game has even come close to it. I shall miss all my heroes and villains, I hope Paragon City will be back in some form somewhere. Thanks to the devs for making it awesome.
I’ll never forget the first time that I hit level 14 and clicked on Flight, getting to soar among the towers of Steel Canyon. I remember sharing how thrilled I was on the public channel, and having a dozen people I’d never met honestly, happily congratulate me.
Here’s hoping this challenge is only the latest Respec Trial and that in the not-so-distant future, some form of COH returns.
I will miss you all.
– Liberty Server – TWWP SG
the city of heroes will never die. This is mearly the Storm the Mender’s spoke of.
Long Live Puff the Warshade!