Damn, you just had to go remind me of City of Heroes and it's closing again. That was a hard pill to swallow. City was one of my first MMOs, along with WoW. And it's community touched me like few others. Friends I made there stayed with me through other games and into life, some I still know today years after the game closed. The game and those people helped me through some pretty dark times in my life. I can't say it's true that I wouldn't be here without that game and the people in it. But I also can't say that statement is false either. But.. It did keep me going, gave me something to look forward to in times when very little gave me reason to wake up each day. And I've heard these same things from so many people... It wasn't the game so much as the community. But it was the game that brought us together and kept us coming back. That shared experience. And without it, most have gone our separate ways. But forever changed by the experience.
I've been thinking about it a bunch over the last few days, missing it. Many of us try other games, quite a few old players are still active on Champions. But it's just not the same. It doesn't help that we don't let the wound close. Multiple groups have tried to develop a successor... Hopefully we'll see something out of one of those soon. There was the efforts to save the game of course. And afterwards people who tried to buy the code and IP to revive it. But the owners wouldn't sell. There was even a time when one of the groups making a successor game was working on a deal to essentially rent the game while they developed theirs. Bring the servers back up but not buy out the IP. But that fell through because NCSoft wanted to used characters for their multi-game hero brawler.. Their attempt to answer Heroes of the Storm. We're given just enough hope to keep going, but it keeps being taken away...
At least we'll always have the memories and the friends made in the game. But like this comic... it's a bitter sweet thing to have something you've spent so much time, put so much passion into and meant so much to you taken away because it wasn't making enough money and the company decided to turn off the lights.
To all those who have gamed and lost... We know these feelings.