Tonight's the night.
Who knows how many people have passed through City of Heroes over the years of its existance, but tonight marks the point where it all becomes nothing more than a memory.
It's kind of funny in a way. Once upon a time, most people's communities lasted a lifetime. They were born in a town and stayed there. They went to the same Church from birth to death. Communities were one of the bedrocks of life.
How times have changed. I'm not sure of the numbers, but I doubt even half thirty-somethings live in the town they graduated High School in (much less the town they were born in...) We are a culture of constant change, and all of those touchstones are showing that as well (even the family, with the constant morphing brought on by divorce, remarriage, blended families and the like)
Online communities are no different. I can't even begin to think how many different online communities I have been in. Early chat rooms, IRC chats, wargame groups and on it went, until I came to CoH.
The thing is, in the MMO space, CoH was actually fairly old. Oh, it wasn't the oldest (UO and EQ have that spot taken), but it in today's change-a-minute world, it was certainly considered one of the "old men" of the genre.
Think about that for a moment, City of Heroes was about 8.5 years old. Even more, think about how many tell those hurt by the decision to kill CoH "oh, get over that old game, its day is past" (usually said rather less kindly for that matter). One of the older communities in the MMO space is being put to death because 8.5 years is "too old".
That is the new way of our world. Communities come, and communities go. The bonds built in them don't entirely shatter. I'm still in contact with a few people from my very first community online. I'm sure I'll keep in contact with a number of City players in the future too. Yet, our frame of reference will never be the same. It will not be consigned to the "good old days".
The odd thing is, I haven't truly been part of the community for a while now. For a variety of reasons (simple burnout, wounds from the wars of running a supergroup and the like), I've been largely detached from the game. Yet, it was always there. I could go in, and start in with the bad puns and jokes. I knew it was there when the mood hit, when the need hit.
Because of that, I'm not quite as torn by this as many of my friends are. I'd already detached, already gone through the grief process to a certain extent already.
Yet, there are things that it does hurt to realize... they will never happen again.
-The time a couple months ago where some... trigger in the way a mission went led both my character, and a friend's character to start humming ABBA's "Dancing Queen" at nearly the same second...
- The sheer power of running as a high tier Grav/Energy Dom through Freaks
- The groans in global channels as one of my legendary puns goes out.
Oh, many of those things will happen again, in other places, in other games, even with some of the same people... and hopefully those memories will be just as special in their own way.
Yet, it's a matter of knowing that... my pile of CoH memories will be complete in a few short hours.
To all those who were part of those memories, good or bad, I thank you.
God's Protect!
