So it's been a year since NCSoft dropped their Neutron bombs on Paragon City & the Rogue Isles and our diaspora began.
The aftermath has been enlightening.
They killed the game, but our community still thrives, on blogs, on Facebook & Twitter, in the churning belly of the Titan Network, in the hearts of the (at last count) three dev teams looking to mount 'spiritual successors' to our online home.
I've been gaming online since before there even was an online- what choo know 'bout Tradewars on local BBS's back when a 1200 baud modem would set you back a couple hundred bucks, or Doom II deathmatch modem-to-modem? Or MIDI Maze LAN parties with a room full of Atari ST's daisy-chained together? Then, finally, there was an internet, and the WON network and hosting Half Life deathmatch & Counterstrike servers and communities back when CS was a mod (shout out to the early beta M4A1, best FPS gun EVAR) & Steam was just a gleam in Gabe Newell's gimlet eye.
And in all that time I have never seen a community, large or small, respond to adversity like this one.
The death of my game had a similar effect on me that an actual death in my family would have.
I'm not one of those "whatever, dude, I hear Guild Wars 2 is awesome." folks. Or even one of those "I love and miss CoH, but you know what, Champions Online is pretty good too!" folks.
I tried CO but for me it created a Monkey's Paw scenario- the similarities to my game made it seem like the corpse of a loved one made into an awful marionette, jerking and hopping in a horrid parody of life.
I eventually realized that I was not an MMO gamer, I was a City of Heroes gamer.
And, with no other game to distract me, I metaphorically sat down and did some deep thinking on the meaning of community, and what my role in said community had been and would be.
It isn't an understatement to say that the destruction of Paragon City made me a better person, and not just online.
I looked back and I asked myself, what did my various forum altercations benefit anyone?
What was accomplished by savagely attack Positron for not merging the markets quickly enough, or for overreacting to the abuse of MA?
How did it help anyone for me to go at Sam Tow hammer and tongs because his approach to the game was so different from mine as to be an artifact of an alien philosophy?
How do my various assaults on Tony V's intentions & perceived egotism reflect on me now, when he stood at tall as anyone against the true Coming Storm & did yeoman work giving the community a positive focus in the final days?
Even in market forums, the one arena where I could make a case for myself as benefit to the community, was I not reflexively combative, arbitrarily abusive of those I perceived as wrongheaded, did I not wallow in conflict like a berserker, gleefully ignorant of a world beyond the red mist of combat?
I took a long, hard look at myself in the shattered glass mirrors of our city, and it wasn't pleasant.
I found myself thinking of William Munny sitting by the campfire-
I resolved to make his refrain I ain't like that any more my own (aside from his backsliding in the third reel, which led to a saloon decorated with corpses).
I'm in a bunch of CoH related Facebook groups, and when people periodically say dumb things I either ignore it, or respond with a measured, reasonable post. Instead of trolling with the trolls, I put them on /ignore. Instead of snarling at the people who're trying to do something, I either give praise, constructive criticism, or keep my yap shut. I 'like' almost everything I see. I try not to judge any more- we all lived in the same town, we all lived through its destruction, and that makes us all part of the same tribe.
Sitting there on the cracked steps of City Hall overlooking the fallen statue of Atlas I finally understood that in the virtual world everything is reversed. Your actions and accomplishments in the place that seems so real and important, the game world, are ephemeral. What lasts, and what matters, is your place in the community, that agglomeration of wikis, memes, gifs, forums, blogs, youtube channels and tumblrs which collect around the game world like fish around a reef. This realization is an extension of my apologia to Sam Tow, where I figured out that mechanics are mortal but lore is eternal, after years of proclaiming the opposite to one and all at top voice.
As we've seen, a game world can be shut down.
But the community which accumulates around one is a much more resilient structure.
It doesn't matter how many expees or billions you accumulate, or how l337 your gear is, or how efficiently your team conquered this or that obstacle, because all of that can be erased by the flick of a switch, reduced to Youtube ghosts forever acting out the same scenarios.
The true meaning of any game is providing the foundation for a community to grow on.
So I'm watching the progress of the 'successors' closely.
Whichever one most closely matches that ineffable quality CoH exuded will earn, in addition to my financial support, the presence of an older, wiser Nethergoat in their community, one who has renounced the gun and mended his ways.
One who ain't like that anymore.
