My City Of Heroes Timeline: Part 2

Today I will continue looking at my COH history.

On aspect of Issue 11 I forgot to mention was the Ouroboros/Flashback system to play old missions one had missed. This allowed players to collect badges they had missed and added a lot of replay value to the game - especially for top level characters.

I remember Issue 12 for the makeover of The Hollows zone, the Midnight Squad, and Cimerora (a Roman zone).

The Hollows revamp was okay and the new content appreciated but the original missions weren't changed and new enemy groups sometimes made streetcleaning missions harder.

The Midnight Squad and Cimerora stuff was great and got added to later on.

During this time I created several new characters
.
Darc D Zire was a Dark Armor/Ice Melee tank. He was tough but his attacks didn't have a lot of ooomph and so the stamina sink of Dark Armor was more of a problem.

Psychodude - Psychic Blast/Mental Manipulation blaster. he was fun to play although some of the sounds associated with his powers could be annoying.

Witan Nurdi - Plant/Storm controller. This fellow was the first controller I really liked and he was one of my favourite characters. He had some awesome powers that made him tough and deadly and he could cause absolute chaos to groups of enemies.

Issue 13 added Day Jobs which gave characters benefits based on where they logged out and the option to turn off experience gain. Turning off experience was a good way to stop out-leveling contacts.

In 2009 (Issue 14) The Mission Architect system was introduced which allowed players to create content that others could play. It was fun and Mickey Fist used it to create some interesting story arcs.
One criticism was the amount of MA buildings they added to the game. Every regular zone got on and the buildings looked out of place in zones like Croatoa and the Rikti War Zone.

Champion Characters 2012

Here is an alphabetized list of some of my characters on Champion server. The text source of this list includes characters from other servers and mentions around 60 "playerslots".

I think that the playerslot file recorded the most recently visited characters on each server and there was a limit to the number recorded.

This would explain why some characters I remember playing near the end of the game - and whom I have screenshots of from that period - don't appear on the list.

Important characters not listed: Bo Torch, Mason Face, Talcum Powda.

Possibly deleted: Corvalis, Darc D Zire

Characters known to have been deleted: Blue Snafu, Ice Volt, Spare Partz.

Here is the list:

Agent Octon
Aurum Shadow
Beam Angel
Beastbot
Beatstreet
Billy Coffin
Bubblegummer
Catman Deux
Cosmic Ninja
Dead Fred
Deathtoad
Dr. Fost
Dr Nox
Drinkmachine
Dude Lee
Fariel
FirstPawn
Flamboy Ant
Frog Solid
Fryer Tuck
Gromar
Hotmist
Kactus Kid
Kid Krowe
LumberYak
Mad Mountie
Mickey Fist
Mocking Byrd
Molokai
Moo Gumbo
Mr Mechanical
Mr. Sizzle
Mr Sting
Ninja Hoopdance
Pookstein
Psychodude
Red Aeon
Rocky Rollem
Shoot2thrill
Stocker
Stonecat
Super Scoop
Teriyaki Kid
Witan Nurdi
Zakker

My City Of Heroes Timeline: Part 1

‎Large game updates to City Of Heroes were called Issues. In this post I will talk a bit how they influenced me.

In June 2007 I received the Good vs. Evil Edition as a birthday present from my friend Tor. I installed the game and created Gromar.

The edition had some cool costumes and two amazing powers: the Pocket D VIP Pass (teleport to Pocket D), and the Jump Pack.These travel powers were a big help to all of my characters.

When I joined the game Issue 9 was active. I remember using the auction house and learning to craft things at the University. I had fun doing things from earlier issues such as police band missions.

Issue 10 brought Rikti Invasion events. These were both fun and and could be annoying if they interfered with regular missions. The invasions were good for experience and for the Watchman Badge.

The Elusive Mind power associated with the badge was a big help for characters (like Gromar) who didn't have protection from psionics.

The badge also unlocked the Rikti Axe which became Gromar's favourite weapon.

One of the most important updates for me was Issue 11. This was because it introduced the Willpower powerset for melee types.

Willpower became my favourite armour type because it was sturdy and adaptable to many different character ideas. It was great for testing out new powersets because I could rely on it while learning the new set.

During this time I created Mickey Fist a Willpower/Fiery melee tank. He became my favourite character to play and my base designer. He was tough and just seemed to fit me. I would have probably written about him if I had kept blogging in 2007.

I will continue this discussion in later posts.

Screenshots: First And Last

I took over 500 screenshots while playing City Of Heroes. Here are the first and last screenshots.

Here is Gromar in Skyway City. He just finished talking to a contact (Jake Montoya -the man to the right).

Taken 6/16/2007 / 18:20:46.

Next is Gromar participating in the shutdown vigil in Atlas Park. The game officially shut down at midnight Nov. 30, 2012.

Taken 12/1/2012 / 01:01:58.

Servers

‎There were 15 public servers and a test server in COH. I only had experience with four of them.

Champion
 
My first character (Gromar) was created on Champion and my friends played there.

Liberty
 
Liberty was my backup server for when Champion was down for maintenance or other reasons. I also started some characters there when short of slots on Champion most of these were transferred to "champ" later on.

My old records show these toons on Liberty:

"Liberty-bot" - no information.

"Weather Vayne" - experimental Ice/Storm controller? I also had a version on Triumph.

"Helleon"- this name also appears on Triumph. Helleon was the first Brute I liked and played often. He was a Fiery melee/Fire Armour villain. He was eventually transferred to Champion.

Bubblegummer and Pookstein were also transfered to Champion.

Freedom
 
A friend asked me to create characters on Freedom to help flesh out a Supergroup. I eventually became the leader of the SG and redesigned the base. I signed in every few months just to pay base rent.

Miss Dumpling - my only female character was a 4 foot tall, pigtailed, War mace/Invulnerability tank.

Microsaurus Rex - was a 4 foot tall dinosaur and a Claws/Invulnerability scrapper.

Triumph
 
A friend invited several of us to to join a group on Triumph and play together. I created Psycopup and got him to the right level and found out my name was wrong. lol. Everyone was named Doom Trooper something-or-other.I have only one screenshot of Psycopup and don't have any power info.

Characters mentioned as being on Triumph. (Based on an old text file):

"Sno-Mann" - no information

"Weather Vayne" - see above, but one screenshot shows him as Ice/? Dominator in a Kings Row mayhem mission.

"Billy B"- no information

The following were characters that were either transferred or copied to Champion and Liberty.

"Hotmist"-  Fire/Storm controller

"Dude Lee"- Martial Arts/Willpower scrapper

"Pookstein"- Fire/Fire blaster

"Helleon"- Fire/Fire brute.

You can see I experimented with other servers but anyone interesting was transferred or (if low level) copied to Champion.