ONGOING: City of Heroes
May. 5th, 2019 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoThere are several layers of why this wasn't supposed to happen, but here we are. And it is good.
City of Heroes was an MMO that officially ran from 2004 to 2012, at which point it was doing just fine thank you and the devs were even very excitedly talking about all the cool steps forward they were going to take in 2013, but then NCSoft abruptly pulled the plug on the whole thing because NCSoft are dicks and cancelling MMOs for no reason is their fetish.
This wasxyzzysqrl's game, the one she played back in the day and missed to the point of still being depressed about it from the day I met her until about two weeks ago. It was also a classic for me as well--this was the game I quit Horizons in favor of when both were out at the same time. swordianmaster played as well, meaning everyone in Clan Sugardoom but Sara had direct experience with this lost piece of nostalgia. Too bad NCSoft is the literal worst and CoH is dead forever, right?
Well. As of two weeks ago, apparently not. I mean, officially, yes, but someone launched a free pirate server you can connect to with the free download of a client, which quickly became four servers since there are (as of this writing) just over thirty thousand accounts. On the pirate servers. Of a game that's been dead for seven years and back for two weeks. Fuck you, NCSoft.Horizons Istaria considers twenty people on at the same time to be a huge crowded event, and they're still officially alive. You killed a game whose population my game would commit war crimes to have a tenth of.
Xyzzy immediately rushed back in, of course, and you can find her chronicles in her blog. I highly recommend them; they are witty, entertaining, and filled with a delightful sort of life that's equally delightful to see in her. This is someone reuniting with their lost love, and her joy at doing so is infectious.
So infectious, in fact, that Sword decided to bite the bullet and jump in to do some missions with her, and, well, if they're both in then I wanna hang out with them, too. I still consider myself having one foot in Istaria more firmly than the other is in CoH, which is why I resisted this long even when it came back, but... come on. The whole Clan got to run missions in City of Heroes together. Of course I'm not missing that.
The temptation was strong to remake my old Katana/Regen Scrapper again, making this the third time I have created and started over with that same character. CoH has a fairly nonstandard class system compared to most MMOs, but Scrappers are basically your front-line melee fighter types except with more of an offensive focus and not a lot of ability to tank actual hits. Think the difference between a well-armored Knight time and a deadly glass Monk.
Instead of doing that, though, I decided to dink around with the character creator (the CoH character creator is like half the reason people missed this game, just for the record) and resurrect an ancient superhero OC, a brown-furred orange-vested psychic werewolf by the name of Tahaki. When I say this is an old OC, I mean he was a mainstay in a superhero comic series I drew when I was eleven. And even that was me pulling him out of a previous "canon." ("Remember Tahaki from my previous series? Well he fell through a black hole or something and now he's in this world working with this team.") I think he might actually be the first drawing I actually remember drawing.
Being from that early an age, his backstory is... uh... what an 8-11 year old would come up with. He was already a crime-fighter of some sort (I never really dug back further into his origins than an in medias res scene of him chasing down some generic bad guys) but then they threw him into one of those giant open vats of mutagenic "transform you and give you powers" goop that villain lairs tended to have lying around in the early 90s. This turned him into a furry, and later on I clumsily added in a thing about having a Hulk-like superpowered bestial side when he loses control so that he could angst about it. He was a gifted scientist and psychic, though, and between the two he was more or less able to keep that under control.
And now here he is, transported through time and space once again. He looks pretty good overall, though the only open vest they had that looked right has a high collar that clips through his neck ruff, which is obnoxious. Oh, well. Looks good enough that no one notices in the actual game, at least. I also retconned him to have a tail, but he had to trade his shoes to afford it. Tragic, that.
I also tweaked his backstory a little. His official in-game bio:
Tahaki was a brilliant scientist and spiritual guru whose mental strength led to powerful psychic abilities. During a skirmish with some outlaws who sought his work, an ambusher hurled him into one of his own experiments, transforming him into a savage, bestial creature.
Ashamed of his newly awakened primal bloodlust, the formerly serene mental master worked hard to keep his new instincts under control. Between his scientific mind and spiritual powers, he was able to regain his senses. He is still the good-hearted man he once was, just... fuzzier.
That said, one's dark side can be controlled, but not erased. Tahaki would much prefer to win his battles through diplomacy or mentalism rather than shredding opponents with teeth and claws. However, he can lose himself in the heat of battle....
There are two wolves inside this wolf, and one is hungry.
Given his origins, I opted to make him a Psionic Melee/Willpower Brute. Brutes are a sort of unique custom spinoff of the already unique custom spinoff that are Scrappers. Brutes are Scrappers that take slightly more and deal slightly less damage as a base, but they have a "Fury" bar that rises when you're actively in combat, and attacks do more damage as it climbs. Brutes used to be exclusively a Villain class, so I never got to play them because I have problems being evil in games. Apparently that restriction was lifted, and now any alignment can be any class.
Once I was all set up, I logged in, and... God. I'm actually dusting off Tahaki, for use with City of Heroes, in 2019. How... How.
... Once I was all set up, I logged in, and united with the other non-Sara members of Clan. Taking this completely seriously, my ancient childhood telekinetic pupper ended up beating up demonic gangsters alongside an anthropomorphized Twitter mascot (that's illegal, you know) and a future YouTuber who went back in time to City of Heroes in order to conquer YouTube before everyone else did.
We ran around, we did some missions, we gained some levels. Reconnecting with CoH was really nice, staring at Tahaki's assets (I, uh, I'm pretty happy with how he turned out *cough*) even nicer, and being there in Paragon City alongside two of our closest friends as all three of us went back in time was truly priceless.
Don't get me wrong--I love Istaria, I still make my home there, and I probably wouldn't have bitten the bullet on CoH if Xyzzy and Sword weren't both there. But since they are?
God. I love you guys, I love this game, and I would love to continue that story arc we started next time. Thank you for having us. Thank you for making us a part of this, and a part of your team.
City of Heroes was an MMO that officially ran from 2004 to 2012, at which point it was doing just fine thank you and the devs were even very excitedly talking about all the cool steps forward they were going to take in 2013, but then NCSoft abruptly pulled the plug on the whole thing because NCSoft are dicks and cancelling MMOs for no reason is their fetish.
This was
xyzzysqrl's game, the one she played back in the day and missed to the point of still being depressed about it from the day I met her until about two weeks ago. It was also a classic for me as well--this was the game I quit Horizons in favor of when both were out at the same time. swordianmaster played as well, meaning everyone in Clan Sugardoom but Sara had direct experience with this lost piece of nostalgia. Too bad NCSoft is the literal worst and CoH is dead forever, right?Well. As of two weeks ago, apparently not. I mean, officially, yes, but someone launched a free pirate server you can connect to with the free download of a client, which quickly became four servers since there are (as of this writing) just over thirty thousand accounts. On the pirate servers. Of a game that's been dead for seven years and back for two weeks. Fuck you, NCSoft.
Xyzzy immediately rushed back in, of course, and you can find her chronicles in her blog. I highly recommend them; they are witty, entertaining, and filled with a delightful sort of life that's equally delightful to see in her. This is someone reuniting with their lost love, and her joy at doing so is infectious.
So infectious, in fact, that Sword decided to bite the bullet and jump in to do some missions with her, and, well, if they're both in then I wanna hang out with them, too. I still consider myself having one foot in Istaria more firmly than the other is in CoH, which is why I resisted this long even when it came back, but... come on. The whole Clan got to run missions in City of Heroes together. Of course I'm not missing that.
The temptation was strong to remake my old Katana/Regen Scrapper again, making this the third time I have created and started over with that same character. CoH has a fairly nonstandard class system compared to most MMOs, but Scrappers are basically your front-line melee fighter types except with more of an offensive focus and not a lot of ability to tank actual hits. Think the difference between a well-armored Knight time and a deadly glass Monk.
Instead of doing that, though, I decided to dink around with the character creator (the CoH character creator is like half the reason people missed this game, just for the record) and resurrect an ancient superhero OC, a brown-furred orange-vested psychic werewolf by the name of Tahaki. When I say this is an old OC, I mean he was a mainstay in a superhero comic series I drew when I was eleven. And even that was me pulling him out of a previous "canon." ("Remember Tahaki from my previous series? Well he fell through a black hole or something and now he's in this world working with this team.") I think he might actually be the first drawing I actually remember drawing.
Being from that early an age, his backstory is... uh... what an 8-11 year old would come up with. He was already a crime-fighter of some sort (I never really dug back further into his origins than an in medias res scene of him chasing down some generic bad guys) but then they threw him into one of those giant open vats of mutagenic "transform you and give you powers" goop that villain lairs tended to have lying around in the early 90s. This turned him into a furry, and later on I clumsily added in a thing about having a Hulk-like superpowered bestial side when he loses control so that he could angst about it. He was a gifted scientist and psychic, though, and between the two he was more or less able to keep that under control.
And now here he is, transported through time and space once again. He looks pretty good overall, though the only open vest they had that looked right has a high collar that clips through his neck ruff, which is obnoxious. Oh, well. Looks good enough that no one notices in the actual game, at least. I also retconned him to have a tail, but he had to trade his shoes to afford it. Tragic, that.
I also tweaked his backstory a little. His official in-game bio:
Tahaki was a brilliant scientist and spiritual guru whose mental strength led to powerful psychic abilities. During a skirmish with some outlaws who sought his work, an ambusher hurled him into one of his own experiments, transforming him into a savage, bestial creature.
Ashamed of his newly awakened primal bloodlust, the formerly serene mental master worked hard to keep his new instincts under control. Between his scientific mind and spiritual powers, he was able to regain his senses. He is still the good-hearted man he once was, just... fuzzier.
That said, one's dark side can be controlled, but not erased. Tahaki would much prefer to win his battles through diplomacy or mentalism rather than shredding opponents with teeth and claws. However, he can lose himself in the heat of battle....
There are two wolves inside this wolf, and one is hungry.
Given his origins, I opted to make him a Psionic Melee/Willpower Brute. Brutes are a sort of unique custom spinoff of the already unique custom spinoff that are Scrappers. Brutes are Scrappers that take slightly more and deal slightly less damage as a base, but they have a "Fury" bar that rises when you're actively in combat, and attacks do more damage as it climbs. Brutes used to be exclusively a Villain class, so I never got to play them because I have problems being evil in games. Apparently that restriction was lifted, and now any alignment can be any class.
Once I was all set up, I logged in, and... God. I'm actually dusting off Tahaki, for use with City of Heroes, in 2019. How... How.
... Once I was all set up, I logged in, and united with the other non-Sara members of Clan. Taking this completely seriously, my ancient childhood telekinetic pupper ended up beating up demonic gangsters alongside an anthropomorphized Twitter mascot (that's illegal, you know) and a future YouTuber who went back in time to City of Heroes in order to conquer YouTube before everyone else did.
We ran around, we did some missions, we gained some levels. Reconnecting with CoH was really nice, staring at Tahaki's assets (I, uh, I'm pretty happy with how he turned out *cough*) even nicer, and being there in Paragon City alongside two of our closest friends as all three of us went back in time was truly priceless.
Don't get me wrong--I love Istaria, I still make my home there, and I probably wouldn't have bitten the bullet on CoH if Xyzzy and Sword weren't both there. But since they are?
God. I love you guys, I love this game, and I would love to continue that story arc we started next time. Thank you for having us. Thank you for making us a part of this, and a part of your team.