City of Heroes wasn't the first MMO I ever played, it was the second, but in just about every other aspect of my history with the genre it was the first.
It was the first MMO I subscribed to. It was the first (and until last year the only) in which I reached the level cap. It was the first in which I reached the level cap on two characters. It was the first in which I pre-ordered an expansion. This was the game that made me an MMO player, and it's the game that, more than any other, shaped my opinions on the entire genre.
It was also the first MMO I played that was shut down.
In November 2012 City of Heroes was shut down by NCSoft. When the announcement was made - out of the blue, noone was expecting it - I'd been away from the game for some time. I did consider returning for the last few weeks, in order to experience at least some of the content I'd missed, but in the end I didn't. Other things were happening in my life that left me with little inclination to spend time in any game, let alone in one that was soon to be gone forever.
It felt extremely final. Efforts to save the game from shutdown had failed, and there was little to no hope of a revival.
Incredibly, in April of this year, City of Heroes did return. News broke of a secret server that had been running for years, and when the code was released into the wild new unofficial servers started to spring up almost instantly. I've never had any interest in emulators or private servers before, but I couldn't let this opportunity go by.
I played enough of CoH in the next two months that I actually started to feel burned out on it. So I did what I usually do and switched games, and also set myself a goal of playing just one character for a while rather than indulging my altitis.
That was in July, and I've written about my experience in World of Warcraft and then in The Lord of the Rings Online. Now it's time to go back to Paragon City for 24 hours in City of Heroes.
At least it will be once I've decided which character I'm going to play.
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