Weekends of Ups and Downs

This weekend, as the title describes, had it moments, but also sucked really bad.  On Friday night, I finally beat the final urgent mission in Monster Hunter Tri (spoilers for those who check out my Youtube channel).  It wasn't by myself, of course.  I was playing with a fan of said videos and some of his buddies, and the four of us emerged victorious.  I didn't make a fool of myself, which was pretty good.  They were obviously much better at the fight than I was, but that will come with more experience with the monster.  Now only one monster left until I feel ready for MH3U!

The sad part of the weekend?  It was the close of City of Heroes later that night.  Despite having work early the next morning, I had to stay up and say goodbye to such a great game.  Figuring out which character to see the end with and where to do it was a hard decision.  Do I say goodbye with my first lv 50 hero?  My first lv 50 villain?  What about the first character I created?  What about the one I had the most fun with?  The one that didn't get his chance to shine?  In the end, I sadly passed up my scrapper, peacebringer, warshade and brute to go with my main villain, Gear Master J.

He was one of my first concepts, but probably my third created character.  I started with villains and on launch day made my first three characters instantly, mostly to get the names for the first two.  Well, actually my first character was created to get the global name I wanted, but I don't really count him.  Anyway, Gear Master was my first and only lv 50 villain, based a bit off of me, and was tons of fun.  So where should he see the end?  Most people gathered in Atlas Park, so I wouldn't want to go there.  Plus, I'm a villain, so I can't.  How about the villain starting or ending zone?  They aren't as memorable to me as some of the other zones.  Eventually, I decided upon Ouroboros.  The place deals with time travel, which is a subject I like, so why not?  Also most of the plot there revolves around "the coming storm", so it seemed very appropriate.  I used "/demorecord" to try and capture the final minutes, I'm just not sure how to view it yet.  I also took lots of pictures.

As midnight rolled around, many said there goodbyes and lamented the game getting killed.  It seems as though the servers were turned off one by one, since it took a few minutes for Guardian to go down for good.  For yucks I logged in real quick again, and was greeted with this sad sight.

Freedom, was apparently, the last to go.  As I've said time and time again, this was a sad time.  The game was really fun and there isn't anything that can fill the void it leaves.  The other two superhero MMOs just don't compare to the sheer amount of fun, creativity and content of City of Heroes.  I backed up all my characters with the Sentinel program, just in case there is a way to bring them back to life.  It's the comic way!  Still, I wish there was some way to get a single player/ LAN capable version of the game, as that would be perfect.  I'd easily buy one (two) if I could.  City of Heroes and Paragon studios, thank you again for the great game.  I hope to make a video about CoH in the near future.

Lastly, on Sunday I scored a spectacular deal on a handful of games.  Lack of money or not, I couldn't pass up the deal I got.  Thankfully, I'm getting some money for Christmas, so that pretty much went to this.  Basically, I scored a lot of games for about $5 each.  I guess we'll have a good Christmas after all!

The Final Night of Paragon City

Well, tonight is the final night that one can spend in Paragon City.  City of Heroes (don't forget the Villains) will close for good.  It's still sad, the more I think about it, that it will end.  I knew that going in to the game (as I do with any MMO), but it still sucks.  I'm grabbing my last screenshots and demorecordings, playing until the lights go off.  Actually, I'm staying up late just to see it through.  I'll be really tired at work tomorrow, but it will be worth it.  City is worth it.  Once the end has happened, I'll compose more of my thoughts into more posts, and I'm hoping to make a video of them.  It's the least I could do for a game with still the best character creator and level up customization that will cease to be.  As I've said before, it's terrible that this happens to any game.  How can it be classic if no one else can experience it?

All I can do is stand tall and face the coming storm...

Death of the 'Classic Game'

After getting back from PAX, I check the City of Heroes site to see if they are having a Labor Day sale like most places.  The last thing I expected to see was this.  Paragon Studios is now gone.  Like Onlive and 38 Studios, they were just sent home.  No warning (that we know of), just a heaping helping of cold s**t.

I was stunned.  As far as people knew, the game was making money.  The failure of Aion dug deep, so they axed...City?!  Well, I guess they didn't attend business school, or should at least ask for their money back if they did.  Supposedly the servers will remain on until the end of November, but who knows if that will last?  So the most unique MMO, and the game with the best character creator ever made will be gone.  Forever.

This brings me to the true topic of this blog post.  It's an idea I've had for a few days, but this development brings it to the forefront.  It also illustrates my point perfectly.  Constantly connected and always/only online games help usher in the death of the classic game.

What do I mean by this?  Well, take a great game that you would consider a classic.  I'm picking Legend of Zelda for the NES.  You can find this game for a few bucks, and even pick up a cheap NES or similar device to play it.  You can download it on your Wii or 3DS.  The point is you can play it, even now.  So it can remain a classic, since you can enjoy it to this day and beyond.  You can introduce new people to it.  Let your children experience it.  Can you do that with World of Warcraft?  EverQuest?  Now, yes.  What about in 5 years?  Not likely.  10 years?  I doubt it.  These games that hundreds of thousands of people enjoy will just be...gone.  Lost.  Since they require a server, you can't even enjoy them offline.  They can't be preserved.  Therefore, they can't really be classics, as they cannot be passed on.  They can only exist as screenshots and stories.

Your grandchildren will not know what WoW is.  They will likely be able to play Legend of Zelda.

Think about that for a minute.  Strange, isn't it?  A game that at one point had 10 million subscribers will vanish.  Sure, there will exist private servers, but they cannot sustain forever.  You won't be able to snag it on eBay in 15 years when you remember how cool the game was.  The more games that required you to be online, or have no offline component, the less games that survive to be 'classics'.  These games cannot and will not be ported to other systems.  There is no "Virtual Console" for old MMOs.

They just cease to be.

And that, to me, is one of the worst fates.  Thank you Cryptic for making a great game.  Thank you Paragon Studios for making that game even better.  As many people on the forums said, you allowed me to fly.