City of Heroes is no more...

City of Heroes was my introduction to MMORPGs.  I allowed it to eat my life for about 2 years.  The first 2 years of my youngest daughter's life, in fact.

I took time off, briefly, for the launch of WoW.  But all of my friends were still playing CoH, so of course, I went back.

I bought a new PC to run it, after one of it's "updates" and a memory leak issue they couldn't seem to fix.

I waited for City of Villains with baited breath.  I even managed to ignore the "more of the same" for a few weeks.

Our gaming sessions, inevitably, had lots of CoH talk.  I even tried playing my "main", Dr. Halflight in our Champions game.  In fact, I got us access to the CoH Playtest from Eden.

I let it eat my life.

And then I realized that, unlike most of my friends who were playing, I had a family and I simply could not  devote the time they did.  And more importantly, I realized it wasn't fun and hadn't been fun in months.  It was a job, and a bad job, at that.

It was a grind.  And it had always been a grind.

I walked away.

I went back a few times, but it never seemed to innovate any further.  And I never stayed.

And now its heading into the sunset.

Unfortunately, I can't say that I'll miss it.  Aside from my poor decisions, the Cryptic Development Team never let the game live up to it's potential.   Even if WoW hadn't launched 8 or 9 months into CoH's life, I don't think it's fate would have been different.

I think it's a real commentary on City of Heroes problems, that their website still calls it the "World's Most Popular Superpowered MMO".  Even with it's looming sunset.  Even with its severs getting ready to shutdown.

Goodbye City of Heroes, I won't miss you.  Your a sad example of the potential of your industry and how mismanagement can squander every single drop of that potential.