Mei Hou Wang

[wei yau]

For City of Heroes, I've long planned for a character named "Mei Hou Wang", the Monkey King (the more recognized name "Sun Wu Kong" had already been taken) and I had originally designed him to look very much like a monkey.

However, inspiration struck me and I re-designed more as a Beijing Opera Warrior. I'm very happy with how he came out and cannot wait for Staff Fighting to go live.

[Vivisectus]

Ooooo! And you can have Pigsy and Sandy as his sidekicks!

[Sock Puppet]

Okay, you got me to look at your Wang. I hope you're happy.


(But srzly, that is a badass creation.)

[livius drusus]

His eyes scare me.

[Vivisectus]

Monkey has to be my favourite trickster myth.

[seebs]

Man. My staff melee reserved name is Rotary Club. I feel like I have underperformed now.

[wei yau]

Oh. hell.

I have been outdone.

[Vivisectus]

Naaa I like your wang better

[BrotherMan]

That is just no fair. That is something out of Hollywood or some shit.

[Vivisectus]

And what the hell is going on with those boots? Lady gaga would consider them a bit much. Is he supposed to be a demon or a roller-disco fanatic?

[wei yau]

So, Staff Fighting has actually been out for a while, but I've only recently been playing Mei Houwang with any regularity. Despite being somewhat burnt out on City of Heroes of late, I am finding inspiration in this character especially thanks to the music from Monkey: Journey to the West, this was a stage adaptation of the classic Chinese story.

Here's a taste.

Monkey journey to the west - Heavenly peach...

and

Monkey Bee, A short film by Jamie Hewlett - Wide...

[Stormlight]

I haven't played CoH for a while, but this sucks.

Superhero MMO City of Heroes is set to close its doors by the end of the year and NCSoft is disbanding its developer, Paragon Studios.

The game will receive no further development and the servers are expected to be turned off later this year. All current subscriptions for the game will be discontinued effective immediately and exact dates of when the game will go offline will be made available in the next few weeks.

[Ymir's blood]

That's a big reason why I'm so leery of internet required games. Even just stuff like Skyrim which requires Steam.

[curses]

Even console games aren't immune to this sort of thing.

Sucky, stormy.

[livius drusus]

My condolences, Stormy. Also to wei and Bort.

[BrotherMan]

I've been playing City of Heroes longer than I've been registered here at the . I remember all the way back in 2001 when I first heard this game was being developed. I didn't know how it would turn out but it sounded fantastic in my mind. Cryptic at the time turned convention on its head. Not only had there not been a superhero MMO, but there'd never been a game set in "modern" times. Everything up to then had been fantasy-ish. And again nobody was even considering a lootless game.

The first time I hopped into an instanced mission I thought I was going to die. There was no way I could succeed against the first spawn of three (!) even con bad guys. In all of my MMO experience to that point, it would have been suicide or damn luck to win against those odds. Convention was you fought one guy, maybe two if you were unlucky, at a time and spend a minute or two resting after exhausting yourself. Not in Paragon City. (And certainly not with my addiction to melee oriented characters!) In City, you don't stop until everbody is defeated. You took on multiple spawns of multiple ne'er do wells and you loved every second of it.

I took a brief hiatus from October 2005 until July of 2006 because of, well, it's not important. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Cryptic had cut the development team for City of Heroes (and by then, Villains) by 75% leaving only 15 developers. These fantastic people did unbelievably incredible work. The community took to calling them the Freem Fifteen. Cryptic later sold City of to NCSoft, the developers moved the studio out west and eventually became known as Paragon Studios. I have never been prouder of a group of people I have never met. NCSoft gave them money and they continued making a fantastic game even better. For all the years it was with Cryptic we were told "We can't do that. The game engine blah blah blah." I may never know just how difficult it was, but Paragon Studios broke the game engine, rebuilding it into their own image - giving us things we previously thought impossible. (Power color customization, adding alternate animations, all kinds of things.)

This game has been such a part of my life, I still don't want to imagine that it won't be. Punching bad guys is what I did when I was bored. I would watch Netflix while this game idled in the background. It was my Cheers. It was better than an animated chat room. I have one active global channel that I watch while I'm punching bad guys. Everbody gets to be Norm in that channel.

And now...

There are a lot of things I'm going to miss. Flying. Jumping. Running. Battling hordes of bad guys. Standing around pretending to be a superhero. Imagining myself as someone who is as good as one can be because I have the power to stop evil (by punching it in the face). I'm going to miss the people, and not just all the friends I have - many of whom I'm in contact with anyway, but all the acquaintances, the characters. As much fun as the game was, it was the people who gave it life.

[wei yau]

It should go without saying that the best thing to come out of this game is quite simply my brother, Brotherman. My history with City of Heroes, doesn't go as far back as Bort, but just the same I am going to miss the hell out of this game.

This game inspired me from the very first day I played. It triggered a burst of creativity that I had not felt in a long time. Very soon after, I often myself lost in a world of heroes and villains...sometimes even when I'm not in-game. I created multiple worlds, characters and plots that would fill volumes upon volumes of material, should I ever put pen to paper.

As often as it was a reprieve *from* the kids, it was something I shared *with* my kids. Many a night, I would play with one of them sitting on my lap. They would "ooh" and "aah" over one hero after the other.

Frankly, I'm at a loss. I don't know what I'll do after the game ends. I can't think of any other game that appeals to me in the same way. Maybe I should find that pen and paper and start creating these worlds again.

[Ymir's blood]

I probably created ten times as many villains as I actually used when running Champions. It can be pretty addictive.

[Jerome]

魏國

I love the colors!

Can the tone be changed?