Player History

Preamble

Hello, reader.

If you've found your way to this page you're probably looking for information about who I am, so this is a history page of my years past and present as a gaming geek.

Back in my teen years I was involved in playing Villains & Vigilantes, a pen and paper RPG, with some high school buddies. We had many campaigns and rotated the gamemaster role amongst ourselves to keep things interesting. This is where my superhero avatar Stalemate first sprung to virtual life, during a scifi / techno campaign where a whole origin and background was designed for him. My wife Cassiopea also played then a character who would later on become the inspiration for a slew of CoH alts, and her global name.

Life took us into different directions. The V&V nights stopped (for me at least). Years passed.

Before all this, I had started videogaming on the Atari 2600 console and my first computer was an Apple IIc which I happily lorded over my friends who owned Commodore Vic 20s and C64s. Although enjoyable, the games themselves were nowhere near being adequate for replacing my weekly V&V nights so they took the backseat.

I continued on in my interest in all things IT, even choosing that field for my career and establishing a network of like-minded friends and acquaintances through discussion forums.

And that's where I learned of City of Heroes originally.

Hero Reborn

In June 2004, several friends of mine started spreading the word about a new superhero themed MMO: City of Heroes. Despite having had no interest in MMOs previously, this one more than intrigued me. I had to try it. When enough money was scrimped and saved (weeks in my case then), I bought the game on July 24, 2004 and waited patiently until all the installing and updating was completed.

Naturally, the first character I wanted to create was Stalemate.

I adapted the original character's powers to what the game proposed. Since the original design called for a robust, tech armored character, the tanker archetype was a given, but the power blasts had to be dropped. A compromise was made by selecting Energy Mélée, which in my mind was an acceptable mix of super strength and power blasts, and then I promptly hated the coloring of until color customizations came along. The actual costume I chose was mostly grey, with the huge robotic gloves and featured the electron pattern on chest and legs.

It was horrible, and I had no inkling that I'd be able to modify it later, but I just wanted to get playing. Outbreak was (and still is, perhaps on par with the villain side version now), one of the best game introductions I've ever seen. Right away the player is made to feel like his actions matter in the grand scheme of things. No rat hunting for 10 levels here.

The free month given with the purchase was extended to 3.