Anniversary: Being Witty Librarian Online

So near around my birthday back in 2004, I spotted a PC game box on the shelf that had a bunch of superhero characters on it and asked the store clerk "What was this all about?"

That, said the clerk, was one of the newest Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games called City of Heroes.

I knew what MMOs were. Up until then, they tended to be fantasy-based like Everquest or Runescape, and I wasn't too enthralled about them. I was more into science fiction than fantasy, and more into comic books than either at the time.

Having a superhero based online game was tempting to pass up, though. So I bought it.

And... got addicted to it.

Welcome, to Paragon City!
Don't mind the Level 1s...

Part of it was the gameplay: Relatively simple compared to other MMOs of the time, with different means of crafting boosts (enhancements) to give your character more power and durability in battle. Another part was the roleplay:  A healthy mix of different (Arche)Types to roll made mixing and matching powersets reasonably fun and gave you a chance to build different ATs to test which ones - Blaster (Ranged Damage), Controller (Holders), Defender (Healers), Scrapper (Melee Damage), or Tanker (Meat Shield) - worked best for you.

One of the things about being into superheroes was being into the set universe - DC, Marvel, other - that allowed for fans' imaginations about being a hero in that 'verse. While CoH was its own franchise - and indeed ran into issues stopping players from rolling trademarked builds - fans still have in their heads a stable - entire teams worth - of different types of heroes they'd like to be.

It was common for players to roll multiple alts. The game gave you 10 slots per page (and a ton of pages) to fill, and people would just get about 50 or 60 of them built before maxing any of their levels up (first to 40, then to 50). Altitis (altoholism) is a thing, and CoH contributed to it. New ATs like Brutes, Corruptors, Dominators, Masterminds, and Stalkers added even more addictive appeal.

Say hello to Witty Librarian, on the Homecoming's Excelsior server!

When I first got the game in 2004, it had just finished its Beta testing phase and was actually two-three weeks into gaming. I stumbled around on the various servers before settling on Champion server where I was able to meet people who were willing to team up. One of the things about leveling in-game is that you have to run missions, sometimes story arcs provided by NPC contacts, or Task Forces that doled out bigger item drops. So there's a lot of PvE (teaming) involved. Finding an active Supergroup - think Avengers/Justice League - was a must.

(In terms of PvP - player vs. player - City of Heroes attempted that by adding a new side City of Villains and then created Arenas and shared Hazard Zones where PvP would happen. Two things happened: 1) The developers brought it in too late and the PvP fans weren't interested in the game and 2) Too many people had gotten into the teaming part of CoH/V to where they didn't want to play against each other, so the PvP aspect remains minor)

Soling this mob at Level 8 in Perez Park would be a mess. Find a team first!

Thing about the game, certain ATs played better early on that others. Blasters (think Superman's heat vision or Iron Man's repulsors) were extremely popular early because they were easy to figure out and doled out the most damage. Later updates (Issues) began nerfing or boosting other ATs to where Tankers (think the Hulk) became the preferred type to roll. There was an epic nerfing of armors in Issues 5 and 6 that almost killed the whole game, but the players tolerated it as later Issues course-corrected those mistakes and allowed the game to be more fun.

As I said, Tanker became very popular, to the point where it's one of the often-seen builds in the game. A group in one of the servers began hosting Tanker Tuesdays on a weekly basis, which quickly built a following and a good way to find people to team with on other days of the week. Up above is one of my many Alts, Witty Tanker. Yes, there is a theme. Gamers will tend to name alts after a common nickname/identity. My in-game nickname is Witty, short for Witty Librarian, and so I've rolled numerous Alts with Witty in the name.

You'd be amazed how quickly names can go in-game. When murder hornets hit the newswire late April 2020, I immediately logged in and created a Murder Hornet alt. Within minutes of my doing that, I started receiving in-game text messages from angry players that I had gotten to it first.

Time to GO HUNT, KILL SKULS before there are any
DUPING RARES.

All those screenshots are from last night's Tuesday Tanker run (missions team running high-level door missions to help lower-level builds that are SideKicked can get better XP to level). You can see a lot of different uniforms and costume styles, part of the CoH allure. City of Heroes gained a reputation for one of the most diverse and colorful costuming among all the MMOs - better than Warcraft - and allowed for even more Alts to get built around themed costume designs.

And THAT is what it looks like when your Alt hits a new level up!

Oh no, the abandoned mine map! Veterans of the game
aren't a fan of these (too narrow, and one map has a nasty room
we called the Layer Cake).

While it was fun to play - and needed a few months here and there to step away to keep from getting too addictive - it all came to an end when the game's owner NCSoft decided to end it (in spite of its popularity in the US and Europe, the South Korean company never understood the appeal and wanted to expand newer franchises) by 2012. The outrage back then was intense, even from non-players. Attempts were made to buy up the rights, but they all fell through, and it all ended with fans standing in Atlas Park holding up torches in remembrance.

The Last Night in Paragon City 
November 30, 2012

Except...

A number of gamer fans had gained access to the base code, and had begun underground servers to maintain and keep a core set of players going. Due to the illegality of it - NCSoft still owned the rights - they kept it hush-hush as much as possible, inviting back players they knew would keep their damn mouths shut.

(Glances about) (whispers) I got invited to the secret server around 2018.

Until 2019, when someone finally blabbed on a public forum, due to concerns that the game code contained the personal information of those who had paid to play between 2004 through 2012 (some MMOs required full registration for full access, some offer limited access for free, and CoH had both). Immediately, hundreds of thousands clamored to get back on the game, even with the pending legal battle that NCSoft was sure to unleash.

Except...

NCSoft decided not to pursue the matter as long as none of the server providers required people to pay (they could donate monthly to help pay for server space/office bills instead). Someone must have explained to the bosses that this was an audience that could - and would - pay down the line if they ever brought it back as a fee-based MMO.

A number of alternative CoH sites sprang up, with Homecoming - formed by the people who ran the secret server - gaining a sizable advantage. Homecoming also made back-room discussions with NCSoft to be the official provider, with all of the talks wrapping up this past January to where the game is officially back.

Whether they will convert the current setup to a pay-to-play model - which could reduce the number of active Alts and the ability to build post-50 Veteran-level Alts - remains to be seen. In the meantime, there are nights when multiple servers on Homecoming are packed, there is ongoing interest in playing the game, and demand for new power sets for more Alts remains constant.

So I may have my Shardtobers back after all! If I can convince people that the gameplay's improved to where we can run those Task Forces in under two hours now.

Witty Librarian in figurine!

And don't even get me started on all the Badge Hunting that happens in-game...

Witty Librarian as a Superhero Minifigure

If you ever worked with HeroClix or any RPG dice game, you might understand what this is.

An online friend from City of Heroes crafted this on Hero Forge's website, where you can design and purchase 3D figures to enhance your figure collection for RPGs. It's about as tall as a finger digit, yet the detail for that size is eye-catching.

Now I gotta put it somewhere the cats won't chew on it. ;-)

Witty's Year End Book Review 2019

This whole year had been busy in a lot of ways: Work at the library involved my taking on double-duty as an interim director; I was active with the Florida Writers' Association's Royal Palm Literary Awards as a judge (I did not judge in the fields I submitted, relax); I increased the amount of stories submitted to the markets to see if any publisher would like (just one: A sad truth is that writers face a ton of rejection and few victories. We live for the victories).

In all of this, I still found some time to sit and read, both for relaxation and for education/self-information. Here's what I had in front of me for 2019 and what I think deserves a huzzah or three for being effective reads:


Best Fiction

Black Spire (Star Wars Galaxy's Edge #2), by Delilah S. Dawson

I didn't read much fiction - I blame my heated political slant, see below - so what I did sometimes didn't keep my interest. This one did. Granted, I am a huge Star Wars geek and so I can get into books in that 'Verse quite easily, so this one already had a few bonus points to keep the grade up.

Tying in to both the aftermath of The Last Jedi movie as well as promoting a new Disney theme park called Galaxy's Edge, Dawson (who also wrote the well-received Phasma novel) sends her heroine/Resistance spy Vi to the Outer Rim in search of safe havens and new recruits. Instead Vi runs into a wretched hive of tourism and sunscreen (in other words Orlando Metro FL ow stop hitting me) where run-ins with First Order troops and vendors selling 800 credit t-shirts (ow stop hitting me again) keep her busy.

Dawson does write a lot of Young Adult, so a good amount of dialogue and description reads to a middle-school level than adult, but for me it's not a problem. What I enjoyed were 1) re-immersion into a 'Verse I love, 2) good storytelling, 3) likable characters and 4) the subtle Floridian snarkery of poking fun at our tourist industry while accepting its place in our lives.


Best Non-Fiction

The Man Who Sold America, by Joy-Ann Reid.

There are a TON of trump political books I can recommend, given my outrage and discontent about our nation's current predicament under his corrupt rule (yes, as an apostate moderate ex-Republican, I have a bias against that Shitgibbon). Reid's is one of the better ones worth your time, which focuses as much on trump's still-shadowy background and rise in business as well as his current acts of corruption and failure.

Honorable Mention: The Mueller Report (Washington Post edition)

In terms of our current events, keeping up with the political catastrophe that has been the trump Administration requires constant reading and constant reminding. Robert Mueller's years-long investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 elections, and the possibility of donald trump's involvement aiding them, may have come out in April and it may not have ended with proper closure... but a lot of the revelations even when redacted exposes a criminal enterprise behind everything trump has done and is doing right now (hi, impeachment over Ukraine military aid extortion!).


Best Graphic Novel (or Ongoing Series)

Harleen (Black Label), by Stjepan Sejic (DC Comics)

As part of a publication effort to print darker and edgier versions of their mainstream characters, this one focuses on THE breakout Batman rogue of the 1990s - Harley Quinn - to provide a more nightmarish origin story to Dr. Harleen Quinzel's run-in with (and corruption by) the Joker.

As always, the art is the biggest draw: Sejic works like a painter much of the time with the kind of detail to character designs (although I gotta admit a lot of people's chins start to look the same) that make you squint and zoom in to catch it. Also, he can draw nightmarish images that haunt more than terrify, fulfilling the darker/edgier requirement of the Black Label series. The plot itself covers familiar ground - foreshadowing of the demons Harleen herself carries with her, the meetings with Joker than begin her descent as a force for chaos - but Sejic refreshes them in an attempt to make the (anti) heroine a more intelligent and tragic figure that can later find the shred of redemption.

Dishonorable Mention: Doomsday Clock, Geoff Johns (DC Comics)

Not gonna provide a link here, because as a miniseries supposedly trying to tie in Alan Moore's Watchmen universe into the overall DCU this one has been a meandering mess. Considering how writer Geoff Johns had overseen the last decade or more of Crisis-level changes to the comic 'Verse narrative, this miniseries looks to be his latest - maybe last - attempt to clean up all loose ends caused by those shifts. I'm not sure it works: Characters introduced and then ignored for entire issues, plot points that weren't even present early on suddenly become the reason the whole story is being told... I just couldn't keep up with it. There was one bright moment in the entire series - where Manhattan becomes aware of the multiverse and how it's affected by the real-world metaverse - where you can see what Johns was aiming for... and if he made that more prominent from the first issue the miniseries might have been a more coherent work. But he cluttered it up too early and too often, and I walked away discouraged.


Best Work by Someone I Email, Tweet, or Chat With on a Regular Basis

Eye Spy (Valdemar Universe Family Spies series), Mercedes Lackey

Adding to the list of authors I've been in communication is Ms. Lackey, and for a roundabout reason. Ya see, I'm a fan of an MMO called City of Heroes that sadly got shut down a few years back... only for a dedicated fanbase to secretly start up a private server version of the game to continue to hard work of saving Paragon City. Well, earlier this year someone blabbed about the secret server, which launched a huge outcry of millions of fans who wanted to get back on it (oh, and the usual suspects of people complaining the secret server had access to people's credit card numbers). So the secret server managers released the game code and... well, as long as NCSoft doesn't bring the lawyer hammers down on anybody, the game is there to upload and play.

City of Heroes was huge in the day (and its revival one of the bigger gaming news of 2019), and it drew in a lot of well-known fans including Mercedes Lackey. She was such a fan of the game she wrote an entire superhero novel series called The Secret World Chronicles (unrelated to City of Heroes itself due to copyright) that she's kept up with to this day.

So here's the thing: In-game, they hold Costume Contests (CoH is legendary for its varied costume options for your game avatars) and one night they announced a secret prize. So I showed up with my most outrageous avatar (Lady Esoteric) and ended up winning! The prize turned out to be a gift copy of the second book in Lackey's Family Spies series set in her Valdemar universe, which she sent to me via email and basically qualifies her for this award. Congratulations! (ow stop hitting my Blaster)

You may need to get into the entire Valdemar 'Verse first, but I'll try to make it simple. There's a kingdom ruled by a benevolent monarchy beset by dark forces - at one point a rival border power, currently tribal raiders - that require the aid of magical creatures (known as Companions) and also magical people (known as Heralds) to protect the realm. The Family Spies series focuses on one Herald family where at least in the first two books the children develop their magical Gifts to serve both family and kingdom. Eye Spy focuses on Abidela (Abi for short) who discovers her Gift as a form of Scrying (the reading of inanimate objects) that can sense their physical weak points.

From there Abi is swept off to Wizard School the Collegium to hone her skills and train as her parents had to serve as a Spy. From there she hits the field working on a mystery involving a drowned village and political schemes that threaten Valdemar's reputation with their border allies.

Lackey's skills are in the details of her world-building, and crafting characters who are believable as social, living beings. I do encourage you to read the earlier Valdemar novels though to help get a better understanding of how that whole world works.


Best Work Including Stuff I Wrote

This has always been a narrow category, considering few publications accept the stories I submit. I made serious efforts this year with short story submissions but... well... Sigh. I need better adjective placement in the stuff I write, I think...

Anywho:

Strangely Funny VI, edited by Sarah Glenn (Mystery & Horror LLC)

Keeping up with the near-annual Strangely Funny series, I submitted another chapter of the ongoing Dhampyr storyline with Minette on vacation in "How a Vampire Gets a Tan". Set in the more current day of... well, after the events of a novel I've half-finished called Subway Night, it's a pretty straight forward story of why vampires don't tan outdoors (it's less to do with getting charbroiled and more to do with the excessive pheromone production when they sweat). Saying any further would spoil the rest of the story, but anyway it's a good volume and it's an overall great series so PLEASE take the time to purchase/download (available in Kindle) and read.

Happy New Year, everybody, here's hoping 2020 has a lot of fun reading ahead.

Bit Off-Topic: Missing Some Gameplay

You should know I still miss City of Heroes.

I miss the superhero roleplay. The team-ups. The power mixing. The costumes. The overall camp/seriousness of the eternal struggle of GOOD vs. EVIL.

The few MMOs in superhero genre don't cover the loss. Champions Online is just questionable gameplay and I could never get into the dynamics of it.

I've done other MMOs: Star Trek Online and Star Wars The Old Republic, but both of them don't provide much to free play.

I can't really get into the PvP games. It's the big reason why I didn't get Overwatch when it came out this month, although the buzz on it as a multiplayer makes it sound so tempting. Also, budget. I can't indulge right now... if ever.

I need something to improve my mood, though.

Summer Librarianship: Keep the Kids Reading

Just to note, it's summer.  Libraries use this time to encourage kids and teens to read.  It's helpful: it keeps the youth engaged in a needed skill - reading and literature - during the two/three months between schooling.

The theme this summer is Heroes, which is an appropriate one for meself as a fan of comic books and hero gaming.  Here at Bartow Public we're hosting a lot of superhero-themed events for the youngsters.  I worked with our Children's and Teen librarians hosting an event where kids got a superhero name and they crafted their own superhero outfits (although I would have said no to the capes like Edna would).

As such, I need to get this printed out and hanging on a wall at work:

Libraries run a READ campaign.

I really REALLY miss City of Heroes...

P.S. this is post 300.  Hi, everybody!

I Miss Shardtober

To all the Champion Server players who teamed with Witty back in the day when we had an MMO we could play with pride... To the players of City of Heroes...

Dear NCSoft: I hope your company's stock sinks to pennies on the dollar, so we gamers can buy it all up AND BRING CITY OF HEROES BACK.

This is Champion Server.  We will return.