Friday – 19 October 2012
“Leg godt” is Danish for “play well.” It is also the root for the LEGO brand name.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been letting Team DiVa play with LEGO magnets that we have on our front door. Always with supervision and, thankfully, when someone decides to investigate how a LEGO brick tastes, I just have to tell them “Not for eating…” or “Put it back on the door,” and they will put it back. I don’t think that the ladies are quite ready for unsupervised LEGO play, but I think they’re pretty close to being ready for LEGO Duplo. Just saying.
Meanwhile, on another facet…
City of Heroes is shutting down at the end of next month. I’ve been trying to sort out how I feel about this for a while. Long-time readers know that I was a CoH fiend when I first started playing. So much so that my characters even had little sections of the blog dedicated to them. Yeah. It was like that.
After playing Everquest, I had worked the fantasy MMO bug out of my system. (Yes, I’ve played Diablo III, but I’ve never played – nor really had an interest in – WoW.) But, City of Heroes… that was something different. It was a game that was right up my alley: You get to create a hero – or villain, once City of Villains came out – and set out to save (or take over) the world. Brilliant!
I created my first character, Indigo Bolt…
…and hit the ground running. Literally. Because you didn’t get “travel powers” until Level 6. That made getting across zones a bit of a pain, especially when it was big zone and full of NPCs that were many levels above you. When I hit Level 6, I got “Hover,” the flying equivalent of crawling. But, it got me out of harm’s way more than once… despite me calling it “the second-most stupid superpower ever.” Needless to say, when Level 14 came and I could select “Flight,” I did it with the quickness. And kept flying all the way up to Level 50, the game’s cap.
And through it all, I had a blast playing.
Then I started other characters. And I had fun playing them, too.
Over time…
…and as I started playing HALO and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 more…
…and as other games – like LEGO Universe and DC Universe Online came out for the PC…
…and as we had kids…
…I started playing City less. But it retained a warm, fuzzy spot in my gaming heart. Still does.
Hearing the news that it was shutting down was a little bit of a blow. Not as much as it was to some people, but it was still there: The sense that all too soon, Paragon City and The Rogue Isles were being removed from the map. Permanently.
Since the announcement, I have logged in a few times and played for nostalgia’s sake. And it’s been fun. And a little funny, as the controls for flying are reversed. So… just maybe… I’ve flown full-speed into the ground once or twice. Maybe. But, it made me laugh.
I’ll be sad to see to the sun set over Peregrine Island for the last time, but I’ve enjoyed my time in the game.
Thanks to NCSoft and Paragon Studios for many hours of fun.
And, on yet another facet…
My train room has not been used as a train room for a little over six months at this point. The lack of ability to run my railroad has begun to wear on me. Last night, I gave in and put together a little oval of the Marklin set that I got from Monica and Alessandro. And it was good. It started out as a “I should see if this runs,” as they weren’t 100% sure when they gave it to me, and turned into “I should stop. Now. So I’m not down here all night setting up a layout that has to be torn down when I paint.” And I did.
But then, I wound up looking at Marklin stuff on eBay. Go figure. Far longer – and later – than I should have.
But, I ran a train. Yes, it was a short train. But it was a train, nonetheless.
Namaste.
Congratulations to the Ravens on a job well done and “Thank you” to Ray Lewis for an amazing career and legacy.
