Meta’s Verse: CoH Community Sites
By Meticulous Meta, OnRPG Paragon Reporter
Today I’m celebrating an OnRPG first. This is the 50th Meta’s Verse article, making this column the longest running series in the website history! We’ve come a long way since our start. And no matter what happens we will be here through to the end. I’m not going to take any time to reflect on the past though. Instead today we’re having a look at the websites that support City of Heroes. From Samuraiko who makes unofficial videos to the amazing Titan Network who have brought together several different sites to help strengthen the City of Heroes community. Without the sites and the people running them I don’t think City of Heroes would be quite as super.
The Cape Radio
Though there is at least one radio station for every server in City of Heroes, The Cape has always stood out above the rest. The Cape is nearly as old as City of Heroes itself, and takes pride at DJing every major party held on the Virtue server (but no worries, they don’t neglect the smaller ones too). Back when I first started playing CoH I held an in-character birthday party for my main character. It was her 30th birthday and I was temporarily leaving the game. And I was fortunate enough to have The Cape there represented by DJ Angel who happened to be part of the Shield of Paragon. She was also the DJ at the only wedding I’ve ever attended in-game which was between my friend’s character Breyla and Peoples’ Paladin.
But DJ Angel isn’t the only DJ they have. Just head over to Pocket D on a normal night and you’ll see a swarm of people in the middle dancing their hearts off. Each DJ has their own little following. And whenever there is a major event whether it be The SaveCoH Rally or the final days of Galaxy City, The Cape is always there. I was lucky enough to talk to DJ Pheonyx earlier this year about what it was like being a Cape DJ and about how The Cape runs behind the scenes. If you want to read that article have a look here. And as they have always said and I can’t agree with it more, “you aren’t super until you put on The Cape.”
Samuraiko
Ok, so this one isn’t really a site, but a person. But Samuraiko is so widely loved in the City of Heroes community this list would be incomplete without her. All her videos can be found on her user page on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/samuraiko. She has been making amazing/funny/fantastic videos for City of Heroes for years now. And earlier this year I got to interview her about every aspect of the video editing world. Recently she’s been doing her part in the campaign to save City of Heroes. During the huge rally she went around to all instances of Atlas Park to get video of the more than 6,000 people who turned up.
Badge Hunter aka Vidiotmaps
One of my top three tools for City of Heroes is Badge Hunter. As a complete badge whore this tool has been vital to keeping track of what badges I do and don’t have. And when you have over 40 alts like I do it gets to be quite a lot to keep track of. Badge Hunter is a well laid out, easy to use website that I’m using as part of my cataloging project. But it isn’t just a website to keep track of badges. Vidiotmaps is another part of the website dedicated to the maps of the City of Heroes universe. Specifically there are maps highlighting where to get exploration badges and the locations of plaques for history badges. These maps are fully interactive and an awesome tool, even for long time veterans like myself. They also have an in-game overlay for the maps making it so you don’t have to go to the website to find out where to go to get that badge you really want. I never used the overlay myself simply because I’m not really the sort to change games. But I know people who have sworn by it for years. And that makes it one of the most important tools for a City of Heroes player to have.
Real World Hero
Gamers are a charitable sort, there is no denying it. But I think the City of Heroes community goes a step above. The Wentworths as they’re known in City of Heroes started the Real World Hero charity drive. It’s run for three years in a row and raised nearly $30,000 for four charities. In that time it has established itself as one of the stars of City of Heroes. Last year Real World Hero was even seen spreading outside of CoH and into other MMOs like Champions Online and Star Trek Online. I don’t know what the future will hold for Real World Hero but I hope it will remain a lasting legacy of how awesome the City of Heroes community is. If you want to read my article on Real World Hero from 2010, (my second article ever!) then have a read here.
VirtueVerse/UnionVerse
When it comes to keeping track of your characters, if you play on Virtue or Union then the verse websites are a must. These two websites are amazing user made wikis of characters, supergroups, villain groups and stories from the City of Heroes roleplay world. With the closure of City of Heroes one of the site admins, Ransim, has announced that the site would be opened up to all City of Heroes players and kept open for as long as possible. I love this website. There have been times when I’ve gone to the site and just hit the random button to read all the wonderful pages that have been created. And I imagine this will become a popular activity once City of Heroes is gone for those who are missing the game and the community. I’ve even made a few pages myself, though admittedly they are very much works in progress.
And all of this leads me to my number one site, which is actually a group of several sites…
The Titan Network
The Titan Network is a collection of six websites who together make up an amazing tool for City of Heroes. The most widely known is ParagonWiki, a wiki of all things in the City of Heroes universe. I can’t remember a time I haven’t used ParagonWiki, and I end up using the website nearly every time I log into City of Heroes. But, even though ParagonWiki is a fantastic tool there is one in the network which is even more important. The Mids’ Hero Designer. It is an insanely valuable tool that allows players to plan and save builds for their heroes and villains. It wasn’t until later in my City of Heroes career that I became obsessed with Mids. It is the most valuable tool if only because there was always some community pulling between which of the two wikis to use. Though easily ParagonWiki has always been the biggest and best. There are several other websites in the Titan Network. The other big one is CoH Faces, basically a Facebook for City of Heroes. In more recent times the Titan Network has played a vital role in the SaveCoH campaign. Our editor DizzyPW got to interview the head of Titan Network TonyV just last week about the campaign.
All of these tools are going to keep being important to the community well after City of Heroes is gone. Most of these sites will survive in one way or another. They may be taking our game away but our spirit and our community will live on with the help of the websites and people behind them. Come back next week when I take a look at the Issues we will never see, powersets that weren’t announced, and anything else about the future that may never come.
