Anyone play NERO Atlanta?

Hi there, friends list and all the ships at sea. Is there anyone reading me who knows a thing or two about NERO Atlanta? Not NERO in general, but the chapter here in Atlanta. I'd love to know one of my friends / contacts who already plays with them.

Thanks in advance for your help!

(BTW, I found their website already, I'm just looking for people who can speak to the experience and who may even be attending this weekend's event)

What makes for a valid community?

(Note for my boss & other interested parties: This was written over the course of many days, just pulling the trigger on it now)

I have recently begun playing City of Heroes again after several years' off. I still have my old, old characters that have been idle, it says, for over 728 days, and I have not recently logged them in.

City of Heroes / City of Villains is a game where you play a super hero or a super villain. As a hero, you have super powers, you run around and beat up (incarcerate) bad guys, and you have missions in place of what is normal for this genre of computer game, "Quests." Instead of gold pieces, we get a currency called "Influence," which enables us to buy cool gadgets and add-ons to our characters. Characters get experience points which add up to more and more levels, as you get levels, you get more super powers, and so on.

The same thing is done with villains, only the villain stuff is branded for them. So, instead of Influence they get Infamy. Some of the powers are the exact same, except that, for example, Villains don't get to use a power called Empathy which is all about healing and helping people (they have a similar power set called Pain Domination, which is not as powerful as Empathy in my opinion), and heroes don't get to use powers like Poison, which is available to a villain character.

Surprisingly, there are a number of co-op areas in the game where heroes and villains can fight a greater bad guy together, which is interesting.

Anyway, back on track here. I've been playing City of Heroes, and in that game, I have come to know some folks who have become increasingly special to me, that is to say, they are my SuperGroup.

Yeah, I'm part of a super hero group like the Justice League or the X-Men. I'm a member in good standing of ICONS. Yes, we have a super base. Yes, we have a cool costume. But the most important thing about ICONS is the community it represents.

We all chat verbally online with each other using software called TeamSpeak. My microphone is set up to detect my voice and go "live" in time to catch what I'm saying, so all I have to do is speak and my team-mates will hear me.

This helps us when we are fighting bad guys. We coordinate our attacks and the powers we use so that we are more effective.

But more importantly, we have social time, too.

Let me be clear, I haven't met most of these folks in real life, but I feel as though I know them, and they are serving, for me, as a social outlet.

This is ideal for me because I can be at once both "at home" and in "social space." I don't like to be away from home much; my family needs me. This means that I can be social in a positive way without being totally unavailable to my family.

Now, time will tell. But I extrapolate this concept of a group of people, loosely connected through the power of our voices, and I see all sorts of interesting possibilities for the future.

In a short story I wrote recently, I was adamant that some people we meet and know online are just as real to us as people we meet in person. Over time, we in the super group come to know and trust each other. We know what's going on with each other's lives, we pull together like a family does. If one of us is sick, we'll yell at him until he gets help. We offer support and understanding to each other, and honest critique; something I've come to really value over the course of years.

I think the time is past to redefine what it means to have an affiliation with someone. If the word "tribe" applies, what does that mean?

I think that it's important to think about this and to be conscious of it. So much is just disregarded because it is not face-to-face, and I feel that is egregious.

"There's not a word yet / for old friends that just met." - says Gonzo from The Muppet Movie.

I love that idea.

Online gaming wasn't nearly as fun until people like the ICONS, and my friends the Old Fartz, started meeting regularly to play.

P.S.: Wanna see my oldest City of Heroes characters? Click to see the gallery.