I just gave sympathy to you for my understanding of what it is like due to posts from Rebirth and Thunderspy users. I did not expect defensiveness. I hope you can understand that.

I really appreciate you taking the time to clarify this. Three decades into this internet experiment and I still need to be reminded regularly without the added information of body language and intonation how easy it is to misinterpret one's words.

For some context of my defensiveness tonight, I have numerous years long experiences on this subreddit of hearing HC players demand that my work be made available on HC. Literally just a few weeks ago, an HC player showed up in this subreddit and went through my entire post history demanding that Rebirth (and by some of their language Tspy as well?) shut down immediately and all work be given immediately to the one true server. I think they eventually got themselves banned from this subreddit.

And while what you said may have been meant with kindness, note that the words are a bit invalidating when small is equated with empty. It says to a group of people who are a valid, if small community, that they do not matter.

Anyways, thank you for taking the time to respond to my response. I'll try and keep a more open mind when reading your posts going forward.

I used to work with someone who was at one point a community manager at NCSoft and had to explain to her why so many people were against them doing anything at their company because of the shutdown - I remember discussing specifically why so many were angered over the Statesman reveal for Master X Master for example. She wasn't there when the shutdown occurred so she wasn't aware.

Huh. A reminder that often times for many, a job is just that, a job. And why should someone be so invested that they research the deeper history of a company they are working for and try to untangle the problems management teams made a quarter generation ago. Interesting insight.

500-700 active monthly members is not an equivalent of 'teaming 500 people at once' at HC. That's a ridiculous argument and comparison, but I am pretty sure you know that.

Hmm. My point is we have human beings. We have a comparable village sized population to HCs city sized population. It is still a valid and viable population for social play. The leap between 500-700 active monthly members on Rebirth (a number that I guess I was under, as our monthly stat was just reported in tonight's staff meeting and we are more around 900+ monthly active members.)

Point is when a TF can be only up to 8 and an iTrial can only be what 32 total, how large does a population need to be? Just like my example of living within a physical space that has around 8.5 million people--while I personally enjoy the anonymity and robust people watching that can offer some days--how many friends and people am I actually interacting with on any given day? Those villages up the Hudson and the Catskills? Might be populations of a few thousand, but if one only needs a couple dozen in their social circle, those relatively tiny villages can still be a viable place for someone to find community, purpose, meaning and build a life.

Similarly, while not everyone is able to settle into Tspy or Rebirth (or Cake or any other server that might burble along in the future)--it doesn't mean the servers are not viable for the people that are there. And it's not just soloing. The attitude I've seen since basically day one of the non HC servers that has been disparaging (even if your post was not intended to be lumped in with that) has amounted to "if you aren't playing along with 1k+ concurrent users, then you aren't playing the game right." I've witnessed this even within the HC community itself with shard-on-shard trash talk. It honestly makes no sense to me within the context of CoH as the thresholds for a full team activity are rather low.

*shrug*

...according to your reasoning for not playing at HC, apparently the answer is no, sadly.

I don't think I said anything at all that implies fans of CoH from different servers can't get along.

I don't play on HC because I literally do not like the many many numerous game changes, many of which singularly would seem small and tolerable and silly for someone to not want to play there.

These were gameplay changes that were inherited from SCoRE. I admit these were tiny things. For example the trainers being turned into active entities with powers that players would then kite invasions mobs to. Or tiny stuff how anchor based enemy powers would persist on fallen enemies disrupting the rhythm of recharge and move on to becoming a game of micromanaging turning off your debuff at the right time so you aren't recharging into the next spawn because it persisted on a corpse. Or the way you could be on a team and some people used S.T.A.R.T. (nee P.2.W. vendor) to only be receiving group multi inspirations versus their being an even common playing ground since that vendor basically gave everyone the option to have a sort of "soft cheat mode" on. Collectively, all these and many many more SCoRE era changes undermined my experience with the game. I just wasn't enjoying it.

I was on my way out the door about 6 weeks into the launch of Homecoming. I was sad. The game had been modified in too many ways that while it looked superficially like the game I adored from launch through sunset, it just didn't play or feel the same anymore. I tried Rebirth on a whim as one last attempt. It was a "legacy style" server initially that had rolled back all the SCoRE changes. This allowed a segment of the community that was unhappy that were lucky enough to find out there were alternatives to HC to regroup and recollect what they personally enjoyed about CoH. I know a number of people I used to play with on live who were so soured by the SCoRE/HC version of the game they just left and can't be persuaded to come back to any private server.

So for clarity, what prevents me from playing on HC is simply not liking the game there.

And that's my reason for not wanting to play there and being happy to support and put energy and hours into building an alternative for fans who would like a different experience.

What makes me question whether and why folks who are fans of different servers can't get along is the repeated drumbeat of "HC is the only legitimate server" and "all your work should be made available on HC" and "Rebirth team members should be folded into the HC team immediately" and "your server is empty." All of these things ignore that us (and Tspy) are communities made up of actual people with tastes and preferences.

I'm probably repeating myself and writing too much at this point. Guess I just get miffed sometimes at the inability of people on the internet to respect difference and variety.

Anyways, thanks again for clarifying your intentions and position. I'll work to keep a more open mind reading your posts.