Police Drone, Leading The Way Into A Brighter Tomorrow!

Back when I played City of Heroes, I was a member of the Paragon Police Department, on the Justice Server. The PPD, or PD, as we were known, has seen many iterations, on multiple servers. Virtue and Freedom have seen chapters form, and there was once a Paragon City Police Department, PCPD.

What attracted me to this super group was the theme. To be a member of the PPD, at the time, you had to roll up a Police Drone. NPC Police Drones guard zone entrances, and certain buildings, but those are little more than hovering tasers.

I loved the uniform from the first time I saw it. All Drones were the same height, wore the same outfit. Only variances reflected level and rank. Pictured above is my Drone, Police Drone TH. We all used the same Police Drone "xx" naming convention, until they increased the number of characters allowed in ones name, then we extended the rules to Police Drone "xx-xx". All my subsequent drones were named TH-01, 02, 03, etc.

We were technically a role playing SG, but we never took it that far. We only had rules above talking in public channels. After all, we were portraying mechanized law enforcement robots (one of our leaders drew up a nice background for the group). We all tried to speak in a dispassionate, flat tone. And it worked. People often thought we represented in game GMs, or developers, some people thought we actually had in-game authority. None of this was true, mind you, but it gave us this mild mystique. At our peak, we had over one hundred active members, all acting in strict accordance with our rules, and we were a top 50 SG. We actually had fans, and of course, enemies.

At one point, a SG named the "Anti-Drones" formed, and frequently and publicly challenged us. Quite often, when PvPing, we would find ourselves the target of every possible player in the zone. In fact, this led to a very dramatic 3 v 11 battle in a free-for-all zone, where we won (it gave us a reputation as avid PvPers, even when our membership dropped off).

However, these days, you'll be hard pressed to find a Drone an any server, much less Justice. When I stopped playing, there were only four other active members. It was disappointing, for me, as many of the members were close friends of mine. At one point, I had plans to leave the state and move in with a friend that lived in Florida. His name was Patrick, but when we played CoH together, he was Police Drone PT. I knew him before that, to be fair, but we spent a lot of time in Paragon City. Another gentleman, Police Drone R4, I knew simply as "Bob". Bob lived a hard life, and was handicapped by medical error (lack of action, really, due to mis-diagnosis). When he stopped playing, it was a hard blow to our SG. He was our leader, the foundation on which we carried our group. He went from playing 8 hours a day to not playing at all, with only the occasional post on our forum. Police Drone X9, on the other hand, never left, never stopped. He was actually one of the roots of the entire Justice community, and his staying did a lot to carry us through the time when we had single digit membership.

I miss that group, and that game. I met a lot of great people, who I like to think of as friends. I know lots of people who think that friends made playing a game online are inferior to ones made in real-life, but I disagree to a point. I had actually conversations with these people, thanks to voice-chat programs like Teamspeak and Ventrillo. I recognized their voices, could hear the emotion in them when they spoke. I may have only been able to see a virtual avatar that represented them, but I might as well have been sitting next to them.

People like Patrick, and his girlfriend Tiffany, good people, who I miss.

I just took a moment to visit the SG site, a very bittersweet feeling. Maybe I do get too invested in gaming.