Generally, I'm not there at the end. I'm not the first to bail, but I'll probably never be the last, either. When the company running a game just flat gives up on it, or when the money just obviously has run out, when I can see the writing on the wall, I give up.

What do I do then? Go back to whatever MMO I had been playing that I only left hoping for something better. For the last five years, that's been City of Heroes, for me. I rode Neocron most of the way down, and rather than go back to Anarchy Online, tried City of Heroes. Then I quit it for SWG, saw it was going down, went back to CoH. Then I quit it for Auto Assault, rode it most of the way down, went back to CoH. Then I quit it for Tabula Rasa, rode it most of the way down, went back to CoH. Then I quit it for Warhammer Online, saw that it was going to go down, went back to CoH.

Most of them are merely fond memories, or at least fond memories of what might have been. Until the exploiters took over the servers, I never had more fun than I had defending keeps in WAR's RvR, but I don't miss it all that terribly. The only thing I've done in any MMO that was nearly as much fun as keep defense was control point defense in TaRa, but leaving it behind hasn't hurt all that much. I weep for the beauty of the concept of original SWG, while admitting that it never worked and was never going to get fixed. (And I must have had some fun in Auto Assault, although off hand I can't think of any.)

No, the only one I still actively grieve over was Neocron 1. It's been SEVEN YEARS since that game came out, and I have still never found any PLACE in any MMO that I've ever loved the way I loved the Plaza, Via Rosso, Pepper Park, the Industrial Area, and the Outzone of Neocron City. It's been five years since I left, and I still dream about it.

*shrug* As a wise sage once told a king, "This, too, shall pass." In the meantime, I've got City of Heroes as an old reliable fall-back place to hang out.