After reading the level-headed comments from ravenevermore and gordon_r_d, I spent some time at the City of Heroes support site and tried a few things. Before I sent off a letter to tech support, I turned off Zone Alarm and tried the game and got right in. So my theory is, every time CoH updated, Zone Alarm would get all snarky and want me to allow the updated program. I only saw the popup for this rarely, however. The CoH screen covers all and usually, I’m guessing, hid this popup from me.

I’ve done my best now to convince Zone Alarm that CoH changes often and to let it go at that. Hopefully this will be enough to let me play.

So after all of that, I decided to create another hero and play around with him too. I was having such a nice time playing on servers that stayed connected that I forgot to head next door for supper. Thankfully, the folks got hungry and phoned. 🙂