City of Heroes - finally, a GOOD MMORPG?

Now this surprised me. I've heard of City of Heroes before, as its been in development for awhile now. But with so many lackluster MMORPG releases over the past few years, I assumed CoH would be more of the same.

But now, just a few weeks before CoH's release (which would be April 28th), something strange is happening - this game is actually getting ALOT of praise, much moreso than most MMORPGs did on the eve of their release. With games such as Star Wars Galaxies, Horizons, and Shadowbane, the Beta tester feedback right before release was around 50% positive vs. 50% negative, and that's being generous. Some of those games got torn apart quite a bit by disappointed Beta players.

CoH's Beta feedback seems to be more like 90% positive vs. 10% negative. And the main negative complaint seems to be that the $15 monthly fee is too steep. Which is certainly a fair argument. But on issues such as gameplay and fun factor, CoH is really suprising people and quickly winning over alot of fans.

Here's a few comments from a post at the CoH VN Boards :

1. Unrivalled character creation/customization
2. Smooth and dynamic gameplay
3. Graphics are superior, yet don't bog down your comp
4. Combat is FUN, no static spawns, no mob camping
5. The superhero abilities are a blast!
6. The story lines and quest progression are fun!
7. You don't have to play a 6+ hour session to feel you accomplished something.
8. The in-game support is SUPERB
9. There is no bickering about loot, there are no lewt whores
10. The player base that I have encountered is very friendly, and approachable

This was just one person's opinion, but these points are being echoed by many. Now granted, every game like this will have its fanboys, as well as its trolls. And no game is perfect. But the good words seem to far outweigh the bad, as you can see if you browse around those boards.

So is anyone else here considering playing this game? I thought I'd have to wait for World of Warcraft for a good MMORPG launch, but City of Heroes seems to suggest otherwise.

I'm waiting for World of Warcraft to come out to fill my MMORPG quota, but if I my heart wasn't set on WoW, I'd probably give CoH a try.

CrusaderX said:

But now, just a few weeks before CoH's release (which would be April 28th), something strange is happening - this game is actually getting ALOT of praise, much moreso than most MMORPGs did on the eve of their release. With games such as Star Wars Galaxies, Horizons, and Shadowbane, the Beta tester feedback right before release was around 50% positive vs. 50% negative, and that's being generous. Some of those games got torn apart quite a bit by disappointed Beta players.

CoH's Beta feedback seems to be more like 90% positive vs. 10% negative. And the main negative complaint seems to be that the $15 monthly fee is too steep. Which is certainly a fair argument. But on issues such as gameplay and fun factor, CoH is really suprising people and quickly winning over alot of fans.

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No offense, but beta reports don't mean much to me.

First, no previous superhero RPG has gotten it right (IMO, only Freedom Force was close). Every design team that has worked on one has admitted that allowing players to design their own characters is a bear to balance.

Second, there are so many ways a MMORPG can bomb, we won't know what to expect until it's open to the public and actually running. At that point, we'll see how well the servers scale, what bugs, exploits, etc. there are, and how the players actually behave. Far and away, most MMORPG's have crashed and burned.

I hope CoH is a big hit, but I'll let others do the real testing before I jump in myself.

Dark Jezter said:

I'm waiting for World of Warcraft to come out to fill my MMORPG quota, but if I my heart wasn't set on WoW, I'd probably give CoH a try.

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I waiting for WoW too. But I don't expect it to be released anytime soon. It may not even be out until Christmas, or even after.

Sir Whiskers said:

Far and away, most MMORPG's have crashed and burned.

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Oh, I agree. But the crashing and burning was definitely foreshadowed by numerous reports of how bad the games were immediately after their NDAs got lifted.

The CoH NDA got lifted, and a flood of good reports came out, not bad.

You're right though, we won't know for sure until after the game goes live. But the fact that CoH is getting so much good buzz at this point, which is significantly more than other games did when they were at a similar point, gives me some hope.

I just hope they have a good launch. I have heard lots of MMORPG's where after years of them building it up, promoting it, the main servers crash the day the game hits the store because "they did not think the traffic would be so high".
This is the only MMORPG i'm interested in, I have heard that in an expansion, you will be able to play as a villian.

The first few months of release are fairly cruicial to a MMORPG, it seems. If it can go this early period without major bugs, downtime, content/balance/design problems (which generally ends up being the poison that has damaged/killed other MMOs), and of course has fun gameplay, it may indeed buck the trend of lacklustre MMOs that last as long as they do primarily to die-hard fans unwilling to let go.

Well, WoW has a lot going for it too - namely, the company making it. Blizzard has an almost perfect record. Unfortunately, they also have a reputation for spending a loooooong time on creating the games - which is good for the game but bad for the impatient people like me.

Three of my players are playing in the CoH beta, and they LOVE it. They are all longtime Everquest players, but they stopped really enjoying EQ a long time ago. CoH has them raving about it. In particular, features like 'sidekicking', where you team-up with another higher-level player, is awesome. Essentially, you get your level temporarily raised as long as you stay within a set physical difference of your partner...allowing you to go on adventures with a group that may be much higher than you in level. The story-lines are fun, and there appear to be lots of features to make the game more enjoyable and less tedious.

One of my players who's very into it told me this weekend that it was a lot like Asheron's Call, in that you could play solo and have fun or play in a group, and you could get something done in an evening without having to go through the huge convoluted hoops presented by EQ, for example. He was asked flat-out if he was planning on dropping EQ for CoH, and his answer was a qualfied yes.

Example: he side-kicked with a group of heroes who got a mission by calling one of their contacts over a cell phone (one gimmick to get missions in-game). Turns out some villains with ties to the nazis were doing something nasty in a warehouse downtown. They head down there, and get a private mission in the warehouse (that only his super-group can enter...no dungeon-jumping, no lewt-whores, no camping, etc.). They fight their way through the minions, and bring the villains to justice, stopping their evil plan. Mission over. They depart the warehouse, and sit around to talk about it for a few moments. HOWEVER, the villains haven't taken this lying down, and have dispatched a bunch of giant Nazi death-robots, which suddenly come around the corner outside the warehouse and ambush the heroes, some of whom are no longer sidekicked and not ready for the much more powerful villians. Many heroes go down, but eventually they win through...and much fun is had by all.

I'll ask one or two of them to pop over here and lend some info.

What Wizardru said.

Yeah right, like I could stop there.

I'm in the beta. I can't say enough good things about CoH. I'll try tho.

The game is fun. And face it, though we all forget occasionally, that's what we play games for. It has a great comic-book feel, it's a fun balanced game and I think the potential is there to keep people's interest in the long term.

Character creation: tons and tons of costume options. You'll spend 30 minutes minimum in the costume designer, guaranteed. (And no, that's not a bad thing.) There are several different "archtypes" and within each, different power sets to chose from. Blasters all share the fact that they blast things, but there are five different primary power sets, each with slightly different effects. And secondary sets to boot. I have yet to encounater a case where having a second of a given kind of character felt redundant. A mixed team is great, but having several of a given type is fine too. You can adapt your tactics to whatever your team has going for it. Unfortunately you can't control how a power looks when used - i.e. eye beam or scream or blast from the hands - everyone with the same power will use the same graphics. But realistically, there are limits to how much code can go into these things.

Balance: because there are power sets, there can be good balance between them. I think they've done a great job holding balance between different types of characters (blasters vs defenders etc)

PVP: There is none. At all. Forget it. If that's what you want, look elsewhere. The game is not balanced for it. This is the heros vs the villians.

Missions: generally you will always have people offering you things to do. Sometimes it's outdoor "Kill ## bad guys of this type for me", and other times it's "go to the warehouse and stop the arms sale" which are instanced just for you. (Yes people can join in at any time) There are some dry spots by design, and in those times you can always go for some good old fashioned street justice. Plus if you have no juicy missions, you can always team up and do a teammates. I had a fantastic mission arc that started with investigating some stolen artifacts. Eventually I learned they were part of the Wheel of Destruction. I had recovered them all over the course of a few missions and learned about them. After I had turned them over to someone, they were later stolen and I had to go recover them. Each piece I recovered gave me a new temporary power that I got to use for the duration of the mission. It was a great storyline.

Grouping/Soloing: You can team up, and take on a mission of one of the team. If it's an indoor instanced mission, the difficulty scales to the number of people on the team (but not their levels - this can cause a mission to be too easy/hard so you have to select carefully). If you prefer to solo, you can do that too and do well at it, provided you play according to your abilities. You can always find something to do even if you have 10 minutes.

Travel: you travel though city zones through tunnels or by monorail. The backstory of the city supports the need for these controlled zones (alien invasion a few years back). As for personal travel, there are several travel powers - flight, teleportation, superleaping, etc. All have up and downsides. Personally I'm a flight junkie.

Loot: There's very little. It's just not that kind of thing. There are only two kinds of "loot" - inspirations (think potions - one use temporary effect) and enhancements - things that increase the effects of your powers. Great balance overall.

Sidekicking - brilliant thing that every game should find a way to include. If I'm level 15 and my friend is level 30, he can make me his sidekick. When I'm near him, I fight at level 29 and can go on missions with him and help. I'm not as good as a real level 29 but I can get in there and make a difference. Great way to let folks play together.

Graphics: Look great. Not sure what else to say here.

Support: Sure it's beta but the devs have really been great to deal with. Same for in-game support.

The game is a ton of fun, and have gone deep enough in to see the appeal for a long time, and there are plenty of places they can add content easily.

Happy to field questions if anyone has any.