MMO Gamers

I tried City of Heroes back in 2006. I played it for a couple of months, thought it was pretty cool, but it didn’t really hold my attention. I was playing Everquest 2 at the time and I decided to devote my time to that game instead, so CoH got relegated to being another pretty box on the shelf. Fast forward to 2010 and I find myself staring at the screenshots and wanting to play at Superheroes. Sadly, that required an install and some patching, so there was no instant satisfaction, but the game takes up not even 3GB on the hard drive, so not as bad as say, patching Age of Conan for instance.

I finally got into the game and decided to pick up where I left off on my Defender. He was at level 13, which was my highest character and my healer class. CoH is very much a same old, same old when it comes to MMO design, but it’s different enough that I had to relearn everything. Groups are called Teams and Guilds are Supergroups. The interface is similar to other MMO’s but also different. Once I figured out how it all worked again I went out to do some missions (quests). While some missions are outdoors in the public space, many are in indoor instances, and many require a team to complete. Think of each mission a bit like doing a dungeon run with a group, which really suits my play-style, but they do get repetitive because many of the mission instances look identical to others you have already completed. I’m not sure how instances are generated in CoH, whether a zone all has the same looking instance or whether it’s randomized, but I’ve seen perhaps 7 or 8 different instance designs while having done dozens of solo and group missions.

RG-6. Defender of Paragon City

Combat is much the same in CoH as in other MMO’s. I play a Defender, which is the healer class in CoH. The classes are Tanker (tank), Blaster (ranged DPS), Scrapper (melee DPS), Controller (Mezzes, Roots etc) and the Defender. There are also two other classes, the Warshade and another whose title escapes me, but there are restrictions to creating one of these, such as having a level 50 character already. Teams can have up to 8 players and since many of the missions require a group it’s quite easy to get one. It wasn’t long before I received a whisper asking if I wanted to join a team and run some missions. CoH has a sidekick system, so you can join a team of higher level players and get bumped up in level to one below. I took my (now) level 14 Defender into a team of level 23 players and ran a few missions. I was getting a level with each mission I completed, and the next day I ran some more mission with players around the same level and found myself hitting level 20. Needless to say, it was fun. In fact, playing a Superhero is fun, and I can see why this game has such appeal and is still going strong.

Villain Pwnage. I haz it

Spells are done a little differently in CoH. You choose two spell lines (for wont of a better description) a main and a secondary. At each second level you get to learn a spell from either one or the other of your lines, and at each level in-between you get to add a slot to your spells which you can then make more powerful using enhancements. CoH has all the things you’d expect from a MMO, such as crafting, which I tinkered with and made myself an enhancement. The player crafted enhancement was far superior to the ones you can buy from the merchants. Crafting is also a little different. Recipes are gained from mob drops, as are the required materials. Once you use a recipe it’s lost to you, so they only have a one-time use. However, basic recipes can be memorized after they are done enough times. There’s also an Auction House if you can’t be bothered crafting and just want to buy enhancements.

Graphically CoH is dated. While your avatar looks quite detailed the surrounding world is not overly impressive, nor are the NPC’s or indoor environments. Still, the world does suit the game style and lack of pixels and bloom effects didn’t really bother me. On a positive note, I can run this game on max settings and not suffer any lag. While it may be lacking in graphics it’s not lacking in emotes, and CoH has some really cool, fun emotes. You can pull out a huge beatbox and start rapping to the tunes, make a cup of tea, and dozens of others; some cool and others just funny. One of my favourites is just reading the paper.

Hmm, return of the Page 3 girl

I don’t know how long I’ll stick with CoH, there’s still a lot for me to discover and I certainly intend to play it some more. However, I have three subscriptions going at the moment, and it’s not so much the cost that concerns me, it’s finding the time to play them all.