City of Heroes dev team becomes Paragon Studios

I think to enjoy CoH you have to have a super-hero fetish or some sort.

I tried the game and it was decent but there were very few abilities on my character to use. The upgrade system for 'gems' in a equipment slot is kind of odd. Its probability. So if you already have a '+3 attack power' and add a +1 attack power gem to it, there's like a 20% chance it'll turn into a +4 attack power gem'. If you added a +2 attack power gem to the +3, you'd get more like a 60% cahcne it would reach +4 and if you have two +3 attack power gems, you have about a 90% chance it'll turn into a +4 attack power gem.

Since these gems that improve your characters drop from mobs, the further you get in the game, the higher level gems drop, you can eventually skill up our character quite a ways by coming different items.

The problem really for me came down to horrid horrid repetitiveness. The levels/missions are somewhat randomly generated by from pre-set maps. You basically start somwhere in a city and someone 'calls' you to give you a mission. You hit accept and there's a waypoint. You wonder through the city and make it to the 'XXX bank' thats being robbed! Ohh noes! and you enter the building.

This starts your own little instance where its you versus the henchmen in the bank. They are effectively like grinding mobs in wow except they just stand there and shoot at you with a gun till you kill them. No real AI except maybe following you when you run out of line of sight. You kill a bunch of henchmen, reach boss, kill boss. You win instance. you gain xp/rep/money and proably have picked up a few of those upgradeable gems we talked about earlier.

As you lvl, you slowly get more health, more mana, more exp till next level. The missions for the most part stay the same. So you'll find yourself oddly running into the exact same bank you just saved from being robbed, only the name of the bank has been randomly changed and our running to the OTHER side of the city to reach the bank. Fortunately, no matter how long it takes you to arrive, the bank is always still being robbed and the super villians have never ever gotten away.

The draw of this over wow? Well, gameplay is a bit slower, more repetitive, scalable(content gets harder with more ppl in your party, rewards get better), almost all of the content is accessible in or out of a party, in a party just gives you faster lvling, better gear at your given level, etc, you get to design your own super hero between like 8 classes(works similar to wow classes where all the super heros of one class share the same abilities) and you can customize your super heroes look.

If your looking for a slower version of wow where you can customize your character further in looks but less original/customizeable and more repetitive gameplay, COH is right for you! If Super Heros get you 'excited' , COH is right for you and you have a super hero fetish.

I like it personally due to the limitless costume creator and it has one of the best writing in an MMO that I've seen so far. The downside that I've seen so far is the lack of 'endgame' content. However with the launch of the Architect, I been finding myself playing my old characters way more than I used to.

Another thing I liked about it is the setting itself. If you been playing WoW and WAR, then the modern setting of CoH might appeal to you. Gives a nice break from the saturation of the fantasy setting

I play on Triumph personally. A larger population means a larger amount of idiots. So, nice and homely here in Triumph. No offense to Zuburi or anyone on Freedom

To clarify Wes's description,

Instead of equipment and armor, you get 'enhacements' and each will increase a power's stat by a certain percentage. For example, I have a 30% attack enchacement. If I slot it into a power then it'll increase by 30%. It's a permanent increase and not a 'chance of increasing' like Wes said

As for the repitiveness, yes there is a limted amount of maps and they do get resused alot. However, the main focus has always been the writing itself. Seems to me that you only played the Scanner missions. The real meat is in the contact missions which offers more enemy variety, difficulty actual writing, and map variations.

Leveling and gaining health, that's in EVERY MMO

As for being slow, personally I have never seen it slow. Get a full team and when the tank finish herding the mobs, bullets and bodies will fly. A Mother Ship raid: when someone yells BOMB you get the hell out of the way.

And please. Super Hero Fetish? The costume creator allow you to be virtually anything you want. Like fantasy? Got it. Sci Fi? Got it. Silver Age comics? Got it.

You're not being limited by anything

It's fun for the first month or so if you are playing alone. If you have people to regularly play with, it's even better. If you do play it, tankers (In groups) and scrappers (Solo or group) are great fun. :D I recommend trying it out.

Yeah, I would also like to step forward here and say that Wes' comment is rather misleading. I personally love the game, and while I can't say that there are no repetitive environments, the reason for this is that each instance you find yourself in is a randomized area based around a certain tileset.

My personal favorite thing about the game is the travel powers. At level 14, which doesn't take long to get to, you can get yourself the power of flight, super speed, teleportation, or super jumping to get around the city areas faster. The simple freedom of being able to fly anywhere I want in any given area is pretty much what sold me on this game.

Also, to clarify another of Wes' points, the class system in the game is based so that there are 5 primary classes for the heroes and villains, depending on whether you are playing City of Heroes or Villains. while each of these archetypes have different roles to fill in the group, you can easily have 3 defenders (the primary buffing/healer class) in your group that accomplish completely different tasks based on what powers they have. If you have an Empathy defender, he will be doing a lot of healing, while a Kinetic defender will be making the team recover energy faster, granting super speed boosts, and sapping enemy strength.

Every archetype can choose from a large set of different powers when the player first makes a character, and from then on you develop more and more powers in your power sets. The fun comes from the variety. You can have 2 or 3 different blaster (ranged DPS) characters that all play in different styles, and are all different from one another. By making an ice-based blaster who can teleport, you would probably end up playing in a completely different way from your flying blaster with psychic powers, because of the diversity in effects and how each one handles.

There are some free trials out there I think, but I would really not recommend those as good indicators of the game itself. First of all, these trials don't even let you form parties with other players, which is where the game truly shines. If you do play the trial and enjoy the solo experience, that's great, but the game is much better when coordinating with a well-organized team.

Not entirely sure why Wes thinks CoH is so slow compared to WoW. I have a buddy who plays very high lvl WoW and CoH, and when I watch him raid and PVP in WoW, the whole time, I'm like "Why is that game so slow? Are people just ok with that? Why isn't anything happening?"

My opinion, and his, is that CoH combat is much faster paced than WoW. The raid content in WoW is probably far superior to CoH. I say probably because I'm only familiar w/ CoH's raid content, and its not stellar, but people go on and on about WoW's raid stuff, and I would believe its better.

And the whole "Gem" combining thing is amusing, but its actually an incredibly minor part of the game, and not possible at higher levels with the new Invention enhancements.

I liked fighting Malta. They're one of the few enemies I ever screamed "FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK". Unless you count the Hallow days before jet-packs.

HE BAWKED IN THE WINNING RUN FOR GODSSAKES!!!

Also, there is a new retail version shipping soon known as the Architect Edition. Personally, the biggest advantage is the disc contains everything up to Issue 14, the latest issue. The Good vs. Evil pack is Issue 7 or 8, so the new one saves a lot of downloading. Plus it includes a voucher for one of the two new "Booster" packs that give you some new emotes, costumes, and a minor power. And of course it includes the free month.