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From the Archives: Reflecting on City of Heroes, September 2012 - MMORPG.com

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
edited April 2019 in News & Features Discussion

imageFrom the Archives: Reflecting on City of Heroes, September 2012 - MMORPG.com

With all the discussion lately about the possible rebirth of City of Heroes as a "private" server run by former players and fans of the game, we dug through the archives of content surrounding the game to step back in time to the waning days of what many call one of the greatest MMOs of all time. In a piece written in 2012 shortly before the lights went out on CoH servers, Mike Bitton wrote a reflective piece about his time with the game and what it meant over the course of its history. Take a walk back in time with us and then leave us your fondest memories and thoughts about CoH in the comments.

Read the full story here



¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 


Comments

  • SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
    Never having played CoH, this was an interesting read. Makes me sort of sorry I never played. But, such is life. :)


    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 


  • SpiiderSpiider Member RarePosts: 1,135
    COH is one of the greatest in the same way as hello kitty online.
    Gdemami

    No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.

  • AmatheAmathe Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
    Good article. Brings back so many memories.

    EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests

  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,739
    SBFord said:
    Never having played CoH, this was an interesting read. Makes me sort of sorry I never played. But, such is life. :)
    I didn't try it till a few years after it released, but it wasn't as great as I had heard it to be...I'm glad I got to try it, but I didn't understand the hype around it.
    SBFord
  • HalibrandHalibrand Member UncommonPosts: 136
    I didn't play CoH as much as I did other MMORPGs, but I did play casually. It didn't have much in the way of an economy or crafting or an auction house compared to the others, and I guess that was important to me at the time. But it was the best game for customizing your character's appearance, and I enjoyed combat in CoH more than any other MMORPG I have played. I still miss my energy/energy Blaster immensely. In fact, combat in CoH has affected what I look for in classes and playstyles in other MMORPGs more than anything else I've experienced, even though I logged a lot fewer hours in CoH than I did WoW, or LotRO, or SWTOR, or SWG, or TSW, or too many other games.

    I would be very happy to get to play again, and I would pay money to do it the legal way, if that's ever an option.
    CryomatrixWhiskeydustBlaze_Rocker
  • nyxiumnyxium Member UncommonPosts: 1,345
    edited April 2019
    Being a fan of something gets you punished these days if you don't keep to being a fan of the official theme park and decide to build your own fan-based theme park instead. This world has gone wrong.
  • dmangq75dmangq75 Newbie CommonPosts: 1
    My first MMO's were Earth & Beyond and City of Heroes. These games have always been about community and working together. Today's society has became very toxic. We don't respect other peoples opinions or lifestyles. Newer MMO's try to cater to these sort of things. Hence why WOW and others are failing. You cannot make an MMO a single player game. If goes against the whole idea of an MMO. City of Heroes allowed 8 people to join together to accomplish a shared task. These newer games can't even get 4 people to do the same thing. COH will always hold a place in my heart cause it allowed me to be a Hero, a Teammate, and most of all a Friend. Maybe I have my rose tinted glasses on? Or maybe I just knew how to have fun?
    Blaze_RockerScot
  • MendelMendel Member LegendaryPosts: 5,609
    edited April 2019
    Bah.  Image uploader isn't working.




    Amathe

    Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.

  • JeffSpicoliJeffSpicoli Member EpicPosts: 2,849
    I remember my WOW days and seeing the box for this game on the shelf at Best Buy and thinking , hmmm this looks interesting but there is no way im juggling a fulltime job, family and second MMO.
    SBFord
    • Aloha Mr Hand ! 

  • HellscreamHellscream Member UncommonPosts: 98
    edited April 2019
    I will admit i played other games like wow, champions online, when it was released but i did not enjoy those games near as much as City of Heroes i played CoH from day one till sunset day and even to this day over 6 years later i still miss the game very much.

    The level of customization and how you felt powerful in the game with different builds etc and everyone looked different which the other games did not have that is one of the things that always made me come back to CoH i had 2 accounts max vet rewards over 41 lvl 50's most being IO'd out.

    Also the people in the game everyone in teams that i ever came across where always cool there was no elitist like in other MMO's everyone was treated equal whether you was lvl 1 or lvl 50 i met a lot of very good people in the game.

    Have a lot of memory's that i wish i could do it all again and re live those memory's my favorite toon's was my Fire/Kin Controller My Mind/Fire Dominator that had perma dom and that made them very strong also my last toon i had got to 50 before server shutdown was my water/kin Corrupter very strong character i built was actually OP to the extreme but that is one of the things that made the game great.

    I spent over 6 years building and playing on my 2 accounts to get it where it was and after it closed i felt like i lost everything it really hurt me even tho its just a game but when you dedicate over 6 years to something only to have it taken from you is heartbreaking. I think the only way i would play again is if i had my old account with my toon's the way it was before shutdown because for me to start over again with a full time job family etc would just not be as fun for me anymore since the magic of the game for me was lost the day it shutdown. I even had people wanting to buy the name Ninja from me that's how old my accounts where everyone wanted that name for there characters. I have a video on youtube of all my toon's on just one of my accounts if your at all interested in it here https://imgur.com/a/zsHQaJ6
    SBFordCryomatrixBlaze_RockerScot
  • cheyanecheyane Member LegendaryPosts: 9,067
    edited April 2019
    When I first played this game during beta I remember thinking it was so unique. Having played EQ, AO, AC and DAoC I found this game so different from the others. It was my first foray into the sewers I realised how much freedom you had in how you played. People were taking on roles as they came and discovering ways to survive and help each other. I was trying out a controller with empathy and giving my own HP to help others was really an interesting take on healing. When I gave my own HP it made me vulnerable for that time so healing was like a sacrifice of your survival. I also died many times in my zeal to heal poeple.

    Blasters would knock mobs away from others to help their dying team mate although tanks frowned on them repeatedly but the person they helped must have been grateful. People would troll others by offering an invite and then teleporting them deep into Perez Park and then disbanding them and leaving them to their fate. You lost a  lot of experience and went into experience debt that carried into the next level so dying was no easy thing. The crowd control aspect of this game was done with huge ambition and it showed in the animation and execution.

    The game allowed one to explore and not be hemmed in by the trinity system often even when you did not have a tank or healer you could handle the content with competent defenders who could debuff and buff to a point that tanking and healing were not the only way to approach a mission. They were truly in this regard avant garde and paving the way for other MMORPGs to come.

    My fondest memory was starting this task force with a full group with us dwindling down to just 3 poeple and fighting the clockwork king towards the end for 45 minutes but we succeeded in the end after 4 hours at it. The best part was when the group starting falling like flies this Illusion controller because they left while the mission was tuned for 8 people and we were around 4 at that point was powerless to take on the huge numbers of mobs. It would adjust at our next mission within that Task Force but we were stuck in that one. So this Illusion controller starting getting the mobs to kill each other off and we killed the remaining bosses and that allowed us to continue.This is the exact reason why the game was so innovative because people thought and came up with ways to solve the problems.

    The costumes were beyond anything any other game and the other games didn't even come close to the diversity in powers this game offered.

    Do I miss this amazing game ...you bet I do.
    Cryomatrixkitarad
    Chamber of Chains
  • CryomatrixCryomatrix Member EpicPosts: 3,223

    dmangq75 said:

    My first MMO's were Earth & Beyond and City of Heroes. These games have always been about community and working together. Today's society has became very toxic. We don't respect other peoples opinions or lifestyles. Newer MMO's try to cater to these sort of things. Hence why WOW and others are failing. You cannot make an MMO a single player game. If goes against the whole idea of an MMO. City of Heroes allowed 8 people to join together to accomplish a shared task. These newer games can't even get 4 people to do the same thing. COH will always hold a place in my heart cause it allowed me to be a Hero, a Teammate, and most of all a Friend. Maybe I have my rose tinted glasses on? Or maybe I just knew how to have fun?



    welcome to the boards, and nice post.
    Blaze_Rocker
    Catch me streaming at twitch.tv/cryomatrix
    You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations. 
  • MadFrenchieMadFrenchie Member LegendaryPosts: 8,505
    edited April 2019
    It was, quite frankly, one of the best examples of the RP in MMORPG we've ever had.

    You could literally customize your chat box (that actually appeared over your hero/villain's head, comic-book style) border and colors to fit your hero's aesthetic, for one.
    Blaze_Rocker

    image
  • RedMachine72RedMachine72 Member UncommonPosts: 154
    I really miss this game, even though I only played casually towards the end. If NCSoft was(and that is a big if), they would license the game out, let someone else do all the work and just sit back and gather any money made from it. But like I said.....IF they were smart. Still, it makes no sense to me that they shuttered the game when it was still a money maker while they kept Wildstar going and it was losing money.
  • SovrathSovrath Member LegendaryPosts: 31,937
    I really miss this game, even though I only played casually towards the end. If NCSoft was(and that is a big if), they would license the game out, let someone else do all the work and just sit back and gather any money made from it. But like I said.....IF they were smart. Still, it makes no sense to me that they shuttered the game when it was still a money maker while they kept Wildstar going and it was losing money.
    Why would that be smart? Because you think it's smart?

    If it was "my" IP I wouldn't let anyone else near it, no matter the money (which is pretty much a pittance) it could make. I'd want full control of it.

    And once again it does make full sense why they shut it. Because it wasn't making the money they needed it to make. 

    I can't understand why this is a hard concept. For all the effort and money it takes to run the game they could use that same effort to make more money elsewhere. Underperforming is "underperforming."

    Now, if they were a small company that only wanted enough money to keep the lights on and work on updates as they could then fine. But a large publicly traded company? Eventually their investors are going to as why they are keeping something running that isn't making a good return. 

    Note "good return" is different from making some profit. 
    SBFordMendel
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  • SamhaelSamhael Member RarePosts: 1,495
    CoH was fun in that a max level player could group with a level 1 right from the get go via side-kicking and later from exemplaring (where the higher level player dropped down to the level of the lower-level player). The sheer massive number of different builds for each class meant that there was very likely many different options to suit one's playstyle. Most MMOs don't have nearly the level of depth that CoH did at launch much less when it originally sunsetted.
  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 22,823
    dmangq75 said:
    My first MMO's were Earth & Beyond and City of Heroes. These games have always been about community and working together. Today's society has became very toxic. We don't respect other peoples opinions or lifestyles. Newer MMO's try to cater to these sort of things. Hence why WOW and others are failing. You cannot make an MMO a single player game. If goes against the whole idea of an MMO. City of Heroes allowed 8 people to join together to accomplish a shared task. These newer games can't even get 4 people to do the same thing. COH will always hold a place in my heart cause it allowed me to be a Hero, a Teammate, and most of all a Friend. Maybe I have my rose tinted glasses on? Or maybe I just knew how to have fun?
    Welcome to the boards and if you have rose tinted glasses we must all be going to the same optometrist. :)
  • kitaradkitarad Member LegendaryPosts: 7,885
    I have great memories in this game and a lot of them were in groups. This game encourages grouping and that is something we sorely lack in the current MMORPGs .

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