City of Heroes/Villians

So I have taken the plunge into another MMORPG, having been out of World of Warcraft for some time now and wanting to try something else, since, hey, I did get 3 years of fun out of that other product.

The differences between these games is pretty large, and after about 3 weeks of playing I’m pretty happy with what I am seeing.

I’ll start off by taking a crack at my main issues with WoW and discussing how those issues still apply, or don’t apply, to CoX - keeping in mind of course my highest level character at this point is 21, with a level 50 cap - so I’ve seen not all that much of the game at this point.

And . . large moment of panic because I had thought I misplaced my post of my issues with WoW. It appears it never made it to this gaming journal since I started it AFTER I wrote the post, and LiveJournal just got another nail in its coffin since it has no option to allow you to search your own posts I had to sift manually through all my drivel. For the curious, here’s the post in full -> http://winkytoonz.livejournal.com/23020.html

But in any case:

1) Lack of Permanence. CoX has some improvements in this area. Number 1: your “guild” has a home. A place to put shit, storage racks for members, dumping grounds for unneeded things that others could use, etc. Including portals to major areas, dramatically simplifying traveling. Plus you design your own base, put in tables and chairs, whatever you like. There’s even an access point for the bank.

Furthermore, on the character front, similar to the new WoW achievements you earn badges - badges for all sorts of shit, ranging from killing x of y to having spent enough time logged out at certain locations. I have played very little compared to my WoW time and I already have 30+ badges. And badges are viewable by anyone who cares to look - along with your character bio, which gives you room to RP a little if that is your bag.

However, we do have the mob respawning issue still, and other than your personal badge list and your supergroup base, no changes to any environments are possible. That said - they are adding a Mission Creator in the next update that will allow players to craft missions and supports 1000+ maps to choose from and tweak, which should prove interesting.

One thing to note - in CoX almost all quests are instanced - as in you rarely find yourself competing for spawns.

2) Skill. I can’t judge on this one yet. My suspicion is that it boils down to gear to a certain extent, but the powersets available to characters is significantly broader than in WoW. Then again most solo mission work seems to boil down to “shoot mob, make it run to you by hiding around a corner, kill mob, repeat”, with flavor variances based on class and playstyle. So I’m not seeing any indication of “skill” being a significant factor as yet - but at least, thank god, you can shoot at shit while you are flying, so tactics at the very least take a larger role in this game.

3) Variety. omgomgomg, was my first reaction. There is no “uniform” - you have, instead, the fact that how you physically look in game has zero impact on how much oomph your character has. There are 3 “genders” (male/female/giant male), with a great number of options as far as appearance - I’d hazard you could create several hundred unique looking characters just from the costume pieces and skin tones alone. Thus far I have yet to see two characters that looked exactly alike. Furthermore, since there is a large color palette to choose from besides, you just don’t run into folks who look alike. On top of that, as you progress you earn more costume sets which allow you to change your appearance on the fly to potentially a completely different look.

Absurdly rare items, while they exist - are not always a costume piece, either. Sometimes they are only visible to those looking at how you have enhanced your powers.

So while there is a “uniform” of sorts, it’s largely invisible - and has more to do with how much you wish to minmax your stats via enhancements, which in turn plug into powers on your powers screen, than to do with your physical appearance in game.

4) Problem Solving: thus far there have been zero puzzles. No victory here, just mindless explore/kill/get treasure.

So based on those issues, CoX is a definite improvement over Wow in some areas, and breaks even in others.

That said: there are some gameplay elements that are light years beyond the annoyance of Warcraft:

1) inventory management: while you do have to worry about it to some extent, you can go off and do quite a few missions before ever having to bother stopping off at a vendor or the Market to sell off stuff you don’t need. Much less inventory downtime

2) looting: you don’t have to. If that mob had something on him - it just appears in your inventory, with a little animated “Blah Blah FOUND” drifting contentedly across your screen. Almost all mobs give you both money and xp, as well.

3) “potions”, or inspirations, as they are called in CoX: these are oneshot things like health, mana, bonus defense for a short time, etc. ALL of them are available from vendors. You don’t have to farm them, and they can’t be created, so there is no market for them either. And they drop often and heavily besides.

4) Traveling: instead of needing to go to specific places and fly specific routes, all characters have the opportunity to choose a travel power. This in turn means you can get from place to place entirely on your own. Toss in portals inside your supergroup base, and you don’t even need that, just portal around from zone to zone (although some form of personal travel does make it easier for in zone travel). On top of that, there are a variety of temporary travel powers available - a personal favorite thus far is a rocket pack that will last a total of 2 hours. As in two hours of use. This world isn’t that big. Two hours is quite a bit, and the pack itself is way pricey for a level 5 but is dirt cheap for a level 25. So to get somewhere, there is a much greater sense of immediacy - and portals are immediate. There is no 5 minute flight or standing around waiting on a boat.

The down side of this is at level 20, having been running around with higher level friends, I haven’t seen much. Most of my maps are explored in little lines that run from portal to portal and I haven’t looked past them.

5) Leveling: leveling does NOT feel like a chore. In fact, they have added in a system that makes it fly by if you have a friend or two. In one form, the lower level character is promoted to a higher one, so that the lowbee can adventure with the higher leveled person. But - xp earned is earned as if you were your same old level. So you just scoot right along. In the other form, a higher leveled person can voluntarily lower their effective level to do low level missions with you - thus making it easier to do - and in this mode the person at an artificial lower level gains orders of magnitude more cash as they go. So you get more xp, they get more cash. Everyone wins.

That’ll do me for now, for my first impressions of CoX. Ta ta!