Post originally by Juriel at 2005-03-04 11:44:00
Converted from Phorums BB System

I've played CoH for 9 months, and am currently on a many-month break, waiting for my interest to revitalize. I played multiple characters, but got highest with a Katana/Reflex Scrapper (no, not with the everpopular ninja theme) at lv40.

<b>Good points</b>

- Enemies spawn out of sight of players. They will NOT appear out of thin air as you are standing there and watching them. Unlike seemingly every single other MMORPG, which love to kill immersion with this handy trick.

- Proper use of instances. You go into a mission, it's your personal playground - only you and your teammates can enter that one. I know WoW, for instance, uses a similar mechanic, but it does it half-heartedly - not nearly every dungeon in it is instanced, which leads to the happy 'standing in line to kill the blue-haired named orc boss' thing. No such worries in CoH.

- It's about superheroes. Not slender wood people and smelly mountain folk beating up fuzzlies - it's about superheroes beating up fuzzlies. Makes all the difference.

- It is focused. CoH wants to offer what superheroes do, and that is beat stuff up. It gives this, right away.

- Feeling like a hero right from the start. You start by arresting gang members, and can jump into big groups of them practically right away. You do not start by going after the local wildlife. One of my fondest memories is still entering a nazi base at a low level, just me and a friend, and in a climactic end scene, beating up tens of nazis in the largest warehouse room, because they just kept on coming.

- Flight. What other MMORPGs offer you the chance to swoop down on things, or perch upon the highest skyscrapers?

- Active combat. It is not a turn-based affair where you stand still, watching the character beat stuff up, occasionally using special skills. It is a direct, hands-on experience where moving in the middle of a battle is the easiest I've seen in MMORPGs, and it serves a tactical function as well (moving behind cover from ranged attacks, moving so that your broad sweep hits multiple foes).

- There is at least a minor effort towards giving the city some life - there are many citizens walking around, and cars driving. So you are not running around in a ghost town.

- Costume design. It has a lot of options. For costumes, though, not faces - the design idea is that you are identifiable at a distance, not at what angle your left eyebrow happens to be from a close-up view.

- No loot.

- Related to the previous and the no-spawn-in-sight thing: no camping.

<b>Bad points</b>

- The game does the fighting well, but that is all there is. If you do not like just being able to be a superhero who fights well, the game will lose its interest after the first month.

- Bad AI. The AI is the standard game AI - it heads your way and uses its powers, but never does anything remotely smart. At least in CoH they come in large groups, so they have some remote justification for being basic.

- You are not really a superhero. You are superpowered, true, but you have no storyline of your own to follow, nothing in your missions personalizes you/cares about what you are. The missions make you feel like a part of a superpowered army, not a hero. And there are no random events you would just stumble across - bank robbery, burning building where people need rescuing, car chase - none of these staples of superherodom are present.

- The gangs are EXTREMELY prolific in the city. There are tens of baddies for every city block - their amount is just mind-blowing, and the respawn rate (once everyone is out of sight of the place) is fast. This means you cannot even pretend you make a difference, and plays against immersiveness, as there's ten times as many baddies as normal people in the city.

<b>Final comments</b>
There, a few random thoughts. I'm sure I missed quite a many.

City of Heroes is a good game, best MMORPG currently (in my opinion, obviously). In the future, City of Villains will add a nice new dimension with player-played supervillains that interact with the heroes.

Now, I'm going back to testing out Matrix Online, which feels like a clunky, slow, bug-ridden version of CoH. Still, at least it has slo-mo, so it has something 'original' going for it game-wise, unlike WoW.

And both have enemies that spawn very much in the view of players. And wolves that drop chain leggings, or female gangers who drop pants only wearable by males. Feel the immersion value.