Yea, my gravity controller was kicked right in the balls with that one.
I played the hell out of this for about 6 months at launch before moving on to other things, and then maybe another couple of months when Villains launched. I loved it at the time, but when I went back after the ‘freetoplay’ transition I just couldn’t get back into it. It is a shame to see it go though.
Edit: City of Heroes has one of my favorite in-jokes. In King’s Row near the monorail station is/was a spot on the sidewalk that pedestrians would pile up on, like 9 or 10 npcs just kind of jittering around in a mass. Rather that fix whatever was wrong, the devs put a plaque on the spot blaming some kind of villain spell.
Yes. Enhancement Diversification was the biggest mistake they made. It really put a damper on the fun factor. You went from super powerful (a super hero) to simply a somewhat powerful individual.
What the PvP nerfs proved to me was something my guild (Legion) had been saying throughout the beta to the devs: if you want PvP in your game, design around it from the beginning. Trying to add it later is going to lead to endless hassles as your balancing attempts ruin characters that have been played for hundreds of hours. Almost everyone I played with quit then, and the subscription numbers took a noticeable hit.
Later MMO’s seem to have learned this lesson, so I guess that’s good, but I was angry at the time. It was an avoidable problem that should never have happened at all.
Mine too. But only because I choose to define Just Cause 2’s grappling hook as a mode of transportation and not an ability.
I played this a bit some time after it was release and again after City of Villains came out. I don’t think I played any character above the mid-30’s, though. I still remember when my first hero, The Overload Relay, was fighting a bunch of bad guys in a zone that was basically a big high-way. I knocked one of them over the edge, finished off the remaining ones with some electrical/energy area attack, toggled flight and flew down to the lower level and took out the bad guy that got kicked over the edge. Really felt that I was playing a super hero game then.
Maybe I’ll have to log in and see what the Duke of Hurt is up to one last time before the servers go dark.
This crushes me. My favorite MMO ever…and a few of us just started playing again. There is so much right in the game, the blemishes don’t bother me. Still the only game where PUGs are actually fun and non-rage inducing, for that alone the Paragon team gets a huge hi-five.
thanks guys. Thanks for the memories, thanks for showing some in the MMO creation how to do some things right. Sad day. One of the most underrated teams in the MMO space.
Hopefully like Jean Grey they will rise from the ashes and band together and make something even cooler.
RIP, one of the best (the best?) action mmos ever made.
o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7 o7
Farewell, littel prince. WE will miss you.
Very sad. Very surprised they can’t keep servers running and just cut back on content development. The F2P must really not be working for them. I wonder if the numbers will ever come out, and what it might mean for future MMOs.
True but you have to realize there’s a pretty big gap between the time the game came out and when other popular elements like PvP was instituted. The game was initially designed with no PvP because that’s how the heads at Cryptic wanted it. When CoV was released the whole thing was a boondoggle, mostly because of them. It took some massive power shifts in order for the game to actually fit into a better life, though of course by that time trying to tune that entire system is a massive nightmare, which goes back to your point I suppose but the people running the show at various points of COH’s life have been very different, and their reasoning and business purposes are extremely (and at times stupidly) varied.
— Alan
Yeah, your post basically just restates mine. “Do PvP from the beginning or don’t do it at all” should be a no-brainer, and CoH proved it. The massive power shifts you refer to permanently antagonized a significant fraction of the player base, one that had been rabid for the game. We loved feeling truly super, and when that was taken away, we left in droves. For me, CoH died years ago. Today, someone finally headshot its shambling, zombie corpse.
I’ve spent more time in City of Heroes than I spent in college, which, while admittedly is a sad statement on my life in general, doesn’t change the fact that I’m heartbroken by the news.
Aside from all the great parts that have already been mentioned, my favorite feature was the /demorecord function. Figuring out its output and creating footage from scratch became an engrossing endgame. I always meant to go back one day to see what new trickery would be possible with all the updates, but sadly I suppose it’s too late now.
My wife has played this for 4-5 years, almost every day. Is there something out there similar, particularly in terms of the community? She would want something fairly laid back and with a low ratio of obnoxious people, similar to CoH. I don’t follow MMOs at all so I have no idea. Help us please.
Super Jump is truly the best method of travel in an MMO ever.
It was certainly my favorite. I never enjoyed their implementation of flying nearly as much as super jump. I did like teleporting too, but too much micromanagement.
Probably Champions Online and DC Universe Online.
— Alan
Wow, many fond memories of this game. I also don’t play it anymore. Was the first MMO I played with both kids.
The youngest (with autism) then was refusing to type. So in out guild we tried no voice chat allowed when he was online. Everyone, including parents of other kids that could benefit from typing practice, and the adults, typed only to communicate with him. Within a couple of months he was typing just fine.
Same themes, but those two games have a pretty different feel to them I think. Too bad, I have fond memories of this game.
Which really aren’t very similar, alas.
What a shame. City of Heroes was my first big MMO love. The powers, the combat, the easy grouping with instances scaling to the full 8 person team, the character customization. There were issues and peccadilloes (I’m in the camp that they shouldn’t have listened to the people pushing for PvP, as much as I liked playing villains later, and Perez Park was a nightmare for a while), but on the whole it was remarkably fun and far, far less grindy and oppressive than king MMO at the time Everquest.
It sure -seemed- like CoH was doing just fine until I heard this. They’d released a third expansion that I wasn’t expecting, were rolling out issues…sure, they went free to play, but as an older MMO with what had to have been a relatively small playerbase free to play seems like a no brainer.
It still drives me nuts that more MMOs don’t have something like the Sidekick/Exemplar system.
I made a beeellllion alts in that game, my favorite being Bactine Lass, the healer.
Bactine Lass, the combat nurse.
Ultramime, silent gesturer of justice.
Ferrous Pharaoh, the iron mummy.
Rose Maddest, super powered roller derby riot grrl.
Dr. Chocolate, the funky 'hood protector.
Gloomleader, the zombie cheerleader tank.
PiecesMaker, the cough nonlethal cough security robot.
Just on and on…