Like many people, I thoroughly enjoyed playing City of Heroes / Villains, from very early on, and for a long time. The playerbase was far more grown up than that of World of Warcraft, and the way that the game was set up, meant there was far less room for elitism.
As the years rolled on though, I started to get bored of the lack of high end content, and the non-existence of a feeling of accomplishment at reaching the level cap.
That argument always used to be that, WoW was about what you do once you reach the level cap, and CoX was about the journey to it. And for a while, that mentality worked. Sadly though, the MMO gaming industry started to outgrow CoX, with far better games in both Visual, and gameplay sides.
I always preferred NCSoft's way of working to that of Blizzard. NC would release new content frequently, and not charge any extra money for it. Blizz however charge money for every little addition to the game, and even sell items for use in game, as extortionate prices, whereas NC's few Pay addons were a couple of quid a pop.
Having also played Aion, Star trek online, and Champions online, amongst many over the years, i was always hoping for a good MMO to come out that would rival WoW, and put the fanboys in their place. Aion Looked promising. Sadly Aion tripped at the first hurdle with poor quality of life, and "Roadblocks" in levelling (Such as forced grouping at level 20, unless you want to spend weeks grinding low level mobs) and a poor User interface. The interface was fixed in a later patch, but to many the damage was already done.
NCSoft then made a lot of noise about a "Graphical upgrade" to city of heroes called Ultra mode. Originally it was to be part of the Going Rogue expansion, but as the date for Going Rogue was pushed back, they decided to release Ultra Mode separately. I even showed interest, and was looking forward to seeing some more up to date visuals. I was sorely disappointed.
The "Upgrades" were adding shadows, reflections in water, and animated tails should your character have one.... and that is all. And the graphics were so badly implemented, that unless you had a high end graphics card, and it was compatible with NC's unusual occlusion method, you wouldn't see the full benefit anyway.
The next item on NC's list was focusing on the Going Rogue expansion. They allowed Pre-order, and made a couple of the changes (two new power sets) to become available to pre-order customers. And promised BIG things for the full expansion.
Bare in mind that CoX has had a rocky ride, with many of the Changes that Cryptic and then NCSoft made, causing big problems and people to lose interest rapidly. First was Enhancement Diversification, which took a huge nerf bat to the power of characters across the board, making them far less Super. Then came the invention system and auction house, which created a whole new game economy, and elitist attitude among players, particularly in the PvP community. New players would come to the game and make huge sums of in game currency (Influence/Infamy) in hours, that us long time players had spent hours grinding to achieve.
But with the new set bonuses that came with certain enhancements, we felt that maybe the Pre-ED days would be able to come back.
Then the worst thing that any game could possibly conceive happened. Mission Architect...
This system allowed players to create their own missions and story arcs, that rewarded Xp and currency, just like normal missions did.
The Pro-power levellers and Gold sellers moved in, and for a long time, the starting zone, was constantly full of power level, gold selling and farming spam, which made many of us avoid the zone at all costs. Players quit the game in their droves, as the game had stopped being about playing a character to level 50, and more like a pokemon game in how fast you could collect level 50 characters.
The few die hard fans, that stuck with it, eventually saw the Mission architect problem dealt with, as all XP and currency gains from these missions was heavily reduced. But for many this was too little, too late.
So did anyone listen to the hype about Going Rogue? did anyone believe NCSoft when they said it would give the game a whole new lease of life, and add hours more content that players could enjoy?
Some did, Some didn't.
I myself had a little look, once the expansion came out, to see if it lived up to the hype. And I am very sad to say, it hasn't lived up to my expectations.
In this day and age, with yet another WoW expansion coming out soon, A star wars MMO (A proper one) in the pipelines, and new MMO's coming onto the scene almost daily, NC really have to pull their finger out and put some serious work in. They have a HUGE amount of catching up to do, if they expect to keep any feasible number of players interest.
The reason so many people play WoW, is that it offers something to shoot for, once you hit the level cap, which you cant just achieve in a couple of hours, it takes weeks, literally. And the fact that it takes quite a long time to actually reach the level cap, adds several weeks play time to each character as well.
High end content, is that failing point of a lot of MMO's, CoX and STO in particular.
Some companies claim to take a moral standpoint, about how Blizzard conduct their business, which does pull in a few punters for a short time. But lets be honest, there is a reason that WoW is the Biggest MMO in the world, despite having to pay for everything.
In my opinion, as much as i loved CoX and wanted to see Aion rock Blizzards boat, and become a real contender, NCSoft sat on their backsides too long and let the world pass them by. There will come a day when an MMO gives WoW a run for their money, but as far as I can tell, it wont be a Cryptic, or an NCSoft MMO.
As the years rolled on though, I started to get bored of the lack of high end content, and the non-existence of a feeling of accomplishment at reaching the level cap.
That argument always used to be that, WoW was about what you do once you reach the level cap, and CoX was about the journey to it. And for a while, that mentality worked. Sadly though, the MMO gaming industry started to outgrow CoX, with far better games in both Visual, and gameplay sides.
I always preferred NCSoft's way of working to that of Blizzard. NC would release new content frequently, and not charge any extra money for it. Blizz however charge money for every little addition to the game, and even sell items for use in game, as extortionate prices, whereas NC's few Pay addons were a couple of quid a pop.
Having also played Aion, Star trek online, and Champions online, amongst many over the years, i was always hoping for a good MMO to come out that would rival WoW, and put the fanboys in their place. Aion Looked promising. Sadly Aion tripped at the first hurdle with poor quality of life, and "Roadblocks" in levelling (Such as forced grouping at level 20, unless you want to spend weeks grinding low level mobs) and a poor User interface. The interface was fixed in a later patch, but to many the damage was already done.
NCSoft then made a lot of noise about a "Graphical upgrade" to city of heroes called Ultra mode. Originally it was to be part of the Going Rogue expansion, but as the date for Going Rogue was pushed back, they decided to release Ultra Mode separately. I even showed interest, and was looking forward to seeing some more up to date visuals. I was sorely disappointed.
The "Upgrades" were adding shadows, reflections in water, and animated tails should your character have one.... and that is all. And the graphics were so badly implemented, that unless you had a high end graphics card, and it was compatible with NC's unusual occlusion method, you wouldn't see the full benefit anyway.
The next item on NC's list was focusing on the Going Rogue expansion. They allowed Pre-order, and made a couple of the changes (two new power sets) to become available to pre-order customers. And promised BIG things for the full expansion.
Bare in mind that CoX has had a rocky ride, with many of the Changes that Cryptic and then NCSoft made, causing big problems and people to lose interest rapidly. First was Enhancement Diversification, which took a huge nerf bat to the power of characters across the board, making them far less Super. Then came the invention system and auction house, which created a whole new game economy, and elitist attitude among players, particularly in the PvP community. New players would come to the game and make huge sums of in game currency (Influence/Infamy) in hours, that us long time players had spent hours grinding to achieve.
But with the new set bonuses that came with certain enhancements, we felt that maybe the Pre-ED days would be able to come back.
Then the worst thing that any game could possibly conceive happened. Mission Architect...
This system allowed players to create their own missions and story arcs, that rewarded Xp and currency, just like normal missions did.
The Pro-power levellers and Gold sellers moved in, and for a long time, the starting zone, was constantly full of power level, gold selling and farming spam, which made many of us avoid the zone at all costs. Players quit the game in their droves, as the game had stopped being about playing a character to level 50, and more like a pokemon game in how fast you could collect level 50 characters.
The few die hard fans, that stuck with it, eventually saw the Mission architect problem dealt with, as all XP and currency gains from these missions was heavily reduced. But for many this was too little, too late.
So did anyone listen to the hype about Going Rogue? did anyone believe NCSoft when they said it would give the game a whole new lease of life, and add hours more content that players could enjoy?
Some did, Some didn't.
I myself had a little look, once the expansion came out, to see if it lived up to the hype. And I am very sad to say, it hasn't lived up to my expectations.
In this day and age, with yet another WoW expansion coming out soon, A star wars MMO (A proper one) in the pipelines, and new MMO's coming onto the scene almost daily, NC really have to pull their finger out and put some serious work in. They have a HUGE amount of catching up to do, if they expect to keep any feasible number of players interest.
The reason so many people play WoW, is that it offers something to shoot for, once you hit the level cap, which you cant just achieve in a couple of hours, it takes weeks, literally. And the fact that it takes quite a long time to actually reach the level cap, adds several weeks play time to each character as well.
High end content, is that failing point of a lot of MMO's, CoX and STO in particular.
Some companies claim to take a moral standpoint, about how Blizzard conduct their business, which does pull in a few punters for a short time. But lets be honest, there is a reason that WoW is the Biggest MMO in the world, despite having to pay for everything.
In my opinion, as much as i loved CoX and wanted to see Aion rock Blizzards boat, and become a real contender, NCSoft sat on their backsides too long and let the world pass them by. There will come a day when an MMO gives WoW a run for their money, but as far as I can tell, it wont be a Cryptic, or an NCSoft MMO.
