CoH/V was always top dog for me. Over the years it deployed a lot of innovation, regardless of the size of the team doing it. I subbed for most of the time it was active, and had the stable of top level alts to prove it. Even though I was a slow, admire-the-scenery type.
Was way more fun for me than the Marvel Heroes(an ARPG), the DCUO console - controller MMO, and CO, which developed poorly and then was abandoned.
Just another example of NCSoft's shortsightedness: They had the top game in a niche market, and dumped it for some short term accounting tricks. If Nexxon eats them, it will be just desserts....
They had a game that was generating negligable revenue (just a bit over $1M in Q4 2011, for example), and they wanted to redirect that funding to more promising projects.
It's not as if it was some financial powerhouse or had huge prospects for growth. From a business standpoint, they made the right decision.
The just over 1M was GW1, not CoH. City of Heroes revenue was almost 3x that.
To me Champions Online gets a bad rap because of the cell shading. And i think City or Heroes gets put up as the best because it got shut down like SWG. If Champions was run buy a company that cared about it,It would be number 1 today. DCUO is a great console mmo so i have nothing to say about it only it sucks on PC. Did't care to much for Marvel Heroes.
Great article. I am loving Marvel Heroes right now, but agree it is an online ARPG, not really a MMORPG. DCUO was fine for awhile, and it did get PvP right, but I was annoyed that I couldn't really make a hero the way I wanted and got tired of the emphasis on raids. I couldn't get into CO, most likely for the reasons the writer mentions.
CoH is still my favorite. It had its limitations, and I had to take a break from it every now and then, but still by far my favorite superhero MMO. I was really looking forward to a CoH2, and hope that City of Titans succeeds.
There is another one in the making called Valiance Online. I believe they got their inspiration from CoH and it is looking awesome. I've been with the alpha build since they started the project and I got to say they are doing an amazing job and it's definitely one to keep an eye on.
I agree with this article 100% especially the "you could do more with less" line about CoX's costume creator. i had some of my best times with CoX despite it's limited technology (compared to today's standards). I really hope they come out with another great Superhero MMO soon.
Originally posted by Hariken To me Champions Online gets a bad rap because of the cell shading. And i think City or Heroes gets put up as the best because it got shut down like SWG. If Champions was run buy a company that cared about it,It would be number 1 today. DCUO is a great console mmo so i have nothing to say about it only it sucks on PC. Did't care to much for Marvel Heroes.
Agree, I've played all of these, and still jump on Champions from time to time. Marvel is not really an MMO in my opinion, and DCUO, well I purchased it when it went live and tried it for the first month. Hated the console port, which makes it fell clunky on a PC. I would likely play more Champions if it had not gone F2P and started dropping those fracking boxes that need purchased keys to open.
I was city of heroes beta and played until the time it closed . I am now a wanderer never finding that one game that ring true and never to find it . It was not perfect but a great many loved the game any way and shame NCSoft for their deed . The game is number one reguardlessllll of its age and the current games are okay but all i cannot give them .
Only one thing I will say many miss the game and that says enough on what it was
It's unfair to give something that doesn't exist any ranking at all, let alone the number one slot.
Some game out there deserved a number five ranking...a little attention, a polite applause.
They lost it to someone's lack of integrity in judging things.
Do you really mean to say that Michael Bitton could deserve a slot as a top 5 or top 10, and that it's kosher to just...make up a fiction thereby depriving him of it? AND set everyone else one rank below what they deserved?
It's unfair to give something that doesn't exist any ranking at all, let alone the number one slot.
Some game out there deserved a number five ranking...a little attention, a polite applause.
They lost it to someone's lack of integrity in judging things.
Do you really mean to say that Michael Bitton could deserve a slot as a top 5 or top 10, and that it's kosher to just...make up a fiction thereby depriving him of it? AND set everyone else one rank below what they deserved?
I am inclined to agree with you. If the writers or community manager can cop out with a #1 like that, then every ranking contest/vote/poll they run should offer that sort of option. (Lord knows 2014 would have had a crapload of those votes!)
Originally posted by Hariken To me Champions Online gets a bad rap because of the cell shading. And i think City or Heroes gets put up as the best because it got shut down like SWG. If Champions was run buy a company that cared about it,It would be number 1 today. DCUO is a great console mmo so i have nothing to say about it only it sucks on PC. Did't care to much for Marvel Heroes.
^This. Champions had a lot going for it. I honestly believe Cryptic had zero intention of supporting this game. Too bad 'cause it does have some fantastic, innovating elements that are ignored *cough*nemesis*cough*.
CoH/CoV...I don't know. It had some cool things. Character creator, powers, Super base creation (which IMO was the best in all MMO's and sooooo underrated). But like all games that are looked at with rose glasses, it had it's serious flaws too. No offence but Rhode Island?!!? Really? REALLY!??! Was that the best setting you could come up with for a game? A Superhero game! Did Cryptic spin a globe, close their eyes and use the first location they pointed at?
Also, I get a mission at level 20 to earn the right to use a cape? I totally got the concept of why and adding a mission that tied to the lore and history was cool, but capes are just too important a part of the superhero genre to do that to. They should have been available from the start. Cool concept, but it exposed their ignorance.
I really hated how you unlocked travel powers. Stupid and completely easy to miss if you didn't know what you're doing. Again, travel powers are as much a part of the Superhero mythos as capes are. They should be available from the start. The fact that Cryptic made these changes for CO leads me to believe they genuinely didn't understand the genre when creating CoX.
Speaking of travel powers, lets use the subway to transport heroes from zone to zone! Clearly Chris Nolan was referencing this game when Batman used the subway to stop Ras Al Ghul in Batman Begins! My jaw actually dropped when I found out my superhero had to use the subway. It still sounds stupid. It is stupid. It's absolutely baffling that made it in game. Was there not one single person who said, 'you know, guys, I don't think that's such a great idea - it's kind of silly in the grand scheme of things if you think about it'.
I just...I don't know. There are too many things in CoX that made me genuinely question whether Cryptic hired people who understood Superhero comics or simply got anyone who was vaguely familiar with Superheroes (I actually feel the exact same way about CO).
The missions were TERRIBLE! BORING, and SOOOO REPETITIVE! The interiors we always the same. And that's for an MMO game. It's no surprise that when the Architect Mission Creator was developed one of the first questions asked was, 'can I design my own levels?' And another thing, CoX proved that UGC is great on paper - in reality, not so much. Not that I blamed people for wanting to create their own stories. The game missions and stories were so boring and stale and yet people were happy grouping and leveling. I could never understand how people could run the sewer missions over and over again...which leads me to my final point...
I still have yet to find any game that has a community even remotely as awesome as CoX's was. Yes, it made the difference. CoX was the first game I played where I wasn't afraid to ask for help in general chat. It was the reason why I left other games and always came back. But with all due respect, that has less to do with design choice by developers. My memory is spotty, but I'm pretty sure the majority of improvements came well after Cryptic left.
Sorry bro, CoX had a lot going for it, but it had way too much going against it to say it's one of the best. It paved the way - great! But that's all it did.
I don't want to run on about DCUO too much, you either like it or you don't, but I'll say this - they're the best at creating a world that needs heroes. I've never felt that way about CoX and CO, and that's very telling of the designers.
Marvel Universe - I'll say this, it's fun for about two hours a week - but I wouldn't drop money on it (if they lowered the price on Doctor Strange's character...maybe)
Love Marvel Heroes because of that Diablo play style and the way the Devs put so much love into the game. Play-on!
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
The mods do that from time to time. You can try keeping a copy of everything you post and repost it later, but it might get noticed too. Alternately you can keep copies and then have a friend quote the missing post along with a generic comment. If it was "largely" clean yet questionable then it's possible someone reported it and the mods, being overly cautious as they are, just deleted it rather than let it stand. Around here it's hard to say for sure.
I've got a feevah, and the only prescription... is more cowbell.
Michael Bitton I think is dead on with this. I think and feel much the same way as this article. Like many, I have been feeling lost with no City of Heroes to log into and the community it had when it comes to the MMO landscape. With the news I have been hearing about Nexon trying to take over NCsoft, I even fear for the future of Guild Wars 2. Its not City of Heroes, but I still think is a good game and has some good traits that CoH once had, though in fantasy form.
Worse yet I am seeing all these lock box gambling crap creeping into all these games. Its a bad trend. Its even tainting a game like GW2.
Comments
The just over 1M was GW1, not CoH. City of Heroes revenue was almost 3x that.
Great article. I am loving Marvel Heroes right now, but agree it is an online ARPG, not really a MMORPG. DCUO was fine for awhile, and it did get PvP right, but I was annoyed that I couldn't really make a hero the way I wanted and got tired of the emphasis on raids. I couldn't get into CO, most likely for the reasons the writer mentions.
CoH is still my favorite. It had its limitations, and I had to take a break from it every now and then, but still by far my favorite superhero MMO. I was really looking forward to a CoH2, and hope that City of Titans succeeds.
Agree, I've played all of these, and still jump on Champions from time to time. Marvel is not really an MMO in my opinion, and DCUO, well I purchased it when it went live and tried it for the first month. Hated the console port, which makes it fell clunky on a PC. I would likely play more Champions if it had not gone F2P and started dropping those fracking boxes that need purchased keys to open.
I was city of heroes beta and played until the time it closed . I am now a wanderer never finding that one game that ring true and never to find it . It was not perfect but a great many loved the game any way and shame NCSoft for their deed . The game is number one reguardlessllll of its age and the current games are okay but all i cannot give them .
Only one thing I will say many miss the game and that says enough on what it was
Ugly.
That is a really really ugly thing to do.
It's unfair to give something that doesn't exist any ranking at all, let alone the number one slot.
Some game out there deserved a number five ranking...a little attention, a polite applause.
They lost it to someone's lack of integrity in judging things.
Do you really mean to say that Michael Bitton could deserve a slot as a top 5 or top 10, and that it's kosher to just...make up a fiction thereby depriving him of it? AND set everyone else one rank below what they deserved?
I am inclined to agree with you. If the writers or community manager can cop out with a #1 like that, then every ranking contest/vote/poll they run should offer that sort of option. (Lord knows 2014 would have had a crapload of those votes!)
^This. Champions had a lot going for it. I honestly believe Cryptic had zero intention of supporting this game. Too bad 'cause it does have some fantastic, innovating elements that are ignored *cough*nemesis*cough*.
CoH/CoV...I don't know. It had some cool things. Character creator, powers, Super base creation (which IMO was the best in all MMO's and sooooo underrated). But like all games that are looked at with rose glasses, it had it's serious flaws too. No offence but Rhode Island?!!? Really? REALLY!??! Was that the best setting you could come up with for a game? A Superhero game! Did Cryptic spin a globe, close their eyes and use the first location they pointed at?
Also, I get a mission at level 20 to earn the right to use a cape? I totally got the concept of why and adding a mission that tied to the lore and history was cool, but capes are just too important a part of the superhero genre to do that to. They should have been available from the start. Cool concept, but it exposed their ignorance.
I really hated how you unlocked travel powers. Stupid and completely easy to miss if you didn't know what you're doing. Again, travel powers are as much a part of the Superhero mythos as capes are. They should be available from the start. The fact that Cryptic made these changes for CO leads me to believe they genuinely didn't understand the genre when creating CoX.
Speaking of travel powers, lets use the subway to transport heroes from zone to zone! Clearly Chris Nolan was referencing this game when Batman used the subway to stop Ras Al Ghul in Batman Begins! My jaw actually dropped when I found out my superhero had to use the subway. It still sounds stupid. It is stupid. It's absolutely baffling that made it in game. Was there not one single person who said, 'you know, guys, I don't think that's such a great idea - it's kind of silly in the grand scheme of things if you think about it'.
I just...I don't know. There are too many things in CoX that made me genuinely question whether Cryptic hired people who understood Superhero comics or simply got anyone who was vaguely familiar with Superheroes (I actually feel the exact same way about CO).
The missions were TERRIBLE! BORING, and SOOOO REPETITIVE! The interiors we always the same. And that's for an MMO game. It's no surprise that when the Architect Mission Creator was developed one of the first questions asked was, 'can I design my own levels?' And another thing, CoX proved that UGC is great on paper - in reality, not so much. Not that I blamed people for wanting to create their own stories. The game missions and stories were so boring and stale and yet people were happy grouping and leveling. I could never understand how people could run the sewer missions over and over again...which leads me to my final point...
I still have yet to find any game that has a community even remotely as awesome as CoX's was. Yes, it made the difference. CoX was the first game I played where I wasn't afraid to ask for help in general chat. It was the reason why I left other games and always came back. But with all due respect, that has less to do with design choice by developers. My memory is spotty, but I'm pretty sure the majority of improvements came well after Cryptic left.
Sorry bro, CoX had a lot going for it, but it had way too much going against it to say it's one of the best. It paved the way - great! But that's all it did.
I don't want to run on about DCUO too much, you either like it or you don't, but I'll say this - they're the best at creating a world that needs heroes. I've never felt that way about CoX and CO, and that's very telling of the designers.
Marvel Universe - I'll say this, it's fun for about two hours a week - but I wouldn't drop money on it (if they lowered the price on Doctor Strange's character...maybe)
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
See your removed my comments nice going
The mods do that from time to time. You can try keeping a copy of everything you post and repost it later, but it might get noticed too. Alternately you can keep copies and then have a friend quote the missing post along with a generic comment. If it was "largely" clean yet questionable then it's possible someone reported it and the mods, being overly cautious as they are, just deleted it rather than let it stand. Around here it's hard to say for sure.
I've got a feevah, and the only prescription... is more cowbell.
Michael Bitton I think is dead on with this. I think and feel much the same way as this article. Like many, I have been feeling lost with no City of Heroes to log into and the community it had when it comes to the MMO landscape. With the news I have been hearing about Nexon trying to take over NCsoft, I even fear for the future of Guild Wars 2. Its not City of Heroes, but I still think is a good game and has some good traits that CoH once had, though in fantasy form.
Worse yet I am seeing all these lock box gambling crap creeping into all these games. Its a bad trend. Its even tainting a game like GW2.