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When everyone is super...no one is (potential player question)
GameMonger71
Member UncommonPosts: 122
I really love that line from the Incredibles and it perfectly sums up my question:
When everyone is super in COX, is no one super (since everyone is a hero, no one feels like one)?
I am really looking for a game with a real good story that makes me feel like my character's action matters and is fun and partially (at least) justifies the hours you have to sink into any MMO.
Is COH that game or is it 1000s of heroes running around with no "normals"?
Also, from an RP standpoint, is it a good community or a whole bunch of immature (no matter the age) goofs. I prefer darker superhero types, but I also really enjoyed the humor of TheTick animated series humor, but I am not looking forward to running around with Capt Peaches and his sidekick Stinky Steve...
Thanks!
Comments
With the exception of finding any 'normals," you will find all of the above in City of Heroes, plus combinations you will have never dreamed of. Isn't it great? There is something for everyone, and room enough for all.
All player characters are Heroes or Villains unless you enter a PvP zone, where you may run into player-run adversaries. The general population of the virtual environment and most of the interactive NPCs are normal. Many times heroes are called upon to rescue normal citizens from the bad guys and lead them out of the depths of an abandoned building, or a dismal cave, etc. Sometimes these citizens turn out to be not so normal and jump in to "help" you fight --- and you really wish they wouldn't.
Yep, it's all in the life of a superhero.
this game has an incredible amount of versatility, in all things game-related. it is also like all other mmos -- the community has whatever you love and whatever you hate.
Virtue is a great place to go for RP. we're working on the Paragon Noir Detective Agency on virtue right now, none of us is big on narrating as the mission goes. we're putting origin stories in our bios and whatever is there, everyone in the group is assumed to know about you. we'll also have an ongoing storyline where we add more to it as we adventure (together and solo)... but this project is still in the works, HOWEVER, my rambling gives you an idea of some of the stuff on virtue.
if no one super...
if you read the story arcs, there are some fun and interesting stories to be found.
you can be as super as you desire.
1- think of the hero/villain you want.
2-jot down notes on your powers, personality, weapons, base (sorry no vehicles).
3- find the arch-type and powersets that you think could create that character.
4- make a post here or on the official forums (or some COH type forums somewhere) and put what you're trying to create and what you think would do it. this can be as little as say "i'm making a toon like batman, but a darker, grittier batman, so he can be a hero or a villain. i think i'd like some sort of martial arts and gadgets, what do you guys think would work best?"
honestly, if you WANT to rp it out and have a grittier/darker hero, there are a LOT of villain story lines where you're just out to foil another villain group's plans. some of it might take a little stretch of imagination; but the villains don't "arrest" folks, they kill them.
some people will offer alternative archtypes and powersets, some will add to what you've put, all-in-all, you should get some decent advice on how best to create the character YOU want.
5 - create your character. choose your arch type, primary powerset, and secondary powerset.
6- create your costume. take your time and go thru the premade costumes for ideas. maybe pick a premade costume and modify it. as your character advances in levels, you can end up with 4-5 different costumes (which you can switch to pretty instantly ingame); but none of your costumes affect your powers, at all.
7- if it's your first time playing, go thru the tutorial. they're pretty short and they teach you the basics and get you to level 2 and then send you to the normal game. lvl 2 gets you a new power.
8- if you're a hero, pick atlas park. if you're a villain, it doesn't matter if you pick kalinda or burke.
9- talk to miss liberty (hero) or the arbiter (villain) to train to level 2 and get your new power. most zones will have a trainer for every time you level. if you look on your map (hit m to open it), you can find them by the icon with a green person on it (i believe it's the green person one).
10- based on your origin (hero side), you will have a contact that will give you missions and tell a story. villain side, your contact is the person you chose - either kalinda or burke.
talk to your contact, do missions, around lvl 6 you'll have done enough missions to where you're finishing all the missions for that contact and they'll introduce you to someone new. read the stories, some of them are interesting.
11- when you go into a new zone and you get a new contact that appears (kings row heroside, and cap au diable villainside), go visit that person. the detective will tell you about police radio missions, the villain will tell you about news paper missions.
you then get a radio/paper as a contact. run 3 missions from this contact and it'll tell you to talk to the detective/villain for a bank job. complete the bank job and get a jet-pack (2 hours worth of flight) and be introduced to a storyline contact.
it'll be a jetpack for the protect (hero) or rob (villain) bank mish at lvl 5-9, and an anti gravity pack (super jump) for a bank mish when you're lvl 10-14. great temporary powers with 2 hours total time on each.
normally (in each zone you go) you can get like 3-5 (i think) contacts from the paper/radio, and each will have story arcs to run.
12- post on this forum, or the official forums, if you have any questions. you can ask ingame; but if you're patient a bit, you can normally get better answers on forums.
download mid's hero planner, or use the online version maybe... they're found @ ; http://www.cohplanner.com/
this will let you explore different builds and try different ideas.
also, check out http://vidiotmaps.com/ that'll tell you about the different badges you can obtain (and how to obtain them) in city of heroes
you can download the ingame map overlay @ http://vidiotmaps.com/downloads.php
i've probably got a bunch of typos and grammatical errors; but this is a good starting point, and HOPEFULLY i didn't throw to much at you.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Thank you for the great replies. I have stuck to primarily sword & magic fantasy MMOs up to this point, but your replies are making COH hard to resist. COH may have the characteristics of story and heroism that I have found lacking in my other MMOs to date. Once again, I appreciate the time it took for you to craft your responses and I look forward to COH all the more.
if you're looking to make a sword & sorcery character and fight magical opponents (i.e. evil mages, demons, zombies, and even fallen gods), you can make those as well.
there are several ATs with swords, shields, archery, maces, axes. there are a, literal, ton of combinations if you want to make some type of mage, rogue, warrior, or even say a tank/mage, rogue/mage, whatever. if you want to create and elven priestess even... you can make that in coh.
honestly, when i tried to get the wife to play, i asked her what type of character she wanted (she plays wow), and no matter what combination she came up with, i was able to create it without a lot of effort.
on the other hand, there's something for pretty much any hero/villain genre/flavor you're wanting. this game is incredibly versatile when it comes to creating THE character you want.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
I played CoH quite a bit, enough that I had effectively done every bit of content released at the point that I quit. I burned out on the game as a result, but I still think of it fondly. I'll try to address your question in relative terms.
In most fantasy MMORPG's, you're supposed to be some kind of hero. Almost all of them fail completely in making your character actually seem like one. Your tasks are largely mundane busywork, and unless you're a high-end raider, you don't get to touch the important parts of the story. Sure, that's not always the case. LotRO and the Wrath expansion for WoW (not the previous ones) actually put you in the hero's seat for most of the game, exposing you to major story actors and events even during the questing content. These two are exceptions, though, not the rule.
CoX made it me feel like more of a hero than most fantasy MMORPG's ever did. Yeah, heroes are relatively commonplace in the CoX world, but it works because of the setting. It's difficult to really explain this one. Either you dig the setting, or you don't. The way the game plays is the big difference, though.
The first ten levels are actually pretty boring in CoX, imo, as your spread of powers is really slim. I think this is the main reason the game isn't bigger. Unless you're captivated by the setting, you won't really have the patience to reach the point where the gameplay gets really good. I encourage you to stick it out and play the game at least for a week. Once you hit about 22, CoX starts to feel very different from any other game. This is doubly true at 32.
Rather than create content designed only for very large player groups and invent mechanics to force min-maxing (gear check bosses come to mind), almost all of CoX's content scales with player level. You're also not required to play any mission with a specific team setup. Yeah, you may want a tanker and defender if you're going after an archvillain, but aside from that, anything goes really. Also, you're not locked into any optimum DPS or defensive specs. Obviously, people try to spec to be powerful to be useful to their groups, but the game doesn't force you into a set of cookiecutter builds. The game also isn't very heavily itemized at all, as opposed to a game like where WoW where you're forced to grind a certain amount of gear before advancing to the next tier of instances.
The main difference is simply how combat works, though. Once you hit a certain level, you start using a huge spread of abilities during any encounter, and encounters in general are a lot more fast-paced and chaotic. In a game like WoW, the number of abilities you use in PvE actually ends up being quite small. A lot of DPS specs only use a handful of spells out of the dozens total that they possess, as PvE in such games usually is more about min-maxing than fun. Prior to this latest xpac for WoW, the top personal DPS spec involved you using one spell to power up another one, then spamming that second spell for the entire fight.
I dont think people would pay a $15 fee to play as a "normal dude" running around the street.
Really? There are mage, rogue and priestess archetypes in this game? What if I wanted to play a healer?
Really? There are mage, rogue and priestess archetypes in this game? What if I wanted to play a healer?
you could gimp yourself, just like if you wanted to make a MAN build, you could totally gimp yourself.
but if you wanted a "priestess" that also had say storm powers, or could command volcano powers, or was a follower of diana and wanted to be a great archer... you could easily make those.
see how easy it is to take a lemon (quoted) and turn it into lemonade (my reply).
edit: i'm sorry you play with people that don't communicate and/or aren't good players. if people are rushing in and not coordinating with the debuffers and not waiting for buffs, and just not pulling when it's needed -- then, yes, i'm sorry that you feel the need for a healer. but HONESTLY, heals are the WEAKEST powers in any powerset, INCLUDING empathy. if someone is forced to play healer, the others are being selfish and forcing that person to play in order to keep them alive, instead of playing in a fashion that will allow missions to be completed faster and with very little damage.
as the man says, l2p.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
If its immature goofs your looking for try WoW, not coh. The community as a whole is friendly, mature and helpful. Re when everyone is super no one really is, with invention set enhancements and accolades, your max lvl toon will far surpass the abilities of its average un i/o'd or poorly i/o'd counterparts. I was a big pvp guy, and when I first hit 50 on my first toon and tried it i would get owned easily in secs, even as a tank. I would think, "whats the point of gettin all the way to max lvl to feel like a lvl 1 again?" but once I got i/o's I could stand toe to toe with just about anyone and even groups of player villains or high end raid npcs. I remember being on our main raid map (Rikti Mothership) and fighting on the frontlines and looking around and realizing everyone was dead except me and a couple other toons , and I wasn't even scratched! That's the big thing about coh that really attracts most players, customization.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
Really? There are mage, rogue and priestess archetypes in this game? What if I wanted to play a healer?
Dark/Dark Defenders are just CoH's way of copying WoW Shadow priests. Took some prescience to do though. That is just how good Castle is.
Really? There are mage, rogue and priestess archetypes in this game? What if I wanted to play a healer?
Dark/Dark Defenders are just CoH's way of copying WoW Shadow priests. Took some prescience to do though. That is just how good Castle is.
pill was trolling me; because, she supports healer and the holy trinity (tank/dps/heal) in COH, and because mmorpg.com has accepted her as a correspondent, she must know lots and lots about the game (paraphrasing her words).
but, you're right, and that's what i keep saying -- you can make ANYTHING you want in this game and be as gimped or powerful as you desire... the game really is THAT versatile.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Really? There are mage, rogue and priestess archetypes in this game? What if I wanted to play a healer?
Yeah I find it pretty disgusting that the mmorpg.com correspondant for CoX is trolling and seems to have little knowledge of game mechanics.
I was not trolling; I was teasing. A form of friendly PvP here in the forums. The dfference is INTENT. No insult, defamation and humiliation was attempted, you see?
And even if I was trolling, Damian deserved every bit of it. He's been busting my chops for three weeks now and dancing circles around everything I say in trying to explain myself against his accusations, using twists and pieces of my own text out of context to support his own arguements. Plus he insists that I am being arrogant and condescending while he says things about me AND to the reader that are 10 times worse than anything he perceives coming from me. THAT is trolling.
Actually, I nearly gave Damian a "thumbs-up" over his initial comeback remark to my tease. It was equally as sharp, as full of meaning, and without his usual venom. Touchette.
Pill - 1 point. Damian - 1 point.
But then he had to spoil it by vomitiing out his usual noxious bastardized interpretation of reality for three times longer than anyone wanted to hear about it. So I am taking back the point.
Damian's signature indicates he has clues for sale. I think he's let go of a few too many. I don't know how much clearer I can make my position on these two points he seems to consider the be-all and end-all of this game.
1.) I do not, have not, never have supported the idea of a "holy trinity." Damian pulled that assumption out of someplace I'd rather not discuss, and I'm sure he will cite AGAIN the pages and pages of his reasoning for it. I say, READ for yourself. Go to my articles and posts and make your own decision.
2) I happen to think using the word "healer" is okay in this game. This does not mean I think there is a healer archetype. Nor do I think the archetypes with heals can do only healing. Damian makes a lot of presumptions of me, and of others, when he insists we are all dumb enough to think these things. Once more, and for the last time, let me state that when I refer in my articles and my posts specifically to the powers or toons that heal, whatever archetype is involved, and whatever other powers those toons may have, I will use the word healer. When I refer specifically to buffs, debuffs, holds, and so on on, and those that wield them, I will use those words, and the words defender, controller, or suuport. It is semantics. something I choose to do as a writer, and for a couple good reasons, whether Damian likes it or not. I have no problem with Damian NOT using the word healer. I think the game and the world is big enough for both options.
Now this is funny, from someone who does not know the history of the game. CoH came out BEFORE WoW.
If you wanted to role play a healer, you can. there are plenty of ways to go about choosing the Defender Archtypes that would be your vision of what a healer is.
Many players who take on the Defender role would take offense to being delegated the healer role. They are a support role that make combat easier. Their heals are nice, but the Debuffs/Buffs are even better.
The best thing about CoX is that there is no role "required" for a group. I've played in groups that have all blasters, ripping into mobs, I've also played with groups that had all defenders, through buffs and debuffs taking out mobs with equal efficiancy.
your arguement is so persuasive, so filled with knowledge and insight. You back up your argument very articulately, with suggestions of improvements and raising examples to glorify your position....oh wait, you didn't
Now this is funny, from someone who does not know the history of the game. CoH came out BEFORE WoW.
If you wanted to role play a healer, you can. there are plenty of ways to go about choosing the Defender Archtypes that would be your vision of what a healer is.
Many players who take on the Defender role would take offense to being delegated the healer role. They are a support role that make combat easier. Their heals are nice, but the Debuffs/Buffs are even better.
The best thing about CoX is that there is no role "required" for a group. I've played in groups that have all blasters, ripping into mobs, I've also played with groups that had all defenders, through buffs and debuffs taking out mobs with equal efficiancy.
the original quoted was tongue-in-cheek. prescience is the tip-off.
prescience means: knowledge of things before they exist or happen; foreknowledge; foresight.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
if you're writing for new players, as you state, you're doing more harm than good by supporting wrong-preconceived notions of the game.
if you're writing for vets, you're asking to be mocking ruthlessly. paste your articles into the guides section of the official forums and see what replies you get.
edit: to summarize, if other players are playing in such a fashion that REQUIRES anyone to be labelled as a "healer"; then those other players need to learn HOW to play, cuz they're definitely doing something wrong. (again, there's always exceptions, hami kinda comes to mind).
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Now this is funny, from someone who does not know the history of the game. CoH came out BEFORE WoW.
If you wanted to role play a healer, you can. there are plenty of ways to go about choosing the Defender Archtypes that would be your vision of what a healer is.
Many players who take on the Defender role would take offense to being delegated the healer role. They are a support role that make combat easier. Their heals are nice, but the Debuffs/Buffs are even better.
The best thing about CoX is that there is no role "required" for a group. I've played in groups that have all blasters, ripping into mobs, I've also played with groups that had all defenders, through buffs and debuffs taking out mobs with equal efficiancy.
Maybe your defender is a support role, but my Storm/Sonic is the STAR. I blast stuff and take names and everyone else supports ME!
I'm the alpha dog. What? Shut your mouth you want some Tornado? I didn't think so.
Do NOT tell me to turn off Hurricane I boot you in the head with Gale and then throw down a Screech. And then you are like woozy and shit and sitting on your ass wondering what happened wishing you had some pansy ass empath. Meanwhile I am busting Council ass and making the Carnies cry through their mask holes and saying "Tank this bitches ! You see this cloud over my head? This is my boomstick now get in your damn corner and feel the pain of my Howl!" Yeah feel the chaos, I support with knockback and pure badassery and charging straight at an entire spawn at Super Speed and having a bunch of chumps follow me around wish they could be this cool.
Heals are for chumps.
if you're writing for new players, as you state, you're doing more harm than good by supporting wrong-preconceived notions of the game.
if you're writing for vets, you're asking to be mocking ruthlessly. paste your articles into the guides section of the official forums and see what replies you get.
edit: to summarize, if other players are playing in such a fashion that REQUIRES anyone to be labelled as a "healer"; then those other players need to learn HOW to play, cuz they're definitely doing something wrong. (again, there's always exceptions, hami kinda comes to mind).
Meh you can't fight it. Play a defnder in the lower levels and even if you play a set with no heals and put that in your /who comment you still get people saying they need you to heal.
I have even told people I had no heals on the Storm/ defender and then the very next thing they said is sweet some heals would be great.
Meh whaterver. Heals are fairly powerful in the game below level 20. But later on you will suck if you try to make healing the cornestone of your survivability. Note: there are a number of people who suck and think healing is the thing in the 40s. Especially some Blasters for some reason. I guess because they tend to have no defense or resistance. But Blasters are supposed to die. That is their group role. Isn't that what defiance is for? Or at least the old Defiance...
But keep rocking the aura if you want, my guys can take care of themselves either way. It does help, its just secndary to well most everything else.
i was on a earth troller with an archer defender. i want to say the team was lvl 10-13 and it was 8 man. after an incredibly rough first couple of rooms of a mish... i started talking to these guys... had the tank stop bumrushing. explained how to pull and break los. the defender and i would put holds onto the bosses and i'd lock folks down with immob after a pull.
to summarize, the next few missions went by real smoothly. didn't need any heals. soon as we were short a player, the leader was advertising for a healer.
seriously... it's like every low level pug i get on, i somehow am able to show them that we can breeze thru missions by playing intelligently INSTEAD of just bumrushing thru the missions screaming "HEAL HEAL HEAL ZOMGBURGERTIME HEEEEEEEEEEEEAL MEH"... yet, time and again, as soon as you leave a mish, they're whining for a healer in broadcast.
no wipes, oftentimes no deaths, some missions everyone even stays in the green.
just like sewers' runs... you don't HAVE to have someone with any healing powers, in order to go thru those... intelligent play trumps everything in this game.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
And as long as there are people who teach the new people that write things for new people that have the word healer in it the longer we will have this problem.
The only way to get rid of the "healer" stigma is to get people who claim to be knowlegable about the game re-educated about how things work.
Now this is funny, from someone who does not know the history of the game. CoH came out BEFORE WoW.
If you wanted to role play a healer, you can. there are plenty of ways to go about choosing the Defender Archtypes that would be your vision of what a healer is.
Many players who take on the Defender role would take offense to being delegated the healer role. They are a support role that make combat easier. Their heals are nice, but the Debuffs/Buffs are even better.
The best thing about CoX is that there is no role "required" for a group. I've played in groups that have all blasters, ripping into mobs, I've also played with groups that had all defenders, through buffs and debuffs taking out mobs with equal efficiancy.
the original quoted was tongue-in-cheek. prescience is the tip-off.
prescience means: knowledge of things before they exist or happen; foreknowledge; foresight.
I apologize to gestalt and to everyone for my blind stupidity. I was in a very bad mood that day and lashed out without reading.
Please pass the salt, this crow is a bit tough to swallow.
your arguement is so persuasive, so filled with knowledge and insight. You back up your argument very articulately, with suggestions of improvements and raising examples to glorify your position....oh wait, you didn't
Really? There are mage, rogue and priestess archetypes in this game? What if I wanted to play a healer?
Dark/Dark Defenders are just CoH's way of copying WoW Shadow priests. Took some prescience to do though. That is just how good Castle is.
Because when I game like CoH is released before WOW, COH must have copied WOW................
Really? There are mage, rogue and priestess archetypes in this game? What if I wanted to play a healer?
Dark/Dark Defenders are just CoH's way of copying WoW Shadow priests. Took some prescience to do though. That is just how good Castle is.
Because when I game like CoH is released before WOW, COH must have copied WOW................
scroll up and read the post where i define the word "prescience".
actually, just read the post DIRECTLY ABOVE your post. it also has the definition of the word 'prescience' in it.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
This game has an incredible amount of versatility, in all things game-related. it is also like all other mmos -- the community has whatever you love and whatever you hate.
Virtue is a great place to go for RP. we're working on the Paragon Noir Detective Agency on virtue right now, none of us is big on narrating as the mission goes. we're putting origin stories in our bios and whatever is there, everyone in the group is assumed to know about you. we'll also have an ongoing storyline where we add more to it as we adventure (together and solo)... but this project is still in the works, HOWEVER, my rambling gives you an idea of some of the stuff on virtue.
if no one super...
if you read the story arcs, there are some fun and interesting stories to be found.
you can be as super as you desire.
1- think of the hero/villain you want.
2-jot down notes on your powers, personality, weapons, base (sorry no vehicles).
3- find the arch-type and powersets that you think could create that character.
4- make a post here or on the official forums (or some COH type forums somewhere) and put what you're trying to create and what you think would do it. this can be as little as say "i'm making a toon like batman, but a darker, grittier batman, so he can be a hero or a villain. i think i'd like some sort of martial arts and gadgets, what do you guys think would work best?"
honestly, if you WANT to rp it out and have a grittier/darker hero, there are a LOT of villain story lines where you're just out to foil another villain group's plans. some of it might take a little stretch of imagination; but the villains don't "arrest" folks, they kill them.
some people will offer alternative archtypes and powersets, some will add to what you've put, all-in-all, you should get some decent advice on how best to create the character YOU want.
5 - create your character. choose your arch type, primary powerset, and secondary powerset.
6- create your costume. take your time and go thru the premade costumes for ideas. maybe pick a premade costume and modify it. as your character advances in levels, you can end up with 4-5 different costumes (which you can switch to pretty instantly ingame); but none of your costumes affect your powers, at all.
7- if it's your first time playing, go thru the tutorial. they're pretty short and they teach you the basics and get you to level 2 and then send you to the normal game. lvl 2 gets you a new power.
8- if you're a hero, pick atlas park. if you're a villain, it doesn't matter if you pick kalinda or burke.
9- talk to miss liberty (hero) or the arbiter (villain) to train to level 2 and get your new power. most zones will have a trainer for every time you level. if you look on your map (hit m to open it), you can find them by the icon with a green person on it (i believe it's the green person one).
10- based on your origin (hero side), you will have a contact that will give you missions and tell a story. villain side, your contact is the person you chose - either kalinda or burke.
talk to your contact, do missions, around lvl 6 you'll have done enough missions to where you're finishing all the missions for that contact and they'll introduce you to someone new. read the stories, some of them are interesting.
11- when you go into a new zone and you get a new contact that appears (kings row heroside, and cap au diable villainside), go visit that person. the detective will tell you about police radio missions, the villain will tell you about news paper missions.
you then get a radio/paper as a contact. run 3 missions from this contact and it'll tell you to talk to the detective/villain for a bank job. complete the bank job and get a jet-pack (2 hours worth of flight) and be introduced to a storyline contact.
it'll be a jetpack for the protect (hero) or rob (villain) bank mish at lvl 5-9, and an anti gravity pack (super jump) for a bank mish when you're lvl 10-14. great temporary powers with 2 hours total time on each.
normally (in each zone you go) you can get like 3-5 (i think) contacts from the paper/radio, and each will have story arcs to run.
12- post on this forum, or the official forums, if you have any questions. you can ask ingame; but if you're patient a bit, you can normally get better answers on forums.
download mid's hero planner, or use the online version maybe... they're found @ ; http://www.cohplanner.com/
this will let you explore different builds and try different ideas.
also, check out http://vidiotmaps.com/ that'll tell you about the different badges you can obtain (and how to obtain them) in city of heroes
you can download the ingame map overlay @ http://vidiotmaps.com/downloads.php
One of the best starter guides, I've seen Damian7!
On #7, I still play the tutorial on every toon. There's a badge in each one that you can only get in the tutorial, as far as I know that is. The villian badge is pretty easy to get; the hero isn't difficult, just tedious.
For #8, it really doesn't matter which one you choose for your first contact as a hero or a villain. I do prefer Atlas Park to Galaxy City simply because I don't like fighting the Vahzilok (zombies & grave robbers) in Galaxy. But if you have a hero with a low level defense against Toxic damage, it doesn't matter as much. The choice between Atlas/Galaxy and Kalinda/Burke is mainly for variety - after 100+ alts, the first few stages can be a little repetitive.
Also, I highly recommend the character planner and vidiotmaps. I was under the misperception that the test server would allow me to do a practice build and try out different powers. It does, but just like the live servers, you still have to earn experience and level up. That translates into wasted playing time.
GameMonger, if you decide to play, shoot me a PM here on MMORPG.com.
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The less you expect, the more you'll be surprised. Hopefully, pleasantly so.