Near-constant discussion of City of Heroes / City of Villains on IRC over the last couple of days has chipped away at my will, and I nabbed the Good Versus Evil Edition from the local Gamestop for twenty bucks. I gave up on City of Heroes some time ago, getting bored at level 24 on two separate characters. The best part of the game, honestly, was making new characters. I spent hours clicking through the character designer, filling up four servers with wacky new character ideas.
I’ve been informed by my friends that the game is much changed since its release four years ago, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it another go. Heaven knows NCSoft is pretty keen to have me back; I get regular email from them asking me to pop back in and try out some new feature or another. Unlike many bits of nag mail that I’d opt out of in a heartbeat, the announcements regarding CoH/CoV are always entertaining and quite professionally produced, and some part of me just can’t bear to part with the fond memories I have of playing the game.
In particular, I’m looking forward to playing a villain. From what I’ve been told, it’s quite a different experience from the all-too-familiar MMO grind that playing a hero quickly turned into. Besides, I want an army of henchmen to do my bidding. Evil’s just more fun than good, as I’ve discovered in several games, Knights of the Old Republic among them.
I’m also intrigued by the news that Cryptic Studios is working on an MMO version of Champions, the venerable pen & paper RPG that brought massively flexible point-based character creation to super-powered roleplaying. Champions Online won’t be based on the game mechanics of the HERO system, but it sounds like it will do justice to the rich game world of Champions. It’s certainly a game I’ll be keeping an eye on.
