Is CoH v24 a MMORPG?

[Blondeshell]

With set IOs, the marginally-useful hydra-o's became irrelevant.

Titan-O's from the Eden Trial would also fit here.

[ukaserex]

Yes.

[Golden Girl]

Why is soloability listed as a negative?

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

ROLEplaying? NO!
  Went from 4 combat roles (tank, healer, dps, controller), to 1.5 (a weak dps tank + random dps) for vast majority of grouping. Not even the justly maligned 'holy trinity.'

RolePLAYing? Maybe.
  Best core community in the industry. Best emotes in the industry. Best class & costume customization in the industry. Again, this is something Paragon/NCSOFT hurt. Much of the special-ness faded with free-to-play and the pay-to-customize marketplace.

That word. You keep using it, but i feel you've taken the Humpty Dumpty approach to it, and i vastly prefer the definition used by most other Scotsmen.
The rest of your post was mostly more like that: redefining words and terms to suit whatever you wanted them to mean. Sort of silly, but the minutes spent trying to puzzle out your logic were fairly fun, so that was nice.

[ICKool]

...but the minutes spent trying to puzzle out your logic were fairly fun, so that was nice...

A victory for all! But I'm still hoping for a thoughtful, open-door-knocking, glass-ceiling shattering type of post!

[ICKool]

Why is soloability listed as a negative?

Because it usually degrades the multiplayer (and hence social) aspects into insignificance for all but the hardest-core, long-established, community members--something like a dwindling old growth forest.

[Void Huntress]

Because it usually degrades the multiplayer (and hence social) aspects into insignificance for all but the hardest-core, long-established, community members--something like a dwindling old growth forest.

City had some of the best mechanisms for maintaining social elements regardless of activity of all the MMOs I've played. The global friends list that worked regardless of server, the ability to send and receive tells regardless of server or faction, global channels (of which you could have a GREAT MANY), highly customizable chat interface (multiple windows with multiple tabs, if you desired).

I frequently played solo, but remained in constant contact with many people all during.

[Castegyre]

When compared to it's predecessors like EQ and DAoC, CoH was always a solo friendly game. It was still a solo friendly game when compared to later games like EQ2 and even early WoW. As time progressed and the genre changed, CoH pretty much kept pace with being very solo friendly. I don't know what else you would call a game where fire blasters could solo GMs other than solo friendly.

When you did group in CoH you were also not compelled to stick to a rigid group makeup for most things like you were in other games. Everything was much more flexible. Sidekicking, account handles, the chat system, the eventual note system, etc, allowed CoH to be and remain social while still being solo friendly. That was one of the things a lot of us who had previous MMO experience loved about the game and miss about it now. That's why some of us kept coming back even as new stuff came out.

[LaughingAlex]

ROLEplaying? NO!
  Went from 4 combat roles (tank, healer, dps, controller), to 1.5 (a weak dps tank + random dps) for vast majority of grouping. Not even the justly maligned 'holy trinity.'

RolePLAYing? Maybe.
  Best core community in the industry. Best emotes in the industry. Best class & costume customization in the industry. Again, this is something Paragon/NCSOFT hurt. Much of the special-ness faded with free-to-play and the pay-to-customize marketplace.

I'll go ahead and reply to the first part.  I'd say there were "roles" in teams, but they were not the way you'd think.  They certainly did not cater towards the tank/healer/dps and that was a good thing, because in reality, a true roleplaying game doesn't force you to use the same solution in every single scenario like many mmorpgs(which should be called mmohtg's).  It was often just fun to take two different powersets on an archtype and see how you could make it work.  In a sense, city of heroes was a true super hero rpg, and an mmo to boot.  Want a teleporting invisible woman?  Take force fields, energy blast, teleport, done.  Want a cosmic being?  Could go with something like fire blast and time manipulation.  Robot/dark magic master like say Dr. Doom?  Ok robotics/dark miasma mastermind.

It was a game that let you really experiment with all kinds of concepts whatever inspired them.  Other games frequently fail that and mmorpgs are an especially bad offender about that.

And because of that first point, in many ways it also helped actual roleplaying.  One could get involved with a plot that encouraged them to get creative with their abilities and if you had a really good GM you'd see very creative solutions to the plots.  And because city of heroes wasn't overly campy like it's main competitor was, the diversity of roleplayers was also far healthier. 

In CO you had things like "Oh sorry, your not magic so you suck" or "Magic always beats tech, noob" in CO's rp community, which to me was an atrocity in of itself.  Or perhaps the dumbest; perfect morals mary sues.  CO's very story writing encouraged that kind of annoyance.

And it also caused me to encounter many runaway plots and/or dragging plots.  It killed my will to rp there.  But in CoX plots moved forward, and there was a diversity of them.  Heck, i'm seeing that diversity on the rise already with paragon chat, people are coming up with both magic and tech themed plots, and I'm finding my mains involved in both types(even tech-themed character involved in magic plot and coming up with ideas!).  Because city of heroes overall ENCOURAGED diversity above all, which a true rpg does.  A bad rpg only discourages it, and mmorpgs apparently get "balanced"(as in, less balanced and in a pandering way) in ways that further discourages it.  Because they are not rpgs, just action games in disguise that pigeon hole you into doing very, very specific things as if it's a job.

[ICKool]

Been thinking. Which is what I do, though not necessarily well.  ;D  And it seems to me that my "MMORPG" hang-up is indeed superfluous, but only because it misses the main point. Any MMORPG not spelled with an invisible C sucks: _{Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game} & Community.

Regarding Item 1 and Obsoleting of content.  I don't recall much obsolete content.

Great comment. I think my main concern was/is with AE. AE became a "Tower of BaPLe," which meant a lot of the story arcs and missions became "obsolete." But the real problem, I now see, was that it degraded the community aspect of the game, particularly for new players.

City had some of the best mechanisms for maintaining social elements regardless of activity of all the MMOs I've played.

Sidekicking, account handles, the chat system, the eventual note system, etc, allowed CoH to be and remain social while still being solo friendly. That was one of the things a lot of us who had previous MMO experience loved about the game and miss about it now. That's why some of us kept coming back even as new stuff came out.

Yes! And I think any point I've tried to make pales in comparison. I would submit that the instancing, pacing of action, downtime (mainly between missions), and the group finder (paired with travel powers) were also extremely important for community/socializing: Not just acquiring new random players, but drawing them into the "community." Because it was a community of personal stories that invited uniqueness...

Because city of heroes overall ENCOURAGED diversity above all, which a true rpg does.  A bad rpg only discourages it, and mmorpgs apparently get "balanced"(as in, less balanced and in a pandering way) in ways that further discourages it.  Because they are not rpgs, just action games in disguise that pigeon hole you into doing very, very specific things as if it's a job.

I obviously couldn't have said it better myself! (In other games, you're not really part of the community until you are level capped with only one or two community approved builds, geared in only one or two community approved sets of gear.)

Yeah, I think we're really developing something here.

[Kassandros]

I was a new player in the last year of the game. I think I tried AE once and moved on. When I play new games I'd much rather go through the story than just gain levels. I mean the only power I had to have was flight and that came quickly. I just don't see why a new player would do anything but go through the story lines. Wouldn't AE be for players who had a already been there and done that with the main missions?

I played on the villain side and usually with a friend who introduced me to the game.

[GenericHero05]

I was a new player in the last year of the game. I think I tried AE once and moved on. When I play new games I'd much rather go through the story than just gain levels. I mean the only power I had to have was flight and that came quickly. I just don't see why a new player would do anything but go through the story lines. Wouldn't AE be for players who had a already been there and done that with the main missions?

I played on the villain side and usually with a friend who introduced me to the game.

I played from 2004 till shutdown and never once did AE. I considered it cheating. I always enjoyed the journey to 50 and would feel kind of sad when I would reach it. This great game would then allow me to create a new hero with completely different powers and start again.

[Castegyre]

I played from 2004 till shutdown and never once did AE. I considered it cheating. I always enjoyed the journey to 50 and would feel kind of sad when I would reach it. This great game would then allow me to create a new hero with completely different powers and start again.

I tended to avoid AE for the most part myself. I would sometimes help others level up, but I've never been much of one for grinding when I could quest or PLing my own characters. I did try some of the story arcs other players made, though, and some of them were pretty good considering how limited AE was. I can only imagine how much better some of the stories would have been to play through if the creators had access to something more advanced like the NW system. It wasn't all bad. Just mostly bad. :P

[doc7924]

I played from 2004 till shutdown and never once did AE. I considered it cheating. I always enjoyed the journey to 50 and would feel kind of sad when I would reach it. This great game would then allow me to create a new hero with completely different powers and start again.

I did AE and farming runs only after I had like 4 or 5 50's. After a while it got tedious doing all the low level stuff over and over and over.

Mostly I would use them to get a new toon to like 22 or 25. Then from there do stories and missions and whatever. Since the mid content and TF's were pretty good.

[Nyghtshade]

I did AE, but mostly just to check out cool stories there.  It was certainly possible to disable earning XP, so it in no way had to be a 'farming' experience, no matter what missions you were playing there.

Also, I agree that with others that the standard missions and story arcs were great, and I was so glad when it finally became possible to go back and run the ones I'd outleveled.

As for whether CoH/CoV/Going Rogue meets the definition of an MMORPG?  "massively multiplayer online role-playing game: any story-driven online video game in which a player, taking on the persona of a character in a virtual or fantasy world, interacts with a large number of other players."   https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=mmorpg%20define

Yes, emphatically yes on all points, in my experience, and I played the game for 8 years.