How and why did you buy the game?

[ag88t88]

  My God, I want this game back.  I HAVE POWERSETS TO TRY!

OMG I never got to level my bubbler, and the new Martial arts sets, I had two new characters to make for I24 like the moment it was released (Fire and Water brother\sister PiC combination with Martial arts dominator and blaster stuff!) 

Not to mention I never got to play enough with staff, or plant control or the new natural assault set and....  Well tons others, too many more powersets I didn't get to complete, I miss it so much!

[Joshex]

I was on linux since 2006, I had SuSE 10.0 (outdated), I got to the point where I would need to copy all my files and program installations (many of them hard to find and install) and reformat the drive to install SUSE 11 otherwise I couldn't update without rebuilding the kernel from scratch and forcefully installing the newest Glibc and all it's prerequesits. sadly I didn't have enough space in my home directory to do this.

I had been browsing the internet with flash 8 cause 9 and 10 didn;t support linux at the time.

it was then 2009, I was on the internet all day talking with friends then one friend got a laptop and started raving about this game they wanted to play, they played it all day every day.

I got jealous so I wanted to join them and see what all the hype was about, I tried to find a way to run CoH on linux and there was such a way but only for ubuntu and sometimes it didn;t work right. and it required the newest Glibc (Gnu library for C and C++)

so I was stuck. I chose the easiest option which was to take my second harddrive and install XP on it, I was curious to see if my bare bones Game Dev comp could even run City of heroes.

I bought the city of heroes Good Vs. Evil DVD edition (with pocket D card included, which I carry in my wallet everywhere now)

I installed it after a bit of driver todo.

then I made my blaster (electric and energy) and learned how to die and hosp. then I realized there is a large difference between the different archetypes not a small one.

I originally though that tankers were only slightly tougher than blasters as I played with primarily unenhanced people with bad power choices.

but all in all I loved the game, I'll never forget that first moment exploring a strange new city as a superhero.

soon after I made my first villain, and thats when I became intricately weaved into the game, to see that the villain side was not a exact copy of the hero side, to see a distinctly new atmosphere expanding the world, it really helped me finalize my thoughts on weather to stay and like the game, then from there on I was militantly infavor of paragon studios lol.

[Unsung_Corpsmen]

Sometime in early 2005 I had come off of a exile I put myself into cause of a obsession to FPS's, a roommate and I went looking for a game we could play that would be fun but light. I grew up on comics and knew far to much about superheroes in my youth and decided it prolly wasn't going to a good game with me. But my roommate prevailed in talking me into getting it. I logged on and played for almost the entire weekend. I realized every fantasy I had in my youth could be played out. I built a family of heroes in the game, Literally. I have beta tested tons of games since I started City, but never really left. Unsung Corpsmen was always there. Ready to fly out and fight villains or the latest threat to humanity. Now he exists on Icon. I logged almost 15 hrs flying him around in it. Oh gawd I am tearing up.

[Blondeshell]

Some of my college buddies used to meet up regularly for a long Memorial Day weekend of gaming (boardgames, card games, RPGs, etc.). At our 2005 get-together, one of my friends was playing City of Heroes in the other room, and I watched over his shoulder for a while thinking it was so cool. He let me create a couple characters on his account and I was hooked, playing it more than the other games that were going on that weekend.

Later that week, I picked up a copy at Walmart, realizing that I'd seen it on the shelf for a year already, but never bothered to try it. The extent of my experience with PC games to that point consisted of Ultima (the numbered ones), X-Wing/TIE Fighter, Myst, Descent, things like that. But now, NOW, I had been introduced to the glorious Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. I didn't actually do any teaming right away, though, because I spent too much time in the costume creator (who didn't?!).

After filling up a couple servers worth of character slots, I finally found a concept that clicked (Kat/SR Scrapper). Unfortunately, my computer was underpowered enough that I couldn't get past level 6 due to the slideshow that was my framerate causing me to continually die to the Vahzilok. I upgraded to a new machine later that month, and stayed subscribed to the very end.

[Epelesker]

I bought the Architect Edition on Boxing Day (2009) for $5 at EB Games.

[Felderburg]

I was in Walmart in 2005, having just graduated from high school. I tend to look at the games section when I go to stores like that, and as soon as I saw the game I knew I was going to buy it. I saw the box image with Statesman and all those other heroes flying out from under the logo, and basically went "Whaaaaaat is this!?!? I must buy it!" A look at the back, where it said you could create your own hero and fly around the city just confirmed it.

When I got home, I discovered it was an MMO. It was sort of disappointing since I was leery of MMOs at that point, but the idea of creating a hero was not something I would let go for such a minor consideration. Plus some of my friends had talked about MMOs quite a bit, so I had a vague idea of what to expect. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my home computer to work with it (I think it would have taken days to download the latest patch or something) so I ended up not playing until I visited another friend's house over the summer with my laptop. I saw a flying hero in Atlas, and immediately made it my goal to fly (the question for that weekend was "Can you fly yet?"). Eventually I was able to fly, and that was that.

[srmalloy]

Well, there was only one power that was changed for purely PvP reasons (Hurricane, which could do some crazy stupid broken stuff). Everything else was for PvE reasons that just happened to effect PvP.

As I recall, Movement Suppression was pointless in PvE, because 'jousting' just prevented you from eating more than one round of return fire before the NPCs moved -- at the point you got close enough for your attack to trigger, the mobs aggroed and instantly attacked back, even if you were out of range by the time their attacks actually fired; however, in PvP, because of individuals' reaction times, if you didn't have an attack queued, an opponent could joust past you, firing off an attack as they came within range, and be out of range of your return shot before you could fire.

[srmalloy]

Every other MMO I've looked at, the MAJORITY of PvP'ers are these poster children for birth control (don't let this happen again).  If PvP hadn't been limited to those zones only, I was planning on quitting.

In some of the more extreme cases, poster children for the Retroactive Abortion Society...

[Reiraku]

As I recall, Movement Suppression was pointless in PvE, because 'jousting' just prevented you from eating more than one round of return fire before the NPCs moved -- at the point you got close enough for your attack to trigger, the mobs aggroed and instantly attacked back, even if you were out of range by the time their attacks actually fired; however, in PvP, because of individuals' reaction times, if you didn't have an attack queued, an opponent could joust past you, firing off an attack as they came within range, and be out of range of your return shot before you could fire.

Originally (as in, long before i4) this was true. There were lots of complaints about people getting instantly attacked by lots of mobs they couldn't see as they super jumped past. The devs added a minor pause between alerted status and attacking around i2/3. With this, it was actually possible to keep mobs locked in an AI mode of melee attacking (where they would try to run in to attack as opposed to firing from range). You could, with practice, keep an entire group of enemies running around without them taking a single shot as you destroyed them.

When the devs became aware of this, it was right around i4 beta. In order to curb that behavior, they added a 50% to hit debuff to travel powers and people lost their damn minds. That debuff lasted a week before they added the travel suppression we've known for the majority of the game.

When asked, Castle stated that for the 8 major reasons for travel suppression, only 3 related to PvP.

[Woodsfire]

Pre-ordered the box, though I don't recall from where since different stores offered a different Prestige sprint effect. I was getting really sick of EverQuest by the time CoH went into Beta and was starting to try other games when I got the Beta invite.

It didn't take long to realize I had found a new home and I kept an active sub (and eventually a second one during a couple of the intervening years) up until sunset.

[firelightx]

So basically a lot of games handle an introduction of PvP badly. Makes sense.

Bit more than that, really.  This was a time before WoW had started it's rise, and was still a little niche game in itself.  Most of the other major MMOs that were out around the time of CoH's release did not have different servers for PvP or PvE, or special "battleground" areas to herd the PvPers together.  Corpse camping was a regular thing in many games, etc.  If you disliked such a thing... those games taught you to hate such a thing with a burning passion.

A lack of PvP, at the time, was incredibly attractive.


Anyway, my story - I was in my freshmen year of high school.  Making meager attempts to roleplay in a game called "Jedi Knight" back in 2002/2003.  One of the guys I had become good friends with (these days known as Charon) pointed out City of Heroes pre-beta site.  We decided to jump ship (I don't think I loaded up Jedi Knight even once after this discovery) and roleplayed exclusively on the CoH pre-beta forums.  Did this for years.  Major involvement in the Big Hero Art Thread (BHAT, as we affectionately referred to it)

And then... the game came out.  I was still in high school, did not have an income... could not buy the game for months.  It was agonizing.  I wound up picking it up right around the launch of I2... and thank god I skipped that first part, because I fell in love with costume editing.  Played for years, never looked back.

[Cinnder]

... A more complicated solution is setting up power sets with a 'Rock, Scissors, Paper, Lizard, Spock' premise...

I love you for including "Lizard, Spock".

[AlphaFerret]

My rl gaming crew played a ton of Neverwinter online in the early 2000s.  None of us wanted to pay a sub fee, so we had been avoiding EQ and the other pay to play games out at the time.  There was a lot of steam for WoW pre-lauch, and we all agreed that we would give it a try.  I happened upon an article about an online super hero game, that would let you make your own hero, design your costume, and FLY.  Having been a huge fan of the original Freedom Force, I knew that WoW would have to take a backseat to this new City of Heroes thing.  I pre-ordered it (something I had not done since Daikatana), and patiently waited for launch day.  My buddies joined me for the first year or so, before they migrated to Azeroth.  I dabbled in other MMOs over the years, but always stayed faithful to my City.

Make mine Paragon!

[Sugoi]

My introduction to the game began in the mid-50s, when I started looking at my uncles' (they were about 10 years older than me) comic books while visiting my grandmother's house a few blocks from home.  I've been hooked on comics, SF and Fantasy ever since.

I was aware that CoH was being made back in the early 00s, because several of the hardcopy computer gaming magazines were sporadically covering it's development, comparing it with several earlier failed attempts to create a Superhero-based game. (Anyone remember the coverage of Microprose's cancelled Agents of Justice?)  Up to this point in time, the hot Superhero game was Freedom Force which had a relatively limited set of choices for running missions, but tons of fan-created costumes/skins for the characters.  When I read online that early purchasers of CoH would be given pre-release access to the game, I just had to give it a try.

I had read about Everquest and Ultima Online for a while, so I had a theoretical idea of what an MMO was, but no first-hand live experience.  It was quite amazing to go thru Atlas Park and Kings Row in the early days, just marvelling at the idea of not just running past an image of a building, but being able to literally run around the building, seeing it from so many different angles.  And when I could Fly... pure bliss!  As an old-time fan of Microprose's combat flight sim games, and EA's Janes varied aircraft simulations, I was right at home, reigning Death From Above on helpless morons waving their useless bats in my general direction.

I showed the game to my son, who immediately ran out and bought a copy for himself, as well as a few local RL friends who also joined the game shortly thereafter (and a great time was had by one and all).

As far as I'm concerned, PvP is a negative aspect to MMOs, just due to the way it usually happens.  I've run 1 on 1 bouts with various people in the Arena over the year, and win or lose, I've enjoyed it.  What I don't like about PvP is the nearly universal 'Bully' factor, where 3 or more people gang on on a solo player, and then brag how damn good they are, when all they did was gang up on a lone support character.  Yeah, yeah, that crap I can live without.  Of course, there was the time 3 people decided to jump my Claws/Regen Scrapper while she was Badge Hunting... too bad for them.

I played the game since a week before opening day thru the very last day it was active, and enjoyed it very much, due to the way the game played and largely due to the inherently helpful nature of the majority of the players in the game.  Thank you all for making the game the positive experience it was.

[Eoraptor]

I got in way early. I was never into the swords and sorcery RPGs out there, so I didn't get the point of online gaming when people talked about Evercrack. (I still largey don't, but CoH is an exception) I bought a disc back around issue 2 and played a bit, but the Hollows Slog burned me out on the game along with several of my friends. When the City of heroes/City of Villains combo pack showed up on local store shelves, I eyeballed it, but left it on the shelf and went home, the taste of a dozen toons stranded in the hollows still bitter in my mouth.

I looked up the game online though, and saw the blurbs about how they had done away with the mandentory group mission runs, how the hollows had been reworked, and how there was new stuff like Supergroups and the invention system, and of course, villains! So I went back and bought the full special edition Good Vs Evil DVD package with my VIP pass to Pocket D, my wall map of the zones, etc. I enjoyed the tweaked game a lot more in its new balanced out modes, and played it on and off for two more years. Finally, though, my PC could no longer launch the game as the graphics got reworked and surpassed my aging hardware (Gee, maybe if I'd been spending those monthly fees on savings for a new GPU and some more memory? )

A few years down the road, I heard the news... City of Heroes and Villains was going to go F2P! I had a new-to-me laptop which more than met the minimum requirements, my old login information including my Pocket D Pass, and I started counting the days! I logged in. Sadly, while my old account worked, many of my old toons had been erased over the years. Oh well, a chance to start anew, right? And man the changes! I stopped playing before the Going Rogue options for alignment change appeared. And I stopped playing before some key rebalancing, so my old playstyle of Tank in and let everyone follow no longer worked so well. And I stopped playing before Oroboros was anything more than "that wierd time travel mission for level 40 characters" Plus... holy crap, where are all my contacts? Who is this guy standing around asking about his dead wife? I don't go downstairs anymore? Oh my God... I don't even have to go to the hollows at all now?!?!?!

I quickly fell in love with the new early-stage missions and the writing involved with the stories for Mathew Habashy and then Twinshot. I love their backtories and tried to play them with every toon which I made even when power-leveling. And the inside joke that Matthew's wife was too good for him, or at least too hot. And I dearly wished they'd added more twinshot missions later in the game, because once you left Atlas, the stories just began to lose some of their detail and intimacy as you ran from contact to contact. I spent quite a bit of my disposable income either on game time or on options in the shop... I must have worn out those Vanguard weapons props on all my toons...

I loved playing back and forth across the alignment lines, and even did a mission or two in Praetoria though it was not my favourite. And the Arenas... those had been THE hot new thing the last time I'd played... and now, only one was left standing. I was a total toon whore, building and deleting charactersleft and right save for a few special ones. sometimes the only thing that saved a toon was the ability to gain a costume slot at level 20.

And then... August 31 2012... NCSoft took the broadsword out of Jeanne Darque's hand and rammed it through my heart. We'd just gotten the incredible new staff fighting, and were supposed to get an entirely new haunted astoria zone and mission set... and... its dead... the staff has been fired, and the game was going to coast on on automatic for a couple of months so they could rake in money from the paid custmers accounts and then... the cold, lonely, empty death of a game client that wouldn't connect any more. The only online game I had ever played more than five minutes... had played for years... gone. 

[Eoraptor]

I am legitimately curious how the lack of PvP attracts people.

Does it stem from a fear that PvE and PvP will be mixed?
Do people worry that people who could be working on PvE are using their time on PvP?
The type of community it may bring?

I've never heard of an addition to a game, which has no effects on the existing game, turn people away. I started the first issue like a lot o% of people, and its hard to enjoy yourself ef other people here, PvP being announced made me stay much longer than I would have originally (up until the end). I'm not the only one either.

I want to hear people's thoughts on this, because I like PvP in games and don't want games not attracting PvErs because PvP exists. We also already know that every project being worked on will include PvP.

Did people quit out-right when PvP was introduced?
Why doesn't anyone feel this way about things like Bases, AE, Ouro or Incarnate?

For a couple of reasons. Firstly, as everyone else says... bullies and douche nozzles. Going into a game is an act of enjoyment and escape for 98% of people, and its hard to escape or enjoy yourself when some little fusker is teabagging your freshly sniped corpse.

Related to that are two more reasons... the pack-hunt mentality... again, everyone on here has an anecdote about a group of trolls running you down like a fox being hunted, and the feeling of community-breaking that gives, making you feel like an outnumbered minority and again breaking that enjoyment and escape you logged in to seek. And then the sociopaths. Those who literally come in to the game to do nothing other than hunt and kill live people for sport. None of us want to be around that kind of person, but when the game is skewed to force PVP, you're forced to endure that kind of person with little or no recourse.

Fortunately CoX controlled most of this by limiting PVP AND making some of it story-driven. Other games just say "oh, by the way, you can also kill other people while you're here... have fun with that"

Another reason though... PVP is not conducive to story-telling. This is the big one for me. If you're constantly walking around with one eye cast over your shoulder, waiting for the next dagger in your back; you're not taking time to stop and explore your environment, to learn the lore of your game, or perhaps even reading the prompts from your contact fully. And look at all the lore scattered around JUST Atlas Park. Now imagine that game where you couldn't be bothered to stop and read about Atlas himself, or the fifth column, or collect your local historian badges, because you were to busy trying to not be dead by someone with stalker claws. And PvP has almost single-handedly killed off the RPG half of MMORPG. you can't spend a lot of time working out longform prose in character and getting IC when you;re busy watching your back for, or hunting down, other players in game and having frenetic live battles.

[healix]

I actually bought the game as a birthday present for someone who was into superheroes. He asked me to create a character, just for the heck of it.....that was it. Bought my own game and I was hooked for eight years. Truth be told, I still am.

[srmalloy]

Another reason though... PVP is not conducive to story-telling. This is the big one for me. If you're constantly walking around with one eye cast over your shoulder, waiting for the next dagger in your back; you're not taking time to stop and explore your environment, to learn the lore of your game, or perhaps even reading the prompts from your contact fully. And look at all the lore scattered around JUST Atlas Park. Now imagine that game where you couldn't be bothered to stop and read about Atlas himself, or the fifth column, or collect your local historian badges, because you were to busy trying to not be dead by someone with stalker claws. And PvP has almost single-handedly killed off the RPG half of MMORPG. you can't spend a lot of time working out longform prose in character and getting IC when you;re busy watching your back for, or hunting down, other players in game and having frenetic live battles.

Unfortunately, for a lot of people, an MMO isn't about experiencing the story, it's about getting the most twinked-out max-level character possible as fast as physically possible with the least effort, and the story can go piss up a rope. Look at, for example, all of the level-50 AE babies that we saw in CoH.

[FatherXmas]

But that's because they've been preconditioned to believe all the "good" content in an MMO is at the end.  Content that only a "twinked-out max-level character" is allowed to participate in.

[Spineshank]

A friend of mine convinced me and another friend to pick it up. We started on Guardian in Galaxy City, two things that ensured we didn't see too many people, just the normal low-level 'petty' toons without capes, auras or travel powers.

Me and the other new guy were on Skype with our veteran friend. It was really our first real MMO. Out of the blue, we saw the most miraculous toon in front of us, 'Supreme Alpha' (Obviously, a Superman spinoff). It was the first time we saw someone that was not only flying, but had a cape and had a really breathtaking costume. And for some reason, he was flying right in front of us, to give us a good look at him.

Me and the other new guy were yelling at our veteran friend to hurry up and get over here to see this guy, as our veteran friend was a big Superman fan.

Then, over Skype, he said. "Now you see my main toon."

I grinded to 14 that night just to get Fly.

When we finally both got to 50, I was pretty cocky about the killing power of my Broadsword/Dark Armor Scrapper. I talked him into an arena battle with his Invul/SS Tank. Never did a get whupped as hard as I did that day.