Hi all, I just signed up to the forum since I'm feeling a major pang months after CoV's closure. I love the idea of this thread and just wanted to contribute my own memories of a great game. I played from CoV on, I think Grandville/lvl 50 was around then and my first characters were a villains. Truth be told, I didn't like CoH as much. The zones weren't as good, I loathed those zones which lacked hospitals in particular. They were just too big and navigating with trains and zone exits was no where near as good as the ferries IMO.
Right now at this minute, I would dearly love to be able to log in and do an arc or a TF or something. So I'll settle for my favourite things about the game:
- My own memorable characters
I've played other MMOs and apart from a couple of them, I can barely remember most of my characters. They simply lacked personality, if such can be said. My CoV characters however all had unique and interesting identities. I usually stuck with colour schemes, but different costumes, they're biographies and power sets all came together to make each of them memorable. I miss those characters dearly.
- Sidekicking
Why other MMOs don't have this feature is quite simply beyond me. It is one of the greatest features of any MMO, bar none. The ability for us to play any character with any other character at any time, whilst remaining balanced and rewarding really does make me question why every single MMO doesn't allow it.
- Character Creator
It has to be mentioned. It was simply better than practically any other MMO including those released many years later. When considered alongside powersets, weapons, costume change emotes and so on, it allowed for truly wonderful creations.
- Instanced missions
There's a love or hate relationship with instancing and I'm firmly in the love category. One thing I loathe with a passion is having to find and kill 10 roaming miscreants in an open world area, with kill stealing, spawn camping, respawn timers and the rest. Instancing missions meant I always had my (or my team's) own zone which could be tackled at my pace.
There are so many more things to mention and all are equally memorable but the post is too long already. Just to give honorable mention to being able to have multiple characters with different roles to suit our moods, cool powers and the choice in how/when we acquired them, seamlessly integrated travel powers, cool vet rewards, the badges/accolades and an arcane "behind the scenes" number system :-)