Hercules

Thanks! That would be great to get the entire series posted here, seems to be some missing from their website.

I've seen the press releases for new games such as GW2 and how "revolutionary" they are to the MMORPG realm, and my response is "oh really"?

GW2 adds little hearts to maps and you have to perform tasks that have been around for years to complete, and supposedly that's revolutionary.
They draw circles on a map and spawn zergs, call it an event, and thats revolutionary... They eliminate healers, give each class a weak heal, and call that revolutionary. The appearance of each toon is still specific to the equipment you pick up. Yes, you can transfer stats to something you like, but hardly revolutionary.

Let me point out some things in this game:

1. CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION - you can literally create anything. YOU ARE WHAT YOU CREATE. Not what you pick up and wear. No other game even attempts to do this. Equipment is king. (with CO as the exception)

2. POWER SYNCHRONIZATION - in every other game, you can do what you can do. Nothing else anyone does has that much of an impact on your performance. The way powers in this game mix and match is something to behold. A /kin troller can make a good meleer truely awesome. A buffer/debuffer can make a good blaster literally melt through enemies. I have always loved PUGs in this game, because every group is different depending on the mix of powersets. It feels like a completely different game - every time. I can participate in a 1000 PUGs in WoW, it's always the same, except for perhaps the competency and equipment of the players.
Tank/DPS/Healer/Whatever. The experience never differs.

3. PLAYER CREATED CONTENT - now this is something truely revolutionary. Love it or hate it, you wont see this in the vast majority of MMORPGs. Yes, the design could have been much better, but you have to admit some of the stories you can find are far and away better than most of the Dev content.

4. BASE EDITOR - yes, its hard to use. But look on the base forums, it's amazing what people have come up with. DAOC had very limited player housing where you could pick decorations. GW allowed you to select a guild base, but no customization.

5. TRUE TANKING - I've tried to tank on games such as WoW, after tanking in CoH. My reaction is always - you've got to be kidding me.
In CoH, you are a brick wall, and you can keep a substantial portion of the baddies on you alone, just by doing what comes naturally. In WoW, and most other games, you're nothing but a bag of hitpoints that the healer has to keep filled. Keeping a substantial number of the baddies on you is difficult.

6. BADGES - yes, every game has them now. But CoH invented the concept ... which WoW later stole. Now that was revolutionary.

7. SIDEKICKING - havent seen this anywhere else. GW2 has auto-exemplering at a zone level, but it's just an inferior implementation IMO. Try joining a team 30 levels above you in any other game, you will die in 1 second.

8. POWERSET/ARCHTYPE PROLIFERATION - nothing else comes close to the number of powerset combinations in this game. Foe each class, GW2 expects you to pick from 2 weapons and swap between them, giving you a grand total of 8 attacks. Less is better in their minds, I guess.
In Wow, you can pick from one of three skill trees for each class, again not much of a choice.

9. TRAVEL POWERS - this is both a blessing and a curse. It destroys any chance of having true "exploration" in this game. However, it is a joy to be able to have the ability to fly, by myself, without having to use some giant bird or other contraption.

10. INSPIRATIONS - yes, we take them for granted. But have you seen anything like them anywhere else?
You get "potions" in other games, but do they drop that frequently and have as much of an impact?

11. EIGHT PLAYER TEAMS - the rule of thumb in other games is - 5 players.
Not sure why they do this, but it really cuts down on the flexibility of group composition.

12. TEAMING - this game encourages teaming. From the power synchronization mentioned above, to side kicking, to the fact
that you can just level faster by teaming ... nothing else comes close. You can form a PUG in just a few minutes, whereas forming a team in other games can be such a major time-consuming hassle.

It's a shame the game is being sunseted. And it's more of a shame that the industry hasnt taken a harder look at some of the features in this game, and tried to emulate more of them. This is an 8 year old game, and IMO far more revolutionary and unique in design than anything coming out now.

Very early on, there was a series of comedic comic strips about life in CoH.

Examples:
1. A group of heroes waits impatiently while their teammate uses hover to reach the rooftip.

2. The heroes rescue a damsel in distress on a roof, she then leaps to the street below unharmed. One exclaims, "Um, why do they need us exactly?"

3. There used to be a bug where civilians walked into a sewer entrance and got into a backflip loop. A hero joins in the fun.

4. A hero grins when his rescuee exclaims "How can I EVER repay you?"

Would be nice to locate and preserve those. Are they still available anywhere?

I've wondered if someone created a hero name in the game and sometime later one of the major comic book publishers took that name - who would win? Fairly certain NCSoft doesn't copyright any of our names .... so whoever copyrights/trademarks first would have the right to order cease and desist to the other party?

I've also wondered, especially with the upcoming Marvel MMO, if there might have been some kind of backroom deal for NCSoft to sunset CoH early, to eliminate the possibility of such conflicts and/or competition. Wouldnt even put it past the CO folks to try it.

Malta - primarily because of the sappers.

CoT - a nightmare in the lower levels due to the accuracy debuffs.

Carnies - hated the bosses with their invulnerable mode and ability to cast spells even while held.

Arachnos - perma blindness. You had to carry a load of yellows or you were just out of luck.

Redcaps - seemed their attacks had 100% accuracy and totally blew through your resists.

Personally, I think the double XP should start now and go on until the end.

Since the game is being sunseted soon, I'm wondering if a red-name could answer some questions about what would have come in future releases.

1. What was intended for the next and subsequent incarnate powers. I'm assuming it hadnt been planned out all the way to Omega, but I'm guessing at least the next 2 were in the planning stages.

2. What is the "coming storm"? I'm guessing some kind of alliance between Hami 1, Hami 2, Rularuu, and perhaps Nemesis... any kind of outline on what the story would have been?

3. There's always some kind of resurrection storyline in comics. Was there any intent to return Statesman back from the dead?

4. Any details on future incarnate trials?

5. Were we finally going to get the moonbase zone? Underwater zones?

6. Future powersets in the planning and/or implementation stages?

7. Any plans to enhance mission architect or the base editor?

8. Was a COH2 being planned?

I've played a human ranger to level 80... while it's a beautiful game, I just dont see me playing it long term.

One of the principal things that a game designer has to get right is balancing the challenge level for players. Also, one thing that CoH got right that GW2 doesn't - you need to feel that your character is becoming more powerful vs same level mobs as you gain in level.

GW2 does the opposite. I was having difficulty in the level 75-80 zone, & the level 80 zone is well beyond my ability as a player. I found myself getting my teeth kicked in, repeatedly, just venturing a short distance from the "safe area". While some may relish this level of difficulty, I don't. These designers appear to have the "old school" everquest mentality.
Again, another thing that CoH got right - you can set the level of difficulty on your missions.

I'm also finding the game to be anti-social. No one calling for groups to be formed, and my zone broadcasts for forming groups have been met with silence.

Crying shame, too. The graphics are very nice, although nowhere near the level of Skyrim.

Regarding Charr, I couldnt bring myself to play one. If you played GW1, you know what they did to your starting area. That race is pure evil.

Not sure if it still works, but if you stand outside some of the bowling alleys, you can hear the sound of pins being knocked over. I've always wanted to be able to enter and actually see the inside.

Nellie in Croatoa is another one - I never knew she existed until a year or so ago. Pretty rare sighting.

Never noticed the pumpkin heads in the trees in Croatoa until yesterday - is that a Halloween event thing?

1. Cave Missions - especially with the pancake room.

2. MM sound effects - Demons and Wolf sound effects drive me nuts.

3. Spamming in LFG and Help Channels.

4. Orenbega missions

5. The new pay2win model - I'd prefer regular expansion packs for $30 vs being nickel and dimed for everything, and paying what would turn out to be 100s of dollars for a single expansion box.

Wishful thinking, but I'm wondering if it would be possible for Paragon studios to form up independently and recreate this game? The name CoH would of course be off-limits, but maybe something like "Superheroes", "Paragon", etc.
Dont see how a non-compete clause would be applicable since NCSoft would no longer have a superhero MMORPG to compete against.

They already know the inner workings of the game, recreate that and add a brand new frontend - it could maybe be out in a couple of years.

What would really be neat IMO is to reset the game to 70 years ago in the middle of WW2 ... golden age heroes and storylines. Statesman in his youth with his funky helmet. Recluse not yet a villain, but on the verge...

Missing features in this game that I'd like to see:
1. Exploration - I prefer games where you have to EXPLORE the zone to progress. Would require some reworking of the travel powers and/or how zones work. Zones would no longer just be random collection of doors to quest areas - but
areas would have permanent mob allocations. Certain doors would always be a Council base, for example.
2. Personal Story Lines - epic quests that you engage in all the way to max level and beyond.
3. Underwater combat
4. Reworked bases/Personal lairs.
5. Combined Hero/Villain zones across the board. No separate red/blue worlds.

1. The awesome costume creator. You design your character as you see fit - its not controlled by drops.

2. Designed for casual players. None of the "man, I have to level fast to keep up with my friends". None of the "I have to have purple gear to survive more than a few seconds in this dungeon".

3. Mature community. Leetist players were few and far between.

4. The huge number of archtype/powerset combinations. Other games you can pretty much categorize everything as Tank/Fighter/Healer/Ranged DPS.

5. No cookie cutter builds required - pretty much everything works.

6. Mission Architect

7. All of the memorable villains - Nemesis, Recluse, Crey, Romulus, etc.
I think I'll miss Nemesis the most.

What he doesnt mention in the video is the repetitiveness of these
objectives - and to be frank they arent a whole lot different than regular quests in other MMOs. Kill mobs, collect objects, perform actions like dumping water, etc., etc., the same old same old. Only difference is that you dont have a quest listing.

The OTHER thing that is really bugging me is the difficulty of just crossing a zone. In most MMOs, there's kind of a tacit understanding that roads comprise a safe route - i.e. minimal aggro. There is non-stop aggro when crossing their zones - cant really be avoided. The game also tends to zerg you when engaged with a mob. A fight with a mob usually turns into a fight with every mob in a 1 mile radius. It becomes a real chore just to get from point A to point B.

They made a big todo about the fact that what you've done becomes permanent in the game-world. ( i.e., you save a town, it stays saved ). I've yet to see anything like that.

The vast majority of their "events" are either
1. KIll mobs as they atack an area
2. Follow an npc patrol and kill everything in your path.

Big woop.

There is nothing that revolutionary from what I've seen.

As far as grouping - people dont group. If you happen to be in the same area, yes you're working on the same objective. But there's zero socialization. So, what the reviewer counts as a positive, I consider a negative.

I was going through some of my screenshots, and thought it would be nice to post them for old-times-sake, before the lights get turned off.

Note sure when beta ended, but I think most of these are from beta.

Beta (April 2004):

My namesake, and first toon:







Remember the Perez park flight exploit? Everyone was farming hydra. Not sure this one's from beta.


I recently got this guy to 50 ( had him shelved for years ). Glad I did so
before the game shut down.


May 2004:


I had several screenshots from the 1 year anniversary celebration in AP, unfortunately, I seem to have lost them.

What I personally wish they'd do is to break the concept of bases and raids into two separate systems.

1. Bases - scrap the current system, and make something that is more flexible and usable. I have a personal base that I've been working on for years, I cant stand working on it more than once every few months due to the clutziness of the interface.

2. Raids - create something similar to mission architect. You select a map, decorate it up, and use that for a battleground. I could even see this being PART of MA.