PeteyCat

Unnecessary Solicitation: Newbie, if the next two words out of your mouth aren't 'See ya' then the third word will be 'Oh my god. My crotch. You've punched me in my crotch.

On the moon, naturally.

Ouch. Hard question. There isn't good and bad, it's what interests you, really.

Protector and Pinnacle are mid to small population, but have very close-knit and active communities. Quality over quantity.

Justice is the unofficial Aussie server, so if you're on at strange hours in the US, there will be more people on Justice than most of the others. Also, Justice is crazy, but in a good way. Infinity is the 3rd most populated, so if you want a fair number of people, it's a good bet.

Freedom's easily the biggest, so it's got the most good players, but it also has the most stupid and rude people, and they can be pretty loud. If you ignore broadcast on Freedom, there's a really great bunch of players, you just have to dig for them a little.

Virtue's the other high population server. It's the unofficial RP server, so that can be good or bad, depending on how you feel about it. A lot of people don't RP, and nobody's going to make you. Virtue's players are very nice, and there's always something going on.

I don't have enough experience with the others to comment. I play on Virtue and Pinnacle, and love 'em both.

I'd second the vote for the Hollows, or if you don't have a temp travel power yet, go to King's Row (you can get there via the Yellow Line tram in Atlas). When you get to King's Row, A detective contact should pop up in the nav bar. Talk to him to get a police scanner. After three scanner missions, you'll get a message to talk to the detective again, and he'll offer you a Safeguard mission, defending a bank against robbers. If you complete the Safeguard, you get a two-hour temp travel power (a flightpack if you're 10 or under, a superjump pack if you're 10 or over. At level 10, you have a 50/50 chance of getting the 5-10 safeguard or the 10-15 Safeguard. It's weird.) They help a *lot* before you have your own travel power, especially in a big hazard zone like the Hollows.

Also, Welcome to the City! If you're curious about something in the game, Paragonwiki has everything you want to know, and if it doesn't, come ask here, we enjoy showing off our knowledge to the newbies. Oh, and check out Faultline when you hit 15, that series of stories is one of my favorite parts of the game.

Yeah, it might start a fight, but I think this is worth emphasizing, especially because the OP is asking about MMOs in general. In a lot of other games, especially older ones, combat was designed around the idea of the "holy trinity": A tank to absorb damage and keep enemies away from teammates, a damage dealer to kill those enemies, and a healer to keep the other two in fighting shape. Even World of Warcraft uses this model to a certain extent, so a lot of people come to City of Heroes/Villains thinking that the "healer" is the best type of support class, and that they need one to accomplish anything.

That's not true, at least not here. In CoH/V, powers that buff teammates or weaken enemies are much, much more powerful than in most other MMOs. Even Empathy, the set a lot of people think of as the "healing" set, is based mostly on (very powerful) buffs to teammates that when used right make heals completely unneeded.

Another example would be a Force Field Defender. Force Fields doesn't have a heal, a resurrection power, or any of the other abilities people think a "healer" should have. Force Fields has defensive shields that make it harder for enemies to hit you and your team, and powers that knockdown/knockback enemies to keep them from attacking. That's it. A good forcefielder doesn't *need* a healing power, because his team doesn't get hit in the first place.

Since you're not joining us with a background in other MMOs, this may not seem like a big deal, but there are a lot of veterans of other games wandering around who still think support=heals, and on the other side, the Defender subforum will skin you alive and sacrifice you to their dark and terrible gods if you wander in and start talking about "Healers". Just remember, in CoH/V, healing isn't a bad thing, just a last resort.