Open world for both Factions

BULL!

It's a game. Games have rules. Heroes and Villains can't fight each other in three zones right now. It's probably going to be more than than if I understand how Praetoria is going to work.

Many games allow good and evil characters to exist in the same PvE space. This is a good idea and should be how they implement GR.

I really do love me some Queen of Maths, when she's making sense!

We already have Heroes and Villains in the same PVE space: Pocket D, Rikti War Zone, and Cimerora.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

QFT! I had someone in my time there, he was literally spamming me with dual requests (or possibly guild charter request) so hard that I couldn't click on him to /ignore him. I couldn't do anything until I had to type /ignore

That doesn't actually indicate that it makes sense for them to do so. I forget precisely which flavor of rhetorical crap that is - possibly the false conflation of causation and correlation? Whichever, that other games do it - indeed, that this game does it in a couple of places - is irrelevant. It's still annoyingly nonsensical. Either it requires a cumbersome handwave ("Pocket D is neutral ground, and for some reason just the DJ saying that is enough to keep the peace") or simply a game mechanic enforcing behavior that the characters would otherwise not exhibit.

That's because DJ Zero MADE that pocket dimension. He created the rules, literally. So heroes and villains simply CAN'T attack each other, because it's not POSSIBLE in the mini world that he created.

Um, no, the LOTRO devs have never said that. Ever. I say this as one who has been in LOTRO since friends-and-family alpha and is related to one of the devs (who would be vehemently opposed from a lore and gameplay standpoint).

If we had a vote on Open World, I would vote no for the reasons others have mentioned already.

You win Ten Thousand Internets!

Doom/Batman in 2012

The Resistance has boobs too, and better hair!

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I think the reasoning in the D might be "If you start a barfight, I'mma teleport you into your own, private pocket dimension... forever."

Also, the game is constantly fresh - players at every level of play (not character level, but super casual to super hardcore) are constantly being given more to do. Their quests have an amazing level of variety. It isn't that they're amazing feats, but it ends up being all the little things that make so many quests slightly different. For exmaple: a fishing daily question. You need to attract some fish attracted to blood. So you kill an animal, "wash off" the blood in water, that creates a little bloody pool where you jumped in. You fish that bloody spot, you get the right fish.

It's those little things that distinguish each quest from clicking a glowie.

Then there's the dungeons, which are pretty comparable to a Task Force, except with a wider variety of mechanics. Only a few fights in CoH - end of ITF, the Four Horseman in the LGTF, etc, have really "different mechanics", and (almost?) none of them have mechanics you can't just overpower with a sufficiently strong group.

And then there's the raids. Lag-free, challenging activities that take 25 good players, and are still HARD. (And scaling up to where you literally need 25 really excellent people, all playing nearly error-free for the duration of an encounter.)

To say nothing of the PvP, which seems amazingly well balanced considering how the powers are essentially the same as the PvE versions.

Granted, this is a game they spent maybe 75-90M$ developing, and then it became a monster hit, far beyond what anyone would have expected - even the most optimistic Blizzard fanboy would never have predicted 12M subscribers, with 35M+ people trying the game over time. But rather than rest on their laurels, the game has been made drastically better over time as they listened with a deft ear to their players. (Despite all that was good about it, I found it nearly unplayable in it's first couple years.)

I do think it's true though that there are only a handful of companies that could have pulled it off, no matter how good their game was. Blizzard being one of them. The only company I can think of with a comparable clout - and even they are not as strong as Blizzard - is Bioware, and I am pretty sure their MMO will be the next one to break into the millions, and stay there.

I'm not a WoW player, but that's not what I've heard about their PvP.

On the other hand, WoW (and several other MMOs besides) have a larger variety of PvP modes to make it more interesting than simply "kill the other guys".

What are you TALKING about? WE have Pokemon PvP!

Still BULL! Same reasoning could be extended to say that we should be able to attack ANY target. Heroes and villains can't fight each other? Why can't villains fight each other? You can't even use the "Heroes wouldn't have any reason to fight each other excuse."

Player character Villains can't beat each other up in the Rogue Isles because it's a game rule. It's a PvE space.

Try to quote all the debate maxims that you want. Your argument is irrelevant. We already have to make allowances for the fact that players can't fight each other. Better to just say you don't like the idea than to try and justify it with a weak argument that reflects nothing more than your own prejudices about how the game should work.

Hero and villain are in the back corner of Rikti War Zone or Cimerora. No one around to see. Why can't they fight each other then?

Why do you presume that heroes and villains *must* automatically be antagonistic to each other, just because of their archetype or the place they started?

If you put two siblings in the back seat of the car and told them not to mess with each other, guess what's gonna happen eventually? Daddy's gonna have to pull this car over and whup somebody.

I like Arcana's idea of being more proactive in opposing faction zones with special missions.

I wouldn't like it.
By making every zone co-op PvE, what would be the point of even having factions?
We've already been proliferating the heck out of powersets, which some people love, but I do not. I wish that every AT had at least one exclusive Primary and Secondary, to make it stand out as special in a way other than just the AT's Inherent.

I'm against having PvP flags and Dueling requests, for reasons other posters have expressed.

Because the game has player convenience mechanics that are poorly justified by the in-game story. I think we've covered this already.

You forgot to mention one of the biggest contributors to WoW's success. It had a 10 year head start over City of Heroes.
Yes, World of Warcraft as a title did not exists before CoH, but it was already a successful MMO early on and when it was 'Warcraft'. Then it got a major overhaul and was re-released as 'World of Warcraft'.

Subscribers to 'Warcraft' naturally subbed to WoW.

Um... because they're heroes and villains. One of the things that defines supervillains is "antagonism toward superheroes", and vice versa. You'd as well ask why one presumes that something knocked off a kitchen table will fall to the floor. Because that's what they do.

Yes. Quite true. I don't think I ever denied that, did I? And once again you ignore the fact that just because some things already don't make sense, that doesn't mean it's okay for more things not to make sense.