What drew you to CoX?

My buddy and I had seen advertisements and preview articles online about a new MMORPG called City of Heroes, where you get to be a superhero. We were big comic book fans, and we were excited to play.

Comic books were one of the things that bonded our friendship. As kids, we exchanged comic books; I drew my own comic strips; and my buddy introduced me to the Champions pencil and paper RPG, which we played for years with a gaming group.

When CoH launched, we were there.

But, by that time, I had already soured on MMOs. I had played America On-Line's original Neverwinter Nights, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot ... and I was weary of MMO conventions. I wanted more of a story, like in a single-player game.

I played CoH for the first month and enjoyed the character creator, flying, gravity control, and other features. CoH was a great superheroic combat simulator. But, watching scores of heroes chase Skulls and Hellions around Perez Park in pursuit of "XPs" and "LVLs" seemed mindless and unappealing.

I left CoH for Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. It sought to simulate a Dungeons and Dragons gaming session with support for a game master and a small group of players--a different concept from MMOs. Plus, NWN provided a toolset that allowed players to create their own game designs that others could play.

My buddy stayed with CoH, off and on. About 2 years ago, I emailed him, asking, what are you up to, gaming-wise? He indicated CoH had been greatly improved, and a lot of good stories had been added to the game that I would like.

By then, I had gotten tired of playing NWN amateur-made modules (plus, I was discouraged by how technically demanding the NWN toolset was to use--you had to know how to write C++ programming scripts to do just about anything), so I returned to CoH.

Been enjoying it ever since. My buddy was right, CoH is constantly improved.

I've played World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Lord of the Rings Online, and they're all great games; but, I like superheroes better than sword and sorcery.

I received a $50 bestbuy gift card for Christmas. I had no interest in best buy so I surfed around found some game called city of villains. It sounded interesting. I bought it and played for a few months then quit. Then a buddy had me try wow. I hated it and kept remembering wow in City this was so much more fun... SO I resubbed to city and have been back for most of the last 3 years.

At the time, local friends were playing, and I was looking for a new game. Plus, I've been a huge fan of superheroes for the better part of the last 20 odd years. So for me, a relatively open-ended superhero RPG=epic win.

5 years later, all those guys moved on or back to WoW, and save for a period that lasted a little over a year where my internet was royally goofed up, I've been here ever since.

good luck D.B.B.

Silver Age Sentinels. The Tri-stat system, with its metric ton of dice needed for half of what I wanted to do.

Some friends of mine and I had a weekly gaming night. We jumped between DND, Shadowrun, All Flesh Must Be Eaten (ok, mostly halloween games there, but fun) and, for a while, a SAS campaign. I'd had a character inspired in some ways by Scuzz from DP 7 (yes, I *did* like some of the New Universe.) Strong, could take a hit, always basically oozing a highly acidic substance while showing up in the wrong place and irritating the "big names" in the city.

If you've never blown up a bunker by using an acidic spitball (and getting one heck of a nice die roll,) well...

In any case, that game got put on pause after we finished one campaign and one of our number went off to join the army. But I still felt like playing *something* superhero-ish. Freedom Force didn't really do it for me - fun little game, but "eh." I ran across COH (CE) in Wal-mart for twenty bucks, said "pay monthly for a game I already bought? Don't think so.. but, eh, free month and it's cheap. I can always drop the sub before it renews."

... yeah. still here. Forum date's about a week behind my signup date. >.<

Tried getting as close to that SAS character as I could with my first character. Didn't want a spines character, though it handled the toxic (and ranged attack) side of things... went with a Fire/SS Tank, the first Memphis Bill. (I've remade him on other servers trying to find a better fit - closest was initially a SS/Dark brute, but - well, wrong side. Now there's a Dark/SS tank who's the way he should have been, pretty much.)

Now, two accounts, 200+ characters, made some good RL friends out of it as well.

See my Guides and Tutorials

basically, a other forum i used to post on mentioned how good the customization was. i read the prima guide book at eb and saw that it had a martial arts powerset, so i figure i'd give it a go.

Funny part is, the manager of said eb had discussed with me about it earlier, but after having some irritation with other mmo's (eq's obtuse interaction with npc's, ffXI's deleveling, daoc having boring character art, swg going insane and istaria running like treacle on my system) i was actually waiting for guild wars. i used to love the old dreamcast(and later gamecube/xbox) game phantasy star online, which was more diablo'ish than mmo'ish, so when i played the old mmo's the slow pace and lack of easy teaming kept me at a distance, but with coh, teaming was fast, forgiving of composition, and basically was 8 people hopping together and having fun. plus the sidekicking system, even pre exemplaring and ssk, was a wonderful feature, i could alt and still play with friends who were significantly higher level. then i got my friends into it and then i basically was cemented.

funny part is, while i did like the thematic freedom of superheroes, since they could be tech, sci-fi, eastern martial arts based or mystical, i really wasnt the biggest fan of the genre, too much spandex, and i didnt care for the stories(largely due to not fully understanding them in context) I was and am still more of a manga guy than a comic-book guy, but coh did a lot to make me reevaluate and start to appreciate comics a lot more.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

In May 2009, I blew off MMOs after a bad experience with Turbine customer service...and decided to kick the MMO habit..figuring I could put the time to better use, as in writing, and reading and catching up on current events and yeah a little thing called Pokemon diamond and pearl...

One month later, I was well on my way to kicking a habit that is like cigarettes to me..but I was starting to feel a little mundane...

Hubby sees the CoH trial...mentions it...and I comment on having wanted to play with that costume creator, but well...never could find a decent version of that program....what does he do..?

He downloads said creator..

Ten days later, we both buy accounts.....

I'd gotten pretty bored with Counter Strike/Quake/Unreal by 2004, and was looking for something new.

While flipping though the latest issue of Maximum PC I came across a review for a newly released game. City of Heroes.

I didn't join until Feb 2005 and I kick myself when I think about the vet badges I missed :P

Page: 53

http://dl.maximumpc.com/Archives/MPC0804-web.pdf

Back in March of 2005 my RL friend was getting into Ultima Online.
I'd never even heard about MMO's at that point, as I was strictly a console gamer.
Only PC game I'd played at that point was Maniac Mansion!
When he told me you had to pay a monthly subscription to play I couldn't believe it. So I held off for a month.

He wouldn't shut up about how cool it was to play with people from all over the world.

So one night in April of 2005 I went to Wal-Mart with the goal of buying UO and getting him off my back. I was looking at the various titles, trying to find UO. Then I saw the City of Heroes box and my love of superhero mythos made me pick it up.
I casually glanced at it and then put it back, resuming the search for UO.

Upon finding it I 1st noticed the price was nearly $30 more than COH then looking at the game I realized I'd be a fool to spend that much cash on a fantasy game. I hate fantasy type games.

So I picked COH back up and started reading the details, determined to get an MMO while I was there. But I still wasn't sold.

Wanna know what did it for me?
1 picture was worth more than the whole box. When I opened the teaser cover I saw a picture of a Hero flying high above the city a building ledge just beside him with the street far below.
SOLD!

I haven't regretted it since.

Got him hooked as well.

Lotta great stories in this thread, thanks for sharing everyone.


/e cheer

When I was twelve, I happened to be at the house o my sister and brother-in-law, the latter who was and still is a gamer. For whatever reason (I don't really remember it now), he let me make a character on his CoX account. From then on I was hooked.

Unfortunately I only played it once before he junked it , and it took four years until I decided to pool my money together to pay my parents for a subscription. That and my parents decided I was mature enough to play an online game. A year and a half later and I couldn't be happier with my own unique superheroes and lots of awesome friends!

I love reading these. I just want to give a big e-hug to everybody who has posted here.

Way back in 2001 I began my path into the world of MMO's with Anarchy Online. Upon launch bugridden to the bone, but it took little time to get hooked on the concept of playing in groups. After a few years however, the interest started to lessen, especially since the concept of science fiction was being mauled by the fantasy expansion Shadowlands. Add to that a dying relationship since my other half had fallen in love with someone we met on a playermeet(!) and the joy of the game was pretty much gone.

Time for something new!
Yah... but what?
Well... let's do a wee bit of browsing on the interwebs!
www.mmorpg.com. Let's see.. Oh hey hello there! What's this? A chance to not just read comics, but make one myself? Hell yeah! Where do I b.. beta? Hmm.. Oh well, let's try to get in there! Yay!

Eventually the game came to Europe as well, time to hop to those servers and migrate my blaster Meowing Mags over! Wait.. it failed? But why? Noooooo... Oh well.. Let's see. Masterminds are petclasses. Metaphysicists were awesomesauce in AO. Let's make a mastermind.

And Mad Mandy went through hell and back with mega debts, dodgy Issue releases, pet pathing problems up the wazoo and so on. But in the end, my first 50 was there. She was also the only one to have solo'd the entire way up to 50. And no matter what, that is the one character I'll not ever delete. If only because she still has some 40-odd free cossiechanges left (without vetrewards mind you! )

Just felt like playing CoX one day it's pretty good

I play tons of CoX now

EU Shelf presence !. I'll say this again for Paragon Marketing that claims that digital distribution for the overseas market is just as effective these days - for the architect edition, for the GR expansion; EU SHELF PRESENCE.

My story is one of pure coincidence. March 2005 I was returning an unwanted title to my local gamestation store and was after a specific replacment. They did not have the title i was after and was on my way out of the shop when the boxed product on the shelf caught my eye.

I stayed subscribed for over five years and thoroughly got caught up in everthing 'City of'.
If the same scenario happened today I would most probably never of tried it because.... well, all us EU vets know how things are. I would be straight to Champions or DCUO because they have/will have boxes on shelves over here, and I would of missed out on one hell of an MMO - just as there are plenty of potential subscribers that are missing out here now and are unaware of GR and its supporting MMO 'City of Heroes'.

My husband was gotten into this brand-new MMO by a friend at work. When he tried to get me to play, I, who was an obsessive veteran of a MUD (The Final Challenge, which still runs!) and someone who jumped ship on EQ early when I saw it was totally possible to get lost there, told him that no, it was a terrible idea. I mean, I got so into my MUD that I was playing 5-8 hours a day, what would happen to me in a graphical setting? Nooooo thank you.

Well, long story short, I made an Emp/dark on his account and started playing her, and we got two of our best friends into the game too.

... then my husband had to buy himself a new account because I wanted to play my Emp/Dark all the time and all he wanted to do was make new characters and he was hogging all the slots, back when you couldn't buy more. Besides, I was making way better use of the account than he was, what with the playing and leveling and getting into an RP SG... yeah.

Here I still am! Took breaks when WoW came out (my gaming partner wanted to play that) and came back, and then LOTRO (he always wanted to play that) and came back. I think I'll probably always be here until they shut it down, nothing else has the draw or the staying power for me!

I'll be here after they shut it down.

I plan on making a small fortune so I can buy the defunct IP and run my own solo server forever!!!

I mean, I've got so many alts there's no physical way I can complete them all.

I needed something online to pass my time... As I love the genre, I decided to try it.

Right at the first moment, on the server selection screen, something got my attention... There was a server that was drawing me in... It was Guardian. With an AWESOME smell of cookies coming from it...

I got into the cookie server.
Created a toon named Kay Nova. It was a Fire/NRG Blaster.
Played for 5 minutes.
Loved the game.
Logged from Kay Nova, and created another toon, this time a Defender. Name was Life Nova. Empathy/Psi.
Was soloing around Galaxy City, getting the feeling for the toon and the game. Yes, I started on Galaxy.
Got into a few teams, and we went into the fearsome Hollows.
Made a few friends.

Then, on the next day... I was trying to learn how to create a SG (yes, right after getting CoH I got CoV too). One guy, a mighty 50 named Pellien, explained to me what I had to do. And promised that, when I got to level 10 and created my SG (Arcane League) he would drop his SG and joined mine, as he was tired of some bickering that was happening there.
We exchanged Globals.
Two days later I created the group. And got Wwhawk, a personal friend, hooked on the game too.
And Pellien called me and told me to invite him.
And all his alts.
The 3 of us got our toons on the group (Pellien dropped all of then from his other group).
And we are playing since then. Right now Pat (Pellien) is kind of away (but I know that he will come back when RL let him do it, as he is on a yearly sub).
And I plan on play forever and ever...

I didn't know anything about the game. But got into the closed beta.

Found out you could make catgirls and was sold, bought game.

Then realised the game is pretty awesome and stayed

QR

My friend Turtle (not his real name) had a copy and said "Hey, want to try this game I picked up?" I said yes, rolled me an ar/ice blaster, murderized about a hundred mobs while cackling wildly, bought myself a copy 2 days later. He didn't last out the free month, I've been playing off and on for six years.

This is kind of funny but I was actually drawn to CoX after reading about DCU Online this past July. I thought DCU sounded really cool so I figured I'd buy CoX AE on steam to get into the super hero mood. All I can say is I wish I tried CoX a loooong time ago. I logged 175 hours in game in my first two months. That's the most I've ever played a game in my life!

What I like the most are: fast paced combat, travel powers, meaningful crafting, badges, player created arcs...etc. I could go on and on and on but you get the idea.