Well, firstly, the game is very highly instanced - each team is in its own door mission, beating up its own group of bad guys. If you want to spend more time with other people, open up the Team window (it's in the chat interface) and set yourself as Looking for Team, or search through the other players online and start your own.
Also, look at joining the global chat channels for your server. I'm not sure which one you're on, but each server has a couple of channels where a lot of people hang around, talk, and form groups for various things. They can be a lot of fun.
Finally, welcome to the game. I'm fairly new myself, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I am. I'm @AnElfCalledMack. Send me a tell if you're on Justice or Virtue and I'm online.
The population of the server also makes a big difference, I find it much easier to team on Virtue than on Pinnacle. Servers do have global chat channels, you can search channels if you right click your chat box. In the search box put the name of your server and look for the most active channels and join them. Some of them require approval before you talk, but most you can pitch right in and look for teams. Also look for channel N P C for general help and questions, they are very good there. For a good list of guides see the Wiki here is has a number of very good guides. Also see the player guides in the forums, they are mostly builds for types of heroes but there is some great information there. Welcome to the game!
You are lucky you on an American server, try coming over to Europe and see underpopulated...
Echoing the advice, click on Team above th chat box and change status to looking for team and put a little message in there as well -ie say you are happy to team, or even that you are starting out. There are a lot of helpful people in this game, it really is the best I have found for that.
Try the search function, eg type /search in the chat box (or possibly from the menu I cannot remember if it is there as well).
This list will show who is in your map right now, click the search button and it will list most people on the server (max 50 at a time i think). you can filter this to people of your level. It will also show their team comments -do not worry too much if the status is not saying much as it resets each login and people tend not to bother resetting. Anyone around your lvl with looking to team or 'lft' should be amenable to group up.
There will be server specific chat channels -unfortunately named different things on each server, check out their threads- thought these tend to be for higher lvl task forces etc.
Check out the sticky live journal question at the top of this forum.
You also have the Mentor group to help out new people.
The biggest pick up groups for me are always in Praetoria as people tend to do the early lvs there these days.
Heroside is more friendly and more populated than villain (over in Europe anyway) and less repetitive in my opinion (though hero do have old missions of go to the other side of the map, now come back here, now go back there that they seem to have dropped in later content)
Oh, and its double xp weekend next week, so you will be lucky to actually get on a server...
And saying all that, this is not as heavily populated as other MMO but I have to turn requests down all the time as people ask me for teams and I'm in another already.
Hi,
welcome to the game and the forums
One thing to be aware of is that after you have created your first character and have started it in Preatoria, any new characters you create can be a Hero or Villian or Preatorian! You get that choice as you make a new one. Starting the first alt in the Preatoria zone is just the Dev's way of getting new players aware of the shiny new stuff released in Going Rogue!
I would suggest you could roll a new alt and choose the Hero type and after the tutorial (highly recommended and is a different one to the Pretorian tutorial) you choose to go to see Ms Liberty in Atlas.
You should be able to see a lot more new/low level players and be able to run in a team to do the sewers and other missions.
Maybe also do this on a different server, say like Freedom or Virtue which may have players on at the time you play.
Do not worry about making new alts as you can have a bunch on every server and do not be afraid to delete them and start again if you find you do not like the powers or type of alt you have made.
Welcome to the world of spandex
So many cats - So few recipes!
Age is of no importance,
unless you are a cheese!
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Not really a beginners' guide, but if you plan to stick around for any length of time Paragon Wiki is one of the best resources out there (if you ever google it, avoid the old wikia site).|
Originally Posted by Tavid46
Well any beginners guides out there with a link would be appreciate because I honestly feel like Im wondering around the world saving the same people with the same problems for the same ammount of tiny exp.
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One thing to remember about Praetoria is that the content only goes to level 20. While we are now free to return and explore, everyone leaves for either Paragon City or the Rogue Isles. Other than badges, there's really not much reason to go (back?) to Praetoria after lvl 20 (yet?). So that is probably not helping in the perception of population.
EDIT: Reading closer, wiki was already mentioned. Aah well, can't mention it enough, really.
"My inner mind has become a reality-cracking overgod. He torments me! Help!"
What server are you on? When do you normally play?
One other thing that can help is the Mentor Project. (already mentioned.)
Are you in Praetoria [shiny, shiny, white-and-gold theme], Paragon City [blue-themed] or the Rogue Isles [red-themed]?
Either way: Welcome to town.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Thanks for the referrals for the N P C channel / Mentor Project guys. 
As for Paragon Wiki, there's a specific sction which could help you get your bearings a little: The Player's Guide to the City.
Link is in my signature.
Welcome to Paragon City!
█ Players Guide to the Cities
Also, one thing to note about Praetoria is that its very easy to outlevel a lot of the mission arcs if you're not careful, so a lot of people tend to avoid teaming if they're looking to get the badges/accolades that are available before beeing booted out into the real world.
Or, they turn off their XP gain until they've finished the arcs... which is not something you'll find in most games 
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Okay, here's the skinny. |
Originally Posted by Tavid46
So here is my question, I know I haven't come close to figuring out the game in it's complete stage, but I purchased "Going Rogue" and I am at Level 6 but I am not really seeing anyone else in the game or understanding how its a MMOG?
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This is a highly instanced game. That means that every time you enter a door to run a mission (I trust you have done this at least once) you are not visible to other players in the game. Now, most MMOs have quests taking place out in the open where you can clearly see the people doing them, which leads to frustration sometimes when you have a quest to do something like "Hunt down the Wolves to collect pelts to trade for the bauble you need to do the next quest" and getting to the area only to discover that someone else beat you to it and there are no wolves to collect pelts from.
Since City of Heroes is mostly instanced missions, most missions take place in enclosed maps that other players cannot enter unless they are on your team. That leads to new players getting the mistaken impression that there is no one else playing, because everyone is running missions of their own and not milling around in plain sight.
There are indeed other people playing the game, you can tell by the color of the dots next to the servers in the list. A green dot means the server has a light load, a yellow one means it has a medium load, and a red one means it has a heavy load. Now, it isn't a direct correlation between server load and number of players, but generally the higher the load is the more people are playing on that server.
Also, if you are just street hunting in the beginning zone, you aren't very likely to see a whole lot of players there, because content in that zone runs out at level 6 and higher level contacts rarely send you back to that zone.
Another thing worth noting: The overwhelming majority of players start in Atlas Park, so if you chose Galaxy City it will seem like a ghost town in comparison. Now, if you started in Praetoria and have not created a second character (the game encourages you to play more than one character) you have to finish the Praetorian content before you can go on to Paragon and the Rogue Isles (hero and villain areas respectively)
I believe you can start new characters anywhere you like after your initial character, so you SHOULD be able to create a new character in Paragon or the Isles.
I assure you there ARE other people playing, but the nature of the game means that you don't necessarily SEE them all the time.
I suggest going down to the forum for the server you chose and finding the thread that lists the global channels for that server. Those are channels that will let you talk to anyone else on the channel no matter where they are. They could be inside a mission, in a different zone, or even on a different server, and they can talk to you and vice versa. That is where the majority of the communication in the game takes place, because the other channels are too limiting. Local chat only extends about 50 feet, and broadcast can only be heard in the zone you are currently in (so if you said something in Galaxy City, people in Atlas Park will have no idea you ever said anything)
If you happen to play on Pinnacle, you can join the channel PinnBadges and you will be in contact with anywhere from 45 to 175 people depending on the time of day you are playing. You are silenced in the channel by default when you join (this is to prevent spammers from joining the channel and cluttering it up with their garbage), but you can ask one of the OPs to unsilence you. You can tell who the OPs are by the fact that their name will be in blue and they will have a star next to it, any one of them can unsilence you, and they will be more than willing to do so for a new player. And if you can't get unsilenced right away because there are no OPs online, you can respond to someone by clicking on their name and selecting "Send <playername> a message". So if you see that someone is forming a team, you can still get in on it even though you can't respond in teh channel.
Now, different global channels will have different rules and guidelines, so if you play on other servers I can't tell you what to expect, but for the most part players are very willing to answer questions and help newbies out. We were all newbies once, and most of us received help from someone, so we pay it forward by helping someone else once we have more experience.
I hope your initial impression hasn't soured you on the game and you have read what people have said in this thread, there is a lot of good advice to be had, and the community is what keeps me and a lot of other people playing.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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Originally Posted by Tavid46
So here is my question, I know I haven't come close to figuring out the game in it's complete stage, but I purchased "Going Rogue" and I am at Level 6 but I am not really seeing anyone else in the game or understanding how its a MMOG?
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Welcome to the game!
What server are you on, and what times do you play? It will make a difference.
Praetoria kind of encourages solo play. You can team up just fine, of course, but the missions are rather all about you and what choices you make, so a lot of folks just do their own thing. Thus you don't see tons of teams forming up.
That the game is instanced and also that Atlas Park is the most populated starting zone has already been mentioned. If you picked a very low pop server, though, even Atlas Park won't have a ton of folks, and if you play off hours, well.... I'd go to the Server forums (on these forums here) and say "hi" on your server forum, and ask about populations and teaming and such. Get some advice how your server works.
The server list (when you log in) goes from least populated on the top to most populated on the bottom (usually Virtue and Freedom are at the bottom). So if you picked the first server on the list, you've got the least population server. Try something closer to the bottom. Don't be afraid to try out several servers and see which you like the best.
Reasonably enough, with so much of the game being instanced it is very solo friendly. Teaming is not hard, but you do have to look for it. This does make this game very unique compared to WoW or the like. And really, the XP comes in very quickly, it does not take much to get through the 20s. If you're expecting a grind to get to level 50 before you can start finding a team and good stuff, don't be.
You do want to team if you're feeling you're not earning XP fast enough, though. I think my advice is not to be afraid to do a few missions while you have yourself set to LFT. If you get a tell, you can just back out and cancel the mission.
Unfortunately, you can't join a Supergroup until you get out of Praetoria and can start new characters in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, but you might ask around on a channel for a good SG that has set up a Global Channel. You might be able to find one willing to help you level to 20 on the promise that you'll join as soon as you do. (They'll need to have a Global Channel so you can talk to them since their SG channel won't be open to you, but I'm guessing that's common. I know my SG has a Global Channel, although that's mainly for when our members are on other servers or on villains that are in the sister VG)
Welcome to the game, Tavid!
A lot has been said already about finding teams and global chat channels, if you add me to your Global Friends, I'll be glad to help you out.
Go to your Friends list, drop down from Server Friends to Global and add:
@Imminent Violence and I'll do my best to help you with missions, advice or whatever.
If you're not on Freedom, don't worry, you can still talk to other people on other servers using Global names.
CoX is a great game, with an awesome community!
Welcome Tavid. I suspect you wound up on a really low population server. You probably did this by selecting the first server in the list.
Here is how the servers are listed. If you have not played before then the server under the least load and most likely the least populated is at the top of the list. The server at the bottom of the list is the one under the most load and most likely the most populated. And the ones in between range from top to bottom in order of current load.
If you have played before then the last server you were on will always be at the top of the list but the remaining servers will still be in order from lowest load to highest.
Currently you will also be seeing less players in all low level zones because special added level 50 content was just added. So many of the players are playing their high level alts to try out the content.
But as has been said by others. Just try Freedom or Virtue and you are sure to find people to group with.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
Welcome to the game! I remember being frustrated at not being able to find teams when I started, too. Occasionally someone would send me a tell asking to team, but I just had no idea how to go about finding THEM.
Totally agree with what the others have said, but also one of the primary ways to find teams is via the Broadcast on your chat. This is where people look for teams, or look for more players on their teams - it only Broadcasts in the zone you are in. LFM means a team is Looking For More (Click on their name directly in the chat box and it will address a private tell to that person - you don't have to fumble and try to correctly type out "/t TeamPlayer'sNameWithWeirdSpelling"). Also, YOU can broadcast directly and say you are LFT, or Looking For Team. Remember that if the available teams are in a mission, they will not see your tell, so if you get no response try broadcasting again maybe 5 minutes later (note: spamming broadcast that you are LFT over and over is generally considered obnoxious, so don't go crazy).
However, the server you play on makes a big difference in how many people are around. Virtue and Freedom are very different in attitude, and are the most populated servers. If you don't like the atmosphere in one, go try out the other! Once you get out of Praetoria, if you go heroside, it will send you directly to Talos. Though it is a 20-30 lvl zone, it is sort of a hub of activities in Paragon, because it's where everything is pretty centrally located.
In Pocket D (you can get there via a Pocket D pass, or from Club 54 - I think is the name? in Imperial City, I believe - there is a portal to Pocket D) there will be winter events until the end of the month (Go to dance floor in P-d, there is a villian side off the dance floor and a hero side. Look to the window above the villain's side - there is an entrance there to all the winter events). There will be another big event for Valentine's Day - lots of teaming opportunities to be had - again, check Broadcast.
Another thing you can do is look in the Forums under Servers, there may be info you can use for chat channels for your server, and advertisements of open events at a specific day and time. These are typically for higher level toons, but can help you get used to your server, and who is doing what. If it isn't helping you with a slump in your particular zone/level, it will definitely show you that this is a thriving community with lots of stuff going on, so don't worry - the slump IS temporary!
Good luck, and happy teaming - we're happy to have you here!
Hello everyone reading this I'm Tavid. Brand new to the City of Heroes as of 2 days ago via Direct2Drive.
So here is my question, I know I haven't come close to figuring out the game in it's complete stage, but I purchased "Going Rogue" and I am at Level 6 but I am not really seeing anyone else in the game or understanding how its a MMOG?
Well any beginners guides out there with a link would be appreciate because I honestly feel like Im wondering around the world saving the same people with the same problems for the same ammount of tiny exp.