10 Years of CoH

The pre-beta forums opened in September 2001. I've been following this game ever since. Through pre-release, betas, expansions, multiple accounts, and now free to play. 10 years of my life. I was 15 then. I'm 25 now. I've basically grown up with this game.

It's weird in a way. I was on my way to sign up to another MMORPG's website but decided to have a quick look at COH first. That quick look turned into a decade.

I regret nothing. This has been, and continues to be, an awesome IP and equally awesome game.

Just out of interest...how many other old timers are still kicking around?

I heard about this game through a friend (that played a diff. PC game with me) and at first I laughed at the thought of a super-hero MMO...I mean who can balance that?


Probably about 6 months later I saw one of the first E3 videos of it and was like, "WOAH! that's awesome!"

Hooked ever since

So I probably started to follow it around 2003 (late 2003...maybe around fall/winter 2003).

I think I first heard of the game in small article in PC gamer back in mid to late 2002 and checked out the website. Went on the forums and lurked around and then joined a pre-launch SG called the Canadian Shield and we had our own forums. Played a little in beta and had to miss the launch as I was away on a vacation. First day back jumped in and have been here ever since. Picked up a second account in 2004 or so.

I will never leave and I have loved every moment of this game, it's been a dream come true for me as I've always wanted a game where I can make my own heroes.

Been here since day one of the website and forums. Still loving it.

And I do remember Canadian Shield.

One person I remember from the old days, but don't recall ever seeing post-launch is Yankee Daring. Anyone know what happened to him?

I was given a trial disk (City of Heroes: Bootleg Edition) around I8. I tried it out, an made a character (my namesake) based on the Exalted RPG. I stopped when the trial ended, because I didn't want to become addicted like I had seen friends become to WoW. A couple months later, a friend suggested an Exalted-themed supergroup, and I realized I already had an Exalted character, and he was already over level 10, so I could create it.

I re-subbed and made the SG, but the whole plan for it fell through. By that time, I was truly hooked, and didn't let my sub expire. In fact, I've been going by a 12mo subscription since. Of course, it was only after creating the SG ("Exalted") that I discovered the epic debt badge "Exalted". And now we've got a server named "Exalted", which I moved my namesake to yesterday.

Read previews and reviews of City of Heroes from Fargo on Gamespy (who has now gone to work for WoW... I'm still here, ironically enough), and they interested me enough that I got over this "pay per month thing" that I thought was an absolutely horrible idea. I'm still not fond of it, but I like this game enough that I stuck with it. I took about a year and a half hiatus from about I6 or I7 to a couple of months after I9 hit, mostly because the game had gotten stale for me.

When I came back, enough layers and content had been added (and kept being added) that I have just kept going as best my finances allowed. I have to say that inventions were a big part of the game's hook for me... I really like planning builds and making them work in game. More costumes and powersets really add to it as well, of course.

Here's hoping for plenty more good years!

Been here since original Beta, in time for the second Rikti Invasion, before they had their accents

This is the best MMO, best Dev team, and best community on the Internet.

Here's to another decade!

Lets see.

When I first started playing this game I was a junior in high school, and 40 was the highest level attainable.

Today I'm 24, and still see Archery and Sonic as those new sets. This is the first and only game I've been unwaveringly loyal to ever since
I've joined.

i didnt really hear of the game until my friend got city of villains, so a few days later i went to my friends house and he let me try the game out on his account for that night, and i was hooked, for once i got to play the bad guy and be as bad as i wanted, i didnt care what the contacts were saying i got to beat stuff up, lvl and get achievements (oddly enough this game turned me into an badger for almost every game i play now lol)

so i managed to convince my parents to get me an account on the game for my 17th b-day and been hooked ever since

Sometime in... 2003, maybe late 2002, I stumbled across a mention of this game. My first impression was 'Huh. A super hero game? Well, that's different!', and I had to check it out. Now, I'm not a big super hero or comic book fan- the comics I own are mostly two decades old and for the most part either of the graphic novel or the old TSR Forgotten Realms and other D&D varieties- so it wasn't the genre that pulled me in. It was the 'something different' in comparison to the fantasy that was (and still is) dominating the MMO market. I love me some fantasy, but I also love variety.

So, I followed the game, I lurked on the forums, and I signed up for the beta, which I got in on. And at which point I told every friend and friend-of-a-friend that they should really check out this upcoming game called City of Heroes....

Then the game launched. Me, my husband, and a dozen or so friends rolled up characters on Guardian. We played like mad up until the ED patch, whereupon those dozen or so friends vanished into other games. I stuck it out for a couple more months, but I was lost and flailing and shuffled off to other games myself.

I never quit keeping my eye on the game, though. I always wanted to come back, but I'm also the kind that likes to have at least one friend with her. Hubby was only vaguely interested, and while I knew I could convince him to sub for a month or so, he'd get bored with it. He needs a big group of friends around, and even then he's not typically your 'long term game commitment' kinda guy.

Then I managed to get my best friend to try it- he hadn't tried it the first time around. His first trial, it didn't click for him, but then a few months later out of nowhere he goes 'You know, I think I need to give that Men In Tights game another chance. I wasn't in the right mindset for it, then, but now I can't stop thinking about it!' Another trial and he was purchasing Good vs. Evil and we were rolling villains.

And that's when I truly fell in love with the game. Redside has my heart now, and I'm happy to be here! Even though I'm alone, again, because my friend got sucked into Real Life. (boo hiss)

Well I'm not sure if I count as an old-timer, but I first heard about City sometime in 2003.

I'd never played a MMO, heck I had only played FPS' and single player RPGs up till that point, but I was always into the superhero genre and had recently been playing Freedom Force, which is how I learned about the game. Started checking out ads in game magazines, lurking around forums an such and it peaked my interest to no end.

Due to internet issues I wasn't able to start playing till late 2004, but once I got rolling, well there wasn't any going back =].

That is awesome!
Congratulations on the ten year mark! I hadn't thought of the pre-beta websites and forums and such.

I was a part of such forums for another game. And I was very much enjoying that game when CoH launched, so I didn't pay it much interest... but a longtime friend and former Table-Top RPG partner (who ran numerous Marvel RPG sessions with me, where I created the Electric-Knight) was with this game form the beginning and I got a chance to check it out in the early stages (after launch and pre-capes).

I always thought it was cool but I was swept up in something else.

Once that was gone (Taken away! Destroyed!! Gah...), I signed up for a CoV free trial and - both my wife and I - enjoyed it so much that we knew were going to stick with it.

Started around the last month of beta - since then little breaks here and there - but when I have time, this is where I come back to

I first heard about this game from a PC gaming magazine. You know the kind that got mailed to you or you picked up at the market or bookstore. That you held in your hand.

I also played Freedom Force and the idea of an MMO featuring super heroes seemed very cool to me as the popular MMOs at the time basically were UO and Evercrack which I had no interest in (I beta tested UO, that was enough to turn me off the fantasy genre for years).

I joined about 4 months after the game went live, about a month before Issue 2. Only really stopped lurking when CoV was in beta and decided to help with nVidia driver issues and other technical problems for several years after that.

Now I'm Forum Cartel.

Hm... I never signed up on the beta forums, but i was poking around since 2002 or so. Wasn't until i got into beta late 2003 i signed up on forum, but never made a post i think.

Not quite a decade, but close

This has been my favorite game for a long time. Taken a few breaks from it to try diffrent games, but always came back to this. And i'm not really a particular big fan of superhero genre, i just enjoy the game

Catgirl Dressup is a major perk for me tho!

Has it really been 10 years? I joined the forums the month they opened up. Unfortunately, between then and beta the processor requirements got bumped to just over what my then-current PC had and I was thus unable to join the new forums and actual game until later.

I got interested in CoH sometime around 2002. I actually joined my first SG on the boards before Beta came out. I remember when I had planned on making my first character an SR/EM Tank, because we didn't know exactly what sets were going to which AT. And now I finally can!

Also, I had so much fun with those Fanta Shokata vids that everyone was posting for a while.

I'm at 7 years and 6 months. Cut my teeth during the first Rikti war. When I found an MMO with superheroes, I was hooked!

Strangely, I had a friend preorder something for me. Turns out that with that preorder, and $5, you could get a preorder for City of Heroes, and a free beta key for the CoH open beta.

Funny thing is, the CoH beta account is still on my NCSoft Master account. I never did pick up that physical preorder, and got a new key when I purchased the digital download, if I recall correctly.

I couldn't tell you what the original game that I preordered was. But City of Heroes is still one I play.

Edit: Heh, I forgot that old sig. Never did change it. And Solarstar is still my only 50. Stupid altitis.

On April 28th, 2004, I bought City of Heroes. (It hit the shelves.) I was amazed then, and still am to this day. Seeing the game evolve and improve, making wondeful friends and sometimes laughing till my stomach hurt has been a wonderful experience for me. I still have yet to see/do it all.
I raise my glass in a toast to the game creators, techs and fellow players who have made this such a great 7 years...here's to 7+ more.

I first heard about City of Heroes from a review on SomethingAwful back when they were actually funny, and it was one of the few things that wrote a positive review for. The article writer basically talked about being a troll to other players, but the game itself seemed good enough to research. I looked through a lot of screenshots and failed to find two player characters who looked alike. Having been bred on games like Diablo where you picked from one of 5 existing characters and then looked like your gear, that was AMAZING.

I then heard the game had swords AND guns, then I heard there were no items, then I heard you didn't have to keep taking powers over and over again and that they scaled up with you, that nothing you picked ever became deprecated and so on. Plus, it had a modern setting in an actual city, as opposed to a Fantasy forest or jungle or crypt or old medieval town number eleventy billion.

I tried City of Heroes back in May of 2004, just a month after Launch, and I fell in love with it immediately. The gameplay was cool, my character was strong, I had a unique look and everything was pretty simple. I DREADED playing an MMO because I thought those were always an overcomplicated mess that emphasises your woodcutting or embroidering skills and that bogged you down with grind and repetition and time sinks. As such, I got City of Heroes, plus a two-month time card, wholly convinced that I'd be bored of the game within a few weeks of playing it and I'd never have to "waste" my money paying for a game over and over.

Seven years later, I'm still here and I don't regret (almost) a moment of it. Turns out I was completely right about MMOs in general, but City of Heroes was simply different and much better. Turns out I was wrong in my reluctance to pay a subscription. You get what you pay for, and a game that I was continually subscribed to could have bugs fixed, mistakes recitifed and new content added. And considering I bought the original game on a single 750MB CD and I'm playing a ~3GB game now, I'd say a lot has been added indeed.

City of Heroes is one in a million, and I'm very, very happy I caught it in its early life. It's been a fun ride

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.