All I want is a Great Superhero Game...

...where I can be the hero! Is that too much to ask?

In this gear, grind, and raiding with 80* of your closest friends world, yes.

CoH was a lone light in the MMO wastelands.


*minimum required, attendance must be scheduled at least three weeks in advance, missing a raid will only be allowed when the raid leader is presented a valid death certificate for you, deaths of immediately family or friends do not count.

Lets be fair: You can also be a hero in DCUO and Champions. Both are "great" in their own ways. They just happen to be so different from CoH that it would take a lot of time to get into either.

The art direction on both is also very different from the one we have.

But given a chance, and by that I mean more than a week of gameplay, then you may be able to appreciate them better.

I personally love a lot of aspects on DCUO, only dislike the character creator and male face/body/facial hair+head hair design choices.

" Both are "great" in their own ways"

So if I squint, they might be appealing.

You can be a (super) hero in The Secret World. IMO, it's the closest MMOG to City of Heroes, in both features and community. Sure, you don't wear spandex, but you can assume a codename, have superpowers, and fight evil. The only thing you're really missing, or at least I am, is travel powers. For that, there's DC Universe Online.

Actually, the signature heroes stop showing up pretty quickly in CO. I see how you could get that impression from the first fifteen levels or so.

In a lot of ways I felt like CO has more 'comic book action' than CoH. It's certainly much more mobile and fluid (in a usage sense, not in an animation one). I preferred CoH for two main reasons -- first, the story is better (and existent), and second, there's a really really great (and unique in MMOs, as far as I can tell) group dynamic. CO has kind of a weird dynamic that started as 'wolfpack' and has been sliding towards 'trinity.' (For the record, I enjoyed the game's atmosphere more when it was pretty silly and wolfpack-y, since it was different both from CoH and from other offers. But I think the mechanics are getting more sound and the Alerts were probably a good idea.)

One thing that's long amused me is that at least two of the most vocal and outspoken critics of CO on the CoH boards appear by all given preferences to want CoH to play just like CO, but with more rooting, CoH-like mezzing, and CoH's art style.

To be honest, at this point, I don't really want another superhero MMO. Not right away, at least. I was talking about this with my cousin last night.

In the best case scenario, I'd like for CoH to remain alive and well.

But if that doesn't happen, what I'd want in the future is for someone to develop a singleplayer sandbox game - something along the lines of the Elder Scrolls games, but set in a modern city, where you get to design a character and roam around in a city, maybe similar to GTA IV or Saints Row 3 in regards as to how the city would look like.

Unlike GTA or SR3 though, you'd have various options of how you could play - either doing heroic things like stopping criminals/gangs/costumed villains on the street, protecting areas like banks and government buildings, etc, building your reputation, maybe have a few superhero groups you can join if you get your reputation high enough.

And have a vigilante/rogue path as well - be the violent hero that doesn't always go with the law, or the opportunistic one that's just in it to get paid, whether it's good or evil.

And then have the option of doing villainous things, robbing banks, helping other criminals (or fighting them as well and just creating chaos), fighting other heroes, etc. Perhaps have factions here as well, with some kind of 'honor among thieves' type thing, maybe similar to the Dark Brotherhood or Thieves Guild of Elder Scrolls (but not the same thing of course).

For me, that would be an ideal game. A game with a variety of powers and a variety of costume options, with the ability to be modded to add more. The story here probably wouldn't be exceptionally strong.

Multiplayer would be a must, of course, with various options - co-op for the main world, teams fighting, or one on one, etc. Or have competitive objectives, like cause the most destruction within a certain amount of time, or prevent the most destruction, etc, depending on the faction.

I doubt a game like this would exist anytime soon, but man, I would LOVE to have a good superhero sandbox game.

And mostly the reason I say I don't want another MMO is because in the future, I'd like to keep playing it, even if the company that made it decides to move on or is unable to work on it.

Marvel Heroes is starting closed beta test in November.

Details are sketchy but the downside is that it appears to be a game where you play AS one of Marvel's stable of heroes. That's makes it less an MMO than an online game that happens to feature Marvel Characters. I'm envisioning it as an adult version of Marvel Super Hero Squad Online.