Turned off of MMOs now

Nah. Cheaper to solo in single player games.

I've found the reverse.

City of Heroes had pretty much prevented me from trying out other MMOs because it was so good, and filled all my gaming needs.
(OK, I played Champions a litel bit but then came back here.)

But I'm now playing Champions again and having a ball, and will definitely check out DCU, and probably Secret World at some point.

Games come and go, but my characters, and my love of creating them, will continue.

While I don't care for NCSoft shutting down CoH (hate it in fact), and the way they just fired the devs is terrible (but to say it's a asian thing is misleading fromt hose saying as such...no...it's a corporate thing period. Not even corporate, that's how the job market does it period).

However, they have no (as TonyV put it) ethical responsibilities towards the customers, outside of reimbursing for recent transactions (which I believe they did). It's part of what you sign on for when you say "yes I agree" that the game can close down.

If you can't handle a game being shut down, then yeah, MMOs arent for you. Not that it always seems to make sense when they shut them down.

I'm not turned off of MMO's, just ones produced/published by NCSoft.

Two things with regard to this post:

1) I am done with subscription-based MMOs. I paid for CoH monthly, as a VIP, because the devs embraced and became part of our community. I have not seen that anywhere else, especially with subscriptions as the main way into the game. Hybrid models are the way to go and the games that have done as such have development teams that are, indeed, treading through the game with the players.

2) As Hitstreak stated, Torchlight 2 is amazing. $20 for a game on par with Diablo 3 is pretty amazing.

I'm kind of weird on the subject. I'm turned off on MMOs because I never liked MMOs to begin with. I liked City of Heroes, and I liked it DESPITE the game being an MMO, not because of it. Sure, I embraced certain aspects of the MMO package, such as community, friends and occasional cooperation, but I can get this in a single-player game with a multiplayer component.

However, MMOs don't seem to try to be good games. They, instead, try to be some kind of amorphous world with nothing terribly interesting to actually do in it. You're a medieval nobody. Go chop wood. Go wash my cows. Go kill some boars. It's uninspiring, and it's a giant waste of my time. I WISH I could play an MMO that "has no depth" these days. I'm sick and tired of those trying to appeal to absolutely everyone when all they end up appealing to is how MMOs have always been made.

Just imagine an MMO without loot, raids, crafting or PvP. Madness? Madness? This. Is. City of Heroes! That's pretty much what it was back in 2004, and that's what I bought the game for. And they just don't make 'em like that. No, the game has to be bigger, it has to have raids and PvP and crafring and forced teaming and loot grind and time sinks and pointless minigames and backtracking and money sinks and all the crap that sets an MMO apart from an actual game.

To be honest, I've always been turned off MMOs because so few try to be good games before they try to be run-of-the-mill MMOs. Aside from Spiral Knights, I guess.

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.

Yeah. While there are definitely some folks in here expressing bitterness over the "loss" of their invested time, I'm pretty sure there are more folks expressing how unusual CoH was for attracting people who didn't otherwise play MMOs. A lot of us will miss it not just because of all the mostly obvious things, like losing our specific characters, the community, or even the extremely open dev team. We'll also miss it because it's been the only MMO so far that made us interested in a progression-oriented, persistent world in an on-line setting.

There can be good things to be had from playing any MMOs, such as a chance to make online friendships with other people, but if you don't enjoy the basic premise or mechanics of the core game, those extra things won't usually keep you playing (or paying) on their own.

Here's what CoH had for me.

• In game dynamics that made me enjoy just playing the game, solo or teamed. I just enjoyed firing it up and fighting stuff. This game's focus is incredibly narrow - basically all you do is fight. That such a game lasted more than eight years has to be a statement about how amazingly fun it was to fight stuff here.
• The aforementioned character customization. I've commented in other threads that the rich costume creator was clearly a very intentional feature of the game, but I suspect the blank text input field for character description was accidental genius. I find it hard to imagine whoever added that feature realized just how deep a sense of character investment that little text box would eventually provide for some of us.
• "Loot light", even after inventions. This wasn't critical for me, but it definitely helped. I definitely appreciated that defeat or even just ongoing use did not cause our "loot" to degrade. While the old-school green-to-yellow see-saw of TO/DO/SO enhancers was annoying, it was a pittance compared to what some MMOs did to your gear.
• The community. I never came here looking for a community, and I certainly didn't like everyone I met, yet I think this game's community (both on the forums and on my home server) is really a cut well above the norm, and I am going to miss it a ton. I know I can remain a part of it after a fashion, and I plan to, but realistically, it won't be the same if we're not sharing the game. It'll be a community, but not one that shares and discusses playing CoH, barring a miracle.
• The devs. I've certainly not liked everything the devs have done over the years, and in my opinion, they have not been uniformly awesome in their interactions with us. However, I think they became outstanding among game devs in their willingness to communicate with their community fairly early in this game's life, were truly amazing about it the last few years, and IMO they were still on the upswing when the axe fell on Paragon Studios.

Torchlight II has pretty much saved me. I only have the Demo and I'm still enjoying the heck out of it...it's an amazing game.

I'm reluctant to invest time in any MMO now. CoH fed my cosplay fetish and saved me hours of sewing and making costumes. In 30 mins, I can crank out a cat boy or pirate chef and go to town terrorizing citizens. Even though I can preserve their memory in a screencap, it's not the same when I'm not controlling them.
CO comes close in terms of costumes, but I can't stand their game mechanics. To me, a Champion is much much weaker than a CoH villain. Heck, a lvl 20 Champion can get killed by a lvl 15 mob. And as someone else mentioned before CO can go away whenever business goes bad.
I plan to keep in touch with the community, until I can find something that folks can play together but still retain access to their creations.

I had typed a reply in another thread, in which I tangent-ed into the subject of questioning what the MMO really was and what people were expecting it as compared to what corporations view them (and create them) as and what does it mean to be an "old" mmorpg and what their lifecycle should or shouldn't be and what it all might mean and how we've reached a new point in the existence of the genre and how the old stalwarts have remained, but now we're seeing an example of a new should-have-been-stalwart getting shut down...
But I cut it out, because I felt it was too off topic and I should post it as its own thread...
Then I forgot about it, went and posted a reply to something else, copied the reply before hitting submit (because, ya know, I'm so clever...) and later realized that I lost that whole thing that I intended to start that thread with that I was sure would have led to in-depth discussions of great interest and importance...
And have been too disheartened to retype it all and instead bored you (if you bothered to read this).

I think this might be my worst reply ever. And, yes, that is saying a lot (of nothing).

CoH was my first MMO...and my last. I have tried CO, DCUO, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, WOW, GW, and GW2...none of them were fun to me which is why I play CoH...it's fun!

I uninstalled GW2 yesterday and the only other MMO on my computer anymore is CoH. I will play my 24 hour pledge on 10/20 for Extra Life...then after that log in and chat with friends...and then on 11/30 say goodbye to the game that introduced me to MMOs. CoH created a very high bar for what I expect in a game and a community...one I doubt any game will ever fulfill again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

I remember when they closed the Dots in the mall and I was put off playing Pac-Man for months afterward.

NC's betrayal of the playerbase has made me think fairly hard about my relationship to the structure of MMO gaming.

I've been deeply involved in a handful of game communities over they years, dating back to CounterStrike beta 4. Interestingly, as of November 30 CoH will be the *only* one of those games that I won't be able to log on and play any time I like. Not coincidentally, it is the only MMO on the list, and one of the only big commercial releases (yeah CS *became* a big commercial release, but I played it for years before that happened). Even a never-super-popular game like the Quake mod Urban Terror is still being played, and will out-live CoH because of the efforts of their (volunteer) dev team.

I'm coming around to the notion that the only things I'll be trusting moving forward are fan-driven, community run games or mods. The reality that you can play a game for most of a decade only to have it arbitrarily murdered by some anonymous suits is unacceptable to me.

While I won't rule out playing that kind of game now and again, I'll be treating them as livestock, not pets. Emotional attachment I'll save for games that aren't vulnerable to home office freak-outs.