If CoH does get shutdown, I need a new MMO...

Now, I have a shortlist of four MMO games which I'm tempted by, none of which being superhero based as the alternative superhero MMO games don't appeal to me. The list is as follows (in no particular order): Raiderz, Tera, Vindictus, and Battle of the Immortals.

All the games I mentioned look good, but I have no idea which to choose out of the four. Has anyone played any of these games and could recommend one to me, or maybe played a similar game to any of these which they could recommend instead? I'm swinging more toward Raiderz or Tera, but your opinions will help a lot as the majority of you are veteran MMO players who know what you're on about when it comes to these kinds of games. Oh, and I don't mind paying a subscription, as long as it's not too expensive (around CoH price per month).

Contact me in-game: @CheeseSlicer

This is not on your list but I am going to suggest it anyway.

Guildwars2.

Yes, the publisher is NCSOFT, but the game is outstanding.

Beautiful graphics, wonderful stories...lots of things to do...

And I, the person who soloed my whole way through City Of Heroes, is finding doing Hearts with others is a whole lot of fun.

Read up on it on the Internet, watch a couple of the zillion of videos that are out there.

Only fly in the ointment is NCSOFT, but, if this game, Guildwars2, is the new focus and direction they are taking, then it might be around a while.

Lisa.

On-List:

Vindictus

Off-List:

Guild Wars 2

To be honest, McC, I've found GW2 to be quite mundane. It's mainly just running around from public quest point to public quest point, and I couldn't help but wonder how hard it's going to be for the lone soloer to get through any of it even a few months down the road when everyone's a high level toon and the beginning zones are empty.

It's pretty but it lacked depth to me. I don't see what all the fuss is about, and beyond that, sixty bucks is a lot for an 8-class game that only gives you 5 character slots then charges you 10 bucks a piece for extra slots. Yeah, yeah, no monthly fee, but it's NOT massively multiplayer so it shouldn't have one anyway. It just pretends it is to try and snow people, really.

That's the other thing that got me-- it's all channeled just like GW1 is, it's just that this time mirror 1 is called Yak's Bend (making believe it's a separate server when it's not) and mirror 2 is called Ferguson's Crossing or whatever. They can "name" the mirrors whatever they want: the fact is, when a player's name gets taken on one "server" it's taken on all of them (because they're all really just one overarching server). And you frequently get dumped into "overflow areas" without your party when the much-lower-than-real-MMOs-zoning-limits are reached (at least you did during launch week-- maybe the abandonment of the newbie zones has already happened now, though, and you'd be doing those public quests alone nowadays, I'm not sure, because after the COH announcement I quit playing GW2. I only played it from early start for a week before the CoH bomb dropped).

The sad part is that there is no free trial, the cash shop is too expensive, and it smacks of cash grab in the usual NCSoft style (their cash shops in Aion and Lineage 2 are even more outrageously priced because there's no box fee with those).

I dunno, but the OP didn't mention GW2, and personally, I'd tell him to take a pass. And the NCSoft affiliation is of course terribad, too. Their history with games is awful.

You can use your gold in Tera to buy game time, they called it "Chronoscrolls." It's 30 days real time. It's very cheap and affordable when you hit mid level. Yes, you can farm them by killing random mobs.

I want to be honest with my review since I don't want to waste any money myself...

Of all the games you mentioned, Tera is by far superior when it comes to combat.. In fact, in all MMO's out there at the moment. The combat is pretty straight forward. No "gimmicks." Not clunky either. Definitely the new generation MMO. It's literally action combat.

For Melee and Range class, It's basically aim and shoot. Dodge their attacks by moving away from them or running away from their attacks (like 1 or 2 steps away to dodge it...) And no, it's not that difficult. At early levels, the NPC's are very forgiving and slow, but definitely not dumb. Each NPC's has their own moves and you will definitely notice their moves and figure out a way to avoid their attacks or find a better way to attack them especially BAMs (Big A** Monsters.) Regular mobs are pretty easy.

As for BAMs the game actually wants you to study their moves, to find a better way to avoid their attacks. They are basically Huge Huge monsters. With that said, they have a bigger area, which means, it's harder to dodge. They are smarter NPC's that jumps so much and run just to stomp on you.

The level cap is 60. From lvl 1 - 59, the game is great if you are all about the experience, since gear is not important. When you reach lvl 60, the game shifts just like every other MMO's. It is completely different feeling, since you have to do dungeons after dungeons to get the right gear for you to do Hard Mode dungeons.

Now, not so much grind, since Nexus Raid is a daily thing now. You can get lucky and roll on a superior gear. All you have to do is enchant it to get better stats. Which is a different story. Enchanting is by luck if you want higher stats. On December they will add a patch that gives you high chance to enchant your gear every time you enchant an item.

The Races in Tera are unique. Each gender, each race has their own movements and animations and combat animations. The movements are very realistic to me, especially the Castanics. You will notice other MMO's have stiff movements especially running. In Tera, it's very smooth and very well made. When you are in combat, it's so pleasant to see action happening, because each animation is very well made.

My main toon is a level 60 Priest. The best character/class I've played in my whole gaming experience in Tera. Priests have one of the highest HP classes in the game. They have a decent damage for soloing and have over powered heals.

I never once had a hard time healing anyone, even on random dungeons. Tera's healing concept is very good for me. You can put healing patches on the floor. If that fails, you can lock the target on them and heal them from far. You can buff them with health regen buffs which lasts for 15 minutes just like any other buffs they have.

The game is really good, all it needs is a good community to do great. The closest community they have like CoH is the RP server, Celestial Hills. PvP and PvE servers are an animal pound. Beware of Dogs.

Negatives:

The only negative thing about Tera for me is the enchanting system at the moment.
The PvP community is not for the good in heart.
The fact that when you try to Queue for random dungeons, you will encounter PvP players and PvE players that will look down on you coming from RP server.
Dungeons queues requires a Healer and a Tank to continue. (You can create your own dungeon team without a tank or a healer but that will take skill.)

That's all I can think of, for now. Let me know if you have any other questions.

If you can accept that someone else can take away a game you bought and in the case of RPGs, MMO or otherwise, your characters, then good for you. The problem now extends to always online required games, even ones with decent solo modes, can also go dark once their publishers decide to shut down the servers. Unless the patch the game before they throw the switch of course.

We are becoming more renters than owners and we just aren't noticing it.

No but then again I don't use Office. Well I don't use Microsoft Office, I use LibreOffice.

And when was Office classified as a game? Flightsim in Excel doesn't count.

There is also 6 pages of discussion here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=296533

Hope you find what you're looking for

-H

Thanks for all the responses. I've downloaded the Tera trial, and am going to give it a go. I'm not interested in another NCsoft game, so Guild Wars 2 is a no-go for me. I was considering The Secret World, but then I found out how expensive the subscription was per month.

Contact me in-game: @CheeseSlicer

TSW is $15/mo, same as CoH was for VIP.

It's super hero or bust for me, and Champions Online will probably be my stop gap until another game truly impresses me. DCUO? Maybe, but the times I have tried it I really didn't like the limited character creation.

Marvel Heroes is going to be doing closed Beta testing. I signed up for an account... we'll see what happens with that, but expecting it to be a similar experience to DCUO.

Yep, it's £11.49 compared to CoH's £8.99.

Contact me in-game: @CheeseSlicer

I'm currently playing the trial of Tera, and I'm really enjoying it. It looks good, and is fun to play.

Contact me in-game: @CheeseSlicer

I've played sooo many MMO's, still play quite alot actualy.
Each got its pro's, but each also got its con's.

A true substitude for CoH that is recent? There is none. Either the combat is very bad (CO), the whole system is plain weird or very little costumisation (DCU), it has a awsome setting but very bad mechanics (TSW), or well.. its just not the same genre (insert basicly any other MMO).

Quite a few MMO's now have seperate US and EU sides, Tera and Aion as big names, so outside your casual gametimes, it get quiet pretty fast, specialy if you made the wrong choice of server (yes, even GW2 already have these issues).

Ironic, my next awaiting MMO is yet NCsoft again, Blade&Soul. It kinda mix up alot of aspect of few games out now, Tera, C9, Vindictus, BoI, etc, but i have little faith this game will be released anywhere soon in Europe.

Sadly, i just cant find any MMO that has the same mechanics as CoH has how easy it is to play with other people, dispite their level, dispite their class or class. You just give out a shout and off you go to random instances, not some preset fixed dungeon stuff you fight the same boss over and over, by the exact same mechanics or tactics.

If only other games would have taken example of CoH, their system, their setup, their combat or even the powerability (powerupgrade instead of gear) and combine it into some stuff that .. ah screw it, nothing can replace CoH on that mather.