theworldofdreams.com

I pre-orderd City of Heroes and am now in the beta. Anyone else playing this game? I have made about 50 heroes so far and have spent too little time actually playing the game itself...seems I'm sorta stuck in the "OMG look at all these powers and costumes" state.

Super Hero MMOG, home page is http://www.coh.com/ . There is an NDA, so I can't give details, though they are everywhere if one looks. I'll just say it's fun. And cool. Fun, too. You need a pretty hefty machine to play.

Everyone who gets the pre-order ($10) gets instant access to beta. Just don't order it online as there are all sorts of problems there; just go to Best Buy or EB and buy the pre-order if interested. You can always get the $10 back if you don't like it. The game goes live later this month.

Let me know who you are, if you're in. I'll try to settle on a hero one of these nights and find you. I'm not on the "Prime" server, I am on "Pinnacle."

k thx.

I saw a review of that on X-Play it looked really cool.

We are writing this evening to inform you that the City of Heroes Non-Disclosure Agreement has officially been lifted!

Alright, so...the game is just plain fun. Some details about the game:

You log in, create a super hero using the criteria of Origin (mutant, magic, technology, etc) followed by hero archetype (which is like a class, I guess) then two power sets and your first powers within those power sets.

Your origin places your hero on a branching storyline within the game that you can follow as you like. More on this later. Your archetype determines what type of hero you will be, and which power sets will be available to your hero. This is an important decision. Your powersets give you your super powers. Confused yet? There's more! You have limited powers available to you when you begin. You can choose one of two available powers from your primary power set and then the only one available from your secondary power set.

You are then taken to the hero costume screen which can suck you in for hours. The choices are legion; it's too much for the senses. Luckily, they have a neato costume generator which will take your powers into consideration and spit out any of a trillion inspiring outfits that you can then tweak until you're satisfied. The details are the key here.

Once you make a costume you name your character and can add a nifty background if you're so inclined. You can always add or change your background story at any time once in the game (which is good, since most people write horrible ones that begin with "Born with the power to destroy..."). You then enter the game.

Everyone starts in the same newbie zone on their server. You are introduced to CoH's contact system immediately. Contacts are the NPCs in the game who give you things to do, and shape your progressive storyline. The first is some rent-a-cop fella in the burned out section of the city. All your contacts use you for whatever purposes they will, then introduce you to another contact (or eight) once you've gained their confidence. They ramp up as you progress in level, and they often usually present you with choices regarding your crime fighting career. You can choose which of their missions to take, but once you choose you are on a path, and the ones you don't do are gone forever. For example, one of my contacts requested that I either a) go learn about some gang war in a part of the city by arresting a particular group of thugs (no one dies in CoH, they are arrested) or b) go rescue a friend of theirs who was captured by this same gang in the same gang war. I chose b) and am now going through a loooooong series of missions all involving this captured friend of my contact. Neato design feature in my opinion.

Your hero progresses like in many other MMOGs; kill stuff, get experience, level, train, wash, rinse, repeat. You also get experience by doing quests, reaching goals within quests, or by finding information pertaining to your contact or quest. When you level, you go see a Super-Super hero trainer person who explains what you gain by leveling (each level is unique) and how much experience you need to gain your next level. When you choose to train to the next level, you are presented with choices.

At each even numbered level you gain a new super power, which you choose from your primary, secondary or pool power sets. Pool powers are powers available to all heroes, and begin being available at level 6. Pool powers are things like flying, super speed, super reflexes, invisibility, super leaping and others and are designed to be used in conjunction with your hero's primary and secondary power sets. You can only choose one pool power set, and there are 4 or 5 powers within each of these power sets. The choices can feel intimidating since they are permanent, and the powers are only gained every even level.

There are ways to enhance and augment your powers, which are called enhancements and are CoH's only real loot. These are valuable and extremely important. At every odd level you gain an enhancement slot in one or more of your powers. Each enhancement slot can hold one enhancement, and each enhancement improves an existing power. You can improve your Ice character's freeze ray by adding a freeze enhancement that will increase the duration of the freeze effect. The combinations are incredibly diverse and, like your powers, are permanent. Again, these decisions feel very important when it's time to make them.

Gameplay is difficult to describe. You play from either a third person perspective (like UO, sorta) or first. You can zoom way in or waaaaaay out so your hero is an animated dot on the screen. Anyone who played Galaxies, or Neverwinter Nights for that matter, will be able to picture the game screen and camera controls. Fighting is nothing like other MMOGs; there is no auto combat here. You must target something and activate a power to engage an enemy, then continually use your powers or move during combat. Combat is fast and often hectic. You are usually taking on many bad guys at a time, which is designed to make you feel more super. Your powers are driven by your endurance, which is CoH's form of mana. You must always manage this resource during play, though it recharges extremely fast once you stop flinging fire about. My personal opinion is that the combat in CoH is extremely fun. They did a heckuva job making all the powers truly fun to use and the effects must be seen to be appreciated. There is no way to describe seeing a group of ten thugs running at your hero on a rooftop and then seeing them fly off the rooftop head over heels as you unleash a wind storm on them.

The graphics are fantastic, but I don't have nearly the performance issues/problems I had in Star Wars Galaxies, and my detail levels are cranked to the max. The city is broken down into zones, and each zone has its own flavor. People go about their daily business in the city while cars, trucks, and trains move about. There are criminals everywhere in the city, and one needs never look far to see a crime being commited. You will see everything from a purse snatching to car jackings to bank robberies to cult-like rituals anytime day or night. Depending on where you are at any time there is always work for a hero in need of action.

CoH is an action game. You make a character and start doing heroic and impressive things within minutes of launching the game. It's a whole lot of fun to form a group and stop crime, or battle a group of super villains. You will rarely, if ever, see a hero with your same powerset since there are so many to choose from, and it seems that a ton of effort was put in to the group's ability to work togehter with one another. There is no min/maxing here. Every hero can kick butt or save other heroes, they just do it in very different ways.

This is a terribly bouncy write-up, but I just got the NDA lift and wanted to share. If anyone is interested I highly recommend checking this one out. The beta lasts for a few more weeks at least, so at the moment gameplay costs only the $10 pre-order price which is 100% refundable at most retail locations. Don't buy online if you want to play the beta.

My hero is on the server "Prime" and is named Watt Zephyr. He's a level 10 Defender with Storm Summoning, Electrical Blast and Flight power sets. Summoning a hurricane while hovering 50 feet above my enemies is great fun.

Any idea what the monthly charge is going to be? I'm waiting to see if I'm picked for the beta this week - I haven't pre-ordered it yet, but I signed up for the beta in the hopes I'd get picked.

They haven't even given a clue what the monthly fee will be. Hopefully they will have the same 30 day trial as most other MMOG's out there.

btw, I got into the beta for this last Sunday. Most of my characters are on Prime:

Ancient Shaman: empathy/energy blast defender
Quillboar: spines/super reflexes scrapper
Crimson Raven: dark melee/dark armor scrapper
Dragonspawn: fiery aura/fiery melee tanker
Seismic Power: earth control/kinetic controller

Picture of the Super Group I joined. I am in the middle with my arms crossed.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/AtomicSen ... t_0025.jpg


On another note, I got Seon killed about 20 times on Tuesday.

Figures Sebastian would enjoy this, if he hasn't seen it already:

<a href="http://www.gamespy.com/articles/510/510182p1.html">CoH supergroup applications</a>