A Return to Paragon City – City of Heroes Going Rogue
I have come to find out that there are those who do MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online games) and those who do not. Years ago, I watched several of my friends lose their lives to Everquest, so I tried to avoid it at all costs. Yet when NCSoft launched its superhero MMO City of Heroes (COH), the comic geek in me just had to jump in. I played that game for a little over two years straight. It was one of those games that my wife actually played with me and we ran a large, successful Super Group for our duration of stay in that game.
You may be wondering, “so Ryker why did you quit?” There are several reasons. The game became stale and old, money got tight, and – oh yeah – some d-bag almost completely destroyed the Super Group I had worked so hard to create. The only person to stay with the game was my son, Tiny. He continued to go back to COH whenever he could. He learned a lot about social networking and leadership as he made several attempts on his own of creating both successful and failed Super Groups. Recently, Tiny’s Mom bought a second home in Florida and so off he went to live down there. It’s been a challenge, but last week my son gave me a copy of the latest expansion for COH, Going Rogue, and he begged me to come back and play with him and his new friends. So I went to the closet, got out my cape, and went back to the game that I once loved so much.
The game experience remains essentially the same. You create a custom character, enter a large city, and go fight crime. Unlike Champions Online, there isn’t a ton of action in the combat itself. Yes, positioning is important, especially if you use ranged attacks, but you’re not running around your combatants much during an actual battle. Instead, the game is far more strategic as you utilize specific roles and sequences of attacks and heals to make your experience a victorious one. You complete quests, level up and gain new powers and abilities. Like many MMOs, it becomes a grind when random battles and questing to gain levels becomes more important than any storylines. I think a lot of MMOs struggle with this and the Going Rogue expansion is NCSoft’s attempt at getting people to come back for a unique storyline and new adventures.
The story in Going Rogue is pretty unique and offers both new and old players a reason to come back. In the old universe, you could choose to be either a hero or a villain. Aside from just a few select zones, heroes quest in one area and villains quest in another. All of this was fine in the beginning, but as console games become more sophisticated and we saw moral choices and character development take center stage, such an experience seems a little empty. Going Rogue changes all of this by introducing a storyline where your character is mostly grey and has the ability to make choices and grow over the course of a story. You are in a parallel universe of Praetoria (veterans will remember the Praetorian Task Force that made up some of end game experience) where Emperor Cole has saved the city from the Hamidon attacks and presides as ruler. All seems well on the surface, but there is an undertone of unrest. A resistance is growing where people are fighting against the status quo saying the Cole is a tyrant who has taken away their rights, reading their minds to keep the peace. You are given a choice: do you protect the city against the resistance, or do you join their cause and try to overthrow Cole?
When you start of in Praetoria, you can choose from any of the hero or villain character archetypes. Your character is mostly neutral and will adventure in the new zones until level 20. Along the way you will be given many moral choices in the game. Do you rescue the foreign ambassador and save the city from an international incident, or do you hunt him down and expose another link in Cole’s web of tyranny? Such choices are very prevalent in Going Rogue and they help determine your path from a villain to Rogue or from Hero to Vigilante. Once a character reaches level 20, she or he will be given a choice; do you want to be a hero or a villain? From here you will either enter Paragon City or the Rogue Isles as a hero or a villain and your story will progress from there. This had led to many interesting sights in the hero and villain sides of the game as these new archetypes are popping up on both sides.
But wait, what if I am already a villain and I want to join my friends as a hero, can I go Rogue as well? The answer to this long-awaited question is YES! There is a new “tip” system in the game that comes from special tip missions that can be found in both the hero or villain campaigns. Complete enough tip missions and you can be given the choice to become a vigilante or go rogue yourself. This provides avenues for many gamers who have leveled their villain to a certain point, but have found all their friends have moved on to play as heroes, or vice versa.
There were some other improvements to COH that I had missed since being away. Some of these improvements include:
An upgrade to the graphic engine – Like World of Warcraft (WOW), City of Heroes graphical engine was designed to work with older graphics cards to enhance accesability. While such an approach is a great thing for marketing, it doesn’t address the PC nerd’s desire for kick ass graphics. The new “Ultra Mode” provides a more rich environment with detailed shading and particle effects. While I could notice an overall improvement in how the game felt on a good video card, it paled in comparison to the graphics one might find in Champions Online, or the new DC Universe Online.
Crafting – Those veterans of MMOs might tell you that a good crafting system is critical for a game’s success. Crafting refers to the ability to take found items and make them into something useful for your character. This always made sense to me in WOW and other fantasy games, but I never quite figured out how it would work in a city environment. Characters find salvage items and can forge these items into enhancements to powers and even special costume pieces. I’m not a huge fan of the system, but at least I can always sell what I find in the marketplace and make some virtual cash.
Level Pacts – Do you play with someone who has no life and can be online almost all the time? Do you find that your character falls behind your no-life friend to such a point where you can’t team with them anymore? Well now with level pacting, you can gain experience even when you are not online. Simply create a level pact and let your friend grind away. You will gain experience as if you were on a team, but of course do no work. Then when you log in you can level your character back up and regain the fight. This is very bad ass!
Enhance character creation – In COH, it’s all about the character creator, for creating a killer looking toon is half the fun. There used to be literally hundreds of options to choose from when designing your character, and now your choices have nearly doubled. I have to warn you that creating your character is so much fun, that you might actually spend hours just doing that and nothing else. There are even options for how each power will look when you execute it ; how bright is it, what colors does it take, etc. No more green laser blasts for the Crimson Avenger my friends!
Architecting – Are you bored with the game’s stale storylines and lack of new content? Well, why not create your own adventures, villains, and storyline and let your friends play them! The Architect system allows you to do just that, and I must say it is quite impressive. You create your own maps, enemies, items, and dialogue and place it in an area where anyone can experience it. I did a few missions my son had made and not only was I impressed with his building skills, but these missions were quite fun. I think I might make the lair of the Panic Bot and have evil John, Hilden, and Moe take you do-gooders out!
So now comes the big question: Going Rogue is selling for $40 with 30 days of playtime included, is the game worth the $40 price tag? The answer to that question depends on whether or not you have stayed playing the game. Sure the new expansion adds 20 levels of new content, new enemies and level design; but it’s essentially the same City of Heroes. The old-timers I ran into all felt that the $40 was way too much to charge for the expansion, but they bought it anyways because everyone else had. For those who are new to the game or have wandered away, I felt the price was just right. Since I reinstalled the game I think I’ve logged in at least 20 hours or so, and that’s more game time than many console games provide. As a gift my son got me an additional 6 months of game time so we can adventure together, and for me that’s well worth the subscription price.
The last thing I can say about Going Rogue is how amazed I am at the resiliency of the community. Last year Cryptic launched Champions Online, and in every aspect that game is superior to this one. It has better graphics, it tells stories better, even the instancing is improved. And yet, most of the people I know who started playing that game have long since quit; many to go back to City of Heroes. This proof to me that it takes more than flash to create a game that people are going to want to play. For whatever magic City of Heroes has, it is a game that has withstood and passed its test of time and deserves a second look from those looking for a departure from the fantasy MMOs that are so prevalent in our world.
Look for @Huuby as a global friend and we can fight crime together!
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Tags: City of Heroes, Expansions, Going Rogue, MMO, NCSoft, pc gaming, Super Heroes
September 21st, 2010 at 12:46 pm
City of Heroes/City of Villains was the first (and only) MMO that I ever actually played long-term. For a great 3 years I was on the Infinity Server, part of the Simian Defense Force. I just picked up the 7-day free trial yesterday and plan on sinking my teeth into the Going Rogue expansion to see how it plays, to see if I feel the itch coming back.