YourGamer.Net

Recently, NCSoft gave a weekend free to former players (like myself) of the City of Heroes/City of Villains MMORPG. Now, i really liked that game, it was and still is a masterpiece of design and social interaction in the gaming field. Although not as popular as World of Warcraft, it still keeps pace with the times and maintains an excellent level of quality. And in that lies their problem.

You see, instead of developing major expansions for the overall game, forcing gamers to purchase more software in order to keep up. They add and remove content that follows a common storyline thread, just like a normal comic book would. This is a great strength for them, it has made some of their more dedicated fans even more loyal. But, in that thread, not much else is going on. Unless you sit down and read the comic books that follow the main vein of the lore, you loose track; it blends together in such a way that what ever transition happens goes nearly unnoticed.

The controls remain the same and the enemies, give or take a few quirks, are essentially the same. I’m not saying that its a bad thing. NCSoft tripped, fell, and rolled around into something brilliant, but they aren’t doing anything more than keeping pace. Its time they got a little ahead of the game. All they need is a shot in the arm of original content, and splash in the face of advertising. And i guarantee that CoH will see a heavy resurgence. I will go over the How CoH can be reborn, next time.

Toodles!