Up for an adventure into some Kenshi shenanigans? Check out the new video here: ruclips.net/video/tZmg8oZIAgg/видео.html PS: For those asking both the child and the chemistry set were stolen. With the child quickly being discarded after Suit discovered said child was not actually a tiny chemist and therefor could not assist with his balding issues 👍
My husband and I met playing this game in 2004, and when he proposed to me a few years later he did it through the game. We played it right up until the official servers shut down, and when the community run servers started up we jumped right back on :)
And it's how I learned that you can't trust companies to keep backing the product even after you invest money and time in it. Hard lesson to learn. Things that you love hurt you the most.
It is the only MMORPG I loved as well. It hurt to lose, far too much to allow such attachment to one again, even to the currently available versions of it.
To this day still one of my absolute favourites and one that now has a permanent spot on my hard disk. I was gutted when they cancelled the official version, but I was so so very happy when it came back community driven.
I loved it when it first came out and you could slot five or six damage in your powers. I loved taking on the Cyborg bosses who had the big hook claws.
I had no idea that this game had been opened up again! A friend showed me this game when it originally came out. I was converted to a PC gamer that very day and have never bothered with consoles since. I will have to look into this.
I remember sitting under Atlus as the official servers closed in college. Still the most chill, pleasant community I've experienced. No drama over the meta, just costume contests and hey, show me your base.
One of the nice things about city of heroes in general (and maybe Thunderspy specifically, because they've done a pretty decent amount of balancing to bring under-performing sets out of the muck) is that despite the frankly absurd amount of power combinations and enhancement builds the game offers, there really aren't any wrong answers. You could make every character creation and leveling decision at random and still come away with an effective character. Not OPTIMIZED certainly, but not useless either.
I think it helped a lot that the game wasn't vertically focused, but instead, horizontal. You just made alts. It never really developed a strong end-game and instead, offered a huge variety of power combinations. And so you could make some pretty silly characters that still worked. Like I had one called Travel Man, a kinetic defender with all four travel power sets, allowing him to TP, fly, run fast, and jump far, as well as enable all of this for his teammates as well. Overall, an amusing concept, but also one that is a huge waste of power choices. Yet despite the focus on travel, the character was still effective in groups. Unfortunately, they added the player made missions, and I think that played a big part in the game's downfall. Players tend to follow the path of least resistance, which in this case meant making efficient farming maps. But when the content is leveling up new characters, trying to speed run to max level means you're shooting yourself in the foot, gutting both the time per character (which wasn't bad to begin with) and the content variety.
@@Axterix13E never should have given XP or influence. The idea of telling your own stories goes hand in hand with a game designed around making your own OCs, but they just did NOT implement it right. Reminds me of that story where ultima online had an entire simulated ecology with a self-balancing foodchain, and then right at launch players ignored it entirely and just slaughtered everything that moved.
I played a LOT of City of Heroes before World of Warcraft came out. Mostly at this point I remember how satisfying the character creation system was. You could create some highly interesting, extremely aesthetic costumes. I'm fascinated that it's still available to play.
I started playing City of Heroes while waiting for WoW. In the end, I didn't feel the need to leave it. Still never played WoW to this day and don't regret it one bit. Kicking baddies across the room and off balconies never got old.
Same here spent a lot of time in this MMO but WoW did come out and well it grabbed me and I was in and out of City of Heroes for several years. Had an Electric/Electric plus Energy Blapper who got all of the debt badges due to her getting crushed at times. But she burnt off the debt so quickly since she was able to take on large groups of mobs. Fire up the Electric Shield pop everything that was needed and charge right into the group and smack them silly. She was also able to smack certain Tanking Boss around as well. Had a Defender friend and we would go run the zones he would work hard on keeping me alive and I would take everyone down. Love it when she finally got her big power since we would group up and take out dozens of werewolves at a time. Tank would round up several groups and get their attention and I would power up my mega hitting power and the screen would just show lots of damage being done and then it was rest for a few minutes and the Tank would go and get another group. It is very dated though since it is 20 years old.
@@chestersleezer8821 Redside hardcore player. was really the only MMO that I grew to love. I also played an illusion empathy controler blueside. That was rough. Some good memories of it though. Stealth plus teleport others in that one raid where you had to touch the stones at the same time. Wound up beating it with like 10 seconds to spare.
You didn't even touch on the Mission Architect system where you can create your own missions. But it's good to see CoH getting some love in 2023. I'm so glad it stuck with its level 50 cap and gave you options to boost through incarnate systems rather than just raising the level cap. Still my favorite MMO.
Hey I know it's a bit late but I just found this video and I wanted to share some more info for folks. There's 3 main community servers with their own quirks and changes and additions. The largest, since it was the first, is Homecoming. Homecoming has tons and tons of new playable missions and group content and powersets as it was worked on for years before being made public. It boasts the largest playerbase by far, with most days clocking in around 1,000 players at peak over it's multiple server instances. It is the slowest to add content compared to others, but the stuff they do add is high quality. It probably has some of the most changes from the original game, with tons of QoL and ease-of-play features and additions, so it is a lot easier to get around and do stuff. If you want the biggest server with the most polish, Homecoming is the one (It's also the one I play on) Thunderspy is the server featured in this video, and it's one of the most experimental servers, adding lots of new costume pieces, powers, and systems that Homecoming doesn't have. It is probably the #2 server in terms of population (I don't know for sure) and as I said features lots of new player powers and customization, including customizing your pets on the Mastermind archetype which was not a thing the game originally featured. Now one thing I will say is that, if you saw the logo, yes Thunderspy did come from 4chan, as it was originally the server made by the /coxg/ community, and features the least amount of moderation. People aren't regularly running around in-game yelling racial slurs, but if that association bothers you, keep it in mind (and maybe avoid the Discord server). Rebirth is the other main server, and tries to stick to a more vanilla take on the game. It also adds new additions and changes faster than Homecoming due to a shared code base with other servers, but doesn't go as crazy with new powers, systems changes, etc. It's about to get a big new content drop adding new end-game powers and even a new in-game randomized event which is really cool, I'm downloading it to try it out myself. I believe (again, not certain on this) that it's the lowest population server of the three, but still worth checking out if you don't mind playing a less crowded server. (It's also get the best website of the three IMO, as it replicates the original game's site before it shut down lol)
To me the best thing about COH is the community. Almost everyone is willing to help and give advice without looking down at new players. It's a very welcoming community.
I play on Homecoming and I really love that for the most part it is every bit as good a community as the game was on live all the way through its lifecycle.
We had a new player that we helped along. When she commented how nice and helpful we all were compared to other MMO games she played, our team leader jumped in and proudly said "We're heroes, this is what we do!" It's been out SG's motto ever since
I really enjoyed it back then. In fact, we were three roommates who had a blast in City of Villains. We spent a good amount of time building our cozy secret base and flying around (which was fun).
Yes, the game was making money when it was canceled, not a superstar but grinding along there was new content in the pipeline and it had a hard core long term customer base, but I think the company wanted to move the staff to other projects, they especially felt there was another wow slayer waiting to be born, that MMO's were the golden goose of gaming. Almost out of no where with hardly any warning they pulled the plug, I know some games that announced sun setting and 1 or 2 years later with no new content the games are still around.
@@averybaumann IMO the company killed its ability to make money by stupidity. They screwed all the actual paying customers that had supported it for years when it went from monthly to 'free to play'. They took nearly everything from those players supergroup base control, alts and many others unless you payed to gain them back. They could have gone down the micro transaction route instead with offering certain costume sets or the ability to change how your powers look as pay options instead of taking core parts of the game away. This is why there is such animosity towards them and outright hate wouldn't be stretching it in many cases.
At the time I recall spending hours creating new characters. I can remember making a bunch of Space Marines from various Chapters. I can't recall actually doing a single thing in the game or an area or boss, but seeing what you could do with the character creator was a legitimate blast.
What I also really liked about COH were the biographies you could write in your profile. Some of the ideas were very creative. It was often nice to read them.
I remember when this game was live, people on the forums kept asking for a teabag emote. So, they got a teabag emote: they dip a teabag repeatedly into a comicly oversized cup of tea. That's the sense of humor we have going into this. In the early days this was a surprisingly well supported game when it came to associated media. There was a physical map of the train system in the standard edition (my dog got his teeth into it, RIP), and a small PVP comic book about the characters from that webcomic playing the game. For the first year there was a monthly comic book that ended the arc with a character yelling at the sky, "Level 15 scrapper LFG!" and had a small newspaper for Atlas Park covering the final pages of each issue. There was a prequel novel about Statesman. And for extra fun, Mercedes Lackey was a player. Her Secret Wars books might look surprisingly familiar to any City of Heroes players.
Crazy that this game is nearly 20 years old. I was 23 years old when I started playing this game and I'm 42 now. I still have the client installed on my PC, but I haven't logged in in about 6 months. I might hop back in today to hang out with some people in Atlas.
The main community created server is the Homecoming version of the game, which recently obtained the *actual license* to develop and host the game. It's the closest to the original game's experience, only having a handful of custom content, and most of that content exists tastefully; it doesn't use copyrights from other media and isn't as "fan-ficky" as other servers seem to be. As it stands, with the license they're now legally allowed to modify the game and add new content, so more stuff is going to be added as time moves forward. Even so, for the most part all the community created servers are valid and enjoyable to play on. But if you want a for sure sustainable experience where you know the game won't suddenly just be taken down one day, then Homecoming is the best bet thanks to that license.
I love your videos so much, it's so nice that you always come at a game from a positive and curious point of view, and you enjoy parts of everything you play, while being critical of issues when needed. It's such a sight for sore eyes in this online landscape of thriving on negativity. You're great!
@@brindle21 oH MY garsh, this used to be one of my very favorite games ever...I invested A LOT of time playing this on both sides COV and COH...wow. I am so going to enjoy this video!
This was the game I played almost religiously. Literally, you were playing a superhero in a living comic book with other players from around the globe. There was nothing like it then, and there's nothing like it now. City of Heroes was THE MMO - and still is. I am having so much fun replaying CoH, it's nearly criminal!
Your editing is awesome and hilarious - Thanks so much for bringing this game back to light Manix! Awesome video man! This game just brings back so many memories.
It lets you customize each minion *period* as long as it is targetable/rename-able. Non humanoid pets will break their animations, though, which is understandable but unfortunate
@@SoggySoup as far as I know there's stuff planned, but they're currently focusing on making the backend easier to work with so they can streamline future development - the game is kind of a patchy ad-hoc mess and cleaning that up will make EVERYTHING easier to handle. There's also a question of the effort to replayability ratio - you dont want to spend two weeks putting together and testing a storyline or trial that people blow through in 20 minutes.
It’s amazing how good early MMO’s were. I could never play them today given they were such time sinks, but games like this, EverQuest, Shadowbane, UO, SWG, FFXI, WoW and so forth… I had such an amazing time.
It's still the only MMO going with the Debuffer playstyle, which I'll never forgive modern MMOs for omitting. Controller is still my favorite playstyle and no other MMO can replicate it, which sucks. CoH is still amazing and unique to play today as it was back in the day.
@@fu102 it's still going? Loved that game back in the day. From bounties on some players put on by guilds to the mid and hib alliance. No MMO dose what they did with the RVRVR
Everquest had the debuffer playstyle as well, and is probably the reason so few other MMOs have it. You had shamans, which combined buffing, debuffing, and healing, and Enchanters, who debuffed, buffed, and crowd controlled. The latter, due to that CC and downtime reduction due to a mana regen buff line, is why WoW, and subsequently wannabe WoWs, overreacted. Enchanters were part of what led to the term "the holy trinity", which was not the three roles of DPS, tank, and healer, but rather, three specific classes: Cleric (had a mana efficient heal), Fighter (biggest hp pool to take advantage of said heal), and Enchanter (very strong CC, plus the mana regen buff). There weren't really alternatives to what it offered. Just bards, who were much worse at it and CTS inducing. With how it made Enchanters so desired, pretty much every other MMO severely limited how many mobs any class could control to, well, usually one, maybe two. CoH was definitely the exception to that, fully embracing the CC with controllers. One of my original characters was an Earth/Radiation controller, and between those two, well, lots of CC and debuffing. Of course, very low offense.
Still play on Excelsior server. Thank you fans for remaking this. Brought back feelings, game with friends on Tuesdays and Fridays still, same people I met in person, even though we live in different states.
This is one of the very few MMOs I genuinely was able to role-play my character in. I even wrote a bunch of one-liners into some macros so semi-randomly my character would spout off things in /say when he used his powers. It was the first and only time I joined a "roleplay" guild in-game. It was fun running around with a bunch of villains, attempting to evade the heroes and enact our nefarious plans. The game has a lot of jank to it now, but the core of it is a superb experience.
I pretty much always stayed in character when playing this game. I was young and naively believed that all role playing games meant actual role play, haha. Those were the good days before I realized just how big a cesspool the internet was and is. But the good thing about CoH is that it wasn’t that hard to find other peeps role playing. True believers till the end of time!
i remember back in the mid 2000s when i played this game, if you subscribed they'd send you a comic in the mail every month following a story featuring in-game NPCs. even back then as a teenager, you could tell how much love and care was put into it, and the day the servers were closed was a sad one for me having grown up with it the fact that it's been brought back and consistently updated fills me with joy
You haven't seen true chaos until you've joined a team of 8 masterminds, each with six pet NPCs, trying to get through a modern office building all at the same time while fighting an absolute horde of villains. Bonus when some of your teammates are levitating and their butt is blocking your view every time you enter a new floor, while your pets are starting the fight without you. Good times!
I think the worst experience I ever had on live was being the only non MM on a full team in one of the Circle of Thorn lairs. I lost track of how many times I got stuck on torches that pets knocked me into! On the other hand, one of my favorite memories was being in Siren's Call as a healer with a full team of MMs, the only villains in there and killing 20-30 heroes the moment they tried to come for us, lol. Back then, you had to buff each character and pet individually instead of hitting all in range. I spent the entire time cycling through and giving everyone speed boost and increase density. I was exhausted by the time we were done!
I used to host runs of a specific Strike Force with full Mastermind teams for fun. There was this mid-level one where the final part needed you to go up a ramp around a platform in the middle of the ocean. The boss is on top, but you need to get your minions up, and the ramp is both very tight and surrounded by jetpacking enemies just close enough to aggrivate stray pets. I called it the Mastermind boot camp. It was my second favorite thing to do.
8 Mastermind teams absolutely destroy everything in their path though. Like, yeah, it's chaos, but it doesn't matter because everything is going to be dead in the next 5 seconds anyway.
@@kellymurphy1098 MMs that have the support to cap their pets do the highest damage of all classes. Its just that you need a LOT to get those pets capped. A squad of all thugs MM with say, kinetics or something to buff their damage can output insane levels of damage since all MM thug pet auras benefit all other thug MM pets, so their def and acc is maxed out. Its just difficult to get to those levels, and its way easier to make a super scrapper/corruptor/blaster.
Oh man, this hit me right in my nostalgia. CoH was my first MMO. I found a great supergroup and had years of fun. When it shut down some of us tried other options, but nothing had the same community feel with no one interested in doing PvE. They only wanted to PvP and were not very open to newcomers.
The best MMO I've ever played, simply because they decided no characters would be useless, and players shouldn't be gated off from playing together. The sidekick system alone made this an incredibly good MMO (Play alongside any higher level player at their level). Tons and tons of tools to make playing with other people a delight instead of just a huge irritant that's necessary for gear. Speaking of which, no gear, just limitless costume options, including customizing what your powers even LOOK like (Colors and animations and the look of your weapons if those are what your character's using). No useless characters, everyone can team up with very few restrictions (Heroes and villains can only team up in certain zones, for instance, but you can also switch sides if you want to, or make a rogue/vigilante character who can walk both worlds). So cool. Thanks for the good memories, Virtue server.
in its day sidekicking was amazing. these days its kind of been adapted by anyone, but in the original everquest/ffxi days, if your friend played more than you, you just weren't going to play with them, it was big.
They made a LOT of good decisions. Some poor ones right after launch, but things got better after Statesman left to start his own MMO with hookers and blackjack. Like there's crafting and an auction house, but you don't have to ever interact with those if you don't want. If you *do* want you can make yourself insanely rich in a very short time playing the auction house. It's absolutely 100% optional, and you can absolutely complete the game without it, but if you're the sort of person who enjoys seeing just *how* busted you can make a character, it's amazing for that too. And your gear doesn't change your appearance, so you're not forced to look a certain way if you don't want to. The variable difficulty system means that the game scales to the most casual or most power obsessed minmaxer. There's nothing forcing you to join a clan or guild, unlike a lot of MMOs where if you aren't good at socializing you're not going to get as far or have much fun. It was the first MMO I ever played where, when fighting even-con enemies, basically at the intended level of difficulty, you could take on like 8 enemies at once. Every other MMO I'd played before that, you had to single-pull or die. There were so many things about it that were revolutionary (Some of them unintended, but they ultimately ran with them), and so many decisions that made it just friendlier and more accessible than other MMOs. I still play it, even though the combat is clunky and old fashioned now.
And you could invite higher level players to be mentors. Their level was dropped down and some powers locked. They were still way more powerful but didn’t just destroy everything. Level 50’s were the group I asked to joined my task force after everyone in the level range. I figured they weren’t busy leveling. And often they’d need an achievement.
This unlocked core memories, good ones. That familiar lighting zap sound...man. This was my first MMO, I remember playing for something like 6 months before WoW came out. Played both for a long while but I ended up struggling to quit CoH. I don't think there is any other game to this day that I had spent more time on. If I wasn't running pve content, there was a much more social aspect as you could literally hang out in areas for hours at a time talking and shooting the shit. While super dated now, it wile always have a very special place in my heart and jumping into it again last year was unbelievably nostalgic and I am glad I did.
The greatest loss from CoH shutdown was the player community itself. The player base was the least toxic of any I have ever been a part of. Even the hard core PvP players looking for the most optimal build would lend advice to someone who wanted to make a sub-optimal build because it fit their Roleplay character. Asking for help from a complete stranger would net you a full team of 8 players of whom you were the only one not max level and fully geared and all there to make sure you get the help you need in your quest to save the world. The CoH community said “we’re heroes! We act like it.”
I must have sunk hundreds of hours into this game back in the day, great community of players. I still have the original install media and some small figures for the game that came with some of the later game media for City of villains. When they did the Beta, the last few minutes before they closed the servers in preperation for the new start had loads of people standing in Atlas Part letting off their power like fireworks. Still have some screen grabs of that. Good game for its time.
I love, love, love, love, *love* City of Heroes. I played it almost daily from launch to sunset and again since it returned a couple of years ago. I love making characters and their backstories and appreciate that I can play for 5 hours or 5 minutes and still have some fun. It's also one of only a handful of games that my wife played with me. In many ways, it's just about the perfect game for me right now.
Ah, I loved playing this game. I played a villain named Evil Abe Lincoln, an undead mastermind who summoned the bodies of John Wilkes Booth and other notables from his past to do his bidding. Truly, the customization of your hero in this game is second to none.
Going Rogue really did open the doors to so much more possibilities before the game was abruptly shut down. Replaying it now, it is so much fun and the twists and turns Going Rogue could give you before getting too fantastical was fun as hell.
Your videos are such a joy to watch. You have a great sense of humor, and have everything very organized, while also feeling fun and enjoyable--like I'm playing the game. :)
I stood in Atlas Plaza until the servers turned off. So many of my friends and I put HOURS into this game played the free servers a lot last year. Homecoming really kept me engaged.
I was invited to play on the secret server before SCORE got it and turned it into Homecoming. And on the secret server, you were given all your old characters and SG Bases from your existing Live accounts. It took a week to find, but when I logged in and saw them again a few years after Sunset, I was all tears. Emotional Damage.
I played City of Villains back then for the pvp. They made city of Heroes/Villains basically work as a factions system for open world pvp. It was one of the best mmo pvp experiences I've had to date!
I remember seeing copies of City of Heroes/Villains in my local Walmart as a kid. Being a Marvel Comics-obsessed nerd it instantly caught my eye though my budget couldn't afford it. Makes me reminisce on old times when the superhero genre wasn't milked dry by cinema and activism and still had that feeling of being cool and occasionally deep. Really glad to see that the fans have kept the servers alive, might give me an excuse to go and finally check it out.
As someone who followed CoH before release and played for years, the modern era of super hero games is way better than back in 2004. Back then nearly all super hero games were cash grab garbage. There were a few that broke the mold but we always had to approach a new game with the assumption it wasn't good. Like movie tie in games today; and back then as well. I guess movie games haven't really gotten out of the cash grab phase of IP translation.... Anyway, point is, tody a bad super hero game is the exception, not the expected.
@@Ryoku1 Well I'm sure there's a reason Insomiac's Spider-Man games aren't based on the movies. And I'm sure that reason has _absolutely nothing_ to do with the MCU and Sony publishing the games...
If you join a server and the player base is sparse and you have to solo, make a scrapper or brute. Other classes need support(blaster) or are support. Tanks just don’t hit hard enough(there are exceptions). I think all the classes can do damage if built right but it’s more limiting. Scrapper is just a well balanced soloer. I got scrapper brain playing one. I joined groups just so I could fight bigger groups. I beat the tank to take the alpha(he was too slow) and might peel off from the groups to fight alone. It was all about seeing what I was capable of. Could I beat it. Defense debuffs were horrible for me.
I was there at the beginning. City of Heroes was my first MMO and will forever hold a place in my heart and not just the game, I was part of a fantastic Supergroup, The 47 Ties, with some brilliant people. Fool, it just wasn't the same without you. The revitalised servers are great but it's just not the same so I'll leave you all with this... Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls
@@MissFirefly11 Yup. Back in the old days. As a villain you were broke out of a big max security prison by an evil organization. There are arcs to win yourself into their ranks. Stories for: sheer power, some for pure evil, others for greed, and more still to undermine thier power. Also you can simply chose violence that day put on the hurt on some idiots. Bank jobs to make, well bank.
I was in the CoH beta and played for quite a while before quitting it. My main, Farm-Aid, was in the group shot on the box. He was a very short red and white robotic cow that was a healer and used TK and teleportation. Those two powers were way OP in beta. They went through a lot of tweaking before the game was released. In the begowning, TK would allow me to hold any boss so my team mate could beat the tar out of them. One of it's sub powers allowed me to let other people fly ,,,until I turned it off. The whole City is inside of a force field bubble that we normally cannot cross. In the early days of beta, I could teleport outside the boundaries. I could also teleport anyone else out there even if they didn't want to go. If I left them there, the only way back in was to exit the game and restart. There were many other things that could be done and it's why betas are so important.
City of Heroes is back! Homecoming and others have been running the game for the past 3.5 years and have now gotten an official licence from NCsoft to continue the game!
We all stood in Atlas Plaza, when the countdown began to shut the game down for good. It was such a sad moment. The private server is terrific, and a lot of old friends are back. Fun and great game.
There's a video of it playing with the Babylon 5 end music somewhere here on RUclips. Good to play if you get something stuck in your eye that you need to wash out. ;)
I was there. (Wouldn't have missed it.) It's insane that they would shut down a game that was still so popular at the time. It wasn't at it's peak, but it still had quite a healthy player base.
You forgot to mention the most insanely innovative idea that they came up with, which was a CUSTOM CONTENT CREATOR that plays could use to create their own missions. This allowed us to essentially take on the role of a Dungeon Master in D&D. The Roleplaying servers were in character all the time as well which was a different kind of fun.
@@MitchManix You could make NPCs/Monsters for your missions using the exact same character creator you use for players. You could decide what powers they had, it was honestly insanely awesome and unfortunately they didn't debut it until near the end of the game's run. If they had that ability near the beginning it would of made the game much stronger.
I still have screenshots galore of my city of villains character and miss her so much. Bank heists were a joy to do with my friends and getting my paragon power storyline done was happiness.
In 2012, I knew an MMORPG that: 1. Had over eight years worth of content and updates 2. Was the first, and still the most popular, MMORPG of its genre 3. Didn’t limit you to only playing one realm per server 4. Never went through a server merge 5. * Had 14 different classes from which to choose 6. * Gave you access to 192 characters slots right out of the box, with the option to quadruple that amount 7. * Had over 1200 different ability set combinations for each of those 768 potential character slots at character creation, with nearly 3 billion total different combinations available 8. Allowed each character to have three different builds, enabling even more customization of ability sets 9. Let you customize the visual effects of your abilities, completely independently from their effectiveness 10. Let you preview your abilities during character creation and costume modification 11. Didn’t affect your character’s abilities by simply wearing different clothes that didn’t match thematically 12. Decoupled your character’s appearance from its abilities, providing complete creative freedom during the character creation process 13. * Had literally trillions of costume combinations available right out of the box, with hundreds more costume pieces you could earn, unlock, craft, or purchase, making over 4.5 quindecillion (4.5 x 1048) total combinations per costume 14. * Allowed each character to have up to 10 different costumes/appearances that you could switch to at any time, even during combat 15. Allowed you to write publicly-viewable bios/backgrounds for your characters 16. Allowed you to create an actual evil character rather than one who was simply opposed to another in-game faction/alignment/race 17. * Allowed you to change your character’s alignment from “good” to “evil” and back again, or stop at multiple points in-between 18. * Gave you special abilities that were only available to your character’s current alignment 19. Didn’t base your character’s advancement on gear that could break, get lost, need repairing, or be stolen 20. Didn’t involve politics or endless rolls for loot distribution - all drops were 100% random for every member of your party and dropped instantly directly to your character, privately 21. * Had a cross-server auction house with complete anonymity between buyers and sellers, and opacity of selling and asking prices 22. * Allowed you to obtain any drop you wanted or needed through the market or through regular play within a reasonable amount of time 23. Allowed you to convert unwanted drops into something usable for your character 24. Allowed you to save up in-game rewards to be able to purchase specific drops without having to use the market system at all 25. Didn’t require membership in a guild to participate in any specific content 26. * Allowed you to build massive guild houses with medical, crafting, storage, and transportation facilities 27. * Allowed you to bring guests into your guild house to visit and look around 28. * Had 20 different methods of transiting between game zones, including across realms, resulting in some of the fastest play and travel times of any MMORPG 29. Didn’t force travel along explicitly-defined paths as a time sink for traveling between quests and their NPCs 30. Gave you the ability to call quest NPCs directly rather than having to return to them upon completion, or for obtaining your next quest 31. Gave you your own travel abilities instead of using super-expensive mounts - or offered one for purchase cheaply at level one if you didn’t want to take an ability 32. Was the first MMORPG to allow your character to be capable of fully unrestricted and untimed flight, without gliding or using mounts 33. Allowed your character to fall from any height without dying or swim in any water without drowning 34. Didn’t place unrealistic restrictions on your character’s movement around terrain in game zones - “You want to climb that hill over there that you’d be able to in real life? Sure, go ahead!” 35. Didn’t have XP loss or make you run back to your body when you died 36. Used a system of XP debt that was paid back after death, but still allowed for level progression 37. Left your characters with all their stuff when you logged back in - nothing decayed 38. Had over 30 different types of in-game locations (i.e., auction houses, hospitals, arenas, transportation hubs) where characters could earn temporary buffs simply by being logged out for a period of time 39. Granted temporary abilities based on being logged out in specific combinations of those locations over time 40. Didn’t require spawn camping for specific kills/objectives - quests were your own private instances for you and your party 41. Didn’t automatically force you to group with other players simply because of where you were or what you were doing 42. Didn’t require you to “gather ten of those plants to make a good soup” or “kill five of those creatures to protect my herd” - 99% of quests were combat-oriented “go punch somebody in the face” 43. Used actual opening and closing doors for quest instances, providing more realistic immersion in the game world 44. *Had a crafting system that anyone could use without grinding raids 45. Didn’t penalize your character’s advancement or participation in content for not using that crafting system 46. Always gave you entirely new abilities when you leveled up, rather than just more powerful versions of old ones 47. Scaled your abilities’ effectiveness as you leveled up, making them just as useful at max level as at level one 48. Allowed you to enhance specific characteristics of your abilities (i.e., damage, accuracy, endurance/mana cost, cooldown time, range, buff/debuff strength), either with or without using the crafting system 49. Provided multiple opportunities to re-specify your character’s abilities and enhancements, without spending any real money 50. Had complete transparency of your abilities’ stats and costs so you could see exactly what they did and what you wanted to enhance as you leveled up * Continued Below *
* Continued from above * 51. Didn’t require your character’s build to be min/maxed to be effective, though you could do it to your heart’s desire if you chose to 52. *Had over 140 levels of content across three different realms that could be soloed at will by anyone willing to do so 53. Allowed free accounts to play characters up to the max level 50 54. Enabled players to find level-appropriate content with a single click, thus eliminating XP “dead zones” 55. *Gave players the option to travel freely to other realms to experience content on a non-PvP basis 56. Had PvP content but didn’t require you to participate in it to advance your character 57. Had compelling stories and quests to encourage players to enjoy the journey to the level cap - the game didn’t “Start at Level X” 58. Allowed you to “flashback” and re-play lower-level content that you might have missed, with full XP credit 59. Allowed you to customize that “flashback” system with various handicaps for a greater challenge 60. Didn’t have an ever-increasing level cap that invalidated or made obsolete lower level characters, content, and equipment 61. Allowed you to create 8-person parties for basic quests and multi-quest “dungeons,” or up to 48-person leagues for larger group content like trials and raids 62. Allowed you to group with anyone for most content, regardless of their level, and still earn XP credit 63. Allowed you to group with players of opposing alignments for cooperative content 64. Had an arena system with 15 customizable event types, from basic one-on-one duels to massive guild rumbles with up to 280 players 65. Didn’t require the “Holy Trinity” (Tank/Healer/DPS) for party composition - any combination of characters was viable for virtually all content 66. Used Buffing and Debuffing support characters as “force multipliers,” making your party much more powerful than you would have been without them 67. Had support classes with some of the strongest controls available in any MMORPG, allowing players to completely lock down even boss-level mobs 68. Had a Pet/Summoning class which could have buffs, debuffs, healing, and damage all rolled into one fully-controllable “Army of Seven” 69. Allowed you to customize quests to be easier for the solo player, or as difficult as being in a full party by yourself 70. Let you call fighting 10-on-1 a fair fight, where you were the 1 71. Had a power-to-level-difference ratio such that your character couldn’t still be defeated by a mob five levels below you 72. Automatically scaled mob groups and ranks based on party size so quests weren’t pointlessly easy or insanely hard 73. Had multiple tiers of consumable buffs/potions (obtainable as drops or purchased from NPCs or the market) that increased your health, endurance/mana, accuracy, damage output, damage resistance, defense, or protection from status effects, or rezzed your character from defeat 74. Also had some consumables that affected multiple attributes simultaneously, or applied party-wide buffs 75. Allowed you to combine unwanted consumables into a specific one you needed 76. Didn’t restrict consumable use to being in a resting or non-combat state 77. Didn’t restrict repeated consumable use to a predefined interval 78. Allowed stacking use of consumables (either the same one or different ones) that could turn your character into a nigh-indestructible damage-dealing god for a short time 79. Would auto-rez your character if you leveled up while defeated on the battlefield, while also applying all top-tier consumable buffs simultaneously 80. * Had a highly-customizable quest creator system that allowed any player to make their own quests of whatever difficulty they wanted 81. * Had tens of thousands of solo-friendly quests made by other players up and available to play 82. * Had an end-game system that could be used by solo players 83. Allowed you to pause multi-quest “dungeons” to finish later at your party’s convenience 84. * Had over 50 “dungeons,” trials, and raids, ranging from level 1 to 50, and beyond 85. Provided a queuing system for those “dungeons,” trials, and raids that could be accessed and teleported to from anywhere on the server 86. * Had nearly 1400 in-game achievements you could earn, the earliest of which pre-dated the Xbox Live Achievement system by over a year 87. Had a wide variety of rewards for earning some achievements, including permanent bonuses, temporary abilities, unique costume pieces, expanded storage capacity, or access to exclusive game content 88. * Had over 450 chat line commands that allowed you to do things such as interact with other players, change the UI, or activate powers 89. Allowed you to combine those chat line commands into powerful key-binds or one-click macros, providing an unparalleled system for customizing your game experience 90. * Had over 250 emotes your character could perform, including when switching costumes/appearance 91. Had a demo recording function that allowed you to record in-game activities, or edited to create your own off-line machinima productions 92. Allowed you to save/load costumes, preferences, and UI customizations for use on other characters 93. * Had global chat abilities that allowed you to talk to other players on other servers, regardless of the character names or realms on which they were playing 94. Allowed you to create your own and/or belong to up to 15 global chat channels 95. Had both local server and global friends lists, as well as a global ignore list for spammers or offensive players 96. Allowed you to take in-game notes and assign ratings on players that would be visible to you regardless of their current character 97. Had multiple levels of publicly hiding yourself from other players, allowing your gameplay to be as social or as private as you chose 98. Had developers who actually played the game, and who would occasionally log in as signature lore-based NPCs and roleplay them on the live servers 99. Would frequently have features added to the game that were specifically requested by players and implemented by the development team 100. Let you fight time-traveling alien Nazis with giant robots in Ancient Rome (yes, really) 101. Had one of the friendliest, most mature, and most helpful communities of any MMORPG yet to exist Does it sound too good to be true for all these features to have been in a single game? It's not. It was/is called “City of Heroes.” * Feature originally required micro-transaction purchase and/or active subscription to fully access. ** All features listed here were included naturally with the game and did not require any third-party add-ons to access.
The main shards still have quite a lot more than the ones like thunderspy, so you know. I'm glad that you enjoyed the game and made such a fun overview. I have been playing this game since 2 months after its release in 2004, and have no desire to stop playing now. Many of the base items were unlocked before tspy existed, and I can happily drop that my base was used as a testing ground for some of them ;D Even if the game is showing a little age in some ways, it's still more satisfying to just drop in for 20 minutes and feel like you've actually done something - whether it's good or evil.
Great game, I remember having a friend (a tank luckily since I was melee dps) who looked like a female Skittle and had a catch phrase prior to fighting.. "Taste the Rainbow!" then she'd proceed by tearing everybody up lol Good times.
My friends played this when it was still online and I came in at the tail end but didn't get to play much before it was shut down. My only real memory of playing was a costume contest in the city that was interrupted by a Rikti invasion. My less than stellar computer provided a robust 1 fps with flashes of color and intermittent sound. I think I helped in the fight. I couldn't tell. But it was lots of fun while it lasted.
Often imitated, never duplicated. This was a one of a kind game/community/developers group that has yet to repeat itself. Nowadays, it's the dlc cash grab that takes priority over just having a fun game like this one was.
AWESOME! One of the best MMORPGs ever, and still is! 🥰 This game has 2 major draws: A legitimate superhero/villain world, and the seemingly infinite freedom for character design. You come up with a cool hero or villain idea, you can most likely make it. For example there is a power set that's all about zombie pets. I combined it with the dark miasma power set of which I made some powers look like sand, then zombie and pharaoh costume pieces and what I got was an undead tomb king.
Oh man this takes me back, I played this along with Runescape for so many years as a kid. Played this with the family though mostly, runescape was my personal mmo(still play it off and on with OldSchool Runescape). City of Villains was also fun. Good times.
I've still never max leveled a character in CoH, I'm sure I'll make it one day, but making alts is just so much fun in this game It was the MMO I loved the most growing up, too bad I don't have the time or attention span to play MMOs anymore
I played it on release and didn't make max for like 3 years :D it was a little easier in the early days because teaming up would create and xp tether. So my character would be parked in front of the tram station while my insomniac friend would run missions and street sweeps. So i'd level just standing there. She loved it because people would dance around me making a little party on the other computer screen. later they made that teather a distance thing, so I took up flight and would just /follow them all night like a balloon.
@@midnightblue3285 there has yet to be a true Marvel mmo. There was a Marvel ARPG that was online, but that only let's you play heroes in the marvel universe and not create your own heroe.
Rikti representation: zero Status: reprehensible Retribution: inevitable ;) The GUI is made for much lower resolution, but it's really an awesome thing. You can shape many of those windows, even bend them around corners! Everyone talks about the amazing character customization, but the GUI customization deserves a ton of praise, too.
I was not a day one player, but I started a few months after it opened and I was there the night it closed. The game has always been about the players - I have many friends still out there online that I met here. So glad my friend introduced it to me because I enjoyed it for years. This also makes me all nostalgic and will possibly check out a fan server I. The near future. Thanks for the video!
CoH is still my top Superhero game and one of my Top MMOs. I miss the days of logging in and hanging out with the Net Radios that existed in the game. and running around with them in events. There was so much in that game I never saw. And never got to experience.
So glad I found this! I used to love City of Heroes and City of Villains, and didn't know there were community servers still going! Going to have see if I still fit into those spandex...
Thunderspy has arguably the most advancements, Homecoming is the largest as far as population and has a lot of QOL features to make things easier/simpler, and Rebirth started as trying to be as close to the game at sunset while persuing advancements intended by, or inspired by, NCSoft SoCal's last developers.
There is a glitch on the sidewalk in King's Row that will cause the pedestrians to loop on a small building. They never corrected it, they just put up a plaque describing how a supervillain caused the glitch.
2 (and a half) things made CoH my favorite RPG. 1) Costumes!! Everything was just available, it was simply down to you how you wanted to look, and it was GLORIOUS. 1.5) Costume contests! Like an Asmongold transmog contest, except it was open to everyone, and people ran them all the time, and with design options just open, you didn't have to find grind high level raid bosses to get your shoes. 2) The combat was just so perfectly satisfying. Player animations, particle effects, enemy responses. All in perfect unison. When I force blast an enemy, it feels like I just knocked him on his ass, not like I just triggered ability #2 for 16 damage and a status icon.
The costume contests reminds me of something people would do in pixie hollow called fashion contests. They could vary a bit but usually they had multiple rounds and themes that the judge would choose. It's cool that no matter the genre of game, if there's clothing you can mix and match there's a sub-community for that (like "fashion hunters" in monster hunter, for example). Sorry if my comment is a bit rambly
My understanding was that a large portion of the population came to City Of from Star Wars Galaxies due to the similarities between City Of and the Pre-CU/CU versions of SWG.
Nope,thats male cow manure. For people who cried for 6 months their afk-macro testground got scrapped and replaced with an actual game,CoH was too bright and cartoony
City of Heroes is still the best superhero MMO of all time. The fact that it lives on in City of Heroes Homecoming and I can return anytime I want warms my heart. I picked up a copy of City of Heroes from a Big Lots for$8 in 2008, the best 8 dollars I ever spent. I was there till the end of the shutdown. Was involved in the shell of the game called Paragon Chat and happily returned with the reveal of Homecoming. I've met so many great friends and had amazing moments but good and bad. I became a part of the Cape Radio on Virtue and its community which is still going to this day. Many of the players I've met in person consider family. Champions and DCUO while they have some advantage over COH will never top what the game could do overall. From the powersets to the character customization. It really is superhero experience.
one good thing is that if you miss content, you unlock the oroboros content, the time travelling add on from i think issue 12(i think), and you can replay a good portion of the stuff that you missed. also, this game was one of the first games with the idea of scaling your character up or down, so if you have a pimped out character and your friend started, you can either get (exemplared) having your level lowered to theirs, or sidekicking them, which scales them up. obviously since they wont have the powers or enhancements, sidekicks are a bit less helpful, but you level like a mofo, and if you have exp debt, the only death penalty in the game, it burns offf fast.
I have such fond memories of this game. I played the hell out of it during its first year. Surpassing all levels and quests I found myself literally done with the game... and loving it. I started making videos for the forums and made my own quests for other players on the server. Most popular was "Find Foe" where I would give hints of where I was hiding in the city and when people found me I would give them prizes. Finally stopping and selling the Foe Hammer account for almost $1K. Thanks for all the great memories CoH!
I've played dozens upon dozens of mmo's some I play for awhile and never play again, others like wow I leave and come back to for a time in new expansions. but COH is the one I always come back to constantly dropping in to do a task force or level a new toon. I was devastated when the game shut down but was so over the moon when it came back playing on the homecoming server. to this day its one of my fav games with nothing but positive memories of it. not to mention that the playerbase and community is much nicer than most other mmo's.
Had a ton of fun with that game when it launched and for a few months following. It died fast for me and WoW and EQ2 were right around the corner. It’d be fun to see it again though.
I just discovered this series. So happy I did. You are truly funny. While not an overly nostalgic person, I do enjoy the occasional look back at games from the past. COH was a game that I got into while living in a bachelor pad with 2 other guys and a girl. We all had our own PC's set up in our respective rooms, and even had a 5th for my brother who would come over, almost every day. We used to game from the minute we got home from work until we passed out. Thanks for this comical trip down memory lane.
I as there when it launched and was there in Atlas Park when it went dark. Best MMO I ever played. It was about your character and their powers - not the junk you collect.
for a second you had me look up if the official servers got re-open, but nope. the only ones still around are the community driven private servers. funny how everyone objects to the term "private server" when it literally just means "not the retail business version"
Mayn, I loved City of Villains, felt like there was no one else playing - later learnt there was more people on the Heroes side back in the day (it was 2007 at the time) Cool to see some fans brought it back to life, seeing alot of MMOs being rekindled lately
yeah made pvping really fun. especially the last zone, where the environment changed depending on who had control of the nodes. i remember having a mines and my ninja dark mastermind out and about and set up a trap with a lot of mines and me standing out in the open and my minions off hiding. one of the top players on hero side was an invis poison scrapper. never saw him but the mines did and boom... he messaged me great trap it will only work once.... he then hunted me if i was on. nice game of cat and mouse we had.
Up for an adventure into some Kenshi shenanigans? Check out the new video here: ruclips.net/video/tZmg8oZIAgg/видео.html
PS: For those asking both the child and the chemistry set were stolen. With the child quickly being discarded after Suit discovered said child was not actually a tiny chemist and therefor could not assist with his balding issues 👍
The cinematic universe we deserve. Seriously, I have ideas on how to do that
My husband and I met playing this game in 2004, and when he proposed to me a few years later he did it through the game. We played it right up until the official servers shut down, and when the community run servers started up we jumped right back on :)
That’s awesome!
how was the ring?
🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿
thats really fucking weird
@@Tyscratweird but awesome
City of Heroes was the only MMO I ever loved.
And it's how I learned that you can't trust companies to keep backing the product even after you invest money and time in it. Hard lesson to learn. Things that you love hurt you the most.
Me, too. I loved LOTRO early days of Lotro. But COH is still great on Homecoming server.
@@MichaelJohnson-kq7qgUnfortunately, Marvel heroes Omega did the same thing to me but in months instead of years. So I got burned twice.
Time spent playing other MMOs: about 30 minutes.
It is the only MMORPG I loved as well. It hurt to lose, far too much to allow such attachment to one again, even to the currently available versions of it.
To this day still one of my absolute favourites and one that now has a permanent spot on my hard disk. I was gutted when they cancelled the official version, but I was so so very happy when it came back community driven.
#FACTS
Absolutely AMAZING character creation and classes!
I loved it when it first came out and you could slot five or six damage in your powers. I loved taking on the Cyborg bosses who had the big hook claws.
@@wardenm The character creation WAS the game. Like, the gameplay was fun, but making your character was the entire reason for the game.
I had no idea that this game had been opened up again!
A friend showed me this game when it originally came out.
I was converted to a PC gamer that very day and have never bothered with consoles since.
I will have to look into this.
I remember sitting under Atlus as the official servers closed in college. Still the most chill, pleasant community I've experienced. No drama over the meta, just costume contests and hey, show me your base.
One of the nice things about city of heroes in general (and maybe Thunderspy specifically, because they've done a pretty decent amount of balancing to bring under-performing sets out of the muck) is that despite the frankly absurd amount of power combinations and enhancement builds the game offers, there really aren't any wrong answers. You could make every character creation and leveling decision at random and still come away with an effective character. Not OPTIMIZED certainly, but not useless either.
I think it helped a lot that the game wasn't vertically focused, but instead, horizontal. You just made alts. It never really developed a strong end-game and instead, offered a huge variety of power combinations. And so you could make some pretty silly characters that still worked. Like I had one called Travel Man, a kinetic defender with all four travel power sets, allowing him to TP, fly, run fast, and jump far, as well as enable all of this for his teammates as well. Overall, an amusing concept, but also one that is a huge waste of power choices. Yet despite the focus on travel, the character was still effective in groups.
Unfortunately, they added the player made missions, and I think that played a big part in the game's downfall. Players tend to follow the path of least resistance, which in this case meant making efficient farming maps. But when the content is leveling up new characters, trying to speed run to max level means you're shooting yourself in the foot, gutting both the time per character (which wasn't bad to begin with) and the content variety.
@@Axterix13E never should have given XP or influence. The idea of telling your own stories goes hand in hand with a game designed around making your own OCs, but they just did NOT implement it right. Reminds me of that story where ultima online had an entire simulated ecology with a self-balancing foodchain, and then right at launch players ignored it entirely and just slaughtered everything that moved.
Would've been nice if people at the time thought this way. "Oh, you're a Defender, but not a healer? GTFO."
Throwing a forklift at people never got old.
I mained an illusion empathy controller blue side. Are you sure about that? :P
I had like 5 levels worth of XP debt before I got my movement power...
I played a LOT of City of Heroes before World of Warcraft came out. Mostly at this point I remember how satisfying the character creation system was. You could create some highly interesting, extremely aesthetic costumes.
I'm fascinated that it's still available to play.
I started playing City of Heroes while waiting for WoW. In the end, I didn't feel the need to leave it. Still never played WoW to this day and don't regret it one bit. Kicking baddies across the room and off balconies never got old.
it's not legally available anymore.
Same here spent a lot of time in this MMO but WoW did come out and well it grabbed me and I was in and out of City of Heroes for several years. Had an Electric/Electric plus Energy Blapper who got all of the debt badges due to her getting crushed at times. But she burnt off the debt so quickly since she was able to take on large groups of mobs. Fire up the Electric Shield pop everything that was needed and charge right into the group and smack them silly. She was also able to smack certain Tanking Boss around as well. Had a Defender friend and we would go run the zones he would work hard on keeping me alive and I would take everyone down. Love it when she finally got her big power since we would group up and take out dozens of werewolves at a time. Tank would round up several groups and get their attention and I would power up my mega hitting power and the screen would just show lots of damage being done and then it was rest for a few minutes and the Tank would go and get another group. It is very dated though since it is 20 years old.
@@chestersleezer8821 Redside hardcore player. was really the only MMO that I grew to love.
I also played an illusion empathy controler blueside. That was rough. Some good memories of it though. Stealth plus teleport others in that one raid where you had to touch the stones at the same time. Wound up beating it with like 10 seconds to spare.
@@AngelusNielson Yeah it is. Source: Currently playing it.
You didn't even touch on the Mission Architect system where you can create your own missions. But it's good to see CoH getting some love in 2023. I'm so glad it stuck with its level 50 cap and gave you options to boost through incarnate systems rather than just raising the level cap. Still my favorite MMO.
Hey I know it's a bit late but I just found this video and I wanted to share some more info for folks. There's 3 main community servers with their own quirks and changes and additions.
The largest, since it was the first, is Homecoming. Homecoming has tons and tons of new playable missions and group content and powersets as it was worked on for years before being made public. It boasts the largest playerbase by far, with most days clocking in around 1,000 players at peak over it's multiple server instances. It is the slowest to add content compared to others, but the stuff they do add is high quality. It probably has some of the most changes from the original game, with tons of QoL and ease-of-play features and additions, so it is a lot easier to get around and do stuff. If you want the biggest server with the most polish, Homecoming is the one (It's also the one I play on)
Thunderspy is the server featured in this video, and it's one of the most experimental servers, adding lots of new costume pieces, powers, and systems that Homecoming doesn't have. It is probably the #2 server in terms of population (I don't know for sure) and as I said features lots of new player powers and customization, including customizing your pets on the Mastermind archetype which was not a thing the game originally featured. Now one thing I will say is that, if you saw the logo, yes Thunderspy did come from 4chan, as it was originally the server made by the /coxg/ community, and features the least amount of moderation. People aren't regularly running around in-game yelling racial slurs, but if that association bothers you, keep it in mind (and maybe avoid the Discord server).
Rebirth is the other main server, and tries to stick to a more vanilla take on the game. It also adds new additions and changes faster than Homecoming due to a shared code base with other servers, but doesn't go as crazy with new powers, systems changes, etc. It's about to get a big new content drop adding new end-game powers and even a new in-game randomized event which is really cool, I'm downloading it to try it out myself. I believe (again, not certain on this) that it's the lowest population server of the three, but still worth checking out if you don't mind playing a less crowded server. (It's also get the best website of the three IMO, as it replicates the original game's site before it shut down lol)
To me the best thing about COH is the community. Almost everyone is willing to help and give advice without looking down at new players. It's a very welcoming community.
I play on Homecoming and I really love that for the most part it is every bit as good a community as the game was on live all the way through its lifecycle.
@@trident042 100% agree and there is so much more participation from GMs within the game. They love the game and it shows.
We had a new player that we helped along. When she commented how nice and helpful we all were compared to other MMO games she played, our team leader jumped in and proudly said "We're heroes, this is what we do!" It's been out SG's motto ever since
@TheBwing That's so sweet of your SG to say that and help that girl out!! 😊.
I really enjoyed it back then. In fact, we were three roommates who had a blast in City of Villains. We spent a good amount of time building our cozy secret base and flying around (which was fun).
The COH community is what really made COH special
So glad to see this game back from the dead. No game deserves perma death, especially not good ones.
Yes, the game was making money when it was canceled, not a superstar but grinding along there was new content in the pipeline and it had a hard core long term customer base, but I think the company wanted to move the staff to other projects, they especially felt there was another wow slayer waiting to be born, that MMO's were the golden goose of gaming. Almost out of no where with hardly any warning they pulled the plug, I know some games that announced sun setting and 1 or 2 years later with no new content the games are still around.
Ok that's just not true, and pretty stupid for you to say that
@@absolutelyfookinnobody2843What about what he said was incorrect. Most of it is fairly accurate. Some of it just being conjecture.
@@averybaumann IMO the company killed its ability to make money by stupidity. They screwed all the actual paying customers that had supported it for years when it went from monthly to 'free to play'. They took nearly everything from those players supergroup base control, alts and many others unless you payed to gain them back. They could have gone down the micro transaction route instead with offering certain costume sets or the ability to change how your powers look as pay options instead of taking core parts of the game away. This is why there is such animosity towards them and outright hate wouldn't be stretching it in many cases.
@@rigrmortis3393if you're paying monthly to play a game then you're a moron
At the time I recall spending hours creating new characters. I can remember making a bunch of Space Marines from various Chapters. I can't recall actually doing a single thing in the game or an area or boss, but seeing what you could do with the character creator was a legitimate blast.
What I also really liked about COH were the biographies you could write in your profile. Some of the ideas were very creative. It was often nice to read them.
The mmo review I wish people could do all the time, and almost no one has. YESSS
I remember when this game was live, people on the forums kept asking for a teabag emote. So, they got a teabag emote: they dip a teabag repeatedly into a comicly oversized cup of tea. That's the sense of humor we have going into this. In the early days this was a surprisingly well supported game when it came to associated media. There was a physical map of the train system in the standard edition (my dog got his teeth into it, RIP), and a small PVP comic book about the characters from that webcomic playing the game. For the first year there was a monthly comic book that ended the arc with a character yelling at the sky, "Level 15 scrapper LFG!" and had a small newspaper for Atlas Park covering the final pages of each issue. There was a prequel novel about Statesman. And for extra fun, Mercedes Lackey was a player. Her Secret Wars books might look surprisingly familiar to any City of Heroes players.
Crazy that this game is nearly 20 years old. I was 23 years old when I started playing this game and I'm 42 now. I still have the client installed on my PC, but I haven't logged in in about 6 months. I might hop back in today to hang out with some people in Atlas.
Lol wait is this me? Are you me? This is my same exact circumstance. Lol
Dude this fame got me into mmo's
I was thinking the same
The main community created server is the Homecoming version of the game, which recently obtained the *actual license* to develop and host the game. It's the closest to the original game's experience, only having a handful of custom content, and most of that content exists tastefully; it doesn't use copyrights from other media and isn't as "fan-ficky" as other servers seem to be. As it stands, with the license they're now legally allowed to modify the game and add new content, so more stuff is going to be added as time moves forward.
Even so, for the most part all the community created servers are valid and enjoyable to play on. But if you want a for sure sustainable experience where you know the game won't suddenly just be taken down one day, then Homecoming is the best bet thanks to that license.
I love your videos so much, it's so nice that you always come at a game from a positive and curious point of view, and you enjoy parts of everything you play, while being critical of issues when needed. It's such a sight for sore eyes in this online landscape of thriving on negativity. You're great!
Couldn't agree more!
@@brindle21 oH MY garsh, this used to be one of my very favorite games ever...I invested A LOT of time playing this on both sides COV and COH...wow. I am so going to enjoy this video!
This was the game I played almost religiously. Literally, you were playing a superhero in a living comic book with other players from around the globe. There was nothing like it then, and there's nothing like it now. City of Heroes was THE MMO - and still is.
I am having so much fun replaying CoH, it's nearly criminal!
Your editing is awesome and hilarious - Thanks so much for bringing this game back to light Manix! Awesome video man! This game just brings back so many memories.
Thunderspy has a RGB color picker and lets you customize each minion for your MM! It's impossible to go back from
and a bunch of additonal costume options. and new powersets. they're really doing more to build on the game than anywhere else.
It lets you customize each minion *period* as long as it is targetable/rename-able. Non humanoid pets will break their animations, though, which is understandable but unfortunate
@@swiggydiggyDoes thunder spy have any exclusive story content yet?
@@SoggySoup as far as I know there's stuff planned, but they're currently focusing on making the backend easier to work with so they can streamline future development - the game is kind of a patchy ad-hoc mess and cleaning that up will make EVERYTHING easier to handle.
There's also a question of the effort to replayability ratio - you dont want to spend two weeks putting together and testing a storyline or trial that people blow through in 20 minutes.
There's even the option to start as a villain with the expansion city of villains that ks allready implemented with their own zones
It’s amazing how good early MMO’s were. I could never play them today given they were such time sinks, but games like this, EverQuest, Shadowbane, UO, SWG, FFXI, WoW and so forth… I had such an amazing time.
I came here because I just learnt it is Charlie’s favorite game
It's still the only MMO going with the Debuffer playstyle, which I'll never forgive modern MMOs for omitting. Controller is still my favorite playstyle and no other MMO can replicate it, which sucks. CoH is still amazing and unique to play today as it was back in the day.
I know :) I add it to let those that don't know the game that its an MMO as opposed to a single player game.
DAoC has some pretty amazing debuff classes, and the private server scene is actually pretty good
@@fu102 it's still going? Loved that game back in the day. From bounties on some players put on by guilds to the mid and hib alliance. No MMO dose what they did with the RVRVR
@@rybald1973 Yep, retail is still around too actually. but most people play private servers
Everquest had the debuffer playstyle as well, and is probably the reason so few other MMOs have it. You had shamans, which combined buffing, debuffing, and healing, and Enchanters, who debuffed, buffed, and crowd controlled. The latter, due to that CC and downtime reduction due to a mana regen buff line, is why WoW, and subsequently wannabe WoWs, overreacted. Enchanters were part of what led to the term "the holy trinity", which was not the three roles of DPS, tank, and healer, but rather, three specific classes: Cleric (had a mana efficient heal), Fighter (biggest hp pool to take advantage of said heal), and Enchanter (very strong CC, plus the mana regen buff). There weren't really alternatives to what it offered. Just bards, who were much worse at it and CTS inducing. With how it made Enchanters so desired, pretty much every other MMO severely limited how many mobs any class could control to, well, usually one, maybe two.
CoH was definitely the exception to that, fully embracing the CC with controllers. One of my original characters was an Earth/Radiation controller, and between those two, well, lots of CC and debuffing. Of course, very low offense.
As a former "RUclips MMO funny man", I'm loving your stuff. Well done indeed.
Still play on Excelsior server. Thank you fans for remaking this. Brought back feelings, game with friends on Tuesdays and Fridays still, same people I met in person, even though we live in different states.
At this point, I don't think there's an MMO you *can't* make look fun and funny. Fantastic job as always, Mitch.
This is one of the very few MMOs I genuinely was able to role-play my character in. I even wrote a bunch of one-liners into some macros so semi-randomly my character would spout off things in /say when he used his powers. It was the first and only time I joined a "roleplay" guild in-game. It was fun running around with a bunch of villains, attempting to evade the heroes and enact our nefarious plans. The game has a lot of jank to it now, but the core of it is a superb experience.
I pretty much always stayed in character when playing this game. I was young and naively believed that all role playing games meant actual role play, haha. Those were the good days before I realized just how big a cesspool the internet was and is. But the good thing about CoH is that it wasn’t that hard to find other peeps role playing. True believers till the end of time!
Oh my god, I PLAY on Thunderspy server! The custom powersets and new costume stuff they made are great! Excellent vid, mitch, glad you enjoyed.
I thought this game was completely dead, thanks for the info. got to get back on villains
Captain Lawsuit has to get himself a sidekick, Petty Grievance Boy!
i remember back in the mid 2000s when i played this game, if you subscribed they'd send you a comic in the mail every month following a story featuring in-game NPCs. even back then as a teenager, you could tell how much love and care was put into it, and the day the servers were closed was a sad one for me having grown up with it
the fact that it's been brought back and consistently updated fills me with joy
It is nice to see a larger content creator talking about the City of Heroes private server, I really like the review.
You haven't seen true chaos until you've joined a team of 8 masterminds, each with six pet NPCs, trying to get through a modern office building all at the same time while fighting an absolute horde of villains. Bonus when some of your teammates are levitating and their butt is blocking your view every time you enter a new floor, while your pets are starting the fight without you. Good times!
I think the worst experience I ever had on live was being the only non MM on a full team in one of the Circle of Thorn lairs. I lost track of how many times I got stuck on torches that pets knocked me into! On the other hand, one of my favorite memories was being in Siren's Call as a healer with a full team of MMs, the only villains in there and killing 20-30 heroes the moment they tried to come for us, lol. Back then, you had to buff each character and pet individually instead of hitting all in range. I spent the entire time cycling through and giving everyone speed boost and increase density. I was exhausted by the time we were done!
8 thug masterminds, all with gang war. basically an EDM concert
I used to host runs of a specific Strike Force with full Mastermind teams for fun. There was this mid-level one where the final part needed you to go up a ramp around a platform in the middle of the ocean. The boss is on top, but you need to get your minions up, and the ramp is both very tight and surrounded by jetpacking enemies just close enough to aggrivate stray pets.
I called it the Mastermind boot camp. It was my second favorite thing to do.
8 Mastermind teams absolutely destroy everything in their path though. Like, yeah, it's chaos, but it doesn't matter because everything is going to be dead in the next 5 seconds anyway.
@@kellymurphy1098 MMs that have the support to cap their pets do the highest damage of all classes. Its just that you need a LOT to get those pets capped. A squad of all thugs MM with say, kinetics or something to buff their damage can output insane levels of damage since all MM thug pet auras benefit all other thug MM pets, so their def and acc is maxed out. Its just difficult to get to those levels, and its way easier to make a super scrapper/corruptor/blaster.
Oh man, this hit me right in my nostalgia. CoH was my first MMO. I found a great supergroup and had years of fun. When it shut down some of us tried other options, but nothing had the same community feel with no one interested in doing PvE. They only wanted to PvP and were not very open to newcomers.
I found GW2 was the best of the MMO’s I tried after city of heroes.
The best MMO I've ever played, simply because they decided no characters would be useless, and players shouldn't be gated off from playing together. The sidekick system alone made this an incredibly good MMO (Play alongside any higher level player at their level). Tons and tons of tools to make playing with other people a delight instead of just a huge irritant that's necessary for gear. Speaking of which, no gear, just limitless costume options, including customizing what your powers even LOOK like (Colors and animations and the look of your weapons if those are what your character's using). No useless characters, everyone can team up with very few restrictions (Heroes and villains can only team up in certain zones, for instance, but you can also switch sides if you want to, or make a rogue/vigilante character who can walk both worlds). So cool.
Thanks for the good memories, Virtue server.
in its day sidekicking was amazing. these days its kind of been adapted by anyone, but in the original everquest/ffxi days, if your friend played more than you, you just weren't going to play with them, it was big.
They made a LOT of good decisions. Some poor ones right after launch, but things got better after Statesman left to start his own MMO with hookers and blackjack. Like there's crafting and an auction house, but you don't have to ever interact with those if you don't want. If you *do* want you can make yourself insanely rich in a very short time playing the auction house. It's absolutely 100% optional, and you can absolutely complete the game without it, but if you're the sort of person who enjoys seeing just *how* busted you can make a character, it's amazing for that too.
And your gear doesn't change your appearance, so you're not forced to look a certain way if you don't want to.
The variable difficulty system means that the game scales to the most casual or most power obsessed minmaxer.
There's nothing forcing you to join a clan or guild, unlike a lot of MMOs where if you aren't good at socializing you're not going to get as far or have much fun.
It was the first MMO I ever played where, when fighting even-con enemies, basically at the intended level of difficulty, you could take on like 8 enemies at once. Every other MMO I'd played before that, you had to single-pull or die.
There were so many things about it that were revolutionary (Some of them unintended, but they ultimately ran with them), and so many decisions that made it just friendlier and more accessible than other MMOs. I still play it, even though the combat is clunky and old fashioned now.
And you could invite higher level players to be mentors. Their level was dropped down and some powers locked.
They were still way more powerful but didn’t just destroy everything.
Level 50’s were the group I asked to joined my task force after everyone in the level range. I figured they weren’t busy leveling. And often they’d need an achievement.
Until they shut it down, all those characters I'll never get back. Never touched ncsoft after that
This unlocked core memories, good ones. That familiar lighting zap sound...man. This was my first MMO, I remember playing for something like 6 months before WoW came out. Played both for a long while but I ended up struggling to quit CoH. I don't think there is any other game to this day that I had spent more time on. If I wasn't running pve content, there was a much more social aspect as you could literally hang out in areas for hours at a time talking and shooting the shit. While super dated now, it wile always have a very special place in my heart and jumping into it again last year was unbelievably nostalgic and I am glad I did.
The greatest loss from CoH shutdown was the player community itself. The player base was the least toxic of any I have ever been a part of. Even the hard core PvP players looking for the most optimal build would lend advice to someone who wanted to make a sub-optimal build because it fit their Roleplay character. Asking for help from a complete stranger would net you a full team of 8 players of whom you were the only one not max level and fully geared and all there to make sure you get the help you need in your quest to save the world.
The CoH community said “we’re heroes! We act like it.”
I must have sunk hundreds of hours into this game back in the day, great community of players. I still have the original install media and some small figures for the game that came with some of the later game media for City of villains. When they did the Beta, the last few minutes before they closed the servers in preperation for the new start had loads of people standing in Atlas Part letting off their power like fireworks. Still have some screen grabs of that. Good game for its time.
I love, love, love, love, *love* City of Heroes. I played it almost daily from launch to sunset and again since it returned a couple of years ago.
I love making characters and their backstories and appreciate that I can play for 5 hours or 5 minutes and still have some fun.
It's also one of only a handful of games that my wife played with me.
In many ways, it's just about the perfect game for me right now.
Ah, I loved playing this game. I played a villain named Evil Abe Lincoln, an undead mastermind who summoned the bodies of John Wilkes Booth and other notables from his past to do his bidding. Truly, the customization of your hero in this game is second to none.
Going Rogue really did open the doors to so much more possibilities before the game was abruptly shut down. Replaying it now, it is so much fun and the twists and turns Going Rogue could give you before getting too fantastical was fun as hell.
Your videos are such a joy to watch. You have a great sense of humor, and have everything very organized, while also feeling fun and enjoyable--like I'm playing the game. :)
Having played since the beginning, until they killed it, I literally had tears in my eyes when I launched it again for the first time in years.
I stood in Atlas Plaza until the servers turned off.
So many of my friends and I put HOURS into this game played the free servers a lot last year. Homecoming really kept me engaged.
I was in the same boat. Lol. So glad I get to play it again. ^_^
I was invited to play on the secret server before SCORE got it and turned it into Homecoming. And on the secret server, you were given all your old characters and SG Bases from your existing Live accounts. It took a week to find, but when I logged in and saw them again a few years after Sunset, I was all tears. Emotional Damage.
Where do I download it?
@@Hackurai_Gaming do a search for coh homecoming and it'll come up. 🙂
I played City of Villains back then for the pvp. They made city of Heroes/Villains basically work as a factions system for open world pvp. It was one of the best mmo pvp experiences I've had to date!
Bloody Bay and sirens call being the best PvP zones, loved them.
Hundreds and hundreds of hours spent playing this game on original release. Had probably the best community of any other game I've played
I remember seeing copies of City of Heroes/Villains in my local Walmart as a kid. Being a Marvel Comics-obsessed nerd it instantly caught my eye though my budget couldn't afford it. Makes me reminisce on old times when the superhero genre wasn't milked dry by cinema and activism and still had that feeling of being cool and occasionally deep.
Really glad to see that the fans have kept the servers alive, might give me an excuse to go and finally check it out.
As someone who followed CoH before release and played for years, the modern era of super hero games is way better than back in 2004. Back then nearly all super hero games were cash grab garbage. There were a few that broke the mold but we always had to approach a new game with the assumption it wasn't good. Like movie tie in games today; and back then as well. I guess movie games haven't really gotten out of the cash grab phase of IP translation....
Anyway, point is, tody a bad super hero game is the exception, not the expected.
@@Ryoku1 Well I'm sure there's a reason Insomiac's Spider-Man games aren't based on the movies.
And I'm sure that reason has _absolutely nothing_ to do with the MCU and Sony publishing the games...
If you join a server and the player base is sparse and you have to solo, make a scrapper or brute.
Other classes need support(blaster) or are support. Tanks just don’t hit hard enough(there are exceptions).
I think all the classes can do damage if built right but it’s more limiting.
Scrapper is just a well balanced soloer. I got scrapper brain playing one. I joined groups just so I could fight bigger groups.
I beat the tank to take the alpha(he was too slow) and might peel off from the groups to fight alone.
It was all about seeing what I was capable of. Could I beat it.
Defense debuffs were horrible for me.
I was there at the beginning. City of Heroes was my first MMO and will forever hold a place in my heart and not just the game, I was part of a fantastic Supergroup, The 47 Ties, with some brilliant people. Fool, it just wasn't the same without you.
The revitalised servers are great but it's just not the same so I'll leave you all with this...
Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls
Now you HAVE to do City of Villains.
Agreed! I'd like to see him make a character and run through all the red-side content.
:O there's a city of villains too?!
@@MissFirefly11 Yup. Back in the old days. As a villain you were broke out of a big max security prison by an evil organization. There are arcs to win yourself into their ranks. Stories for: sheer power, some for pure evil, others for greed, and more still to undermine thier power. Also you can simply chose violence that day put on the hurt on some idiots. Bank jobs to make, well bank.
Redside has far better story and roleplaying than Blueside imo.
I remember when my first character walked into Atlas. I panned up saw the statue and said, "I'm home."
I was in the CoH beta and played for quite a while before quitting it. My main, Farm-Aid, was in the group shot on the box. He was a very short red and white robotic cow that was a healer and used TK and teleportation. Those two powers were way OP in beta. They went through a lot of tweaking before the game was released.
In the begowning, TK would allow me to hold any boss so my team mate could beat the tar out of them. One of it's sub powers allowed me to let other people fly ,,,until I turned it off.
The whole City is inside of a force field bubble that we normally cannot cross. In the early days of beta, I could teleport outside the boundaries. I could also teleport anyone else out there even if they didn't want to go. If I left them there, the only way back in was to exit the game and restart. There were many other things that could be done and it's why betas are so important.
City of Heroes is back!
Homecoming and others have been running the game for the past 3.5 years and have now gotten an official licence from NCsoft to continue the game!
We all stood in Atlas Plaza, when the countdown began to shut the game down for good. It was such a sad moment. The private server is terrific, and a lot of old friends are back. Fun and great game.
There's a video of it playing with the Babylon 5 end music somewhere here on RUclips. Good to play if you get something stuck in your eye that you need to wash out. ;)
I was there. (Wouldn't have missed it.) It's insane that they would shut down a game that was still so popular at the time.
It wasn't at it's peak, but it still had quite a healthy player base.
City of heroes and eq2 where my favorite mmo's as a kid.
I always loved the social apect of making groups and role playing.
Don't miss out in a Costume Contest Mitch!
You forgot to mention the most insanely innovative idea that they came up with, which was a CUSTOM CONTENT CREATOR that plays could use to create their own missions. This allowed us to essentially take on the role of a Dungeon Master in D&D. The Roleplaying servers were in character all the time as well which was a different kind of fun.
That does sound really cool. Good shout 👍
@@MitchManix You could make NPCs/Monsters for your missions using the exact same character creator you use for players. You could decide what powers they had, it was honestly insanely awesome and unfortunately they didn't debut it until near the end of the game's run. If they had that ability near the beginning it would of made the game much stronger.
I still have screenshots galore of my city of villains character and miss her so much. Bank heists were a joy to do with my friends and getting my paragon power storyline done was happiness.
1833 screenshots here, plus a ton more "lore" shots where I took a screenshot of each of the story bits.
In 2012, I knew an MMORPG that:
1. Had over eight years worth of content and updates
2. Was the first, and still the most popular, MMORPG of its genre
3. Didn’t limit you to only playing one realm per server
4. Never went through a server merge
5. * Had 14 different classes from which to choose
6. * Gave you access to 192 characters slots right out of the box, with the option to quadruple that amount
7. * Had over 1200 different ability set combinations for each of those 768 potential character slots at character creation, with nearly 3 billion total different combinations available
8. Allowed each character to have three different builds, enabling even more customization of ability sets
9. Let you customize the visual effects of your abilities, completely independently from their effectiveness
10. Let you preview your abilities during character creation and costume modification
11. Didn’t affect your character’s abilities by simply wearing different clothes that didn’t match thematically
12. Decoupled your character’s appearance from its abilities, providing complete creative freedom during the character creation process
13. * Had literally trillions of costume combinations available right out of the box, with hundreds more costume pieces you could earn, unlock, craft, or purchase, making over 4.5 quindecillion (4.5 x 1048) total combinations per costume
14. * Allowed each character to have up to 10 different costumes/appearances that you could switch to at any time, even during combat
15. Allowed you to write publicly-viewable bios/backgrounds for your characters
16. Allowed you to create an actual evil character rather than one who was simply opposed to another in-game faction/alignment/race
17. * Allowed you to change your character’s alignment from “good” to “evil” and back again, or stop at multiple points in-between
18. * Gave you special abilities that were only available to your character’s current alignment
19. Didn’t base your character’s advancement on gear that could break, get lost, need repairing, or be stolen
20. Didn’t involve politics or endless rolls for loot distribution - all drops were 100% random for every member of your party and dropped instantly directly to your character, privately
21. * Had a cross-server auction house with complete anonymity between buyers and sellers, and opacity of selling and asking prices
22. * Allowed you to obtain any drop you wanted or needed through the market or through regular play within a reasonable amount of time
23. Allowed you to convert unwanted drops into something usable for your character
24. Allowed you to save up in-game rewards to be able to purchase specific drops without having to use the market system at all
25. Didn’t require membership in a guild to participate in any specific content
26. * Allowed you to build massive guild houses with medical, crafting, storage, and transportation facilities
27. * Allowed you to bring guests into your guild house to visit and look around
28. * Had 20 different methods of transiting between game zones, including across realms, resulting in some of the fastest play and travel times of any MMORPG
29. Didn’t force travel along explicitly-defined paths as a time sink for traveling between quests and their NPCs
30. Gave you the ability to call quest NPCs directly rather than having to return to them upon completion, or for obtaining your next quest
31. Gave you your own travel abilities instead of using super-expensive mounts - or offered one for purchase cheaply at level one if you didn’t want to take an ability
32. Was the first MMORPG to allow your character to be capable of fully unrestricted and untimed flight, without gliding or using mounts
33. Allowed your character to fall from any height without dying or swim in any water without drowning
34. Didn’t place unrealistic restrictions on your character’s movement around terrain in game zones - “You want to climb that hill over there that you’d be able to in real life? Sure, go ahead!”
35. Didn’t have XP loss or make you run back to your body when you died
36. Used a system of XP debt that was paid back after death, but still allowed for level progression
37. Left your characters with all their stuff when you logged back in - nothing decayed
38. Had over 30 different types of in-game locations (i.e., auction houses, hospitals, arenas, transportation hubs) where characters could earn temporary buffs simply by being logged out for a period of time
39. Granted temporary abilities based on being logged out in specific combinations of those locations over time
40. Didn’t require spawn camping for specific kills/objectives - quests were your own private instances for you and your party
41. Didn’t automatically force you to group with other players simply because of where you were or what you were doing
42. Didn’t require you to “gather ten of those plants to make a good soup” or “kill five of those creatures to protect my herd” - 99% of quests were combat-oriented “go punch somebody in the face”
43. Used actual opening and closing doors for quest instances, providing more realistic immersion in the game world
44. *Had a crafting system that anyone could use without grinding raids
45. Didn’t penalize your character’s advancement or participation in content for not using that crafting system
46. Always gave you entirely new abilities when you leveled up, rather than just more powerful versions of old ones
47. Scaled your abilities’ effectiveness as you leveled up, making them just as useful at max level as at level one
48. Allowed you to enhance specific characteristics of your abilities (i.e., damage, accuracy, endurance/mana cost, cooldown time, range, buff/debuff strength), either with or without using the crafting system
49. Provided multiple opportunities to re-specify your character’s abilities and enhancements, without spending any real money
50. Had complete transparency of your abilities’ stats and costs so you could see exactly what they did and what you wanted to enhance as you leveled up
* Continued Below *
* Continued from above *
51. Didn’t require your character’s build to be min/maxed to be effective, though you could do it to your heart’s desire if you chose to
52. *Had over 140 levels of content across three different realms that could be soloed at will by anyone willing to do so
53. Allowed free accounts to play characters up to the max level 50
54. Enabled players to find level-appropriate content with a single click, thus eliminating XP “dead zones”
55. *Gave players the option to travel freely to other realms to experience content on a non-PvP basis
56. Had PvP content but didn’t require you to participate in it to advance your character
57. Had compelling stories and quests to encourage players to enjoy the journey to the level cap - the game didn’t “Start at Level X”
58. Allowed you to “flashback” and re-play lower-level content that you might have missed, with full XP credit
59. Allowed you to customize that “flashback” system with various handicaps for a greater challenge
60. Didn’t have an ever-increasing level cap that invalidated or made obsolete lower level characters, content, and equipment
61. Allowed you to create 8-person parties for basic quests and multi-quest “dungeons,” or up to 48-person leagues for larger group content like trials and raids
62. Allowed you to group with anyone for most content, regardless of their level, and still earn XP credit
63. Allowed you to group with players of opposing alignments for cooperative content
64. Had an arena system with 15 customizable event types, from basic one-on-one duels to massive guild rumbles with up to 280 players
65. Didn’t require the “Holy Trinity” (Tank/Healer/DPS) for party composition - any combination of characters was viable for virtually all content
66. Used Buffing and Debuffing support characters as “force multipliers,” making your party much more powerful than you would have been without them
67. Had support classes with some of the strongest controls available in any MMORPG, allowing players to completely lock down even boss-level mobs
68. Had a Pet/Summoning class which could have buffs, debuffs, healing, and damage all rolled into one fully-controllable “Army of Seven”
69. Allowed you to customize quests to be easier for the solo player, or as difficult as being in a full party by yourself
70. Let you call fighting 10-on-1 a fair fight, where you were the 1
71. Had a power-to-level-difference ratio such that your character couldn’t still be defeated by a mob five levels below you
72. Automatically scaled mob groups and ranks based on party size so quests weren’t pointlessly easy or insanely hard
73. Had multiple tiers of consumable buffs/potions (obtainable as drops or purchased from NPCs or the market) that increased your health, endurance/mana, accuracy, damage output, damage resistance, defense, or protection from status effects, or rezzed your character from defeat
74. Also had some consumables that affected multiple attributes simultaneously, or applied party-wide buffs
75. Allowed you to combine unwanted consumables into a specific one you needed
76. Didn’t restrict consumable use to being in a resting or non-combat state
77. Didn’t restrict repeated consumable use to a predefined interval
78. Allowed stacking use of consumables (either the same one or different ones) that could turn your character into a nigh-indestructible damage-dealing god for a short time
79. Would auto-rez your character if you leveled up while defeated on the battlefield, while also applying all top-tier consumable buffs simultaneously
80. * Had a highly-customizable quest creator system that allowed any player to make their own quests of whatever difficulty they wanted
81. * Had tens of thousands of solo-friendly quests made by other players up and available to play
82. * Had an end-game system that could be used by solo players
83. Allowed you to pause multi-quest “dungeons” to finish later at your party’s convenience
84. * Had over 50 “dungeons,” trials, and raids, ranging from level 1 to 50, and beyond
85. Provided a queuing system for those “dungeons,” trials, and raids that could be accessed and teleported to from anywhere on the server
86. * Had nearly 1400 in-game achievements you could earn, the earliest of which pre-dated the Xbox Live Achievement system by over a year
87. Had a wide variety of rewards for earning some achievements, including permanent bonuses, temporary abilities, unique costume pieces, expanded storage capacity, or access to exclusive game content
88. * Had over 450 chat line commands that allowed you to do things such as interact with other players, change the UI, or activate powers
89. Allowed you to combine those chat line commands into powerful key-binds or one-click macros, providing an unparalleled system for customizing your game experience
90. * Had over 250 emotes your character could perform, including when switching costumes/appearance
91. Had a demo recording function that allowed you to record in-game activities, or edited to create your own off-line machinima productions
92. Allowed you to save/load costumes, preferences, and UI customizations for use on other characters
93. * Had global chat abilities that allowed you to talk to other players on other servers, regardless of the character names or realms on which they were playing
94. Allowed you to create your own and/or belong to up to 15 global chat channels
95. Had both local server and global friends lists, as well as a global ignore list for spammers or offensive players
96. Allowed you to take in-game notes and assign ratings on players that would be visible to you regardless of their current character
97. Had multiple levels of publicly hiding yourself from other players, allowing your gameplay to be as social or as private as you chose
98. Had developers who actually played the game, and who would occasionally log in as signature lore-based NPCs and roleplay them on the live servers
99. Would frequently have features added to the game that were specifically requested by players and implemented by the development team
100. Let you fight time-traveling alien Nazis with giant robots in Ancient Rome (yes, really)
101. Had one of the friendliest, most mature, and most helpful communities of any MMORPG yet to exist
Does it sound too good to be true for all these features to have been in a single game?
It's not. It was/is called “City of Heroes.”
* Feature originally required micro-transaction purchase and/or active subscription to fully access.
** All features listed here were included naturally with the game and did not require any third-party add-ons to access.
The main shards still have quite a lot more than the ones like thunderspy, so you know. I'm glad that you enjoyed the game and made such a fun overview. I have been playing this game since 2 months after its release in 2004, and have no desire to stop playing now. Many of the base items were unlocked before tspy existed, and I can happily drop that my base was used as a testing ground for some of them ;D Even if the game is showing a little age in some ways, it's still more satisfying to just drop in for 20 minutes and feel like you've actually done something - whether it's good or evil.
Great game, I remember having a friend (a tank luckily since I was melee dps) who looked like a female Skittle and had a catch phrase prior to fighting.. "Taste the Rainbow!" then she'd proceed by tearing everybody up lol Good times.
My friends played this when it was still online and I came in at the tail end but didn't get to play much before it was shut down. My only real memory of playing was a costume contest in the city that was interrupted by a Rikti invasion. My less than stellar computer provided a robust 1 fps with flashes of color and intermittent sound. I think I helped in the fight. I couldn't tell. But it was lots of fun while it lasted.
Often imitated, never duplicated. This was a one of a kind game/community/developers group that has yet to repeat itself. Nowadays, it's the dlc cash grab that takes priority over just having a fun game like this one was.
AWESOME! One of the best MMORPGs ever, and still is! 🥰
This game has 2 major draws: A legitimate superhero/villain world, and the seemingly infinite freedom for character design. You come up with a cool hero or villain idea, you can most likely make it.
For example there is a power set that's all about zombie pets. I combined it with the dark miasma power set of which I made some powers look like sand, then zombie and pharaoh costume pieces and what I got was an undead tomb king.
CoH/CoV was such an amazing game for its time.
Oh man this takes me back, I played this along with Runescape for so many years as a kid. Played this with the family though mostly, runescape was my personal mmo(still play it off and on with OldSchool Runescape). City of Villains was also fun.
Good times.
It's officially back, guys! NCSoft gave a license to the private servers! Woohoo!
I've still never max leveled a character in CoH, I'm sure I'll make it one day, but making alts is just so much fun in this game
It was the MMO I loved the most growing up, too bad I don't have the time or attention span to play MMOs anymore
I am stuck in the same boat. I have been playing on the private servers since 2019 and I still do not have one max level character due to making alts.
I played it on release and didn't make max for like 3 years :D it was a little easier in the early days because teaming up would create and xp tether. So my character would be parked in front of the tram station while my insomniac friend would run missions and street sweeps. So i'd level just standing there. She loved it because people would dance around me making a little party on the other computer screen. later they made that teather a distance thing, so I took up flight and would just /follow them all night like a balloon.
But maxing them out is like giving them a rebirth, with the enhancement sets.
@@ControlledChaosGaming I miss the marvel online too
@@midnightblue3285 there has yet to be a true Marvel mmo. There was a Marvel ARPG that was online, but that only let's you play heroes in the marvel universe and not create your own heroe.
Rikti representation: zero
Status: reprehensible
Retribution: inevitable
;)
The GUI is made for much lower resolution, but it's really an awesome thing. You can shape many of those windows, even bend them around corners! Everyone talks about the amazing character customization, but the GUI customization deserves a ton of praise, too.
I was not a day one player, but I started a few months after it opened and I was there the night it closed.
The game has always been about the players - I have many friends still out there online that I met here. So glad my friend introduced it to me because I enjoyed it for years.
This also makes me all nostalgic and will possibly check out a fan server I. The near future.
Thanks for the video!
CoH is still my top Superhero game and one of my Top MMOs. I miss the days of logging in and hanging out with the Net Radios that existed in the game. and running around with them in events. There was so much in that game I never saw. And never got to experience.
Always loved CoH, and I need to try it again after so long away
So glad I found this! I used to love City of Heroes and City of Villains, and didn't know there were community servers still going! Going to have see if I still fit into those spandex...
Its back officially could we get an awesome celebration comedy video sir?
Thunderspy has arguably the most advancements, Homecoming is the largest as far as population and has a lot of QOL features to make things easier/simpler, and Rebirth started as trying to be as close to the game at sunset while persuing advancements intended by, or inspired by, NCSoft SoCal's last developers.
Used to absolutely love this game back in the day
There is a glitch on the sidewalk in King's Row that will cause the pedestrians to loop on a small building. They never corrected it, they just put up a plaque describing how a supervillain caused the glitch.
😂 That’s amazing
2 (and a half) things made CoH my favorite RPG. 1) Costumes!! Everything was just available, it was simply down to you how you wanted to look, and it was GLORIOUS. 1.5) Costume contests! Like an Asmongold transmog contest, except it was open to everyone, and people ran them all the time, and with design options just open, you didn't have to find grind high level raid bosses to get your shoes. 2) The combat was just so perfectly satisfying. Player animations, particle effects, enemy responses. All in perfect unison. When I force blast an enemy, it feels like I just knocked him on his ass, not like I just triggered ability #2 for 16 damage and a status icon.
The costume contests reminds me of something people would do in pixie hollow called fashion contests. They could vary a bit but usually they had multiple rounds and themes that the judge would choose. It's cool that no matter the genre of game, if there's clothing you can mix and match there's a sub-community for that (like "fashion hunters" in monster hunter, for example). Sorry if my comment is a bit rambly
My understanding was that a large portion of the population came to City Of from Star Wars Galaxies due to the similarities between City Of and the Pre-CU/CU versions of SWG.
Nope,thats male cow manure. For people who cried for 6 months their afk-macro testground got scrapped and replaced with an actual game,CoH was too bright and cartoony
City of Heroes is still the stick by which I measure every single game. I feel like it's just that good.
'Ballbag' on your lair wall had me in stitches...
City of Heroes is still the best superhero MMO of all time. The fact that it lives on in City of Heroes Homecoming and I can return anytime I want warms my heart. I picked up a copy of City of Heroes from a Big Lots for$8 in 2008, the best 8 dollars I ever spent. I was there till the end of the shutdown. Was involved in the shell of the game called Paragon Chat and happily returned with the reveal of Homecoming. I've met so many great friends and had amazing moments but good and bad. I became a part of the Cape Radio on Virtue and its community which is still going to this day. Many of the players I've met in person consider family. Champions and DCUO while they have some advantage over COH will never top what the game could do overall. From the powersets to the character customization. It really is superhero experience.
one good thing is that if you miss content, you unlock the oroboros content, the time travelling add on from i think issue 12(i think), and you can replay a good portion of the stuff that you missed. also, this game was one of the first games with the idea of scaling your character up or down, so if you have a pimped out character and your friend started, you can either get (exemplared) having your level lowered to theirs, or sidekicking them, which scales them up. obviously since they wont have the powers or enhancements, sidekicks are a bit less helpful, but you level like a mofo, and if you have exp debt, the only death penalty in the game, it burns offf fast.
I'm so glad the game is back! What a gem!
I have such fond memories of this game. I played the hell out of it during its first year. Surpassing all levels and quests I found myself literally done with the game... and loving it. I started making videos for the forums and made my own quests for other players on the server. Most popular was "Find Foe" where I would give hints of where I was hiding in the city and when people found me I would give them prizes. Finally stopping and selling the Foe Hammer account for almost $1K. Thanks for all the great memories CoH!
Hopefully this vid gets more people to come to thunderspy
Homecoming is now an official server, no better time to get back in the game.
"A stolen child's chemistry set" so was the child stolen or the chemistry set?
Knowing Lawsuit most likely both..
Hahaha😂
I've played dozens upon dozens of mmo's some I play for awhile and never play again, others like wow I leave and come back to for a time in new expansions. but COH is the one I always come back to constantly dropping in to do a task force or level a new toon.
I was devastated when the game shut down but was so over the moon when it came back playing on the homecoming server.
to this day its one of my fav games with nothing but positive memories of it.
not to mention that the playerbase and community is much nicer than most other mmo's.
Had a ton of fun with that game when it launched and for a few months following. It died fast for me and WoW and EQ2 were right around the corner.
It’d be fun to see it again though.
I just discovered this series. So happy I did. You are truly funny. While not an overly nostalgic person, I do enjoy the occasional look back at games from the past. COH was a game that I got into while living in a bachelor pad with 2 other guys and a girl. We all had our own PC's set up in our respective rooms, and even had a 5th for my brother who would come over, almost every day. We used to game from the minute we got home from work until we passed out. Thanks for this comical trip down memory lane.
also this runs super awesome on the steam deck!
I as there when it launched and was there in Atlas Park when it went dark. Best MMO I ever played. It was about your character and their powers - not the junk you collect.
I'm just go to say it City of Heroes Online is the best MMO SuperHero Game Ever
for a second you had me look up if the official servers got re-open, but nope.
the only ones still around are the community driven private servers.
funny how everyone objects to the term "private server" when it literally just means "not the retail business version"
Well duh, and why worry if it's official or not?
Mayn, I loved City of Villains, felt like there was no one else playing - later learnt there was more people on the Heroes side back in the day (it was 2007 at the time)
Cool to see some fans brought it back to life, seeing alot of MMOs being rekindled lately
yeah made pvping really fun. especially the last zone, where the environment changed depending on who had control of the nodes. i remember having a mines and my ninja dark mastermind out and about and set up a trap with a lot of mines and me standing out in the open and my minions off hiding. one of the top players on hero side was an invis poison scrapper. never saw him but the mines did and boom... he messaged me great trap it will only work once.... he then hunted me if i was on. nice game of cat and mouse we had.
If memory serves, those saved NPCs would run up and thank you with a text bubble above their heads. Now... they slide up, pause, and slide off.
Captain Lawsuit is the hero only a small town might reluctantly work with..