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City of Heroes (CoH) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing computer game based on the superhero comic book genre, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCSoft. The game was launched in North America on April 28, 2004 and in France, Germany, and the UK (by NCSoft Europe) on 4 February 2005 with Scandinavia, Italy, Spain, and Benelux to follow. A Korean open beta of City of Heroes, entitled City of Hero, was launched on January 18, 2006. On October 31, 2005 the game's first sequel, City of Villains, was launched, allowing users to play as supervillains. Seven free major updates (Issues) for City of Heroes have released since its launch, with more on the way for both City of Heroes and City of Villains. A retail expansion which will work with both games is planned for 2007.

In the game, players create superhero player characters who can team up with others to fight various villains in Paragon City and its surrounding areas. Heroes must fight members of various gangs and organizations and complete quests given to them by Non-player characters (NPCs) in order to accumulate experience points (or "XP") and increase their level.

Overview

Players begin by using the game's extensive character creation system to select an archetype and Power Sets, design a unique costume, and write a back story for their hero.

They start their adventure in a tutorial zone that teaches them how to play the game. It is here they learn about the level system and how to determine which enemies to attack. Players may choose to skip this tutorial if they like and head straight to one of two starting areas (Atlas Park and Galaxy City).

A hero's chance to hit an enemy is determined by the difference between his level and the enemy's threat level. Low level heroes always have trouble successfully damaging high level villains. As a hero's security level increases by doing missions and defeating foes, they gain benefits such as more health, more powers, more slots for holding temporary power-ups called Inspirations, and more enhancement slots for powers. Enhancements are power-ups which players can socket onto powers to improve them permanently.

Paragon City, the city in which the game takes place, is divided into different zones by giant energy walls known as "War Walls". In story terms, the walls are used to prevent large scale attacks upon the city and to prevent high level enemies from entering low level areas. In player terms, this means to go to a different area you have to either use the monorail operated by the Paragon Transit Authority or the roads that are guarded by the Police. Players can also travel to hazard or trial zones and the city's sewer system, which teem with large groups of enemies.

Heroes initially move around the zones by slowly jogging, sprinting or if they bought the deluxe edition of the game, sliding by using the Prestige Power Slide power. As heroes grow in level and accumulate more powers, they gain the ability to choose one of four traveling powers: teleportation, super speed, super jumping, and flight, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. While each archetype has its own unique set of powers and abilities, all players have access to the powers from the ten Power Pools at level six. The Power Pools contain the aforementioned travel powers, as well as other generic, non-class specific powers such as Grant Invisibility, Provoke, Recall Friend, and Boxing.

There are a variety of different villain organizations and gangs in City of Heroes, each with unique attributes. Groups of villains, all from the same gang and usually all with similar security levels, roam around areas of Paragon City. Certain gangs are more likely to appear in different zones. For instance, Circle of Thorns (a magic using villain group) members can always be found in the hazard zone of Perez Park.

Missions — the City of Heroes equivalent of the quests typically found in other MMORPGs — are given by NPC contacts and consist of either a "hunt" mission, where heroes are given the task of arresting a certain number of villains from one of the villain groups, or a private "instanced" mission map created solely for the player's team which is inhabited by a particular gang. When heroes reach approximately level 20, they begin to receive outdoor instanced missions set in fenced-off areas as well. As heroes venture further into the mission zone, they usually have to confront a Boss villain, rescue hostages, or find a particular clue. Upon completion, heroes will be rewarded with an XP bonus, influence and occasionally a badge. Some missions may be completed at the hero's leisure, but others will have a set time limit which begins counting down as soon as the mission is accepted from the contact. It is usually possible to tell, by reading its description, whether a mission is timed before accepting it.

Heroes can venture into mission maps together if they form a team and choose a particular mission as the team's objective. The difficulty level and number of the villains is adjusted according to the strength and number of the heroes grouped together. Since the release of the Issue 3 content update 'A Council of War', the player is now able to set the difficulty of the missions by visiting a special NPC, the Hero Corps Field Analyst.

Amid the missions, story arcs will emerge. These are a series of missions which form a larger story, often giving the player new insights into the history and mythos of Paragon City. Sometimes, these story arcs affect the player hero directly as well. Once a story arc is completed, the hero is rewarded with experience points, enhancements and for some story arcs, a badge.

For players who can devote a block of several hours to the game, two other types of missions with deeper storylines are available—the Task Force and the Trial. Task Forces always require a team, and consist of a series of linked missions that must be run to completion by that same team before its members may take on any additional missions. Once a Task Force has been started additional players will not be able to join the team. If a Task Force member voluntarily leaves the team while the Task Force is in progress, he is unable to rejoin it. In the case somebody is involuntarily disconnected, then he will return to the Task Force when connected. Trials are similar to Task Forces but are usually shorter and more challenging; some share the team restrictions of a Task Force but others are taken as individual missions, though teams are still practically required. Upon completion, both Task Forces and Trials usually (but not always) provide all participants with a badge as well as a reward—either a Single-Origin or a special enhancement. Several specially-designated Task Forces reward players with an opportunity to "respecify" their characters by choosing a different complement of superpowers or reassigning enhancements.

Teamwork is a large part of City of Heroes. Players can form supergroups (similar to other MMORPGs' guilds) reminiscent of classic comic book groups such as the X-Men or Justice League of America. Supergroups pick a name, a motto, an emblem and two colors. Heroes can then enter 'Supergroup Mode' and change the colors and emblem of their normal avatar to those of their supergroup. Players can also form teams with other players to go on missions and fight villains together.

Character creation

Creating a character consists of several steps. First the player selects an origin, an archetype and a primary and secondary power set. Next the actual avatar with its costume is created. And finally the player chooses a name and can optionally write a background story to add some flavor to the character.

Enhancements and inspirations

Enhancements and inspirations fill the roles of equipment and items in City Of Heroes, with enhancements being permanent and inspirations being temporary. Usually, heroes earn random enhancements and inspirations by defeating enemies, but they can also be bought at stores. Special enhancements can also can be earned by completing missions, trials and task forces.

Enhancements

At certain levels a character is given new enhancement slots to attach to a power. Every power comes with one slot, and can have up to six slots attached to it. Each slot can hold exactly one enhancement. Once an enhancement is put in, it can only be replaced by a different enhancement, or combined with another enhancement.

All enhancements have the following characteristics:

  • Stat affected is labeled on the enhancement, and shows what stat of a power it will boost. This can either increase or decrease the affected stat. For example, the damage enhancements increase damage, but the endurance cost enhancements decrease the endurance cost.
  • Origin type determines which origins can use a specific enhancement and how large its boost is:
    • Training enhancements can be used by any origin and give a small boost.
    • Dual Origin (DO) enhancements can be used by only two origins, and give double the boost of a Training enhancement.
    • Single Origin (SO) enhancements can be used by only one origin, and give four times the boost of a Training enhancement.
    • Hamidon, Crystal Titan, and Hydra enhancements can be used by any origin and give boosts in multiple different categories (for example, it might do both damage and accuracy). Hydra and Crystal Titan enhancements give three times the boost of a Training enhancement to each area, while Hamidon enhancements give boosts equivalent to Single Origins. Villains now have Synthetic Hamidon enhancements that have similar effects to heroes' Hamidon enhancements.
  • Level is a number on the enhancement that determines what security level a character can be to use it. The difference of the level of the enhancement and the character must be within 3. For example, a level 6 character can use enhancements level 3 through 9. Hamidon enhancements range from 46 to 50 only.

Combining enhancements
To combine two enhancements they must have the same origin type and affected stat and one must be slotted. The further apart the levels of the two enhancements are, the greater is the chance that the combination fails, thus losing the lower leveled enhancement. Two enhancements with the same level can always be combined without failing.

The combination will result in a single enhancement one level higher than the highest leveled enhancement used. An enhancement can only be combined twice with lower leveled enhancement, after that it can only be combined with a higher leveled enhancement.

Enhancement Diversification
Since the Issue 6 free expansion patch and release of City of Villains, CoH and CoV have implemented a system of diminishing returns where single-origin enhancements show diminishing returns when slotting multiple DO or SO enhancements of the same effect type; slight diminishing returns occur after from the boost given for more than four DO (two SO) enhancements, with the fifth and sixth DO (or third SO) enhancement having its boost reduced by about 15%, and severe diminishing returns if more than three SO enhancements are used (with each additional SO enhancement after the third having its boost reduced by about 85%). To compensate, Cryptic Studios boosted the base pre-enhancement effectiveness of many powers, but response by players was mixed, with some charging that it radically changed the way the game had to be played.

This is entirely different from the effects of Internet latency limiting the effects of boosts to the speeds of travelling powers such as 'Super Speed' to a maximum of approximately 80 mph, which have always been in game.

Inspirations

Inspirations are quick powerups that many enemies drop randomly. Inspirations can be used quickly and it is common to store some for more difficult battles. They can also be traded between player characters and bought from non-player characters. Characters gain the ability to hold more inspirations as they gain in level. Most non-instant inspiration effects last for 60 seconds.

There are eight standard inspiration types, each with three levels of power (referred to as small/medium/large). The basic inspirations are generally referred to by the color of their interface icons: blue (endurance restoration), green (healing), red (damage boost), yellow (accuracy boost), purple (defense boost), and orange (damage resistance boost). The remaining two, since their colors are more unusual, are typically referenced by the name of the weakest versions, and are: Break Free, which cancels most status effects on a hero and prevents further ones from occurring (which has a purple color, but lighter than the magenta shade of defense boosts); and Awaken, which resurrects a defeated hero (which has a cyan color). The levels of power are as follows:

The more powerful versions are less common, usually obtained from defeating higher-levelled lieutenants and bosses. Archvillains are guaranteed to grant a random 'large' inspiration when defeated. There is also a special inspiration, called Ambrosia, used only for the Eden zone trial. Additionally, special "gift" inspirations with a random ability (including temporary immunity from experience debt) have also been available upon special occasions, such as the 2005 Winter Event.

Influence

Influence is the currency within City of Heroes. For completing missions and defeating opponents heroes not only gain experience points, but also receive influence points. Especially after a hero defeats a group of villains threatening a civilian on the streets of Paragon City, that civilian will run up to the hero and thank him by giving additional influence. Influence can be spent to buy enhancements and inspirations, change the costume and adjust the difficulty level of missions.

Prestige and Salvage

Prestige is a measure of a player's Super Group's reputation, and is another form of currency within City of Heroes specifically for Super Groups. The more Prestige earned, the more likely the Super Group is known and recognized by others. Prestige is used to buy a Super Group’s Base, and outfit it accordingly.

Like Influence, Prestige is earned by defeating enemies, but it can only be earned by a player in Super Group mode. All players in a Super Group (whether Security Level 1 or 50) earn Prestige, and it goes directly to the Super Group's total - it is not something a player keeps. If the player leaves the Super Group, the Prestige stays with the Super Group. Similarly, if a Super Group disbands, all the earned Prestige is lost. At lower levels, players in Super Group mode earn both Influence and Prestige unrestricted. At higher levels, starting at level 25, characters in Super Group mode earn less and less Influence (and conversely more and more Prestige) until by level 34 they are only earning Prestige if in Super Group mode.

Salvage is a reward for Super Groups, earned by defeating powerful enemies (usually lieutenants and bosses). Salvage, like Prestige, is earned when a player is in Super Group mode, but it can also be earned as a mission reward outside of a Super Group. Salvage is solely used to build special Base items. Players unlock "recipes" for new and improved Base items by completing certain missions or earning Super Group badges. Salvage is used to fulfill the requirements of these recipes. To build items, players need to add a Workshop room to their Base, and ensure they have one or more appropriate worktables. The Workshop allows players to turn Salvage into usable components. Different types of Salvage are found by defeating different types of enemies. Salvage can be traded between players. Players have a large inventory for Salvage, and are able to hold 20 pieces of each item, or 99 pieces of each component.

Experience Debt

Debt is acquired when a hero is defeated in battle. The amount of debt depends on the level of the hero, with higher level characters gaining more debt. Debt is worked off over time as the hero continues in missions, with half of the XP gained going to "pay" the debt off (the other half of the XP is awarded to the player as normal). Although debt is a frustration for most players, it can be worked off and there is no other temporary "punishment" for dying like there can be with other multiplayer online games. For higher level players, debt can be worked off faster by exemplaring, or joining with other lower level players for missions. Players who are in exemplar mode have their experience level temporarily lowered to match that of his or her teammates, with some higher level powers frozen, and 100% of XP gained goes to lower the debt. Players can also exemplar to make extra influence, as there is no XP gain when debt is cleared.

New characters are automatically immune to debt until they reach level 10. The debt system is also in place in City of Villains. In PvP zones, the game tracks the proportion of damage dealt by NPCs and players, and assigns debt accordingly. There are currently some bugs with this tracking, including but not limited to counting damage incurred from falling or self-damaging powers as NPC damage.

Enemies

In City of Heroes there are several NPC groups that players fight as part of "random" encounters. Many enemies are found on the streets of Paragon City, whereas others are found in specific instances or areas. There are also Giant Monsters and similar events that take place in parts of the city that are even rarer, such as Lusca the Giant Octopus in the waters of the Independence Port zone or the Ghost Ship that spawns ghostly enemies in the Talos Island zone.

Badges, plaques, and accolades

In order to give the game more content, Cryptic introduced a system of collectible badges in its second content update to the game. These badges are obtained by visiting particular areas, achieving a certain security level, completing certain missions or sets of missions, defeating a quantity of specific types of foe, or special in-game achievements like taking a certain amount of damage or earning a certain amount of Influence. These badges may be viewed by other players in the player information dialogue, and may also be worn to add the name of the badge as a title under a hero's publicly-displayed name. Thus, if a player finds the name of a badge to be well-suited to his character, or finds some in-game accomplishment especially significant, he can choose to title his character accordingly with that badge.

Also added were a number of historical plaques, placed throughout Paragon City. Each plaque relates some historical fact about Paragon City, its heroes', or the world's back story, and they are grouped into sets based on their subject matter. Heroes can obtain certain badges by visiting and reading each plaque in a set, which are often scattered across two or more zones within the city. Plaques do not have to be read in any particular order.

When a hero has collected specific groups of badges, an "Accolade"—a badge that includes additional special powers for the hero, such as a maximum health or endurance boost, or an attack—is granted.

As the game has expanded more badges have been added, as well as special "event" badges, the first was for Halloween of 2004, but more such events happen a couple times a year. Badges have become, for some players, a greatly needed push for more to do in the game than just fight.

A variety of websites list the various badges available. However, these lists are not always accurate or complete as they sometimes include badges that are not real or that were programmed into the game but are not or will not be implemented.

Geography

Paragon City is a fictitious city located in Rhode Island. This was revealed to the players by Lead Developer Jack "Statesman" Emmert very early on in the City of Heroes beta test period.

Updates & History

The developer continually expands City of Heroes with free downloadable patches/updates. City of Villains was released as both an expansion to City of Heroes and as a standalone game, a concept which has been dubbed "Expanshalone".

Criticism

A major criticism of many players is that City of Heroes does not release or reveal full numerical values for the powers and abilities of players. According to an interview with Jack Emmert, this was, in part, due to his belief that too many numbers could be intimidating to casual players. Due to this, there is concern that with any new release of the game that powers may be adjusted without the knowledge of the players, in what is referred to as a "stealth nerf" - that is, the reduction of players' abilities without the players' immediate knowledge. The players, when this occurs, often find the changes quickly through testing, and report this to the development staff. On several occasions this has resulted in retractions of the changes by the CoH staff, or simply admission after the fact of the changes. Other games, such as World of Warcraft, disclose virtually all these numbers, and players often press the CoH development staff for the release of this information. Jack Emmert has commented, "Maybe I outthought myself!", in reference to WoW's popularity, even releasing these numbers. However, with the Issue 7 release, complete numbers for many (but not all) powers, mostly from City of Villains power sets, were released in a free add-on to the previously released strategy guide binder for City of Heroes/Villains.

It should be noted that many players are entirely unconcerned with this lack of numerical data.

Other criticisms are more subjective. Some players say the game lacks an immersive feel and doesn't express fully the superhero comic book genre on which the game is based. Other players have also noted that the game does not incorporate the experience suggested in the in-game text written for mission descriptions and historical plaques, or the fictional world's history found on the game's website.

A more recent criticism is against a change in the game's mechanics, called Enhancement Diversification (ED). The changes were originally posted on the City of Villains beta forums, however some testers who were angered by the changes attempted to leak the information on to the City of Heroes forums despite their Non-Disclosure Agreements.

Eventually the developers posted the information on the CoH forums. They stated that ED had been in the works since March 2005, and that all changes to the game had been made with it in mind. The lead developer stated that it wasn't mentioned before because he didn't want to release the info because they hadn’t worked out the exact system and didn't want to release false information. This is understandable considering that Statesman had mentioned a special "Super Secret Out of Combat Skill System" in the past that has never materialized due to problems developing the system. Statesman, in a response to a private message sent to him by a forum-goer regarding "SSOCSS" stated that this system is currently shelved for the time being.

Some players have pointed out that City of Heroes has thus far been able to escape penalties for its shortcomings because, as of now, they have the monopoly on super hero MMORPGs, although that may change as other contenders release similar games. Those who feel they have been slighted by changes in the game's mechanics claim they will jump ship at the first alternative game to be released. Competitors within the popular comic book industry have already announced licensed projects, but consumer confidence as to the anticipated quality of these projects is varied, namely because the companies producing them, Sony Online Entertainment (who is making a DC Comics MMO) and Microsoft (who is making a Marvel Comics MMO ) have some negative reputations for handling MMOs.

Praise

Computer Gaming World hailed the game saying "City of Heroes blows a superpowered gust of fresh air into an increasingly stale sword-and-sorcery MMO world" in August of 2004. PC Gamer, Game Informer, GameSpy and several other industry magazines critically acclaimed City of Heroes for its foray into the superhero genre and gave the game top or near top scores across the board.

GameSpy went on to say that City of Heroes has the most flexible character creator to date of any MMORPG and has consistently given the update issues high marks. The launch of City of Heroes was widely reported as one of the most successful MMO launches in the history of the industry.

It also is often praised for having a development team that actually communicates with its playerbase. The development team will admit mistakes and also implement player suggestions. The communication level between players and developers is such that players can actually send private messages to the developer accounts, get their suggestion/question/complaint read, and possibly even responded to.

Also, the game is praised because a subscriber's characters are not deleted, even if the subscription has been cancelled for an extended period of time. Most MMORPGs delete a character after a period of inactivity (usually 3 months after an account is cancelled). For a relatively short period, inactive accounts ran the risk of having the names of their characters taken by new players in the character creator. The lack of names being taken from inactive characters eventually led to this policy being revoked. While this policy was active, the character itself was left untouched and a player who lost his charcter's name was given the option to choose a new one.

Awards

Servers

City of Heroes and City of Villains employ several servers that are based in different geographic zones (some are based on the East Coast of the United States, others are based on the West Coast). The servers are divided between the American and European markets, with separate servers specifically for German and French players. When the Korean City of Hero comes out of beta testing, they will more than likely have their own set of servers as well.

Hacking Incident

On 2005-12-20, the City of Heroes servers were hacked, by an undisclosed method. According to NCSoft representative CuppaJo, "Customer data and its security was not compromised in any way during the incident that occurred." However, this is not verifiable. Further such hacking events occurred in the days following, and again several months later, but these were never publicly addressed or acknowledged by the either Cryptic Studios or NCSoft.[http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=info&Number=4361331 cityofheroes.com: official incident response,[http://www.digg.com/security/City_of_Heroes_Hacked digg.com: City of Heroes Hacked,[http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/city-of-heroes/city-of-heroes-hacked-144399.php kotaku.com: City of Heroes Hacked,[http://www.jucaushii.ro/gamespace_316_rnews_4373_City_of_Heroes_Hacked.html jucaushii.ro: City of Heroes Hacked,[http://www.addict3d.org/index.php?page=viewarticle&type=news&ID=14982&title=City%20of%20Heroes%20Hacked addict3d.org: City of Heroes Hacked

Subscription

As in most other MMORPGs, players must pay the publisher (NCSoft) a monthly fee to continue playing City of Heroes. Portions of the subscription costs go to supporting a full-time "live" team, which develops additional content for the game; other portions support the significant server maintenance and bandwidth costs. coh.ogaming.com has an article on why MMORPGs have recurring fees *. In addition to paying subscription fees via credit card, another option is pre-paid cards that are available at video game retailers. Once purchased, the player inputs a code from the card and their account is updated to allow as many months of play as the card is good for.

As of March 2006 City of Heroes has around 182,858 subscribers worldwide, according to financial reports released by NCSoft in May 2006. * ncsoft.com: financial report

Payment options

US dollars
  • 1 month for $14.99
  • 3 months for $41.85 ($13.95 per month)
  • 6 months for $77.70 ($12.95 per month)
  • 12 months for $143.40 ($11.95 per month)

Beginning April 5, 2006, NCsoft began adding sales tax to the above subscription charges for customers living in the states of California, Texas, Arizona, and Minnesota, due to having a legal business presence in those states. *

Euros
  • 1 month for €12.99
  • 3 months for €34.99 (€11.66 per month)
  • 6 month for €64.99 (€10.83 per month)

British pounds
  • 1 month for £8.99
  • 3 months for £23.99 (£7.99 per month)
  • 6 months for £44.99 (£7.49 per month)

Beyond the computer

The comic book

The Novels

The first City of Heroes novel, The Web of Arachnos, by Robert Weinberg, was published by CDS Books (an imprint of the Perseus Publishing Group) in October 2005. The novel chronicles the backstories of Statesman and Lord Recluse, the central iconic characters in the City of Heroes and City of Villains franchises. A second novel, The Freedom Phalanx, written by Robin Laws, is due for release in May 2006 and will detail the reformation of the hero team the Freedom Phalanx in the 1980s; the story centers on the fledgling heroes Positron and Synapse, but also includes Manticore, Sister Psyche, and Statesman. The book's villains include Lord Recluse, Doctor Null, Shadow Queen, and Revenant. Artist George Pérez provides the covers for the first two novels. A third novel, The Rikti War, was announced by CDS at the time the first novel was published, with an August 2006 scheduled release date. Authors Paul S. Kemp and Shane Hensley have been attached to the project at various times. The book will reportedly cover the epic transdimensional war between Earth and the Rikti homeworld, however a post on the official message boards containing a message supposedly from Kemp states that the "novel is not to be and must leave it at that" *.

Collectible card game

Role-playing game

Suit by Marvel

In November 2004, Marvel Comics filed a lawsuit against City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios and publisher NCSoft alleging that the game not only allows, but actively promotes, the creation of characters whose copyrights and trademarks are owned by Marvel, and that Cryptic has intentionally failed to police these infringing characters. The suit seeks unspecified damages and an injunction to force the companies to stop making use of its characters.

Some have noted that Cryptic already includes in its end-user license agreement (EULA) language forbidding the creation of copyrighted characters and has been known to delete or rename such characters. Others have pointed out that the EULA also includes a clause which gives ownership of created characters to Cryptic.

Cryptic has replied that the lawsuit is frivolous. Many intellectual property analysts agree, but others have noted that trademark law is structured such that if Marvel believes their properties are being infringed upon, they have little choice but to file a lawsuit, regardless of its outcome. At least one has noted similarities to Fonovisa, Inc. v. Cherry Auction, Inc., a case in which a company that ran a flea market was successfully sued over intellectual property infringement because a vendor had been selling bootlegged records at that flea market. Although Cherry Auction had not been directly selling the infringing items, the court found that it was vicariously or contributorally liable for the infringement.

As of December 14, 2005 all claims have been settled. Although the settlement has not been disclosed no changes will be made to the City of Heroes client. *

Although details of the settlement are scarce, it's believed that Marvel's case was floundering because when they launched the suit, the examples of copyrighted characters being replicated by the games character creator cited by Marvel were found to have been made by Marvel's own employees, this led the judge to dismiss these specific examples and ordered that Marvel can never use similar evidence again. Also, it's believed that Marvel's reputation of being trigger-happy with lawsuits worked against them.

It should be noted that Time-Warner, owner of DC Comics see the CoH franchise as something which could promote the sales of its comics and doesn't consider the game to be a threat of any kind.

Communities

Many on-line communities exist for the discussion of City of Heroes. Some prominent ones include:

Official forums

The official Internet forum for City of Heroes is the web board found at boards.cityofheroes.com. This web board is run by Cryptic and NCSoft themselves, and frequented by various developers and customer service representatives (referred to by site regulars as "red names" because their usernames are highlighted in red on their forum posts) as well as players. There are forums devoted to announcements, general issues, player guides, questions, suggestions, each archetype, each of the eleven game servers, City of Villains, and other topics.

The value of this forum to the average player is a matter of debate. Some find the presence of the developers, and their willingness to interact with and answer questions from players, to be laudable—especially in comparison to other MMORPGs, which tend not to have this type of developer availability. Furthermore, the forum automatically indexes all "red name" posts to the forum under the "Dev Digest" for easy perusal. However, there is also a very vocal faction of disgruntled gamers that produce flamewars and complaints which can cause would-be participants to stay away. The forum's regulars estimate that probably only about 10% of the game's player base actually participates in these boards.

The official web board is moderated to remove extreme antisocial behavior, discussion of client modification (such as map patches, skin modifications, or disabling certain sounds) prohibited by the EULA, and discussion of moderator decisions.

The European version of City of Heroes has its own separate official web board.

Fan Sites

Numerous City of Heroes fan sites exist with a wide variety of formats and purposes, including roleplaying sites and informational sites. NCsoft maintains a City of Heroes fan site portal on its official site. Any person may create a fan site and submit it to NCsoft for publication on the portal, pending review to ensure that the site meets with the guidelines for a fan site submission. Fan sites listed on the portal are periodically reviewed by NCsoft to ensure that they are up and maintained.

LiveJournal communities

Over sixty communities on the LiveJournal weblog site list City of Heroes as one of their interests. Most of these are communities devoted to specific supergroups or servers.

The LiveJournal community for general discussion of City of Heroes-related issues is city_of_heroes. A variety of matters are discussed here in an informal setting, including discussions prohibited on the official forum. Flamewars seldom occur.

alt.games.coh

alt.games.coh is a low-traffic USENET newsgroup where City of Heroes is discussed. As with any USENET group, flamewars can and do occur, sometimes lasting for days, but they are relatively seldom. As an alt.* hierarchy group, alt.games.coh may not be available from some news servers.

External links

References

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games | Superhero computer and video games | 2004 computer and video games | Windows games | City of Heroes

City of Heroes | City of Heroes | City of Heroes | City of Heroes | 英雄之城

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "City of Heroes".

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