City of Heroes Free-Play 06/07 - 06/11

[Heretic Machine]

In light of the recent release (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13551) of Issue #07, City of Heroes/City of Villains accounts which are defunct have now been reactivated free of charge to give former players a chance to check out the new additions. Free play ends this Sunday (06/11/06), so get it while the getttin' is good!

[bapenguin]

Hmmm...I might have to reinstall and check it out. I had a lot of fun with this game for a few months back in the day. :) Is the EvAv supergroup still around?

[Doctor Setebos]

Free play ends this Sunday (06/07/06), so get it while the getttin' is good!Wait, so does it end Sunday, or 6/7, cause 6/7 is today. Sunday would be 6/11. :D

[Heretic Machine]

Ya, caught that just before you posted DoctorSetebos :p

EDIT: BTW, if anyone else goes back, can you inform me if your download speeds are horribly slow? Because currently, mine is downloading at <1kb/s.

[Vandabo]

Hmm, if this wasn't the middle of Dead week I might jump on this. As it stands now, Oblivion is already lowering my GPA, and it doesn't have that much lower to go.

[Heretic Machine]

Hmm, if this wasn't the middle of Dead week I might jump on this. As it stands now, Oblivion is already lowering my GPA, and it doesn't have that much lower to go.

Dead week...?! o.o

Dude, I've been out of school for over a month!

[n3rdXcore]

OH HELL YES




that is all. i've been thinking about this game for a while now, wanting to check it out again, so i know what i'll be doin this week ;)

[Savok]

Just be aware there are memory troubles, so if while you're playing it suddenly starts to really lag, might be time for a reboot.

[Cha-Ka]

Just be aware there are memory troubles, so if while you're playing it suddenly starts to really lag, might be time for a reboot. Though they may patch it out by then, wth any luck.

If it were my call I'd hold off on offering the non-paying people access until the lag and memory troubles are smoothed out. But that's only if I were trying to lure people back into being paying customers. Just sayin'

[GrinR]

Meh, I'm spoiled between GW and WoW.

[PantherModern]

I will have to do this. Unfortunately I am moving this weekend and might not have the internets! Nooooooooo!

[Heretic Machine]

I'm still getting terrible download times. At this rate, the free play will be over by the time I get the patch downloaded!

[Lord Dongkey]

I patched last night in the game at >700k/sec, but now that they've opened the free play and people are coming back for issue #7, it may very well be nasty-hammered.

As someone who's come back to the game within this past week after a 6 month+ hiatus, I feel compelled to give it a clean bill of health. This game's damned fun, looks good, being a villain is slick, and in general, it dodges a lot of the slow/downtime/boring crap that so many other MMO's suffer from. A really important thing to remember in CoH/CoV, or any MMO for that matter, is that they're only as interesting as you let them be... specifically, if you don't read the stories and figure out why you're doing the missions and story arcs you're doing, they can get really boring and drab, but if you're reading the stories and paying attention, it's a fucking sweet experience.

That, and you have to talk to other people. Build up a community and a pack of friends, and it makes things 10x more enjoyable, easy.

[Demo_Boy]

A really important thing to remember in CoH/CoV, or any MMO for that matter, is that they're only as interesting as you let them be... specifically, if you don't read the stories and figure out why you're doing the missions and story arcs you're doing, they can get really boring and drab, but if you're reading the stories and paying attention, it's a fucking sweet experience.

That, and you have to talk to other people. Build up a community and a pack of friends, and it makes things 10x more enjoyable, easy.

If they want the stories to be relevant then they need to provide gameplay reasons for me to read them. For example provide a hint that there is a secret panel near the starting door and if you click it, then less mobs show up. "disarm alarm", if you dont read, then the mission has more enemies and takes longer. If you can't modify the play by paying attention to the text then it is not compelling. Hence it is still on the shoulders of the dev to make you really want to read the story bits. In this regard COH fails.

And as far as the building a community around yourself, that is the same for any activity. A game should make PUGs _ridiculously_ easy to jump into and be fun to play. COH does well here, but they could still do better, like autoinvite options for the team leader. And of course they need players... this didnt use to be a problem but has been starting since ED.

[Demo_Boy]

...and nerfing players abilities so everyone has to be active for the whole mission was a mistake.

PUGs have "player churn" and "transient interruption" problems -- facilitating replacement players and allowing players to idle a few minutes without ganking the rest of the team should be a primary goal of gameplay.

Its all about the PUGs! How else are you supposed to develop networks of players?

[Lord Dongkey]

If they want the stories to be relevant then they need to provide gameplay reasons for me to read them. For example provide a hint that there is a secret panel near the starting door and if you click it, then less mobs show up. "disarm alarm", if you dont read, then the mission has more enemies and takes longer. If you can't modify the play by paying attention to the text then it is not compelling. Hence it is still on the shoulders of the dev to make you really want to read the story bits. In this regard COH fails.

I completely disagree with you on this point. Some players want to enjoy a good storyline, and some players just want to blast through missions until their eyes bleed and don't give a damn about the story, and would bitch and whine eternally if other people got perks they didn't. Admittedly, it's absurd, since anyone can take the time to read a little story, but any time a dev takes away a player's freedom of choice on how to play a game, regardless of how small a change, I think that's a step in the wrong direction.

The initiative is there for the player to enjoy the content the devs have provided. They should *not* have to force people or compel them to play it or read it. Just because you don't get a munchkin perk for reading the storyline they've laid out for the game doesn't mean it's not compelling, it just means it's not compelling in a way you find attractive.

[Savok]

I patched last night in the game at >700k/sec, but now that they've opened the free play and people are coming back for issue #7, it may very well be nasty-hammered.

As someone who's come back to the game within this past week after a 6 month+ hiatus, I feel compelled to give it a clean bill of health. This game's damned fun, looks good, being a villain is slick, and in general, it dodges a lot of the slow/downtime/boring crap that so many other MMO's suffer from. A really important thing to remember in CoH/CoV, or any MMO for that matter, is that they're only as interesting as you let them be... specifically, if you don't read the stories and figure out why you're doing the missions and story arcs you're doing, they can get really boring and drab, but if you're reading the stories and paying attention, it's a fucking sweet experience.

That, and you have to talk to other people. Build up a community and a pack of friends, and it makes things 10x more enjoyable, easy.
Couldn't have put it better.

[GoblinToe]

Oh boy, 4 whole days! HAHAHA. Puuuhhleeease.

If this were a free 30 days I would be tempted to give it another whirl. But 4 days? With work, I'd actually end up getting in about 5 hours of play time.

CoH did have an awesome character generator, though. I probably spent as much time creating characters as I did playing the game.

[Savok]

The idea is to try the changes, not give you a free ride.

[Heretic Machine]

Whelp, I can't update. I've tried, and tried, and I still get <1kb/s download rates. I would contact tech support through the official forums, but it won't let me since my account isn't set to a monthly bill rate and that means I can't login to the forums :rolleyes:

[Savok]

Just switch it on and let it run, speed goes up and down these days.

[n3rdXcore]

heh, got home from work last night at 7pm. installed coh and tried to update it. didn't work. i waited about 2 hours for that to try and connect, and when it wouldn't work, i scoured the forums for some help. finally i found something that allowed me to connect.....but only at 30 kb/s. as of 7:30 this morning there were still 7 hours to go for the update to download, yeesh!

[Kefkataran]

Wish I had the time to check this out, as I've had some good times with CoH and CoV, but unfortunately just don't think I will. I'll definitely be needing to give the game another whirl at some point in the future though. TONS of CoV content I haven't got to.

[Steele Johnson]

the servers were loaded last night. Lots of people are coming back to this game, including my ex-WoW guild. This games still rocks!