5 Free CoH Days for Labour Day

[Dirty Harry]

Labor Day just wouldn't be complete without some fun-filled gaming! This holiday, enjoy five free days of heroic hi-jinx and new Issue 5 content while getting ready for the highly anticipated sequel to City of Heroes®, City of Villains™ (see www.cityofvillains.com for details about the game). What a great way to end a super-human summer!

Just log into the game between 2pm (CDT) on Thursday, September 1st and 11:59pm (CDT) on Tuesday, September 6th and you will find your account reactivated FREE of charge!* Your hero characters will be waiting just as you left them the last time you played, ready to lead the charge against evil.

But hurry…this offer is only valid for a limited time, and once 11:59pm (CDT) hits Tuesday night, September 6th, your account will again be deactivated unless you choose to resubscribe.

So suit up and move out heroes, Paragon City™ awaits!

— The City of Heroes® Team

Guess which MMO never runs campaigns to get its players back? Certainly isn't CoH.

[Dirty Harry]

If your wondering, someone had a converstation about Eq2 having a similar thing like this and said CoH has never done any comeback campaigns like this and i knew for a fact they have before infact many times. So basically person who said that, you were wrong :P.

[Bushido]

I'm guessing its WoW....but it wouldnt take much to dethrone the gorrilla, give me better PvP and End-Game and I would stab blizzard in the back...et tu Bushido?

[Savok]

WoW doesn't have free stuff mainly because the devs are arseholes who I'm glad I'll never have to deal with again.

[Bushido]

damn i gotta reinstal Guild Wars I almost forgot about it. That game rocks.

[Sion]

WoW and free stuff? What about the visitor passes, or the months and months of free beta play. MMOs have 5 free days this and that when they loose players. CoH is likely doing this to remind people they still exist so CoV wont flop.

[NonSoft]

Guess which MMO never runs campaigns to get its players back? Certainly isn't CoH.

Guess which MMO doesn't have to?

Let me clue you in on something, the makers of CoH aren't trying to be nice. Their only intention is to hopefully regain subscribers. Meanwhile WoW's subscription numbers keep soaring, so until a massive amount of people leave WoW(and they will eventually, just like all MMORPGs) Blizzard most likely will not offer anything like this. Simply because they do not have to.

Having said that, as someone else mentioned they are giving out the visitor passes and how long were people able to play in the Beta?

[Deadend]

I just played CoH for 4 hours straight, that was fun.

It seems more fun than WoW was.

Blizzard doesn't WANT a free week, as there would be way more people on the servers, and with 4 million paying people, they don't need to win people back yet, or let you check out the changes.

[Vandenh]

Cool!

Back to CoH this weekend!!!!

[Abednigo]

If your wondering, someone had a converstation about Eq2 having a similar thing like this and said CoH has never done any comeback campaigns like this and i knew for a fact they have before infact many times. So basically person who said that, you were wrong :P.

I was thinking the same thing. Kind of funny to me. I bet you we won't see people saying, "CoH sucks! They need to give away free days cause people are leaving for WoW! WoW RULZ!!!" :rolleyes: It's part of the MMO business!!

[bean19]

WoW doesn't have free stuff mainly because the devs are arseholes who I'm glad I'll never have to deal with again.

Actually they don't have free stuff because they are making the phat cash. No promotions necessary.

CoH is doing this in order to get people to try the I5 changes. These changes are huge, but really improve the game a lot. However, they lost a lot of diehards who really enjoyed using exploits and resent having their character nerfed so that they can't exploit anymore and so that all powersets are useful.

I can empathize as I have 2 high level regen scrappers I'll probably never play again, but since I rarely got in exploit groups (never after the devs called it exploiting - really it is just good strategy by using the strengths of the overpowered classes well and required a design change like these in I5), I am super happy with the experience bonuses. Leveling took FOREVER if you didn't exploit in the high level game. We're talking like 10 hours of gameplay to level. . . frustrating in the extreme when you are used to WoW.

Anyway, CoH is a good game, and a better game after Issue 5. I do hope they'll really put in a strong endgame with City of Villains though. That is what the game has been missing.

[Abednigo]

Actually they don't have free stuff because they are making the phat cash. No promotions necessary.

CoH is doing this in order to get people to try the I5 changes. These changes are huge, but really improve the game a lot. However, they lost a lot of diehards who really enjoyed using exploits and resent having their character nerfed so that they can't exploit anymore and so that all powersets are useful.

I can empathize as I have 2 high level regen scrappers I'll probably never play again, but since I rarely got in exploit groups (never after the devs called it exploiting - really it is just good strategy by using the strengths of the overpowered classes well and required a design change like these in I5), I am super happy with the experience bonuses. Leveling took FOREVER if you didn't exploit in the high level game. We're talking like 10 hours of gameplay to level. . . frustrating in the extreme when you are used to WoW.

Anyway, CoH is a good game, and a better game after Issue 5. I do hope they'll really put in a strong endgame with City of Villains though. That is what the game has been missing.

So people quit because they removed exploits that caused people to be able to advance faster than they wanted you to? That just shows how lazy people are. Like the people that would rather spend real cash to buy in game money or items because they are too lazy to take the time to make the money themselves. They just want to be the highest level with the best loot without any of the effort.

The problem though is these things weren't discovered before the game was released. If the developer didn't want people to do those things, they should have removed them before release. But I suppose in a game that big, you won't find "exploits" until they are discovered by some hardcore players looking for a shortcut. People get used to using what they devs call exploits, so when they remove them, they piss people off. It's a necessary evil though I think. You want the game to be around as long as possible. If people can get to the end game quickly, they'll quit sooner. EQ has probably been the game that people complain about nerfing the most (some complaints are legit from what I've heard), but how long has that game been around? It's insane. Although if it's around in 2 years I'd be very surprised.

[Savok]

CoH went live May of last year.

And yeah, a lot of things should have been fixed in hindsight. Problem was we had no idea (including the devs) how to really slot our powers until probably around I2, after that it became a mess of trying to avoid what I5 does.

[Wyrm]

Blizzard is doing it with every patch, it just isnt called that.

[Alexious]

Well, well, well... I think I'll have to give it a try. My favorite part of the game was trying all the different power sets. I don't think I ever got a character above level 20. I'm anxious to try the Archery set!

[Draknodred]

CoH was fun, I bought and played for months, but just too boring after a while, not enough to do, everything seemed the same to me, I mean don't get me wrong, flying and superspeed were fun... but the game was just "Kill kill kill, go see lady, kill kill kill, go see lady" and since I know a lot of you are going to say that that's how all games are, not true atleast in other games I have the option of doing something else, fishing, hunting. mining, crafting, socializing (people in CoH were idiots a lot of times), and other things... I don't know I just found CoH boring after a while, and I still can't play it for more than 30 minutes now without stabbing myself in the jaw

[Savok]

Not to sound too angry Drak but people like yourself are what's given us the new escort missions.

But yeah, early stuff is quite tedious.

[Draknodred]

New escort missions? haven't heard of these, please explain =D

[Heretic Machine]

or the months and months of free beta play.

...Do you understand what Beta is? It's not coming out of the goodness of their hearts.

[Savok]

New escort missions? haven't heard of these, please explain =D
Just that, some missions you go in now, rescue a special character, and then escort them out, trying to keep them alive.

[Draknodred]

... then why are you angry at me? and how come it's my 'fault'? Do they suck? I don't understand your anger then... if it's the fault of people like myself then you should be happy that we left and got that for you then...? right? I'm confused O.o

[bean19]

... then why are you angry at me? and how come it's my 'fault'? Do they suck? I don't understand your anger then... if it's the fault of people like myself then you should be happy that we left and got that for you then...? right? I'm confused O.o

The escort missions suck in my opinion.

You save hostages and then have to escort them back without dying. It is a lot more travel time with a few more groups of mobs to kill. Also, they can't travel as fast as your group, so they are constantly lagging behind.

However, there are some GOOD new mission types. They have heroes in missions that will fight as your allies, and missions where mobs will have an objective like "blow up the artifact" and will spawn in swarms to take out the obejctive. You have to stick around and protect the objective.

Still, you are very correct. CoH doesn't have anything to do besides fighting. You can now do PvP in the coliseum, but it's deathmatch or team deathmatch only. Also, it doesn't have a good matching system like Guild Wars. Instead, players set up all the matches and this leads to it taking a long time to get a match set up and only being able to play against veterans (mostly) since only the veterans will put up with the clunky matching system and newbies are scared away due to mostly fighting veterans (who beat the snot out of them) when they do put up with it. It costs a lot of influence to buy the full trays of inspirations you need to be competitive and even with the balance changes, deathmatch is very rock/paper/scissors (especially in smaller games). You have to have a controller or someone who has powers that disable opponents (knockback, disorient, etc.) or everyone can run away with a travel power whenever they get in trouble. . . which is good strategy, you can't fault them, but it is really boring. If they made some objective based games like capture the flag, or assault, or "Save the Citizen!", etc. it would be really fun.

They are going to introduce the Stateman's Super Secret Skills System (S5) in a future Issue that should expand the amount of "things to do" in the game as well as providing an alternative leveling system (like crafting). However, this is going to be heavily tied-in with all the improvements they are making to missions, so it is very much in the future rather than "soon". Issue 6 will be all about adding everything that comes with City of Villains to City of Heroes.

I think CoH and CoV are going to be one of those games that really gets it's stride very late in it's development, like Anarchy Online. It's profitable now, but if they keep making improvements, it will be a very good second game or alternative game for people introduced to the MMO genre by WoW.

However, your complaint is also my cheif complaint. New art for bad guys and new areas do not make the same basic tasks that are repeated over and over any more fun. They really need more game modes. Really this is the problem I have with most MMOs. . . constant updates, but they very rarely expand their game's gameplay. They most often just give more of the same. Look at WoW and their most recent update. . . another big ass instanced dungeon. . . I'm not at all interested in returning to the game for that even though I think the game was wonderful. I've just gone through it all and more hours of instances do not appeal to me. Instances were one of my main complaints with the game. . . I wanted cool gear, but I didn't want to play for hours upon hours upon hours to obtain it.

[Savok]

How long have you been playing games Drak? Long enough for X-Wing and Tie Fighter back in the day? Escort missions are never a good thing in any game, though at least our wingmen have a chance of knowing of what they're doing in a MMOG.