Eh. Long story short: never played MMORPGs before. Started playing one, but found it too teamwork intensive to be interesting (it became less a pastime than a responsibility. Whee). My friends play City of Heroes quite a bit, though. I started playing it occasionally when I was hanging out with them, and found it entertaining.
Now. I’ve just quite smoking. This is important for two reasons: first, it frees up enough cash that I can afford to join a monthly game. Second, it means that having a game I can obsess over- and not think about how much I want a cigarette while I’m playing- would be very useful.
Again, I’ve played City of Heroes and I have a bunch of friends who play it, so that’s good, but I haven’t gotten far enough to really know whether it’ll be perfect. And I’ve always preferred fantasy RPG, so I’d like to know if World of Warcraft is worth it.
Here’s my criterea:
I must be able to accomplish stuff alone, without having to form teams or gather groups. Getting together with groups for pick-up games is fine and enjoyable, but screw a game where I need to regularly slot specific evenings for it.
I must be able to hit things with other things without getting bogged down in buttons and special abilities. I can do that in City of Heroes (preferred characters: Invuln tankers with their autopowers); how easy is that to do in World of Warcraft?
I must feel like I’m getting somewhere by doing stuff. City of Heroes gives me new missions with bits of plot falling out (nothing Shakesperean, sure, but still fun), and new powers, but that’s about it. I assume WoW has those same kinds of quests (I believe I’ve heard about them)- and it also allows me to gather neat stuff like Massive Glowing Armor of +5, right?
Help me out here. I can afford one or the other, not both.
I have played Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, adn City of Heroes. CoH is BY FAR the best of the three. Can’t speak for Everquset II.
The only downside to CoH is the lack of crafting/skills, though it is rumored that in some future issue, that might be added. CoH also has the best character creation of any of the three, IMO, at least when it comes to deciding what your character looks like. So many costume choices the mind boggles.
And CoH can be very solo friendly. Just paly a Scrapepr or Tanker and you can solo very easily, Blasters can solo alright if you’re careful (the’r very wimpy.) But Issue 5, which is currently in beta on the test server, amkes blaster perform better. They will do more damage the less hit points they have. Controllers adn Defenders are less suited for solo platm at least until later levels.
I don’t have much to offer here, other than to say that I was not into video games/MMORPGs at all until I got City of Heroes - and now my entire day revolves around when I get to play again. (I still have to take smoke breaks, though. ) The fact that I’m a comic book collector, and therefore favorably inclined toward the subject matter of CoH, probably has a lot to do with it. My SO plays WoW and I don’t have even the tiniest desire to try it. If you’re into fantasy, then you’d proabaly like WoW; if you’re a science fiction guy, then there are games for that too.
I guess what I’m getting at is that whatever you enjoy normally will predispose you to enjoying a related game, with the actual quality of the game having little bearing.
What I’ve seen of WoW appears very slow moving and tedious - lots of repetitive hunting, fishing, crafts, etc.; from what I understand, this is necessary to earn “money” your character needs to play effectively. There’s not much sword-and-sorcery action, which is what I would expect and want from such a game. In contrast, CoH is mostly action from the time you visit your very first contact. The only real “chore” you have to do is occasionally buy/sell enhancements.
In the interest of honesty I’ll tell you that I have two characters in the 30s level-wise, and progression has all but ground to a halt. It takes a lot of hours to advance at that stage.
I currently play WoW and find it pretty much tailored to my liking.
Much of the game can be accomplished solo. The exception for this is the “Elite” mobs, most of which are found in instanced dungeons. These mobs are designed to be attacked by a group. Many of the series quests (“chains” is the term I find people using) eventually lead into dungeons, but by no means do they all. Until you hit the level barrier (currently @ 60), if you don’t want to group to kill a single elite boss mob, all you have to do is wait until you level up past the boss’s level and you can most likely solo him (at 50 a 45 Elite mob is trouble, but very do-able).
Money is only as important as you want it to be in WoW. I have a 60 druid who has never had more than 100gp at a time, and usually only has about 20gp. I didn’t buy him any gear through the Auction House, I just used the gear that I got from questing and killing mobs. You only need large sums twice, once for your first mount at level 40 (about 100gp) and again at 60 if you want the extra-speedy mount (1000gp). Mounts are necessary because they move much faster than you can run.
The auto-combat feature in WoW is great. Click on a mob, hit attack, and it keeps beating on it until you tell it to stop. You use hot keys to use special attack abilities during combat or to cast spells. All the hot keys feature a “shadow clock”, that is, once used a button is shaded with a clocksweep until the button is brightly visible again, indicating that the ability is ready to be used. You will need to use these abilities to be effective, but it isn’t like trying to play Tekken 3 or anything.
WoW features an always visible XP bar, with numbers displayed if you bring up your character window (9845/25000, for example). Most quests result in a cash reward and faction standing, and end-of-chain quests usually reward you with an item. Many will lead you into another quest or even into another series. The storylines for all the races and both the sides (Alliance and Horde are hard-coded sides) are complex and vast. I have level 60 characters on both sides, and I still don’t know the whole story. In addition, new content is being added constantly at no additional cost. This includes new instances and the Battlegrounds feature.
Battlegrounds is a pure PvP instance. There are two type, a Capture The Flag game and a King Of The Hill type territory control game. Both are a lot of fun and your performance in them can reward you with items and faction not available any other way.
I disagree heavily that WoW is tedious and has no action. From the get-go you are killing things, casting spells, shooting guns, etc. There is also time that you may spend fishing, learning tradeskills, or gathering supplies but it these things are most often done just as the course of the game permits. Fishing would be the only exception, but my druid did not start fishing until he was level 60 already and I managed to max his skill out in less than 5 hours total time. It was actually nice to take a little break and feel like I was playing BassMaster for a bit.
WoW also has enough variety in each character class that you can make a toon, level him to 60, and then re-arrange his special talents so that he is essentially a whole new class for you to play. Each character has a Talent Tree with 3 main trunk to spread points over (one Talent Point is gained for each level reached starting with level 10, so 51 TPs available at level 60).
The end game (level 60 and beyond) is still evolving in WoW, and on average there is a new high level instanced dungeon opened up every 2 months. There are now 3 that I have yet to set foot in, although in my case that’s because I keep leveling up new characters, trying out all the classes and races.
For my money, WoW beat out EQ and EQ2 hands down., I never looked back at my EQ toon (a 70 mage with over 200 AAs) once WoW was released. It’s fun and it looks great. EQ2 I tried when it was released, and found it seriously flawed. It was very tedious, and required group play in order to do just about anything. It was such an un-fun experience that I stopped playing with two free weeks left from my initial purchase.
Hope that helps you make you decision. If there’s anything else you want to know, I’ll be happy to try and answer your questions.
It’s $15/month, as said by the Ectomorph. CoV will be a standalone game with the capability of expanding CoH for those who get both. There’s still no word on what the fee will be for those who want to play both Heros and Villains but the guys at Cryptic are pushing for no more than $20/month.
I’ve been playing computer/video games ever since 1979 and CoH was my very first venture into the realm of MMORPG. It’s a great choice for us first-timers.
You could try Guild Wars. Its set up so you can go solo and do missions like a normal RPG, but you can also do the teamwork thing(occasionally there are missions that require teamwork, but you do not have to do them). It also has the benefit of not requiring a monthly fee, just the initial game purchase.
I presume text-based games are out of the question?
'cuz I could get you started off right in Gemstone IV…
Good points: Warriors can just wack stuff; any class (mostly) can play as a warrior-type, if they want, but warriors get special guild skills and the like. Long-lived game, some very deep storylines and the like, some very high-quality players (we don’t tolerate newbs very well; new players, on the other hand, are welcomed and encouraged.) Amazingly adaptive; you can do most anything you want, within the framework of the game’s system of course. Alterations aren’t all that rare, and the GMs are good at what they do, and helpful. Easy to solo, intuitive interface (english language), they’re still updating stuff and adding skills/spells, always something new to learn, did I mention quality players?
Bad points: Text-based, but costs as much as graphical for a basic account ($12.95/mo), premium can cost much ($40) much more (if you want it; I don’t.) Moderately steep learning curve, especially if you’re not used to quality RolePlaying, but of course if you just wanna wack stuff it’s not THAT steep. It will eat much of your spare time. It takes a VERY long time to reach the top levels, but the first 10 go so fast you might miss 'em.
I think there’s one or two others on the boards who play as well. I haven’t met them in-game yet.
I second everything Snowboarder Bo said about World of Warcraft. I did the MUD thing years ago in college, and more recently played Star Wars Galaxies. SWG put me off MMORPG’s completely. It was total crap. Boring, tedious (grinding through all the classes to get a Jedi :barf:) and pointless crap. It had some good ideas, but executed them HORRIBLY. I decided to give them another try because I’m trying to save up for a home improvement project and needed a cheap time sink, I chose WoW.
It’s a great game. Fast-paced, very playable solo, and deep. There’s a good selection of classes (gameplay varies a lot depending on which class you pick), the world is beautiful, creative, and well-detailed, the quest system is good, etc. I found the interface very intuitive and easy to jump into; the fact that many abilities and facets of the games (crafting, talents, gathering, etc.) are gradually introduced helps here. It also runs very well on my computer, which is getting a bit long in the tooth.
Also, I’ve been fairly impressed with the player base. I’ve seen very few crappy names, and outside of some of the channels people are pretty good about staying a little in character and not spoiling the mood (I picked an RP server; it’s not rigorously enforced but it may be responsible for some of these perceptions).
WoW appears to fit your needs pretty perfectly. COH requires grouping at higher levels or becomes impossibly slow and grindy. WoW you can solo right to the level cap if you really want to.
Also it’s really good at leading you around the world always with something to do with the quest system. The downside however is if you’ve played through Horde or Alliance a few times then it’ll feel like you’re following a script (albeit one completely of your own choosing). But the first time through is like magic.
I would personally recommend WoW unless you want to play with your friends in CoH (which should probably take precedence over everything if you enjoy the game - being able to play these things with friends is excellent). Objectively, WoW is probably a higher quality game overall, with more content, better balance, and more resources in terms of support and expansions. Subjectively, I like the gameplay better in WoW, though there is a lot to recommend about CoH (though honestly, I like the gameplay of EQ1 better than either, if that says anything about me…). I haven’t played CoH in a while, but I heard some non-positive things about some of the more recent patches and balance changes; I gather that things are still not particularly balanced overall class-wise, YMMV.
It is quite possible to play both of these games at a healthy level of obsession (be there such a thing) and still get things done. WoW has more to do once you hit the high end, IMO. I’m not sure how CoV will effect the play of CoH, but I assume it will in one way or another. Either game should do pretty well for your needs - I like WoW better, but many will come down on the side of CoH, and you really can’t lose.
I’m not sure how much this will help, but I’ll offer some comparisons centered on the criteria you specified. In particular, there are some aspects of CoH you may not have come across yet that are worth mentioning. Bear in mind that my experience with WoW is much more limited than my experience with CoH–I have nothing against it, but it’s not my cup of tea, even though I generally prefer fantasy themes.
In addition to the responses in this thread, you might consider visiting the official forums for each game. That can provide insight both into the game itself, and into the player and developer communities. Normally, I’d suggest asbestos undies–with the changes sitting on Test, the CoH boards are nearly as vitriolic as the WoW boards normally are–but I doubt you need the warning…
My main is an empath defender, one of the most team-oriented builds in the game. Most of his career has been spent solo. As long as you take some thought to building your offensive powers, you should be able to solo pretty much anything in the game short of archvillains and giant monsters. Obviously, this is easier with some builds than others.
WoW also allows for solo play, but is not as solo-friendly as CoH (IMHO). Individual enemies are generally much tougher in relation to individual PCs, and the aggro rules are somewhat harsher.
Tankers, especially invulnerability tankers, are going to take a pretty solid hit in Issue 5. Still, if you were happy with the autopowers (which many tankers don’t regard very highly), they’ll still probably be tough enough to make you happy.
In terms of simplicity of play, WoW offers a trade-off in the form of its macro/hotkey system. If you don’t use macros, combat can (at least for some classes) involve lots of fiddly adjustments as you twiddle things on and off to get the best effect out of whatever you’re doing next. However, if you take the time and trouble to set up your macros and hotkeys, most of that goes away. The system allows you to do much more than CoH’s bind system, at the cost of being more difficult to work with.
Story: The story arcs are my favorite thing about CoH. I’m not sure how much you’ve played, so I don’t know if you’ve seen the distinction between the arcs and the regular missions. Most missions are one-shot things; they have a few clues, a bit of story, and then they’re gone. Story arcs are more elaborate–they have a story that spans a number of missions (the early arcs generally have 4 or 5 missions; the last tier of arcs has as many as 16). Completing an arc nets you some bonus xp and influence, along with an enhancement of your choice, but more importantly, you get to keep a souvenir–anything from a defeated gang-leader’s bandana, to a syringe that saved your life, to the faceplate from Stateman’s own costume. Attached to the souvenir is the story of the arc, which you can look up in your “Clues” section. WoW certainly has instanced missions, and AFAIK each has some story attached to it, but I don’t know if there is an equivalent to the arcs. WoW currently has more variety in missions, but with the mission enhancements coming in Issue 5, I’m not sure if that will remain the case.
Loot: WoW has it, CoH doesn’t. For a lot of people, particularly those coming to CoH from earlier games, the lack of loot is a big selling point, because they got sick of loot-farming in earlier games. In a game with loot, there is almost always an optimal set of gear available at any given level, and the min-maxers will figure it out almost immediately. Since the best loot is generally the rarest, this results in intense competition. You get lots of people sitting around on their thumbs, waiting for the Dread Foozle that drops Teh Uber-Plate to appear so they can gank it. While that isn’t a problem for some players, it strikes me as counter-productive in your case; I imagine that camping a spawn will inspire a serious temptation to take a smoke-break.
On the plus side, loot provides a way to advance your character other than gaining levels. That’s particularly appealing at high levels–a nice bit of loot is a good pick-me-up when the next level looks awfully far away (or when you’re at the level cap, and there’s no other way to improve your character).
The closest thing CoH has to loot is the badge system. There are lots of ways to get them: visiting certain places, defeating particularly dangerous foes (or lots of less dangerous ones), winning bouts in the Arena (think Danger Room), even paying off xp debt or getting mezzed. You can spend a lot of time just collecting badges. The downside, of course, is that most of the badges do nothing for you but provide a title you can select to display for your character. The exception to that is Accolade powers–collecting certain sets of connected badges gives you Accolade badges, some of which are accompanied by special powers. Some of these are permanent increases to hit points and endurance. Others are nifty, but long-recharge powers, like the Cryo Pistol or the Eye of the Magus defensive spell. Most of the Accolades aren’t readily available until you’re fairly high-level, though.
There are also temporary powers that can be acquired in various missions. Most of them aren’t persistent–they go away after a fixed amount of real time, or after completing the mission and talking to your contact again–but some last until you use them up. Having 75 Holy Shotgun Shells on hand in case you run into trouble with undead isn’t the same as having that nifty bit of glowing armor that’s always on, but it beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And you didn’t have to wait in line to gack Billy-Bob the Orc Redneck to get them.
A possible future CoH loot-alternative is costuming. This is currently fairly limited–there are two missions you can undertake that unlock additional costume slots (capes and auras). Issue 5 will add the ability to unlock specific costume pieces, starting with a badge that unlocks a witch hat for the character that earns it. I assume we’ll be seeing more things like this in the future. The degree to which you can customize your character’s appearance has always been one of CoH’s strong points, and it makes sense that they will continue to build on it.
Travel: This is another part of “getting somewhere” in an MMORPG. You have to travel to contact NPCs, to reach missions, to buy and sell things, and so forth. Travel time is play-time that doesn’t directly advance your character. Sorry, WoWers, but CoH wins this one in a walk. WoW characters (with the exception of druids) have to wait until L40 to improve their travel speed…and the mount isn’t really all that much faster than CoH’s Sprint power, which characters get at L1. Then actual travel powers open up at L14. Also, gryphon rides are expensive, but heroes get to ride the train for free.
When the subject of travel speed comes up, WoW fans start talking about how beautifully detailed the WoW graphics are.
Some of this is news to me, too (but that shouldn’t surprise you, because as you know I’m typically pretty clueless about these things).
You get souvinirs for completing story arcs? I never have - what’s up with that? I’ve gotten the free enhancement, but never a souvinir. Is that only for certain arcs?
What are these mission enhancements of which you speak, and why will they be detrimental to the variety of missions? Or am I misunderstanding you?
Auras? You can unlock auras as costume components? How do you do that?
The attitude toward Jedis by 90% of the players was a primary factor in putting me off of SWG. The game was intended to be a virtual world, with an economy, cities, craftsman, almost entirely player-run. Combat was supposed to be at maximum only half the game. But no, the only thing anyone ever wanted to be was a Jedi, and a game entirely populated by monks is not going to have a stable economy, because there ain’t anyone to do anything else. The best thing for SWG to do would be to take out Jedis entirely, but they couldn’t do that because it’s a Star Wars game.
The game itself wasn’t that hot, either. I participated first in the SWG development forums when the game was in closed beta, working myself up into an excited frenzy over the game. Then I got into the beta, and…pff. I know that you can’t judge a game by its beta, but the game had already been delayed many times and there were still an enormous amount of problems in the game, even when it finally went gold! Plus so many features were simply lackluster and not fun, including combat. As much of a Star Wars fan as I am, and as much as I loved the concept, it just wasn’t worth the money. I’ve heard reports from players since the game went live last year, and from what I’ve been hearing it definitely hasn’t gotten any better.
…Right. Sorry. Ranting off.
Right now I’m an EVE Online fanatic. It delivers everything I wanted out of SWG: a persistent world with an entirely player-run economy, the freedom to choose your own path mid-game (none of this ‘pick your class in chargen’ BS), the ability to play a vast portion of the game with barely any fighting (I have a character that was initially slanted for combat, but now he’s more of an industrial pilot), and so on. It’s not Star Wars, but it’s a damned good game.
However, I don’t recommend it to the OP, because it’s clearly not what he’s looking for, the least factor of which is that it’s science fiction and not fantasy. It’s also definitely not a typical MMORPG in the Everquest, World of Warcraft, and CoH sense.
I played non-combat-oriented characters, and the game was really, really boring. Walk around finding high concentrations of minerals. Drop your harvester. Repeat. Visit your harvesters often enough that they didn’t run out run out of minerals. Sell or use to craft stuff. Repeat. Eventually, you’ll be able to craft slightly nicer stuff, but the amount of stuff you can craft really isn’t that big; there’s no “recipes” that you can find or buy like in WoW. and very little variety.
Whoop-de-doo. There just wasn’t anything to strive for or work towards.
All story arcs give a souvenir at the end. They don’t really serve any purpose except as a reminder of what you’ve gone through. You can view them, and a summary of the related story arc, by opening Clues then clicking the Souvenir tab.
I believe Balace is referring to the Hellion Arson in SC, the Troll Rampage in Skyway, the NPC hero fighing alongside yours, and being attacked by waves of Mobs.
Your toon has to be at least level 40 and talk to the city rep in Paragon City Hall to get the mission.
Any arc that gives you the bonus enhancement should also give a souvenir. Check your “Clues” dropdown–it has two tabs. The second one is for souvenirs. The souvenirs don’t have individual graphics, just names (things like “Letter from Requiem”, “Dossier on Victor Sieger”, or “The thanks of the world”). If you click the little button on the souvenir, it expands into a synopsis of the story arc.
Issue 5 will bring more mission variety to CoH. Among other additions are NPC allies who help you once you free them (for example, the mystic you rescue in the Bonefire arc now uses the Dark Miasma and Gravity Control powersets), escort missions (once you rescue the hostages, you have to lead them to the door–sometimes the villains just try to recapture them, but sometimes they try to kill them), attack waves (where new groups of villains spawn to do various things), and more defend-the-widget objectives like the one in the cape mission. There are also a few new special effects in missions, like the spectral fog that turns up in one of the missions in the new zone. The fog is actually a spawned mob that moves around and debuffs you if you’re inside it; it doesn’t aggro on you and can’t be targeted or destroyed.
At level 30, you can get a special mission from the City Representative (the same NPC you get the cape mission from). One of the SERAPH scientists sends you on a series of hunts to retrieve samples from various villain factions and uses them to create a gadget that allows you to manifest auras. Effectively, it gives you access to the Auras slot the next time you visit Icon.
) The fact that I’m a comic book collector, and therefore favorably inclined toward the subject matter of CoH, probably has a lot to do with it. My SO plays WoW and I don’t have even the tiniest desire to try it. If you’re into fantasy, then you’d proabaly like WoW; if you’re a science fiction guy, then there are games for that too.