I don’t have much time for games, so when I do, it is just one that I devote my 10 or so hours per month to. CoX was that game …well, really CoH, as I was over in CoV almost never.
Anyway, since the demise of CoX, I tried DC Universe and Champions. Both are okay, but both also feel like different parts of CoX are missing, and one of them (I forgot which one) tries too hard to be a comic book come to life, complete with bold outlines for its characters. It was just weird playing games that were both so similar to CoX yet so different that they were annoying. Within a month, almost without noticing, I’d given up on both.
I tried SWTOR a few months ago. Boy is that game a grind, and completely devoid of what I consider fun. I stuck with it a few weeks and gave up. Thank goodness I never went pay to play.
I then tried WOW for the first time. Wow is right. That game is terrible. I don’t get the allure at all. Then again, I don’t understand that entire game genre. I think I spent a total of 4 hours over the course of a few weeks before I packed it in.
I’ve now gone back to EVE Online …for now. Not only is the universe beautiful, with minimal rules and no leveling, but it requires quite a bit of data analysis to play well. Even with EVE, however, is the ever present need to accumulate more cash for better ships, better skills, better components, so you can be just better enough to beat your opponents. It’s a game of perpetual one-upsmanship by fractions. But if CoX became available again, I’d drop EVE like a bad habit.
More than once I had ideas for characters since the closing which was depressing and just the other day I realized I couldn’t remember the name of one of my favorite characters which was even more depressing.
One of the things I enjoyed so much about CoH was how the combat was both simple and complex. It was easy to pick up but had a lot of depth. I find that lacking in many other games.
CoH was mainly my only MMO. I tried SWTOR for a little while and Guild Wars 2 but CoH was the only one I played for an appreciable length of time. I would really love to see a successor with a Modern look.
I haven’t even tried any MMO since CoX, or really anything superheroish. It was the only MMO I got into, and its destruction has pretty much impelled me to avoid anything resembling it.
If I never play another game where combat is a matter of mashing A, B and arrow keys as frantically as I can, it will be too soon. I positively loathe controller-style games. I really like Batman:Arkam Asylum in every respect except that the combat control reminds me more of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots than anything else.
I really, really, really can’t believe how much of a hole the absence of CoB* has left in my pleasure time - including just thinking about things I want to do next session and aimlessly exploring its corners. Fuck NCsoft dead, especially the brass fuckwit who killed the operation to spite someone in it (reportedly).
I still mutter “Gunner Lives!” under my breath sometimes.
ETA: And I am a non-gamer older than anyone who so far has admitted an age, who maintained two paid subs to the game to the end, even though weeks would go by between sessions sometimes.
City of Both, or as I was wont to say in the forums, City of Bozos.
I’m 50, and I started my second paid account a few months before F2P started. Planned on dropping it to Free after a few months but never seemed to get around to it.
I occasionally play LOTRO, but I have had a Lifetime membership there since it launched, so it doesn’t cost me anything. I can even afford the expansions without spending money because of the free Turbine Points I get every month and how slowly I spend them. And I would play EVE, but my computer can’t handle the graphics there. Was planning on finally getting a new one this year, which would let me start that one back up.
But I played both of those while I played COH. And COH was my first MMO, and my favorite. I didn’t get to play much at all the last couple of years, but it was nice to be able to log in and just fly around the city. I miss it.
I went back to EVE after being away for 4 years. All my ships, cash, electronic and engineering components, blueprints, mining equipment, weapons, ammo, ore, minerals, and drones were just as I left them.
CCP did some rebalancing in the years I was away from the game, and many ships have had a number of weapons turrets removed, and the skills required to effectively pilot them adjusted.
If anything, the universe is more wondrous, and more dangerous, than ever. When I first began playing 10 years ago I couldn’t conceive that a game that has PVP completely integrated with PVE throughout a single-instanced universe would work in the long term but, somehow, CCP has pulled it off.
And flying in a fleet is a thing of beauty. Turn on your sound for this one. The music is amazing. If the video doesn’t give you chills starting at the 40 second mark, then you may not have a soul.
As you said, Lok, EVE does require a good amount of video and processing power, but man, it is truly a game to get your heart pumping. The downside is, depending on what you’re doing, and your role in a corporation or fleet, it can feel more like work than play …and sometimes I just want to turn my mind off and play, which is why I was drawn to CoX.
I have an absurd amount of hope invested in Missing Worlds Media, the fan-driven successor project. Despite the history of superhero vaporware.
An absurd amount of hope invested – but so far no money. Can’t wait for them to get some sort of revenue stream established; money is by far the greatest threat to the project.
I’ve tried a few other games, not many. It’s shocking how often I’m in something “modern” and realize “COH did that better.”
No. I can categorically say money is not the greatest threat to the project. Egos are.
This should not be a surprise to anyone, really. That being said, we’ve been intact for six months. We’re going to keep going, no matter what. It’s just a matter of how fast we progress, and how much content we have at the end now.
One of these days I just want to ask the EVE creators if they were inspired, even partly, by the Escape Velocity trilogy. They were single-player shareware games, and the playerbase was constantly begging for (and being denied) an online, multiplayer version. I loved them because they were open-ended - you could keep playing the same character forever if you wanted. EV was, honestly, sort of a single-player precursor to the MMOs and “sandbox” games that followed. EVE Online’s basic concept seems remarkably similar to Escape Velocity’s, and now looking at that EVE trailer, a lot of the ships I saw were similar in design to ships that appeared in the EV games (granted, there are only so many practical spaceship shapes). Not to mention the similarity in the names - EV, EVE.
(Note: That video on the front page of the EVNova site is awful. The game’s actual graphics look much better than that, and the game has way more to it than just shoot 'em up space combat.)
I’ve never heard of Escape Velocity, so I don’t know if there is anything incestuous between it and EVE Online, although I guess it is possible.
In addition to the absolute beauty of the game’s environment, what initially interested me in EVE Online was the its sheer scope: thousands of star systems, all of which can be visited (with the exception of a small subset of systems called Jove space, which is part of EVE lore), tens of thousands of stations, either NPC or player controlled, hundreds of player-pilotable ship types, in lengths ranging from 20 feet to titans the size of small cities, all of which can be fitted in hundreds of ways, in an open universe that feels as big I imagine reality to be.
I also like the politics and the economy in EVE, which are controlled by small and large corporations which, in turn, are controlled by the player base; your individual decisions can impact players 30 systems away, and can change the course of the game itself, that is until the natural entropy of any large system slowly, sometimes over the span of months, begins to mitigate the effects of unnatural ripples that occur.
Hmm, I’ve started quite the little hijack, haven’t I. Sorry about that.
Yeah, it isn’t bad enough that our world was taken from us and we’ve been cast into eternal wandering amid the elves and mages and console-ites. You have to give us a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice into it.
