Back in the day, my gaming needs felt pretty met. Every 3 or 4 months I would switch between Classic Warcraft and City of Heroes. One gave me my super hero fill, the other my fantasy fill. Of course both games changed over time, but this was consistent for years. However, it was during Wrath of the Lich King that City of Heroes really started to stand ontop. This may surprise some, as WotLK is considered WoW's golden era by a large portion of the player base. Early WotLK was pretty good, I enjoyed the leveling, I was part of a good RP guild, I enjoyed the battlegrounds. However as that expansion went on, WoW entered a pretty big culture shift within the player base, and it stemmed from a few angles. The first mention of 'gear score' began to circulate from a popular add-on. Dungeon Finder came out, (I am NOT saying this was a bad thing), but when combined with the badge currencies... Suddenly instead of a game about whether you could beat content and see interesting bosses, became about speed running instances for currency. What was meant to keep dungeons relevant to those who out geared them, instead became a system that flooded dungeons with over geared people who wanted to run it as fast as possible. Didn't already have gear? Kicked. Didn't pull enough dps? kicked. To me, this is when WoW lost it's friendly atmosphere, and I stopped enjoying group content. After my RP guild disbanded, I became a solo player, and have been since. For another few years, I still had City of Heroes to fall back on, which not only filled my super hero needs, but also my group play needs and continued to lower the barrier to actually playing with others.
City of Heroes died, and for most of us, nothing has really filled that hole. Despite trying numerous other MMOs, most of them just wanted to be WoW and I always end up returning to WoW. Better dailies helped, better pvp balance helped, world quests helped, but the game continues to move away from what I enjoyed. Less systems fleshing out the world, more streamlining and focus on everything giving stat upgrades. Crowd control left PVE, with all dungeons essentially feeling like training damage in one way or another. Friends try the game but aren't max level. Even if I roll an alt, it's never the same level bracket as them. The get a boost from buying expansions but use it on classes they end up not liking. I had numbed myself to the fact those issues never happened in Paragon City. So there I have been, playing WoW solo for 6 or 7 years, because that's how it was.
In the past few months I've been trying to become active in this community. I'm a Kickstarter backer who didn't follow the news or read updates because it was too far out, too ethereal. But it's close enough that I'm here, and I've come to these forums every day for over a month now. I've planned characters. I've gone over the powerset information we have. It's making me hate my time in WoW.
I think of the Operator I want to play, how good it will be to spread crowd across multiple enemies and do something other than just damage. I think of joining the 8 man groups that will level scale everyone and the difficulty options that will have it as casual or challenging as we feel at the time.I think of the variety of costumes I'll see.
Then I open Warcraft. Warcraft where my rogue, one of the classes with the most crowd control, only really gets to use it if a 2nd enemy aggros or in pvp. Where difficulty is meant to be out geared. Where the world isn't meant for groups and the dungeons are dictated to 3 dps, tank and healer. Where players don't want content, they just want the gear from it. City of Heroes was about fun. Warcraft is about efficiently gearing up.
City of Titans has reminded me what I've wanted out of my gaming. It reminded me why Warcraft was played less and less while City of Heroes was out. I want to be excited for Warcraft's expansion and the island expedition system. But then I'm reminded that like dungeons or scenarios, most groups will just be looking to out gear and complete them as fast as possible until they're irrelevant.
Perhaps WoW wise, I'm in a rut. Could be another month or two from now I'll either regret the words or realize it wasn't as bad as it seemed. These ruts never happened in City of Heroes. I never started to hate it, it would just no longer be what I wanted at the time.
I know this about sums up every post by everyone on the forum but... yeah, City of Titans can't come soon enough.
How is everyone else coping?
Wow, many parts of what you describe match my recollection very closely. I would switch back and forth periodically too. The dungeon finder killed exploration and made it much more about things like gear, speed runs, "what's your spec", " you can't pull aggro in any way because I'm the tank", and other rigid minded nonsense. To me it all went downhill after that.
"THE TITANS ARE COMING! THE TITANS ARE COMING!"
Thank you for sharing and making the effort to become more involved in the community here on the forums.
As for coping, I just put it on the back-burner in my brain as best I can and scratch the itch with novels or comic books or movies. Mostly unsuccessfully, I might add. I've tried playing a few MMOs here and there, but they're not the same and I always find myself comparing it to how CoH/V was or to what CoT could be/hope to be. It's probably unfair to the game I'm playing, but CoH/V was and still is the bar to which all other games should attain for. Was it perfect? Nope, but it was damn near for what I specifically wanted out of a game and it's community.
QFT and same here.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
QFT and same here.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Perfect capture! Same here!
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
I hear ya. I had the (mis?)fortune of having CoH as the first MMO I ever tried, so no other MMO I've ever played has been able to measure up. Every time I try a new one, I'm stunned at the things that CoX had that are missing from this or that more modern game. WoW was the second MMO I ever tried, long before WotLK was released, and even back then it couldn't hold a candle to CoX in my book. I didn't even make it to the end of the free trial.
I've played some MMOs for quite a number of months since CoX closed down, but when I quit the reasons always boil down to "it just doesn't do x or y as well as CoX did." As Cobalt Azurean said, I have to look for distractions till CoT comes out. The good MCU films can scratch the itch for me for a little over 2 hours, but when I leave the cinema after the final credits stinger there's always that slight emotional slump when I realise I can't go home and get that superhero feeling in a more interactive way.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Despite having played table-top RPGs since the late 70s and dozens of computer-based games over the years CoH is still really the only MMO I've ever seriously played. When I mean "seriously" I mean for more than say a year. I did dabble with a few others (notably CO, STO, LotRO and ESO) but for me each of those only lasted a few months. Perhaps amazingly given this background I have [b]never even tried[/b] any version of WoW, not even for 5 minutes. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
In the mid to late 200's Blizzard had a Writers on Writing program in which they invited writers to come to their offices and discuss writing and worldbuilding. In fact, Kevin Siembieda of Palladium Books fame went there in 2009, a year after WotLK came out.
So it seems like Blizzard really did care about making the world interesting, at least for a little while. Then they came out with Mists of Pandaria, which was pretty much a plagiarism of the Pandawa from Dofus done in 2005. And its been downhill ever since. Once I left it to play Rift and Eve I never went back. Well, that's not true... I went back periodically and got a reminder of why I left it.
I've played nearly every MMORPG that's been made and can wax eloquently about the relative strengths and weaknesses of each, but I'm not foolish enough to think anyone is interested in my opinions. So I try to keep my comments restricted to the mechanics or the lore or other nearly objective measures.
One of the biggest problems I have with getting involved in the forums of a game that isn't out yet is that we tend to formulate an idealized image of what we expect, tempered by what we want and colored by what we hope it will be. I think our own hype is our own worst enemy when the game actually does come out. I've seen it too many times before. And then we look back at all the development notes and reveals and realize the glaring truth that we had deceived ourselves all along by not seeing what we didn't want to see. I think the best things we can do for ourselves and for the game is to be honest with ourselves that the creation-space of our imaginations is probably too unrealistically rosy. The best things we can do for ourselves and for the game is to try to see how the game will NOT meet our expectations and then see if maybe, just maybe, we can help steer the final product away from that.
Then when the game does come out we can let our inner fanboy and fangirl free.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I think I'll nickname you "Huckleberry the Bubble-Burster". ;)
In all non-joking fairness I realistically agree with what you've said here. You could probably label 95% of the total current content of this forum (including plenty of my own postings) as the fevered ramblings of irrational exuberance about what we're all collectively hoping CoT will become. But does it really help to point that out other than to understand it as an interesting case study of sociology in action? Everything will change once this game finally launches and we switch gears to deal with the "reality" as opposed to the "dream". We will all adapt to that one way or another. Why worry that our "collective idealized image" of CoT is really just a "collective idealized fantasy" at this point?
Bottomline let the people have their fun bickering about crap that will likely be pointless in the long run... It's better than nothing I suppose.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
You know, My experience is that WoW ruined Itself for me, by consistently offering a gameplay experience that was not what I wanted. The first time I tried it, it was the other players that seemed to ruin it, with a culture of abuse that the GMs supported when I protested. After CoH, I gave it another try and found some fun, as long as I was playing (mostly) solo. After level 60, the game just went the wrong way.
I've found that in a number of games, where the Game just stole the narrative from me and forced my character into a path that I no longer had fun with. Or it became all about the Raids. Heck, that's why I left EverQuest so long ago.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I will agree that it is important to remember CoT will not be perfect, CoH had many years of improvement under it's belt compared to it's launch. Off the top of my head, I know the biggest thing that will hit me is the lack of newspaper/police scanner missions. I know 'eventually' that they want mission crafting, made from tips and leads we collect. But Newspaper/Scanner missions were my jam. If I only had a half hour, or just didn't know what I wanted to do that day, those got me in fighting things. Running between them I got to hear what was going on in chat, and possibly figured out something else or found a team.
I also know I will probably hate the pvp a lot, but keep trying it out. Part of me always loves the idea of PVP, I'm never able to stay away. Open world ganking is not what I'm going to find fun, but I'm going to keep entering that PVP to try it out now and then, have someone find a way to harass me at spawn, and repeat a month later.
I know I will also feel limited by only 5 play style choices per power type. It's easy to remember Tankers had 11 different defense choices until you also remember at launch they only had 4. Ice, Fire, Stone and Invuln.
I know we're only getting the most basic of crafting, if ANY crafting at lauch.
I also remember CoH as HUGE, with so many zones! Multiple leveling zone choices combined with CoV and Preatoria. It's hard to remember it was much narrower at first. They really loved to update, revamp and add mid-level zones. CoT will have 2 choices, North or South, shared by everyone, and only go to level 30 (of 50) at launch.
But we ARE getting the group level scaling. We ARE getting difficulty options. We're getting the 0 barriers to grouping I've missed. Where an altaholic friend can reroll for the 9th time in 5 days and you can still have him join your main.
Franky for launch, that will be enough for me. I don't want to idolize the game as perfect, but if the combat is just fun combined with the above. I'll be good.
I have 20 level 90 characters on WOW. Haven't played either for some time.
I have Skyrim and Fallout 4 to keep me occupied now. Just couldn't get into the mood to play an MMO after losing City of Heroes. Tried to return to WOW again, Secret Wars, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, DCUO, Elder Scrolls Online.
So I find myself still camping here at the gates of Titan City.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
Jeeze, Blizzard must be time travelers then, as Pandarin were in the Warcraft series since 2003.
Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
True, there was a single Pandaren then, but nothing else about them ever until Mists of Pandaria. I think we was talking specifically about their culture and aesthetics.
I agree - this is the most important thing I think we should all keep in our heads. CoH was [I]good[/I] at launch, but was [I]great[/I] at shutdown. MMOs are a continual work in progress after all. This is why I'm keeping my expectations low for this game. I want to be impressed ;^p
And, to the OP and some others on this board, COH was my first MMO and it spoiled me for all the others. Nothing comes close. Hoping COT can fill that void, or at least hit many of the same notes, but we'll see.
I'm not worried if CoT has hiccups at launch. I played Final Fantasy XI for years. If there is one thing that game taught me it's patience waiting for promised quality content in expansions. Funnily enough, I've start up a new character on FFXI to kill time to the CoT launch, since FFXIV has become such a dissapointment. XD
Heroes get remembered, but Legends never die.
Protect the pack kid, no matter how much it hurts. If everyone else in the pack is safe, you can carry on or die knowing you've done your duty. - Fanfiction
Yeah this point might be the hardest to swallow for those folks who maybe only played during the last few years of CoH. They'll likely only remember the game when it was relatively mature instead of what it was like when it first launched. The game expanded/evolved so much between 2004 and 2012. I even remember trying to get a few friends who had given it a try when it first launched another try towards the end by telling them about all of the content that had been added since the beginning.
To be honest I'm finding it hard to keep my own expectations for CoT in check. I sometimes realize that I'm mistakenly expecting CoT on its launch day to be like the "ninth year" of CoH. I continually have to tell myself to (as you say) lower my expectations. At least I think it's safe to say that CoT will not be exactly like going all the way back to Square One. For example we're likely going to have at least some power customization features from the very beginning in CoT which is something that took years to happen in CoH. So while the "Day One" version of CoT might not have as much total content as the "Year 8.5" version CoH did it's likely not going to be as limited as the "Day One" version of CoH was either.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Agreed with pretty much everyone.
CoH was my first game and ruined me exactly like Cinnder. And the point that we shouldn't compare CoT at launch to CoH befor shut down is a good one to remind folks of.
The thought of what CoT could be after a few successful years is so exciting.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Although, looking at the Dofus and Wakfu wikis, their Pandawa are much more humanoid (and, except for the faces, less pandaoid) than the Pandaren. And while I don't find the Pandaren culture to be very original, it seems to me to go back to sources much older than 2005.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
I think Project_Hero may have the right of it. [url=https://wow.gamepedia.com/Chen_Stormstout]Chen Stormstout[/url] and the wandering isle is nearly the exact template for the pandawas and Pandawa Island of Dofus. It would not be too much of a stretch to think that Ankama, Inc. got their idea from him. Good catch Project_Hero, I was completely ignorant of that character.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Those are just the player characters. The Pandawas in their native Pandawa are much more like Chen_Stormstout
Chen Stormstout:
[img=480x480]https://d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.net/wowpedia/thumb/b/b4/ChenStormStout2.jpg/300px-ChenStormStout2.jpg?version=9e3483610acaef2797af355927f17422[/img]
One of the Pandawas from Dofus:
[img]https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dofus/images/9/94/Pandora.png/revision/latest?cb=20100711200827[/img]
But to get this thread back on track. The reason I brought up this example was to show that Blizzard was very serious about writing and worldbuilding at one time, in an effort to support the OP.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
And here I was blaming the whole mess on Kung Fu Panda, but I'm not a media-savvy person.
Be Well!
Fireheart
heh, so was I Fireheart.
I thought that Blizzard was cashing in on the popularity of Kung Fu Panda as it seems that a large number of their players are of less than legal age (I say that as the intellectual level of conversation on the public chat seems to reflects that).
Tried Playing WOW, Secret Wars, Champions Online, DCUO, Skyrim and several others.
This may be the best capture of how I feel on the matter... well said RottenLuck.
Honestly, I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to my gaming expectations. COH didn’t have everything right but it had so very much right... If COT has half as much right as COH did I’ll be quite comfortable dwelling in the new City, shortcomings that may be aside...
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
Exactly my experience, Rott & Rook.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)