POLL: City of Heroes comes to Mac!

been playing CoH/CoV for a long time now. in fact, i loaded windows on my powerbook so i could play it on the road.

love it. btw, virtue is the place to be.

Not to poop the party, but...
While it's flattering that people are playing Evil Inc characters in CofH, it's also a violation of the terms of service.
A few years back, one of my friends who plays CofH was going to create versions of some heroes other friends had created years earlier for Champions (and other venues) and asked if I was OK with him working up a CofH version of one of mine. I read the TOS and discovered that they included language stating that all characters created within their system became the property of the publisher, and that using characters that belonged to others wasn't allowed.
Since there was no provision for owners to license their characters for use by players (which I would have gladly done), and I didn't want my as-yet-unpublished character to become someone else's property, I asked my friend not to use my character and suggested he take down any other friends' characters as well.

You're not in the same situation I would have been, since your characters are already copyrighted/trademarked. Your situation is more like someone from Marvel or DC finding a CofH player running Superman or the Hulk.

Been playing CoH since day one, really enjoy the game, and would love to find some Evil Inc'ers online sometime. Evil Atom would have to be Rad Rad I'd assume....actually how cool would it be to get a group to make Evil Inc chars, and have another group with the hero's from the strip, and then face off in the arena or one of the PvP zones...I'd love to watch that match up.
And now that Mac Users are to join the fray, well that's great, the more the merrier.

As for copywrited chars...that's been a CoH issue since day one, and got really heated when Marvel Sued the game. The Character/costume creator has quite the options ( I think they origially claimed the combinations made for like 3 or 4 million unique costumes, and they've added a lot since then), but at the same time, what makes it so great is what causes the most trouble, and Marvel Legal got involved.
Once upon a time, despite the agreement and warnings, you couldn't throw a fireball in one of the low level zones without hitting an X-man, wolverine (they have a claws power set, and a Healing power set) or hulk ripoff, and whenever certain films would come out, up would pop a host of wannabe's....Kill bill lead to a Lot of Sword weilding yellow clad biker girls, for example.

From what I see, I think, for the most part, they count on players to report when others violate this, and then pursue the matter. I've done the odd toon that has been on the fence (Seriously once you talk the Huge Body type, you're a few skin tones away from a Green/Grey/Red/Blue hulk ripoff.), and a few that were blatant rips, just for fun (Which I quickly deleted before I got tunred in), but, for the most part I'd rather do my own creations than try and be the 1,247,832nd wolverine clone to go "Hey bub". And with multiple costumes (for those who don't know, you start with one costume, but can eventually unlock 5 costume slots, and switch costumes as needed), its always possible to have something for special occasions. Of course legal ramifications for someone who actually owns such character liknesses....

Disclaimer: I must admit that I'm not actually into the superhero genre as such, I only read the funny comics. Evil Inc just happens to be IMHO supremely funny. So take my opinions with a grain of salt.

That said, I do like COH. And I have the 51 months veteran award, so I guess I've played it enough to form an informed opinion.

The game's major strength is its character creator, which allows for quite a number of character designs. E.g., you can make a tech-origin force-fields defender which looks and works remarkably like Captain Heroic's son in his tech costume. You can make spandex-clad heroes, dwarves in medieval armour, undead, lizards, etc.

In fact, there were times where I suspected that the comic was inspired by COH/COV, because some character or another (e.g., the aforementioned kid) could actually be made as a character.

That said, it's not truly unlimited possibilities. E.g., you can't really make the aged Evil Atom, because the sliders don't go as far as to create a pot-bellied character. E.g., you can't make an identical clone of Lightning Lady, because the available patterns don't include that exact kind of lightning.

You can come close enough most of the times, though, or make an alternate version of the same. E.g., the young Up'n Atom from the recent comics can be created verbatim.

Note though that the game isn't as open as, say, Champions, so your particular combination of powers may not be available or might push you into a given archetype.

E.g., if you want Radiation/Radiation on the Heroes side, you have to be a defender. (Healer/Buffer kind of a character.) On the Villains side, it pushes you into the Corruptor archetype. You can't have, say, a Mastermind with that combination, which might fit Evil Atom's role better IMHO.

E.g., if your character fights with a sword, you _have_ to be a Scrapper. It also means you're hero-side only. If you fight with an axe, you must be a Tanker or Brute. If you want to be The Hulk, strangely enough only Brutes on the COV side work similarly enough. Etc.

This is less of a problem when coming up with a new character concept, since you can start from what's available. It may (or may not) however require a fair bit of deviation if you want to create a replica of an existing comic character.

Another good thing is that unlike most other MMOs, I find it easier to feel a sense of purpose in it. Admittedly, I play mostly on the hero side, so it may or may not apply to villains too. But I usually don't have to ask myself "why am I killing wolves for these guys" like on WoW. Here I'm beating up villains for some damn good reason. Like because they're trying to blow up the city's atomic reactor, or trying to torch a building, or they've kidnapped people to slice apart and reassemble as Dr Vazhilok's abominations. (Think Frankenstein.)

Another thing to keep in mind, though, is to expect a fair bit of monotony. While there's some decent writing in the story arcs, virtually all missions are of one of the following types:

- defeat everyone in the warehouse

- defeat the boss and everyone in the same room (might actually mean a few adjacent rooms too.)

- click on one or more mission objectives scattered around the warehouse

- free and/or escort the captives out

And minor variations on those themes. And combinations of them. Like you might have to kill the boss _and_ click the computer. A few can be stealthed ("shadowed"), but if like most people you can't stealth, all the missions will involve beating up a few hundreds of minions in your way.

(Luckily, though, they seem to be hired from Evil Inc. See the strip where Sam is berated for actually hitting the target;))

What really doesn't help its case is that _all_ the maps are made of a small number of huge and easily recognizable chunks. E.g., once you've seen the same lobby a hundred times, it'll be painfully obvious that it's the same. E.g., there's huge a warehouse intersection of corridors with ramps and...

Read the rest of this comment...

HELL. YES.

Sign me up. I would love to be part of an Evil Inc. guild.

This is the day I have waited for since City of Heroes was first announced.

One more thing: the game is unique in that it goes heavily for... flattery, for lack of a better word. Half the missions pretend that you're _the_ hero or villain to fear, not just random lowbie peasant #12345.

E.g., you can get a mission at level 4-5 where a conversation between the enemies goes approximately like:

Boss: "Yess! Nothing can stop us now!"
Minion: "But master, I hear there's someone special. Someone they call The Amazing Asthmatic Guy."

(Or whatever your character name is.)

Or seeing someone's security captain going, "Don't worry, we're professionals, we'll get you out of here safe." Followed by, "Oh! It's The Amazing Asthmatic Guy! Every man for himself!"

Or you get major supervillains making plans around _you_. Or so the dialogue and writing tells you. (And around the next guy who takes the mission, when talking to him;)

That kinda thing.

I didn't know I was into flattery, but damn it feels good :P

Quote HansMustermann:
"Or seeing someone's security captain going, "Don't worry, we're professionals, we'll get you out of here safe." Followed by, "Oh! It's The Amazing Asthmatic Guy! Every man for himself!"

Or you get major supervillains making plans around _you_. Or so the dialogue and writing tells you. (And around the next guy who takes the mission, when talking to him;)"

I like it more when the citizens walking/cowering around town start talking about your latest gig.

Got charecters on Virtue and Liberty, if you need any help with enhancement crafting or stuff, give @talivar a hollar!

Oh, yet another thing: the game involves a bit of planning ahead that other games don't have. On WoW for example, you can just buy all the powers when you hit the right level. Here you have to choose one, and choosing wrong can be a bit of a bother.

E.g., do plan to take the Fitness pool on almost any char, and plan to take Stamina at level 20. Otherwise the increasingly long attack chains will drain your endurance fast, and it will feel like being The Amazing Asthmatic Man.

E.g., on the Villains side you can just buy and endless supply of Raptor Packs (jet packs) from Grandville. It's the level 40+ zone, but there are no enemies between the boat and the vendor. On the hero side they're in a zone you can't even enter under level 40, so do plan to get a travel power sometime before level 20. (The temporary ones you can get will typically run out of fuel in the low 20's.) Etc.

Changing your spec is possible, though you will have to earn it via a brutal trial. Or be a veteran of many months to get a free one. The trial is about as difficult as the normal Task Forces, which is to say harder and longer than normal missions. In a team with people who genuinely screwed up their powers and need that respec, it can be a brutal experience.

Also, since veterans get free ones, and that means about 90% of the population at the moment, finding a team for the respec is not a snap-of-the-fingers affair. On Heroes side it can still be done, on the Villains side... well, it'll take a while to get the team.

There also are some things which aren't that obvious in game, though they're documented on the forums. E.g., it's easy to think "oh, I'll six-slot Hasten and make it recharge faster"... and then discover that any effect is capped at a bit under 100%, which means 3 slots, which means you wasted 3.

My advice would be:

1. If it doesn't spoil the game for you, consider getting a program like Mids' Hero & Villain Designer and planning your character in it.

2. Googling other people's builds is a two-edged sword. There are some guides out there which are 3 years old, and don't apply to the current game at all. As a rule of thumb, any pre-ED guide is completely worthless.

3. Expect your first character to be an experiment which will end up all wrong anyway, but teach you how to build the next one right.

Most of the other replies are spot on, so i won't bother with it except for this little sidenote:

I play on pinnacle, which is full of people who make fun of each other, and is never in a position to overpoplulate, i love it. Freedumb and Virtue are heavily poplulated, and you will find teams there often. However, during special events such as when the alien invasions and holloween zombies attacked, it got into the red zone and was under a lot of strain. Last weekend was Double XP weekend, with double experiance points, double cash influx, and double prestige (super group dough). As it sounds it was very popular. However, every time i sighed on to good ol' pinn, i saw that Virtue and Freedumb were down for the count. Those guys got reamed. Some servers have a sort of reputation, as well. I think virtue is really into roleplaying too, but i might be mistaken- Someone else here can very likely prove me right or wrong on that issue. One other thing, read the patch notes, read power info, etc, etc, the game has gone through 13 issues (big updates) and has changed considerably, especially pvp. Hope to see you on!

The Freedom and Virtue servers are the most heavily populated, true. The Freedom server is most heavily in player versus player oriented folks and Virtue is the preferred roleplaying server.

When the population limit is reached they automatically go gray and become unavailable for joining. While this does often happen for those types of events, they are not crashing.

I've been playing CoX for 3.5 years now. I'd been tracking the Mac client info since they first spilled the beans on starting development on it. I used to play it on a Win box, but after I got my MacBook in late 2007, I would just dual-boot into Windows, via Boot Camp. Now, I can play without having to leave OSX. Life is good.

It may not be perfect, but it's still a pretty fun game. I play on both sides of the law, but I'm usually on the Heroes side.

I play on the Triumph and Virtue servers. Look me up if you're on:

• Triumph:
  • Indigo Bolt
  • Hand of Nefer-Tem
  • Corvus Nox
  • Dhoruba
• Virtue
  • Kurigari

As a regular CoH/CoV player, a member of both the City Scoop (The player run newspaper) and PERC (Player committee for cross server PvE based events) Allow me to say we look foreword to your joining of the fold.

Most everything our wonderful player base has said up until now is pretty spot on. Like any MMO missions become rehashes of old missions, just change the type of things you'll be fighting, or the item your looking for.

However one error I saw, was as to the use of swords being a "scrapper only" power. For Broadswords this is true, however the Dual Blade power set is available to Brutes, and Stalkers on villain side, as well as Ninja Blades for Stalkers, which is a modified version of Katana for Scrappers.

Also, should you decide to lead a full on Evil Inc assault on the Rogue Isles and Paragon City, I'd suggest a smaller pop server, such as, oh Protector (Shameless home server plug) where you'll never have to worry about the server being "full" on double XP weekend, or New Issue launch weeks, or other game wide events. However Protector is a Hero biased server, and a PvE biased one as well. So if hopping into PvP zones for a few battles is on you mind, another server would serve a better choice.

Then again if you bring a small army with you, like some guys who run that one cent amusement area did on that other MMO, well you just might have Siren's Call bumping.

Either or, tis a great game and I hope you get to enjoy it soon.

Hence it being phrased as "if your character fights with a sword". I believe there's a difference between "a sword" and "two swords" :P

More seriously, it's not the same character concept in half the cases, and in others it's plain old impossible. E.g., you can't have two swords if your character concept also involves a shield.