I am firmly of the mind the major reason Turbine has gotten away with so much is many players have very little MMO experience outside of ddo . many a time I've seen people post things like it is the only MMO they have or will ever play. This ostrich head in the sand approach has filled turbine devs with the confidence of a dope pusher and its fueled by the willful ignorance of the players.

To that end I'm going to begin posting in this thread memories of another and maybe the best MMO ever to have come and gone City of Heroes/Villains. A game where devs worked hard and strove constantly to make the game better rather then broken.

I'll be doing a post for each year I played it trying to highlight the good and bad of each. This is being done to help those poor ostriches pull their heads from the sand and see that the bullshit turbine has spooned out is just that.

Year two started rough. During the division of cryptic and birth of paragon studios COH had a bit of a dark time of uncertainty and many players took long breaks my own at the time lasted around 8 months. But this was good in a way. I began my tour of other MMOs especially new releases. Among them wow in its first month of life. Yes wow had only just begun and none of us could imagine the monster it would become nor the massive shadow it would cast upon the industry.

One of the things that brought me back to COH was paragons team already pushing past a limit cryptic had said was insurmountable. Trench coats. Yes that's right a simple cosmetic costume issue. Cryptic had claimed it too hard. Paragon saw that as a chance to prove themselves and did so.

They added veteran badges for every month of subscription and perks like costume items to help mark vets in game and make subscribing by the year rather then the month have meaning even if you couldn't log in as much as your like.

They added crafting to. But did not bog it down in silly leveling grind. Instead you just needed the recipe and the mats. They added the auction house as well and thus a real in game economy began to take shape. All this was done while preserving g in game immersion. Crafting tutorials where located at a newly added university. The auction houses where called Wentworth's and where like a shopping chain with a building in each zone.

Roleplaying was strong with one of the two largest servers virtue being well known as the unofficial rp server on average active daily with more then thirty thousand players on it alone.

Again rocks where around. City of villains was often called a failed effort. Many didn't want to leave friends behind while running a villain alt in the villain areas even though it was all lovely fresh content with new stories. Some labeled it city of henchmen but the same got said about heroes side as well calling it city of sidekicks.

These labels helped the devs take notice. They heard the players seeing them wanting to be self confident and independent of a need for others that grouping should be fueled by want rather then need.

TLDR

By this time the game,devopers, and players where starting to mature. Players began to really grasp mechanics and optimize their builds. Raiding had finally been put into its niche largely because wow had become the dominant raid game and if that was the kind of game play that was where you if an elite raid gamer went end of story.

Many players like myself began to be more active as leaders not just another team member with the star but actual leaders caring about getting the team through. Task forces became my cup of tea and I only lead them never joined others with rare exceptions. This was for me because only the leader could boot members if they proved to be a monkey wrench to the team and at times I could be quite a Stalin about it. Either my way or be removed.

Serious leaders made sure completions of the many hour long tasks forces built for it including powers like recall friend, personal invisibility, and rez other power to be able to keep the group rolling along. In other words leader had a plan while wannabes played it by ear.

We still had rocks. Some of the old timers refused to update themselves to the crafting system turning themselves into frankly the side kicks that they would complain about as if it wasn't a self inflicted choice. Thankfully the devs ignored them. The game itself got harder for them while being about the same challenge for those who kept adapting. Personal difficulty adjustment existed for each player to find their comfort zone of accepted risk.

The elitists also started to become noticeably more prominent. Blaster and tank players demanded healer only types in groups and often waited more then an hour to get them. Leaders took what they could find we had our plans and they revolved around only a single key in their group themselves.

Growing pains existed even for we with the plan though. Many a time I myself would arrogantly ignore the groups need to participate in favor of quicker completion and create animosity between they and myself. The era of the ladder and piking had fallen to the wayside. No one was wasting time in a game if not actively participating in the game.

But as I said this was also the era of maturity. After a few months of quickly efficient success I and others saw we had to optimize our build for group play and an alt for solo play. Thankfully the devs heard us and we got the ability to have alternate builds to swap between.

Now we had the tool to play how we wanted when in group and when solo. Content kept coming. So much it was impossible for new comers to see it all in a half dozen characters rise to cap. Heroes and villains got co op zones and story arcs to help players no longer need to give up friendships or game time ignoring the other side.

One of the most hilarious and brilliant design choices also was made by the devs. PvP had never really taken off. It was hard after all compared to fighting mindless ai. So the devs put the new and best of the best shinies as RNG drops from pvping in the open world PvP areas. The logic simply being the hardest fights rewards the best drops. That was PvP and oh the QQ was sweet. Those who always wanted easy to get uber loot now has no choice. Sure some sgs and vgs exploited created round Robbin beat downs to farm drops but always where vulnerable to being jumped since it was in an open world zone.

If you wanted the best it meant you had to compete for it and even a portion of the anti PvP community couldn't deny the logic and approved.

Some of us learned not to depend on the best shinies to optimize. We developed our powers around that and thrived. The min max type QQd and gnashed teeth and was ignored by all and the game community kept growing. Virtue and freedom the two most popular and populous servers never had less then full loads of thirty thousand plus. One devoted to rpers the other to meta game mastery types. The legends of both frequently voiced approval of the game direction and good times were on the horizon .

Dev interaction was at an all time high. Every dev had personal accounts and often rubbed shoulders with us in anonymity as well as iconic characters as devs during g events. Two devs actually got legally married in game using their icon characters and made MMO dev history.

Players like myself began a lasting trend to make lore based characters. Finding names of kia or mia characters from game lore and either being next gen homages or returned from the dead or alternate timeline e concept's. Some players hated us but the devs openly approved without showing favorites. Often chatting with us in character at social events like holidays and costume contests in game. For we who lored it up content began to feel so personalized it was just that much richer a play experience.

But it wasn't without a price. Characters like my own Bentley Berkeley the games only lore based ancient immortal had to live up to such a concept and it pushed myself and others to rise to the occasion. I found myself stepping into his character and striving to mentor others as he was describes as such.

But it also could be fun. Another of mine was t'keron valmaz the lord of demon kind in game lore and it never ceased to be fun using lore to put many a wannabe Satan,Lucifer, or primordially evil generic character concept in their place if I caught them trying g to brute force rp dominance also called god moding on random players. On virtue server my characters often began to take on prominence rivaling dev icons and I wasn't the only one.

As year three drew to a close the winter holidays had us all enjoying ourselves in an extra dimensional ski resort for all to revel in. From non violent PvP games like super speeding ski slopes to rpers sitting by the fire or bar exchanging g stories we all felt luckier then every other MMO gamer to have our game and dev team.