Most superhero movies and comic books are about journeys - the superhero doesn't start out that way, at least not normally - they're just an ordinary person who discovers they have a power, and while they learn how to use it, and what they are supposed to do with it, they learn a lot about themselves, and about other people too.
In many ways, City of Heroes is a lot like that - since launch, the game has been through its own journey - evolving from a very streamlined, perhaps overly slimmed down 'MMORPG-Lite' into a more flexible and fully featured game – whilst still keeping the bits that make it unique.
NCSoft are one of the best companies when it comes to keeping games updated, and providing plenty of new content for their users. Perhaps their only rival - in terms of regular, free updates that add lots of content, is Turbine, who are telling a good story themselves in terms of The Lord of The Rings Online.
In City of Heroes, new content is introduced in 'Issues' - just like a comic book. The latest Issue, number 12, added to the story of the Midnight Club - a mysterious organisation defending the world from dark powers. The latest threat is the Rikti invasion. Players on both sides the chance to sign up to join the Midnight Squad and help them push back the Rikti threat. Issue 12 also added a new zone, the Roman Cimeroan Peninsula, which gives you a chance to escape modern times and play the game Greek and Roman style.
The change I'm most excited about, though, is access to the 'real numbers' - City of Heroes started out as a very casual MMO - you didn't (and still don't) even have to loot corpses after you kill them - you just have stuff appear in your inventory without having to do anything. There's no weapons or armour to worry about upgrading as you level - just 'Inspirations' that give short term buffs or benefits, and 'Enhancements' that you can use to improve your skills, along with salvage you can use for crafting.
This streamlined interface always bugged me. When the game first game out it was hard to decide how to upgrade each skill - is it better to use that last slot to make the skill more accurate, or should I make it recharge faster instead? With this new publish, I don't have to rely on a third party tool to work that out - I can run the numbers myself, because they're all right there in front of me.
Casual players don't have to concern themselves with squeezing every last bit of damage out of a skill if they don't want to, but it's nice to not feel like things are being hidden from you.
While they were looking at 'the numbers' it seems they decided to overhaul the rest of the interface - you can search through contacts much more easily now, and the chat box works better too - you can select people and add them to your friends list or invite them to a team, and you can link items into chat just by dragging them - a simple addition, but a very handy one. You can also move your power trays around a lot more, giving you more control over your screen real-estate.
The Midnighter Club is accessible to Heroes from level 10. Villains can't get anything from their Midnighter Club contact until level 14, but that's still a decently low level, so if you're new to the game it doesn't take long to get to that stage. Then again, if you're new to the game, you've got plenty of other content to explore along the way anyway. Either way, it's always nice to see that lower level characters haven't been forgotten.
The newbie areas are actually pretty busy at the moment - while this has always been the case to some extent, (I'm an alt-aholic, and have tons of character around the level 10 point) - it seems busier now than normal, perhaps because of the Powerset Proliferation - heroes and villains of all archetypes have access to one new Primary, and one new Secondary powerset. While my heroes aren't that excited about that (I've got my 'ideal' hero already), I've always thought of the villains as a little bland, and it's nice to see a bit more crossover in terms of abilities.
City of Heroes has always had the 'nice touches' - the character generator, when the game came out, was pretty much the best one ever to have been seen in an MMO - rivalled only by the Star Wars Galaxies 'Image Designer' profession - although the dull colour palate of Star Wars Galaxies limited what you could do with that. Inside the game itself, there's lots of things that make you smile - the dialogue going on between the NPCs as you walk by, the things people say to you after you save them, and the way rival factions are fighting it out around you. It's fun to see two rival gangs shooting at each other, and then step in and just kill everyone on both sides.
Villains finally get two Epic Archetypes - the Blood Widows and the Wolf Spiders. Villain players will be very happy to hear this, as their goody-goody counterparts have had access to Epic Archetypes for a while now. You have to have a Level 50 Villain to get a access to those Archetypes, but you wouldn't have been feeling jealous unless you had a Level 50 sitting around, would you? :)
Windows Vista users will be glad to hear that the game now runs well under Vista. Previously there were problems with the mouse cursor, and you had to make a few tweaks to get the game to run well. I found, when testing the game under Vista that it would run decently 'out of the box', but if you wanted to change certain graphics settings, the games own options page wouldn't work (the settings were just ignored) so you need to use a program called TweakCOH to do certain things, such as make the game run in windowed mode. TweakCOH is free to download, and very useful - especially if you have a widescreen monitor and want to use a setting not supported by the game.
All in all, City of Heroes has shaped up quite nicely, with the most recent patches adding a lot of features that experienced MMO players will appreciate. If you've played City of Heroes before, but left because you found it lacking on the interface or information front, it may be time to give it a second look.
