Current status of role-playing in MMORPGs.

Comments

• Lodeclaw Member Posts: 148

  April 2008

  Alright! I'll write up a little review on the state of RP, in my experience, in my favorite MMORPG:

  City of Heroes.

  Historically I've never been much of a follower of the superhero genre in fiction or gaming. I was attracted to City of Heroes initially by it's great character creation system, which didn't disappoint. But I'll cut to the chase and get down to business.

  When I joined City of Heroes, I had no idea what server was best, since there was no distinction between them except their name and population, so I just picked on at random. After a short time I realized that there wasn't an extremely strong following of role-players on the server I picked, so I searched around. I discovered that some time before I joined the game, role-players got together and decided to migrate to a single server, which become the unofficial RP server for CoH. I have to say it's the most impressive display of cooperation among role-players I've ever heard of. It's a sign of how dedicated they are, and how great CoH's RP community really is.

  Although the game's staff doesn't enforce any sort of RP rules, the Virtue server remains a stronghold for role-players in CoH. There's such a density of them in that server, that if you talked to any random person, you would have likely more than a 50% chance of encountering a role-player who will respond to you in character without any provocation. Those are damned good odds for an MMORPG these days!

  When I finally remade my character on the Virtue server, I began actively looking for a good role-playing supergroup (guild) and in not much time I was contacted by someone a fantastic group that I hold incredible respect and love for to this day, even though I have been away from the game for over a year.

  Supergroups in CoH really do tend to RP together on a moderately exclusive level; however, they are not shy to include anyone who shows an interest. Honestly, although pick-up-groups are still often a little on the disappointing side, you can still find interesting groups of role-players who will be happy to let you tag along on their missions.

  
  
  When it comes to non-role-players, they don't hassle you for role-playing on the Virtue server, which is really nice. Sometimes they'll even pitch in a little if you role-play, even if they aren't experienced with the activity. All in all, City of Heroes tends to be a very friendly game, which I figure is thanks to the fact that everyone wants to be the good guy. Haha! They are heroes, after all.

  CoH's character customization is second to none, and it really adds a special aspect to the role-playing experience. Not only can you truly look unique among hundreds of other players, you can obtain up to 4 costume slots which you can maintain separately and switch at any time. Not only that, but leaders of supergroups can choose the guild's official uniform colors and emblem, which supergroup members may add in any combination to any outfit they have with a simple click/toggle.

  This flexibility is much beloved by the players; most role-players will fill their costume slots with:

  1. Their original costume
  2. Their supergroup uniform
  3. Civies (civilian clothes)
  4. (the fourth slot varies by person)

  City of Heroes really is a great game. I personally enjoy the combat system, but the community is what brings it all together and makes it something special. Before I finish, there's one other thing.

  Cryptic released for it's players the ability to use a 3d animation program to actually create their own animations for their characters and upload them to the game. This happened about the time I left the game, (for my own reasons) but from what I hear a lot of people are enjoying this feature to do a multitude of new things with their characters. What other game let's you personalize your characters emotes?

  EDIT:

  I actually forgot to mention couple features that are very important! Please read on!

  CoH features a 'sidekick/exemplar' system, which essentially allows one player to become the sidekick or exemplar of another character. This system goes two ways and always involves only two players. If a higher level player invites a lower level character as a sidekick, that lower level player will gain the strength of (if I remember correctly) one level lower than his/her exemplar. If a lower level player invites a higher level character to be his/her exemplar, the higher level player will get have his/her strength lowered to that of the lower level character. (This also means that skill obtained after the level of your partner will be unavailable.) It may seem like a raw deal for the higher level character if he/she is dropping levels (temporarily), especially since they don't get experience... But what this system allows is for players of all levels to play together! Especially for role-players, this is important, because even if you don't have the time to play and level up as much as your friends, you won't be left out of the fun because of your level!

  The other feature I forgot to mention has to do with endgame content. In City of Heroes there's a company called Portal Corp. which operates trans-dimensional portals. In the end game, players can and often organize events that involve going through portals into randomly generated areas full of enemies. Role-playing supergroups eat this up and use it often to progress their own story lines, which can often involve as for as a small group of players from a single supergroup, or as much as a coalition consisting of multiple supergroups and more!

  I myself was lucky enough to be involved in a few of these excursions and they were always interesting! It's fun to have 25 or more heroes busting heads together in a massive melee of enemy soldiers and their steam-powered robots!

  Here are a few fun screenshots of my first trip through a portal:

  img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Lodeclaw/screenshot_2006-10-28-16-21-34.jpg

  img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Lodeclaw/screenshot_2006-10-28-17-03-38.jpg

  img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/Lodeclaw/screenshot_2006-10-28-17-06-36.jpg

  Unfortunately I didn't get any good screenshots of the really big groups of enemies before we had already scattered them. Plus, if I recall 4 groups entered the instance. Only two of them appear in the second two screenshots.

  END EDIT

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• Caellach Member Posts: 25

  April 2008

  Thanks for the very detailed review, Lode! I'm thrilled. This more than enough on CoH RP.