Drunken Comics Rage

Dear readers, we here at DCR have been keeping a horrible secret from you. We've spent more than a year (with massive gaps) entertaining you with our particular brand of comic rantiness, when all the while this terrible truth lingered in the shadows. I thought I could go on making weekly posts and keep you, our beloved readers, in the dark about our true nature. But the guilt has finally overcome me and I now feel I must come clean on behalf of all of us. I surely risk being ostracized by the rest of my DCR comrades for doing this, but I don't care. The truth must be revealed!

And so here it is.

We are all devoted City of Heroes gamers.

*sigh"

Woo! I feel much better now. It's like a a two ton heavy thing was just lifted off my back.

Okay so maybe it isn't entirely true that we are all devoted CoH gamers. GhostShark has floated in and out a couple times and claims it holds nothing for him. But every so many months we suck him back in for a month or two, so he can't possibly hate it as much as he might often claim. And even if he does we've already dismissed his opinion before on the grounds that he is a soulless ninny. So further examination of his issues are no longer required for the duration of this post.

We have collectively played a lot of MMOGs over the years. Most of us started with Ultima Online, moved right on to Everquest, straight on to Dark Age of Camelot, and on and on. I can't say we've played every MMOG ever created, or even that every one of us has played every game that we can claim in our repetoire of MMOGs. But as a collective, we have purchased, demo'd or beta tested a substantial number of these bastards in the last ten years and change. It goes without saying the vast majority of them were fantasy genre in nature because, lets face it, fantasy games had computer based RPGs on lockdown for a long ass time, let alone the (at the time) burgeoning MMOG market. Pretty well every game had it's good and bad and in the short term we would overlook the shortcomings. However without fail, we would end up bowing out of every single game inside a year.

And then came City of Heroes.

I don't know when we first became aware of its creation, but we kind of halfheartedly watched newsbits on its development. We were all pretty jaded by that stage and were expecting the exact same game dynamics as we had seen before in other games, this time just in superhero clothes. And pretty much from the beginning I stated that if you couldn't punch a bad guy through a building it wouldn't be worth a damn.

Fast forward a little further and Evil Artist was invited into closed beta for the game. Yes, I know Evil Artist is really only spoken of here and never actually heard from so he's something of a Snuffleupagus for most of you, but trust us he exists. He exists or is a figment of our collective imaginations, which given the drunkeness of the rest of us across our lifetimes cannot be ruled out. But I digress.

From the jump Evil Artist was impressed with what he saw, which says a ton because he had pretty well been dragged begrudgingly into every previous MMOG we played. More times than not it would breakdown that one of the others would buy a game on release and then everyone else would follow suit within days. We are nothing if not lemmings when it comes to our gaming habits. Then shortly after we would drag Evil Artist kicking and screaming in to playing yet another fantasy MMOG. He never had the fantasy genre background the rest of us did so they were just kinda games to be played because we were all playing them. Evil Artist is, to the core of his very black heart, a comics nerd first and foremost. So any MMOG with a decent presentation of the super hero comic book genre was certainly in his wheelhouse.

Evil Artist actually bought CoH  on release, which again was unprecedented at the time. Ghost Shark was next to purchase because as it goes he's something like the Galactus of PC gaming. He constantly hungers new entertainment, devours it onsite, and when it no longer serves to appease him discards its husk and moves to the next victim. Somewhere within a month or so the rest of us had submitted to peer pressure and dove into the game as well. As I said we are nothing if not lemmings.

Fast forward again, only this time a bit longer. Like say, four years. That puts us at present day. To date I still can't put bad guys through walls in the game. But we are still playing.

Pretty much all of us but Evil Artist have left the game and come back at some stage. Artist has stayed with it from day one and never really faltered for the most part. I probably clock in with the second most time in the game with something like three and a half years. Monkey and Shark bailed for the pastures of Dungeons and Dragons Online, but at some stage they burned out on that for reasons they would have to tell you. I basically baited Monkey back into CoH by finding a dirt cheap copy of City of Villains so we could all do EVIIIIIIL together. He's stayed on from that point forward. Shark I think has come back and left like twice in the past six months but again, soulless ninny.

A lot has been said both good and bad about CoH in the gaming community. Hell a lot has been said good and bad to me about CoH. Upon finding out I was a CoH player a coworker of Mrs. DVO actually asked me why I insist on playing games that suck. He  of course was (is) a World of Warcraft zealot. And of course to put in his pitch for WoW he added "10 million people can't be wrong".  Which really is quite a silly statement because one doesn't have to look much further than any given general elections in 2000 and 2004 to realize, in fact, 10 million people can be quite wrong. Actually quite a bit more than 10 million people can be wrong, but again I digress.

Really I would contend that CoH does not, in fact, suck. In fact I would say it is quite fun to us and, from what I understand, to Brian Bendis. And as a testament to that is the fact that we have stuck by this game much longer than we have any other game in our collective gaming lives. I'd be willing to bet I've played CoH longer than I did the last three MMOGs I played combined.

Hell even more a testament to the game is the fact that it is still here and profitable after fours years, 14 "issues" (free content releases), and a whole shitload of behind the scenes politics and upheaval within the development team. All that while staring down the face of the 900 pound gorilla in the market (WoW) for a large chunk of its lifetime.

And that's not to say that the games is without its faults.

• Yes, the maps can get repetitive
• Yes, there is a shortage of NPC supervillains
• Yes, we would like some better written stories for the missions
• Yes, we all want to change the color of our energy blast  and shoot it out of our eyes (or butt) if we so choose
• No, it doesn't support voice chat
• And no, I still cannot put a guy through a building.

But at it's core it comes down to this.

It is still hella fun to punch things in the face while wearing colored jammies.

That's it. No more explanation needed really. Punching shit in colored jammies and posing like this:

 . . .simply because I can.

So given we've devoted an assload of time to a game all about superjammies, I'll likely try to strongarm the rest of the DCR gang into sharing thoughts and screens from our many adventures in upcoming posts. The dev team has promosied some pretty coool shit in the coming year and as it strikes us as interesting (pre or post release) we'll likely share it all with you. Who knows? Maybe it'll become your own dirty little secret.

See ya in Paragon City.

Filed under: Games!