It’s Developer Appreciation week. Whenever these come up, I really don’t know what to say. The games I’ve played have changed my life. When things were darkest, they maybe even saved my life. MMOs, in particular, have made it easy for me to “find my people”. I’ve played with the same group of people now for more years than I care to count. My daughter married someone she met in EverQuest. I’m living with someone I met there.
There has never been a game that has been as transformative for me or the industry, as EverQuest. That’s why I am so happy to have this opportunity to shower my praises on the brave, creative and groundbreaking developers of City of Heroes.
What? Talk about EverQuest? My previous blog was named West Karana! I’ve talked about EQ a lot over the years, but it’s no longer a game I play. The developers that made the game special I see working for other game companies now. EverQuest’s legacy lives on.
I took frequent short breaks from EQ to play other MMOs. Dark Age of Camelot, Dream of Mirror Online, Tabula Rasa… but the one I stuck with longest was City of Heroes/Villains.
I believe this was the first superhero MMO released. In the niche field of superhero MMOs, it was as influential as EverQuest.
In COH/COV, players had access to vast customization tools, setting a high bar that is still not met by many MMOs today.
But in COH/COV, your costume was everything. It defined you and set you apart. And more importantly, your look had nothing to do with your stats. You were free to be as unique as you could make yourself without worrying that changing something would penalize your gameplay.
The character I’m showing here was Madame Scurry, a cockroach-themed villain. She’s just received notification that she is being reported dead. That was… disturbing, right?
Missions like this typically had you running from contact to contact within the open world. I say open, but that was only open to an extent. The cities were partitioned off with energy barriers, and crossing through one of the portals between them usually meant higher level enemies, with better powers.
The missions typically ended in one or more instanced missions. Beginning heroes and villains found themselves more often than not in generic office buildings, or banks that nonetheless looked like generic office buildings. Most of the instances were randomly generated. While the terrain might look similar, the specific twists, turns and enemies would differ.
But you’d see the various enemy factions pop up again and again. The snakes. The cyborgs. You know, the usual.
Well, it turned out “reporter” Nellie Fine was a snake queen after all. Newspapers should really vet their reporters with a little more care.
I can’t remember if instances scaled if you were in a group or not; I don’t believe they did. There were raids that did require groups, and they were very hard. Since the sort of powers any particular player would bring to a team were more or less random. The one thing that wasn’t a problem was finding a team with your level. Characters were able to become sidekicks to another player they were grouped with, temporarily elevating them to the same level as their mentor. That’s fairly common, nowadays… but back then, it rocked the MMO world. Someone is seeing end game content without spending a thousand hours grinding levels? MADNESS!
So, here’s to City of Heroes, City of Villains, and Cryptic Studios. You had a dream, you executed, you broke the mold and made something entirely new.
It goes without saying that Champions Online wouldn’t have existed without COH, as they were done by the same developers. Arguably, the HERO games system on which Champions Online was based would have been a far better foundation for a group of related MMOs than COH was, if just because the HERO system already had sourcebooks for fantasy and sci-fi settings that were compatible with Champions. Imagine superheroes, wizards, and hackers taking on challenges together. It might have been.
Jack Emmert was the lead designer for City of Heroes/Villains, went on to design Champions Online, and now is designing DC Universe Online. I have played all of his games, and have been playing DCUO for at least eight years. So, Jack Emmert, and the rest of the crew at Cryptic Studios who took the less traveled path, I appreciate you. Thanks for all the fun!
