Come for the games, stay for the drama.
City of Heroes cast a long shadow over the superhero MMO landscape. There’s easily a half dozen efforts to resurrect the game in some form, either by recreating the original game, or building a clear sequel. As of now, though, there’s only two MMOs that can carry COH’s torch — superhero MMOs where you can build your own hero your own way. And those are Cryptic’s Champions Online, and Daybreak’s DC Universe Online.
Which one is the better game for those who miss City of Heroes?
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.
So, I listened to the DCUO livestream the other day, where they showed a preview of the House of Legends episode, packed to the rafters with quality-of-life changes and new content. I was listening, fascinated, until they mentioned that House of Legends was currently LIVE ON THE TEST SERVER.
So, I, um, quit the livestream and installed the test version of DCUO and went to have a look for myself.
I don’t play every MMO that comes out — not by a longshot. But, I follow a lot of gamers, streamers, and game developers, and between me and them, I see a lot of discussion about the new MMOs that come down the pike.
Crowfall was released a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly, everyone was talking about it. And then, suddenly everyone was not. What did it all mean? I asked Google Trends to help me analyze searches for a dozen or so MMOs to help understand what all was going on with MMOs today.
A long, long time ago, in a different blog, I was frustrated with myself for trying and abandoning so many MMOs. Every new MMO that came along — I’d try.
So I started the MMO Challenge. The challenge was simply this: to play a MMO as my main game for at least a year. I’d join a guild, I’d level up, grind gear, go on raids, see all that I could see and make some memories along the way. Really dive deep. If I made that challenge, I’d know what to do when I sat down to game. I’d log into that MMO.