9 months in the Rogue Isles

This Friday I got my 9 month veteran rewards when I logged on to City of Villains/Heroes. While it does not separate between heroes and villains in this regards, CoV was the one I started with and have played most so far.

The longest time I have played any MMOG is close to a year, so this game is moving into the ranks of the longest played ones for me.

World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online and Earth&Beyond are the games I have played for a longer time. Everquest 2, EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy XI were all enjoyable games, but spent shorter time in those.

For a game that supposedly "lacks depth" as some people comment on the City of games, it has certainly had a staying power for me. As it is now, I do not see that I will stop playing it any time soon. But time will tell.

This got me thinking what it is with the game that makes it stick, while other games with more depth has failed.

1. In-game friends to play and chat with. This is I think they most important factor for any MMOGs staying power. Looking at the other MMOGs I have played, all which I have played for a long tinme I have had some very nice people to play and hang around with. This I have also in the City of games. The only anomaly here is Anarchy Online, which for the most part of the time I did not have a good group of friends to play with. But it was also my first MMOG and I did not play that many hours per week, due to work.

2. Community. If not playing with your friends, then you will play and interact with the rest of the people in the game world. Pick-up groups (PUGs), chat channels in general, game forums etc will certainly set affect the attitude and the view of the game. While perhaps not perfect, it is certainly quite good and a lot of positive attitude and friendliness.
The main negative here is when people are sending invites to teams and supergroups without asking first.

3. Fast-paced, visual gameplay. True to the comic book theme, game play action is fast-paced and visual, only missing "Kapow!", "Swish!", "Blam!" type of texts - although the sound makes up for that. I find that I miss a bit of this in other games, which have a slower pace. Although sometimes it can be a bit too fast at times - or rather players act a bit too fast...;)

4. Easy to get into, can play for short periods of time. There are no extensive times to get a group together, mission content scale with the number of players in the group and thus can in most cases work well for both solo, small groups and larger groups. The necessity to keep a group together for a long time is generally not there and group compositions also have flexibility - if a certain person drops from the group it is not the end of the world.
So it is easy quickly get into a group and play without a lot of waiting time. The group size and persons may change over time also, which just works fine. One finds that most of the time, even with PUGs, it was enjoyable time and did not feel completely wasted.

5. Easy to group with others. As someone that usually plays a lot of alts, being able to play with friends who may focus more on one or a few characters only can provide a challenge in many other games - differences in level can make grouping with friends close to impossible in otrher games. Here the lackey/sidekick/malefactor/exemplar system makes that almost no issue to be concerned with. Plus the game mechanics sort of encourages people to play alts, so there are many people doing that.

6. We are all individuals. Every characters can look different and cool from start - creating an outfit for your characters is part of the fun.

7. Polish. The City of games are polished. Smooth animations, good and clear effects, many nice details in the environment, many nice story arcs, fun NPCs and mobs in the comic book theme - all pieces fit well together.


Except for the first item, these items are not placed in an order of importance. I am not sure I would be able to do that.
IN any case, there is still a lot of content int he game I have not seen and no characters are near the level cap. I stringly suspect that I will still be around in the game at the next veteran reward in 3 months. If so, then City of Villains/Heroes will be the MMOG I have played for the longest time. But only time will tell..