Wednesday 27 September 2006

Pic of the day: Now you can fight evil in your underwear! Didn't know there was evil in your underwear? City of Heroes is a place where you can learn that.

City of sexy Heroes?

I'm not actually into erotic roleplaying, though I've done it some years ago as part of regular roleplaying on a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), a text-based online game. Sometimes I see vague hint of it going on in modern MMORPGs like Dark Age of Camelot or City of Heroes, but I guess I am just not that playful anymore.

In CoH, at least, you can have the body of your dreams. In fact, you have to actively avoid it if you don't want to be overly shapely. This is no less true for the male characters, who tend to look very athletic. There are now sliders to adjust this so you can get a leaner or more massive body, taller or shorter, and various other proportions of body and face. You can't be naked, of course, but you can strip down to the equivalent of beachwear. Unfortunately you can't put clothes on and off all the time, you have a limited number of uniforms, but any one of them can be as skimpy as you like. (Although you can also cover yourself in loose-fitting clothes if you prefer.)

The women are, as you can see from today's picture, also able to dress rather skimpily. Or they could settle for skintight clothes. Or a miniskirt. (Yes, people can see up it when you fly. But you always have at least a bikini bottom, so don't panic.) (Kilts will be available later this fall, incidentally. I assume the same will hold true there.)

And no, that's not my character. I have played some female characters, but they tend to look like anime characters. And you will be happy to know that I'm not flirty in any gender. Although I do tend to use expressions such as "tentacle bondage" about the black energy tentacles that my Dark/Dark Defender can cast to immobilize enemies. Well, it is literally true. Bondage doesn't have to mean, you know, that thing.

CoH does not have the reputation that EverQuest has for breaking and making marriages. On the contrary, a goodly number of the people who play it do so together with their spouse, at least part of the time. Strangely enough, the game seems to have a slightly higher content of real women than the medieval games, but less so than the non-combat Second Life, which is also widely thought to focus more on erotic content than the combat-centered classic MMORPGs. I guess that's what people do if they don't have anything else to do. ^^

I wouldn't really know, of course. I just thought the picture was funny. I hope I have not lead anyone into temptation here. In any case, if you are bothered by sexual temptations, that's what marriage is for. (Or that's what St Paul thought, at least. I wouldn't know.) You may even want to play City of Hero with your spouse... I've heard people say that the game is better than sex. I can believe that, at least if you have the Stamina power. In the City of Heroes, the fireworks go off all night long!