Wednesday 28 April 2004

Pic of the day: Quarkpax, kinetic defender AD 4800. Screenshot from City of Heroes, of course!

Back in tights

Yes! City of Heroes is open for business, and I am there! An online friend in America bought the game for me as soon as it hit the shops, and mailed me the serial number. Since I had beta tested the game, I already had it on my hard disk, so I was up and running in minutes. As I had expected, they eagerly accepted my credit card even though it was not American and neither was my address. (The game is officially released for North America only, and launch dates for other continents have not yet been decided.)

The publisher, NCSoft, had set up 11 servers. This turned out to be plenty enough for release day. The server load was light, and even in the newbie areas the heroes did not need to compete for resources. (The most critical resource for a hero is, of course, villains. The city was absolutely crawling with them. There were also enough trainers and contacts for everyone.)

It is easy to become excited over such a game. After all, most of us boys at least had some kind of superhero fantasies when we were children. To fly, not in a plane or a balloon, but sailing through the air on our own. Or at least jump up on the rooftops. And of course to beat up the bullies who make life miserable. In City of Heroes you can do all that and more. So of course it is a daydream come true for a lot of us. OK, so it is still a daydream... but at least it is one we share, in full audio and video.

This strength of the game is also its weakness, I believe. Because it appeals to dreams we have held since childhood, many players are going to react childishly. I see this on the official message boards. Then again, people react childishly even when superheroes or games are not involved. Even so, I suspect that some people will leave in a huff if they cannot recreate the hero they wanted, or if their hero isn't among the greatest and strongest in the game. Some may leave anyway, because they did not really have any clear idea where they wanted to take their character. Daydreams are kinda hazy at the best of times.

Several reviews praise the game highly, but they wonder how much of a lasting appeal it will have. This is a good question. But after beta testing it for over a month, I still felt that I was just scratching the surface. Of course, this is partly due to my play style: I tend to create new characters often, rather than stick with one till the end. This is so with all the games I play, from Civilization to Morrowind. It is part of my faddish nature, I guess. And with 11 servers, I can switch between 88 characters. That should take some time to get fed up with.

True, I am going to level up so slowly it will barely be noticeable after a while. But then again, I don't play to level up. I don't play to win or even to be better than the neighbors. If I don't have fun, I'll go do something else for a while. (In particular, if I realize that I have made friends with ambitious people, I'll play another character until they have leveled so far they no longer consider me useful.) But in City of Heroes, there are so many imaginary lives to live, I wonder if I will ever come back.