Thursday 13 October 2005

Pic of the day: Screenshot City of Heroes. Text by yours truly.

Online gaming days

Even though I have already downloaded the "Darkness Rising" expansion pack for Dark Age of Camelot, I have not yet installed it. This is because lately I am almost exclusively playing City of Heroes, more exactly my Dark defender. Gaining levels is harder once you have hit the 20s (actually it grows progressively more difficult for each level, as is the rule in all role playing games). But I don't mind. At this point he has all the superpowers that he needs for day to day crime-fighting. As with most heroes, the first powers are the most basic. The later powers are more situational, to be used in exceptional situations. Anyway, I don't mainly play to a level up my character as fast as possible, but to have fun.

I am not a very social person, so I can easily have fun by myself. On the European server I usually played solo or duo. But with this character I have spent more time in larger groups, or teams as they are called in this game. In part this is because of the nature of the character: Defenders are naturally supporting characters. While they can survive without a team, progress is usually quite a bit slower. And teams cannot easily survive without them. Defenders strengthen their friends and weaken their enemies. As a Dark defender I can do both of these. Even though our natural strength is to confuse the enemy so they don't hit in the first place, I also find myself doing a lot of healing. I even got an automatic "medic" badge this week for having healed a certain amount of damage during my career so far. (The game gives you automatic badges for various accomplishments. I also got a "tough" badge for having taken so much damage and survived. I am not sure a supporting character ought to get that badge, but not all teams are equally competent.)

The new thing this week is that I have joined a supergroup. This is a larger and more permanent group, kind of like "guilds" in medieval role- playing games. Examples from superhero comics would be The Avengers, Legion of Superheroes, X-Men or JLA. The supergroup I joined is called Iron Justice. Originally I intended to join Steel Justice, which I have seen described as a mature supergroup. But supergroups have an upper limit of 75 members. After this they organize a secondary group (or more), which are connected in a coalition. Each supergroup has its own chat channel, but there is also a coalition channel. If the division is simply a matter of numbers, it is customary to use the coalition channel instead of the supergroup channel, and this is the case here. I joined a parallel group called Iron Justice so I guess it is probably also a small status difference from Steel, but I don't notice any discrimination in practice.

Not that I notice my supergroup membership much in practice at all. I continue to do my own missions alone, or do other people's missions in pickup teams, while following the chat in a chat window on my screen. I haven't actually taken part in any of their activities. Still, it makes the game a bit more lively.

I am not really the kind of player who could play an active role in a supergroup. I spend a lot less time in the game than students do, evidently. I find that a bit strange since a school day plus homework ought to roughly equal one day at work, and most of them probably have social lives off line as well. For instance, I was under the impression that many high school students and most college students had a boyfriend or girlfriend. Certainly you would prefer to spend time with them rather than with the imaginary characters of complete strangers? Or perhaps that is just me, and I would quickly changed my mind if I actually had had a girlfriend. "City of Heroes -- better than a girlfriend!" But this is all just my observation, I can't speak from experience. And I seriously doubt this game will change that (the no girlfriend part). Even with my dark and mysterious defender...