My experiences with City of Heroes

I began playing CoH the first week it was released. The idea of living my childhood dreams of running around a living city, saving lives and stopping crimes, as a super hero was very appealing. But having never played an MMO on a PC, I was a bit nervous to start. It always seems to be easier watching someone play a game first, learn the basics, then dive into the new adventure. I was able to watch a friend run through the tutorial a couple of days after the release. That was all I needed. I had it downloaded and my first character built within the next few hours. Though growing up with the likes of Superman and Batman, I decided to go with a ninja. A katana/ super reflexes scrapper.

The learning curve was surprisingly very small, having only played one other true MMO (Phantasy Star Online, XBOX) getting a feel for the combat, how much damage you could deal, how many "baddies" you could take on at one time all seemed to make sense. I spent my first 8 levels with my friend, "arresting" all the enemies in sight. Not running through missions and filling contacts requests, but roaming the streets leveling up at a very slow rate. My friend lost interest around this point, leaving me to fend for myself. My next concern was being able to find new heroes to run a muck through the streets.

It was around this time, I was almost forced into finding the XP potential of running through missions. As those who have built super reflexes scrappers know, soloing missions early was not the easiest thing to do. Slowly but surely I met a few other noobs to do our best in completing missions. The more I played with other people online, the more I would learn. By the time I hit level 25 I had already started two new builds, a fire/ice blaster and a fire/force field controller, and was leading 8 team missions and task forces to precision.

I was addicted; I got my scrapper to level 50 and unlocking the highly anticipated Peacebringer. Then I went through the entire process again, minus one new contact at the beginning, along the way bringing four or five other characters to the 30s. All those characters, and my favorite was still the scrapper. Super Reflexes before PvP and issue 4 was release was basically unstoppable. Perma Elude, maxed out SOs and Hamidons Enhancements in all defensive slots, and critical hits coming from the offensive end...I couldn't wait for PvP.

Then issue 4 was released, Super Reflexes got nerfed, and my elite character (there were so few Super Reflexes, everyone was Regen on Freedom Server) was now a joke. Even in PvE I was dying on simple missions, debt became a common occurrence at level 50!!! After a good year, along with some other 'real life' factors, I began to lose interest. So I had a dilemma, what should I play next? Should I hold out until CoV?