Captain Electric

Hey fair enough, that's as worthy as getting new people to try it out. And yeah I know some people that I wouldn't have bothered with too haha. I don't think it's blind luck that I've had so much success getting positive results from fresh newbie eyes, most of these people are either older gamers who appreciate the slower gameplay and focus on stories, or younger peeps in a community I'm in where crapping all over other people's favorite things is highly discouraged (thus it's become sort of a haven for more open-minded types who like checking out each other's games; terminally unimpressed folks kinda weed themselves out over there lol).

On the other side of the coin, I've dragged probably two dozen new people (willingly and unwillingly-at-first lol) young and old into City of Heroes since it became officially licensed again, and to my pleasant surprise (shock almost) absolutely every single one of them loved it, and many of them have continued to include it in their MMO haunts. We talk a lot about rose-colored glasses, but the inverse exists as well. How surprised I was by fresh eyes seeing this old game. Turns out, it's a really good game. And it probably doesn't deserve my tired and old, backhanded compliments on a day like today, with the arrival of this huge Kallisti Wharf update. Our own OG opinions are probably the least valuable here, deal with it. That goes for me, too. If you really want to know how good the game still is, bully and cajole some fresh meat to try it out.

This honestly looks huge (and a huge amount of work) and reminds me of the old Paragon Studios updates back in the day, good excuse to drag some friends with me back into City of Heroes 😎

I'm not gonna throw any shade at the OP, nor do I see any insult in his words, which are eloquently written. And to the person who called four paragraphs and probably 800 words "another 50k word essay", welcome to a forum discussion lol, TikTok is thataway. I've experienced this death of immersion in other games, including my very first MMO (not City of Heroes). I just can't see in that game what I used to, and it sucks, and I know it would just injure me more for one of its present fans to mistake that fact for some kind of shit talk, so I sympathize with the OP. The magic of City of Heroes, for me, now that I think about it, is actually that I always had to meet it halfway. Considering how neck-deep I've been in this game in the past, some of my old friends would be surprised to hear this, but there was never a point when the game delivered complete immersion without any effort on my part, especially considering the original dev team's abundance of campiness (no shade here either, just pointing out the obvious). City of Heroes still works for me because my imagination really likes the work, the magic is still there because I'm still able (and willing) to meet this alternate reality three quarters of the way; and I'm still invested in my roster of characters, enough that I'm probably still more fond of them than any other roster of comic book characters out there (I know some of you can relate!). I grew up playing pen-and-paper games, text adventures, sandboxes and CRPGs with truly shitty graphics, so it's just another Tuesday for me. But this isn't gloating, it's gratitude. One day I might feel exactly like the OP and not be able to help it. I'm not better than them, just luckier.

Salutes! Over the past several weeks, I've introduced probably a dozen friends to City of Heroes. I've seen the proof that all these years later, the costume creator, the world design, writing, level-scaling, trials, all of it still impresses even the pickiest gamers. (And they finally understand why I never shut up about this game.) Saving, or conquering, Primal Earth and beyond deserves to be experienced. Here's to twenty more years of experiences!