I played Champions Online for a while, maybe a year? more? like 10 years ago.
I read some good breakdowns on a couple places, As some have said, it has been on maintenance mode for a very long time. Seems like there was issues with launch, then over a few years changes in direction a few times. It got new owners twice - and was bought by a chinese owned 'lets make this as microtransaction heavy as possible' kind of changes company. (Perfect World). Development and writing and direction seemed to really suffer, and basically wasted a really good base of a game. Also instead of being able to pay 10 bucks a month (to get freeform instead of the mostly bad archetypes), they took that out at some point and you had to buy a lifetime subscription for almost 300 bucks which is insane for a game in maintenance mode for over 10 years.
I have only played City of heros for about 2 days now - got interested with the news about getting the license so checked it out. So take any comparisons with that grain of salt.
CO is very weak in grouping it seems. I played another game Dungeons and Dragons Online for like 9 years, that had a vastly more robust grouping system for example, CO was terrible by comparison. There is basically almost no endgame content. There is a raid-like set of fights that I only ever did like twice and hated it. (Gravitar, super annoying). The way to build a character for 99.99% of the game and the 'raids' was very different, and the rewards seemed minor to not bother with for what the game was otherwise. There was a much simpler set of equipment and enhancement slots you can grind for, but had diminishing returns so was only a factor for what seemed a small group of people. So once you cap a character it was kinda boring, most of the game was making new character concepts (and for many costumes).
That said - the main game was pretty great. The 4 color cartoon style was bright and distinct. The hammy writing fit in with being like a comic (there was a set of Big Trouble in Little China quests for example kinda funny) - tons of movie and pop references all over the place. There was a ton of character to many missions.
I played before the Alert system was added - so leveled 2-3 characters by grinding out every quest in the game pretty much - solo. There was almost no need to group as long as you had some kind of defense and a heal(since freeform you could add any power from any set and built however you wanted), then after alerts you could just sit in one spot and grind alerts and join from anywhere and get to level 40 without touching anything past low level missions. I think I left with 20+ level 40 characters after, some people had many dozens or even hundreds - there is a thread of 'post you alt total' - and there are a couple people with around 1000. (which is nuts)
City of Heros seems to have a more complicated enhancement system, but a wide variety of powers and options. And from what I have been reading is more geared towards grouping so hopefully that is fun. However the visuals are much more blurry and drab it seems in comparison (sounds like COH came out a few years before CO and CO was the second attempt by same studio or same people?) I have watched a bunch of videos of people doing runs, farming, or some group stuff and it can be hard to distinguish what is being used from the visuals alone. Same with enemies, much more drab and blob like than CO. Farming seems much more important to COH, which while maybe not very superheroic...obviously people need something to do that has an impact for endgame to keep playing, which CO really doesnt have.
It would be cool if the games combined the best of both but obviously its different studios, IP's etc so no one is going to invest in that kind of cost for 20 year old games.
Hopefully can enjoy some COH action however - my alt-o-holic nature is already got me 3 characters just out of the tutorial....sigh.
