I don't get why this is so much better than CO

[Warpstarr]

Because I was around 10 years old when I played CoH/V, I never learned how to play the game, I was able to take in how good of an idea it was, never got to learn the technical details and what made the game different until now. Because of this, when CoH/V shut down and got replaced by Champions Online I never really understand why or what the differences were between the 2 games that caused such action from Cryptic. As a result of these decisions from Cryptic, the only Superhero MMORPG from them I ever got to learn and was interested in over the years was Champions Online, I never even had the chance to chose between the 2 games.

 

Times have changed now and I've able to revisit this old game thanks to the staff here at the Homecoming team, thank you. I realize that my past might have given me a different perspective on the 2 Cryptic superhero MMORPGs. I am struggling to see why so many people prefer CoH/V over Champions Online. When I google search why people prefer CoH/V over CO, the people in question never seem to give concrete answers, only reply with answers like "it doesn't feel the same" or "it looks like cartoony crap". Before I go any further, I can completely understand why people would prefer CoH/V over CO just because of the graphical style or simply nostalgia, if either of those are your reasons for preferring CoH/V over CO then I can understand that. But I want to go into the technical details of the 2 games, more than just graphics, because for me I actually like both of these graphical styles.

 

You may be thinking what is this thread even trying to get at when CoH/V is so obviously better, see I don't see it that way, that's what I want people to post in this thread, tell me why you think this game is so much better than CO because I don't see it after trying this game over a few days. All I can see is darker, more outdated graphics than CO, an unbalanced class system where MM and certain OP power combos go around and beat everyone else, people spam farming ae instead of playing the game properly, a static and actionless combat system compared to CO, when you pick your travel power why bother when you can chose stats instead that are better than moving slightly faster out of combat.

 

Where as Champions Online has more updated graphics, no souless ae farming, more action based combat where you can actually move around while using your powers instead of being physically locked in place, you can charge certain powers by holding down a button instead of simply clicking a button 1 time for every skill like in CoH/V, travel powers in CO are actually just travel powers instead of being mixed with stat based powers to take away form the fun of simply picking a travel power, heroes are different and custom in CO (freeform) while in CoH/V when you chose a class and a powerset chances are tons of other people are exactly the same as you.

 

Please tell me if you disagree with my opinion and why, please no insults or childish banter, I want to actually learn and grow from this thread if I can. If all you can mention is the graphics/sounds and nostalgia then I can understand that, but I'm looking for something more. Also I haven't played Champions Online very seriously, I haven't made it to the end game for either of these games and will be unaware of balance issues that freefrom in CO may have, but how much worse could that be than everyone having the exact same op powers like in this game or being a MM and exploding everything in 1 second.

[Charistoph]

For myself, CO didn't really feel as solid of a game.  It's hard for me to define.  Graphics don't mean that much to me, largely because I build to a budget so I generally have to keep things low-key.  Nostalgia wasn't really it, either, because I could run both at the same time.  It was how loosely fit everything felt in CO that I never felt the urge to sub it.  The powersets were more robust, but they didn't provide the same impact (with the exception of the electrical powers).

 

I guess for me CO just felt like a cheap knock-off, even if it was a more challenging game design to work with.  Maybe it was because I never created characters that I wanted to play too far past creation, and it didn't scratch my altoholic itch as much as CoX did.  Maybe it was because the powersets never really felt as cohesive.  Note, I'm not saying that Cox had actually had all those things, objectively, it just didn't feel right.  DCUO was little better, and having to find a desirable weapon set that worked with your powers also didn't help.

[EmeraldFox]

Part of my argument is that yeah im going to go with it just doseint feel the same.  For me COH always felt like home to me super hero mmo wise.  Yeah its graphic engine aint up to as date as CO but the game play feels more solid the community is stronger and unlike CO there is an option to create your own adventure for not only your hero but others.  That and have the opportunity to create a villan to battle against other heros. 

 

CO has a lot of potential if they put these into the game but Cryptic studios have let the ball drop years ago and feels to much like a cash grab when you have to pay real money not only to unlock each power set but if you want your own home base that costs money as well.  Thank you home coming staff.  Feels like a real home coming to me

[Wolf Bonne]

I was in the very early beta for CO, had high expectations, it was some of the same people behind it. It became apparent to me how thrown together CO felt, it was as though they made the whole thing within a year of maybe using half scrapped content, it was also apparent that they weren't as tuned into what CoH vets wanted out of a next gen superhero game with missions to kill wolves and originally starting in either a desert or a winter wilderness setting. The interesting thing to me is that it uses an upgraded version of the CoH engine, and there was for a brief moment some design docs that leaked for a City of Heroes 2, but no way to confirm how real that is.

 

I don't hold a grudge against CO, I'm indifferent to it and occasionally check in on it to see what's up out of curiosity and boredom.Just thought I'd put that here.

 

When I saw that the CoH source code existed and there was a private server somewhere in the wild, I had to step back and ask myself what it was that made this game special to me, what made it work. Cuz, as much as I love City of Heroes and have many fond memories, I also disliked a lot about it. I get critical when I invest a chunk of my life into something, I suppose. Anyway, here are some thoughts:

 

It's funny playing this with my partner (her first time) and finding out just how slow and plotting it is to solo and duo. You're limited in the early game with power selection. You can't hit crap reliably. There is a lot that makes you weak, but that is also a bit of the charm. Harder doesn't mean better, it's a different experience, a game that came out pre World of Warcraft, pre the idea that you should be able to solo at all in an MMO. My partner and I are playing a Blaster and Controller respectfully, we just hit the late teens in Praetoria, we struggled through each mission, but something clicked at 18 when I started to get the hang of the game's nuances again. Line of Sight pulling is a massive thing, stacking our -To Hit debuffs, utilizing stealth abilities to run past groups, syncing up our steps to effortlessly go from one mission to the next. We felt powerful and both useful. There was a real since of progression through our characters gaining power, and us gaining power through learning.

 

City of Heroes is an old, clunky game, with a clunky control/camera setup that feels stiff, movement that feels a bit off these days, it's got some cruft. But it also has a lot of ideas and mechanics that are largely unique to City of Heroes and pre WoW MMO's, the whole mission system is inspired by Anarchy Online's kiosk system, if I recall. Having regular teams of up to 7 other people in a group with you was novel in 2004, it's still novel now. Each person with different powers and costumes, some having written biographies you can read while you wait for people to run across the zone to get inside the mission.

 

And speaking of other players and their creative characters, CoH is a fully original IP. It's heavily based on Champions, the table top game, but it's wholly unique (though I do know they did buy the Champions IP when making CO). They had legal issues with Marvel, but there really wasn't a middle man telling them what they could or could not do. Every member of every villain group has a short piece of lore attached to them, a whole rogues gallery of arch villains and heroes. Writing done by a small, intimate team, some of whom did both the writing and the actual zone design. Not to hype CoH's writing, it has its limitations, I think it handles certain topics and politics with a bit of flippancy, and sometimes it can be pretty dry in the grand scheme, but it's still cool that it's all original, all done by a fairly small team over 8 or so years.

 

Also as a random aside, I am totally enjoying the cel shaded visual options that make the game pop, imo. They're well worth messing around with. It's also wild to me that people think CoH is realistic looking, I always assumed it wanted to have a comic book-like appearance, but were always a bit limited, and the stacking of visual options over the years made the game look increasingly weirder to me, and harder to run with the aging 32bit systems.

[Misguidance]

I love the look of CO, and I loved the updated character creator and the way the game fades to black and white if you go too far off map. Unfortunately, that's all I love about it.

 

Even before they locked away fully customised characters behind a massive paywall, I had big issues with how the game plays.  Characters run and move like they're trying to fight their way through treacle, the basic control system doesn't feel intuitive (compared to other MMOs, anyway), and the early instanced missions felt like long corridors without very much going on.  Also, the stories and characters in CO just... didn't grab me.  Maybe that's personal preference, but it felt very hollow to me and the few characters I did meet felt like they'd been phoned in.

 

More action-based combat sounded like fun, but in reality I don't think it was handled all that well and felt clunky.  Compare CO's combat to the action combat in Wildstar, for example, and it's easy to see where CO falls short of what it was aiming for.  In fact, 'clunky' sums up a lot of CO for me, and sadly it kind of kills a lot of the things that were basically good ideas.

 

I feel like if CO was made today it would be a brilliant game, but it wasn't.  It sort of sits in an in-between place in the MMO time-line, and I honestly think it was too ambitious for what could be built at the time.

[_NOPE_]

There is no HEART. CO felt inorganic and hollow to me compared to CoH. I have no stats or numbers behind this claim, it's all gut feeling and truthiness to me.

[Zakmonster]

I played Champions Online when it first came out, thinking that it would be the next best thing in the superhero MMO genre, and also feeling a bit jaded with CoX at the point in time. A lot of what you said were actually what made me want to play CO in the first place - the action combat, the smoother movement, the updated graphics, etc.

 

But idk, there's something about CoX that just appeals to me in a way CO never did. Sure the combat and graphics are terribly outdated, but the min-maxing and theorycrafting potential is as strong as it ever was (and stronger even compared to some current games), and that appeals to me. The sense of community and teamwork felt stronger as well.

 

The community in CoX have also never been too concerned with the balance of power, in my opinion. Sure, certain MM powersets might be stronger than the other archetypes, but if you don't find MMs fun, then there's no reason to play one. And in a large group setting, the OP-ness of what you're playing matters less. As you get into endgame and start crafting and slotting IO sets, that balance of power also shifts again.

 

Same for the AE grind. I've never enjoyed it, but I didn't have to engage in it. I could easily find a group who was willing to do story arcs or radio missions - we'd be levelling slower, sure, but we're doing what we find fun.

 

Ultimately, CoX is a game that's about the journey, not the destination. There's no point spamming AE on your MM and hitting 50 in 3 days if you never had fun doing it, and don't have fun playing the character. One of my fondest memories of the game was making SS/invuln tankers with my friends, making all of them look like Trolls and roleplaying Trolls while running around in the Hollows. Those characters didn't even make it past 20 because they were silly gimmicks, but to me, they were way more fun than playing a dominator who could wipe out an entire screen in seconds (to me, at least).

 

(Also note that I've really only truly enjoyed playing brutes, scrappers and tankers, in that order).

 

Also, please pick your travel power by level 20. It might not matter before then, but trying to navigate zones like Independence Port without a travel power is a special kind of masochism.

[_NOPE_]

Yeah, when I first read the post, this is what I saw:

 

[TargetOne]

To me, CoH's main appeal compared to CO is that CoH seems to treat the subject matter more seriously. I always felt that the characters and lore in CO leaned too far towards campiness.

 

To use an analogy, CO is like the 1960s TV "Batman", while CoH is more like Tim Burton's first "Batman" movie (with a little "Dark Knight Trilogy" mixed in). The former is good for some laughs, but the action, situations, and dialogue can be pretty atrocious. Whereas, the latter has better characters and dialogue, and a better sense of realism.

 

 

[Veracor]

You know, when I look back upon my 12 months of CoH in 2006 vs my 6 months of CO in 2011, I can really appreciate the design of both.  The CO devs took what they learned from CoH and decided to address its problems in a very aggressive manner, such as autoattacking as a form of endurance regen instead of just standing still, the function of manually blocking attacks, crossing skills between powersets, etc.

 

Unfortunately, these changes made the game a lot less like an MMO and a lot more like an action game.  That would be fine if they weren't trying to appeal to superhero fans who were largely methodical RPG players (at least at the time).  Whether or not the changes were in the right direction or not, in terms of gameplay and not in implementation, depends largely on who you ask.  Personally, I liked some of them and hated others.  Still, you can tell there was a definite passion behind both games, even if CO ended up very rushed and ultimately failed to grab the attention of the demographic best suited for action games (kids).

 

Now when I played CO, I never really had any desire to play more than a single character.  That particular character was a min/maxxed buffoon that was murdering everyone in PvP with powers from whoknowshowmany different powersets, and that same PvP build also happened to fare extremely well in PvE.  I had the gold Deathmatch AND Free For All belts before I was even max level, and at 50 was also able to solo the endgame Andrithal and Mandragalore dungeons as well as that one raidboss intended for multiple teams of players (Kigatilik or something).  It was just... why even roll anything else, aside from costuming?  The mixing of powers was the biggest mistake in my opinion, and I don't remember the game even having a class system to force-differentiate builds.  Everyone was a Frankenstein's monster in CO.  You never really felt involved in your character, or in the lore/setting of the game itself, because it just wasn't an RPG game.

 

CO did have some pretty sick music, though.  I even ripped the release's music tracks and forgot about them for years -- and when CoH was announced as coming back two weeks ago, I listened to both game's musics.  Interestingly, one of CO's music tracks (EvilScientist, I believe it was unused at the time) is a direct remix of one of CoH's music tracks (RiktiWarZone_VanguardBase) which I don't believe is legal.  Just an odd little off-topic thing I noticed.

[RonJ73]

We all have a special place in our heart for our first love.  For many of us, that was City of Heroes.  Sure, the new one might be prettier, but it just didn't have the same feels associated with it as the first.

 

-Ron

[markofantares]

Champions Online imitated City of Heroes. That's the difference. One broke the mold. The other is a knockoff.

[Baronesa]

Well... as someone who went and bought a lifer on CO after the CoH shutdown, trust me i have played both games quite a lot.

 

Let's examine what you say here:

 

"an unbalanced class system where MM and certain OP power combos go around and beat everyone else, people spam farming ae instead of playing the game properly, a static and actionless combat system compared to CO, when you pick your travel power why bother when you can chose stats instead that are better than moving slightly faster out of combat."

 

Unbalanced class system? Well, yes the game is not super balanced, but you may have seen people make wildly different characters, and there are no cookie cutter "THIS IS THE BUILD". In fact City ofHeroes is so flexible that all Defenders and all Tankers run of challenging content like an ITF were common place. Support archetypes are not limited to "Be the healer" on this game. Hell, debuffing and buffing is way way more important than straight up healing, to be honest.

 

If you stick around and reach max level, you'll see how wildly different the archetypes and buids for characters are when running incarnate trials. Because every powerset is viable, how you build it up is up to you, bu there is no such thing as "pffft pfft skip martial arts cause it sucks" cause really... no power sucks.

 

At the beginnign of the game the fighting can be a bit static, yes, but by late game, positioning yourself can become a very important thing to do, and if ylu have hover, you will be moving a lot more than others in combat. Also, the combat in Champions is quite boring, specially considering the last changes on which only a handful of powers are even viable for late game content of "git good" while others are cosntantly nerfed to uselessness.

 

The travel power on CoH are more of a group of powers, you can decide what to get, let's look at leaping for example. you can get combat jumping which increases your movement and jumping just a small amount, but adds defense and consumes so little stamina that can be used in combat, and then you can get the proper power super jump to leap tall buildings and move long distances... but there are other utilities to it as well. but you could also add another atack to your build! if you think you dont have enough with your choices!! adding flexibility! and a power adding Resistance! And that could make your tank build far more viable as well! or your scrapper more survivable.

 

"Where as Champions Online has more updated graphics, no souless ae farming, more action based combat where you can actually move around while using your powers instead of being physically locked in place, you can charge certain powers by holding down a button instead of simply clicking a button 1 time for every skill like in CoH/V, travel powers in CO are actually just travel powers instead of being mixed with stat based powers to take away form the fun of simply picking a travel power, heroes are different and custom in CO (freeform) while in CoH/V when you chose a class and a powerset chances are tons of other people are exactly the same as you."

 

Sorry but the Alerts farming is way more soulless and many "Builds" on CO are just not fun or completly unviable. If you want a controller type of character, you are out of luck. The control powers last very little and generally speaking, the mobs die before you can even start to roll your big powers.

 

There are powrs in City of Heroes that also need management of other conditions, try Staff Fighting or Street Justice, or Titan Weapons and see how a strategic use of the resources they provide can improve the gameplay a whole lot.

 

Heroes in both game are very different and custom... and the amount of freedom to customize your hero on City due to pool powers is very very deep.

 

And back to CO, no... while some of us who don't care about min maxing just do our heroes on a specific theme, if you want to do top tier content in CO, you have to go by what Kaiserin deems are GOOD BUILDS, or be a net engative in the experience of everyone else playing, because one people failing punishes the WHOLE GROUP attempting to hunt cosmics. It takes one either unpotimized build or one troll to ruin the fight for EVERYONE trying to farm cosmics.

 

 

And let's go into something you did not mention.

 

After City of Heroes closed, i went and remade my main character there, and it took me ONE WEEK (not even a full one, just 5 days) TO PLAY EVERY SINGLE STORYARC IN THE GAME. Sure they have added a few other stories... but at best that would add 12 more hours to that.

 

When i remade my main character here in City of Heroes, who was originally a Martial Arts/Shield scrapper, and they just released Street Justice... i started from level one and decided to level ONLY by doing missions. By the time I reached lvl 50 with Condor I still had more than 2/3 of the hero content to play, because there are way too many story missions. You just have so much to choose from on this game, and this is only considering blue side.

 

It is interesting that you have not mentioned lore, and stories, or even the small amount of voice actin we get on City of Heroes, specially compared to Champions.

 

There are great ideas on Champions, but too many problems and horrible implementations.

 

And just t point out, AE was the first time EVER that allowed users to create their own content on an MMO. Sure there are farms, but there were also great and epic storylines, much like it happens on STO with Foundry.

[Knyghte]

For me it was the villain groups.

 

In CoH the adversaries felt like they had been refined over a long period of time. They had depth and I felt like they had an impact on the world.

 

In CO, the villain groups felt flat and uninspired. It was like they patched them together over a week or two and threw them into the world.

[jenosyde]

I don't care about the graphics. What I care about is being a hero/ villain. The story lines in CoH are way better than the crap  CO ever produced. I hated all the pop culture references that CO shoved down my throat while playing. It was like I was a part of  some shitty super hero parody the Waynes bros filmed instead of a comic book. Plus, the content dried up real fast once you max a char. I had no desire to create an alt and slug through the exact same content I just completed. CoH has multiple paths a toon can take instead and that's way better.

[Prototart]

For me it was the villain groups.

 

In CoH the adversaries felt like they had been refined over a long period of time. They had depth and I felt like they had an impact on the world.

 

In CO, the villain groups felt flat and uninspired. It was like they patched them together over a week or two and through them into the world.

 

That's kind of what happened, isn't it? CO was originally a Marvel MMO, Marvel pulled the IP, CO scrambled, grabbed Champions, and just converted stuff. But it was converted stuff, so you got No Really It's Not Hulkbuster Base and What, Come On, This Isn't Alpha Flight starting areas, Not That's Not Hydra Guys enemies, etc.

 

Originally they had Info like CoH enemies, but they were always all blank.

 

I like the graphics of CO, I like the much wider customization of powers, I like the larger roster of travel powers, but I like basically everything else about CoH more.

[mendal]

Champions Online imitated City of Heroes. That's the difference. One broke the mold. The other is a knockoff.

 

Champions was a superhero rpg long before COH was a gleam in its creators eye.

[Baronesa]

Champions Online imitated City of Heroes. That's the difference. One broke the mold. The other is a knockoff.

 

Champions was a superhero rpg long before COH was a gleam in its creators eye.

 

And it would have been a lot more complicated but a lot more satisfying if they translated Champions pnp to a computer game.*sighs* the more you rea about the lore, the more you see how they butchered such an interesting world with that MMO

[Dr. Sinister]

Simple, giant paywall on Champions just to even get decent characters and a huge lack of customization.  CoH was big because people could damn bear live out the super hero/villain dream with huge character customization

[johua]

The amount of content.

 

CO was given up on pretty early on and that shows. When I played CO, the only things they really added were costume packs. It was rare that any kind of mission or story content got added into the game. Mind you, CoH is technically a dead game, so there's really no content being worked on for it, but it still has years worth of content updates to rest on. CO? Not so much.

 

There's other things, but that's probably the biggest thing.

[Jaguaratron]

CO charge up mechanism was weird, the block mechanism was weird, teaming was pointless, the style was weird, running animation was super weird, the lore was stupid, crafting was dumb and the world was SMALL. Instead of building on what worked instead they made one guys dream and it wasnt what most people wanted.

 

I have a lifetime sub on CO and havent logged in for 5+ years, if CO vanished and turned up again 7 years later I still wouldnt be playing it.

[Panache]

I'll preface my .02 inf with the caveat that City of Heroes was the first MMO I ever played, and as such is the benchmark against which I compare all other MMOs.

 

That said...

 

1. Quality of Writing:  CO's combination of pun-based humor, over the top mannerisms, and thinly veiled pop-culture references doomed any chances I ever had of taking that game seriously. The intro arc in Westside even includes some good old fashioned racism with Hi-Pan (get it? like Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China, but SO DIFFERENT) and his inability to pronounce the letter 'L'. Get all the way out of my face with that crap.

 

2. Teaming: there wasn't any. Literally the only times I ever ended up on a team were in Alerts/Rampages/whatever those things were called.

 

3. Gear:  the whole damn game was based on what gear you had, and the in-game 'economy' is based around the same money-grubbing tactics used by games with in-app purchases. You could (try to) make the case that CoX's Invention System is the same thing, but you'd fail. In CoX, you can earn whatever IOs you want by just playing the game (Merits), and not worry about needing to spend actual money for THE CHANCE to get whatever it is that you're after.

 

4. The Community:  CO's community pales so badly in comparison the CoX's that it's barely worth mentioning.

[Man_From_AUNTIE]

I have to say first and foremost for me it is CoH's community that makes this game better than CO.  I have played CO after CoH shut down and it just didn't feel right.  They community was rude and abrasive,  yeah the costume creator was fun but that was the most fun I had in the game.  There were coding tweaks that would have been nice in CoH like being able to move while using combat powers.  The thing with being rooted it meant you had to plan on it, and incorporate it into your combat strategy.

[marcussmythe]

The community, in large part, but the community is in some degree a product of the game itself.

 

What makes CoH, CoH, is that it was at its core a game about -being a hero-, and the people that came fit that mold.  Further, it is a game where you can play with anyone, any level, any friend, at any time.  Barring a few trials where endgame performance might matter, everything is wide open to team up.

 

And the game encourages that teaming up, that playing together.  Many, many classes are at their best making everyone else better, or their lives easier.  Not 'sit in a corner and heal me' better, but empowering and building up your allies so that the whole is more than the sum of its parts - while at the very same time, each is capable of functioning on its own.  No dependencies, no hostility, no 'we cant do this unless we get an X and a Y and a Z'.

 

So everyone is free to play very naturally, and very non-competitively.  Theres not a question who gets the purple drop off the boss.  Noone can steal your kills or tag your mobs.  Its literally 'stronger together' the game, but in a positive way.

 

And the community, I think, grows out of that.  Everyone is not just able to help, but eager to help (sometimes over eager!).  And thats the real secret.  The structure of the game reinforces the good behavior we see, and the good behavior we see reinforces success in the game.  Its a virtuous cycle.

 

Also, and a total aside - 72 metric tons of content, vast ambition, sweeping spaces.  How many zones?  How many contacts and missions and storylines with actual story?  How much to do?  You wont have time to do it all.  Yould barely had time to do it all if you played from launch like it was your job - but you didnt have to play like it was your job.  Take a few months or years off, hop on your character, and roll out with your friends.  Sure, Sally may be an IOed demigod and your a sidekicked up mid-30s scrapper, but you wont be useless.  Your part of the team.  Part of the family.  So theres a lot to do, but not a lot of pressure to do it, except for the pressure you put on yourself.

 

Its.. really ideal for making a game thats a community and a family. 

 

And thats why we are here, why we came back, why adult professionals literally -cried- when they logged back in and heard the music again.  Its like coming home.

[_NOPE_]

The community, in large part, but the community is in some degree a product of the game itself.

 

What makes CoH, CoH, is that it was at its core a game about -being a hero-, and the people that came fit that mold.  Further, it is a game where you can play with anyone, any level, any friend, at any time.  Barring a few trials where endgame performance might matter, everything is wide open to team up.

 

And the game encourages that teaming up, that playing together.  Many, many classes are at their best making everyone else better, or their lives easier.  Not 'sit in a corner and heal me' better, but empowering and building up your allies so that the whole is more than the sum of its parts - while at the very same time, each is capable of functioning on its own.  No dependencies, no hostility, no 'we cant do this unless we get an X and a Y and a Z'.

 

So everyone is free to play very naturally, and very non-competitively.  Theres not a question who gets the purple drop off the boss.  Noone can steal your kills or tag your mobs.  Its literally 'stronger together' the game, but in a positive way.

 

And the community, I think, grows out of that.  Everyone is not just able to help, but eager to help (sometimes over eager!).  And thats the real secret.  The structure of the game reinforces the good behavior we see, and the good behavior we see reinforces success in the game.  Its a virtuous cycle.

 

Also, and a total aside - 72 metric tons of content, vast ambition, sweeping spaces.  How many zones?  How many contacts and missions and storylines with actual story?  How much to do?  You wont have time to do it all.  Yould barely had time to do it all if you played from launch like it was your job - but you didnt have to play like it was your job.  Take a few months or years off, hop on your character, and roll out with your friends.  Sure, Sally may be an IOed demigod and your a sidekicked up mid-30s scrapper, but you wont be useless.  Your part of the team.  Part of the family.  So theres a lot to do, but not a lot of pressure to do it, except for the pressure you put on yourself.

 

Its.. really ideal for making a game thats a community and a family. 

 

And thats why we are here, why we came back, why adult professionals literally -cried- when they logged back in and heard the music again.  Its like coming home.

 

A THOUSAND times THIS.