Timeless Thoughts is a link-up run by Tara and Georgie! I actually wanted to participate since the beginning but never knew what to write. Raisa’s World of Warcraft entry took me back to my MMO days, and I do actually miss the very first MMO I tried: City of Heroes.
I started with City of Heroes in college with friends, and we also played a bit of City of Villains later on. City of Heroes was a brand new world to me. I didn’t have prior experience with online games, and it was a weird feeling to suddenly be surrounded by so many strangers. I was so terrible at first and got lost and died on the way to our first mission. It also made me realize that the online world isn’t always negative. When that happened, an experienced player ran over to revive and help me! (And then I had issues figuring out how to /whisper back to thank the person XD;;)
Also, City of Heroes/Villains were not your traditional MMOs. They were known for being able to design your character’s look and costume, so there was no gear to get… otherwise, you’d cover up your costume! Instead, there was an enhancements system for your powers. Player-run costume contests were pretty common in the game. Instead of a mount system, you chose what super power your hero/villain would use to get around: super speed, super jump, flight, or teleportation.
For me, City of Heroes/Villains were memorable because the community was really friendly – probably the friendliest MMO I’ve been in. I felt like I ran into a lot of casual players. Many didn’t know typical MMO techniques (like tanking ones), and I was frequently invited into unbalanced teams (no tanks, too many healers, etc). Though that might sound annoying to serious players, it was nice that people were in it for casual fun and weren’t so hardcore that they became toxic.
Because of that, they were great games to introduce me to playing online. Plus, I was playing with college friends, and it became something we looked forward to playing outside of classes. Since we were all Computer Science or Engineering majors, we made a nerdy guild! We were called the Turing Machines and gave our characters nerdy names.
My first hero didn’t have a nerdy name because we didn’t decide on that yet. The rest do though! Here is my first hero, MeiHua, who was a healer (Defender).
This is my first villain, Regex, who was a hybrid healer and ranged DPS (Corruptor).
My ranged DPS hero (Blaster) was named Ruby on Rails.
My melee DPS villain (Stalker) was named Stack Overflow (after the error, not the site).
And lastly, when I hit max level, I unlocked a special hero class called a Warshade. I named mine Mersenne Prime.
Sadly, we got tired of both games after about a year and a half. We tried Guild Wars out for a short time, and then moved into World of Warcraft for another year and a half. Some time along the way, City of Heroes/Villains shut down. Even though I wasn’t playing it anymore, I was sad to see it go.
MMOs are really some of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had due to the social interactions and amount of things to do. Though I have been purposely avoiding them to work on my gaming backlog, I still think back to my times on those games with very fond memories!
Yay! I’m glad you participated and it’s even better that Raisa’s entry gave you the inspiration to write about your own MMO experience! I can definitely see the plus on MMO being an awesome social experience, so I’m glad you have fond memories of those days playing and interacting with other players 🙂 I personally can never do an MMO, but I can definitely see the benefits of those games!
My favorite character that you shared is your ranged DPS hero, Ruby on Rails. They look very mysterious and I love the bandana over the mouth! I like that the game was more casual, so everyone was in it to have fun and not get too upset about things. Sometimes people takes games way more seriously than they should.
The closest thing I’ve played to a game like this is Neopets, LOL. There is a series on YouTube that I loved to watch called The Guild about people who played in an online game. It was so funny – I wonder if they ever finished it. I’ll have to go check now. 😉
Ah you’re joining the club as well!! Awesome!! I am always for community building and bonding!!
I have heard of this game once but not much… But of all your characters, I like Meserenne Prime. Pretty powerful and cool name actually 🙂
City of Heroes sound so familiar but I don’t know where I heard it from XD. Maybe it’s from a conversation I’ve heard a loooong time ago :6. This looks like a really neat game. MMO’s are great because you have the chance to interact with others from somewhere else on the planet and have fun in-game. This game definitely has a different feel from WoW. I like how you gave your characters computery names XD.
I used to be so addicted to World of Warcraft, I miss MMOs! I’ve had to stop playing them because of work. City of Heroes sounds like it was a great game, I really like the no-gear idea! It sounds like it was a very friendly game too, I think that’s one of the things that modern games seem to be lacking in. Stack Overflow looks like a cool character, I love the nerdy names =p
That is great that you enjoyed it and it was a positive place to start playing. I think it’s cool that you could have characters as villains! 😀 It would have also been great to play with the other people you knew and have some connection outside of class. 😀
I liked playing the 2012 online game Glitch. It was a lot of fun and very cute. But it closed down and the company created Slack instead (the business platform thingy).
I’ve never heard of City of Heroes before, but it sounds great! I’ve seen so much drama go down on WoW over gear, so at the very least, that’s a helpful omission.
It also sounds like it was very welcoming towards casual players, which is great! MMOs can take up too much of your life otherwise.
To be honest, I’ve heard of City of Heroes, but never played it. I’ve never played MMOs before, because I never had a good enough computer to play them on, and besides I was a Sony PlayStation fangirl that played Jrpgs. Glad it held great memories for you!