Headlines - City of Heroes/Villains free codes up for grabs

[HEXUS]

Courtesy of NCSoft, we have a special offer available to all HEXUS readers!

Read more.

[Wyoming]

Nice, I was looking for a new MMO and this just might be it. I've heard that the possibility for customisation isn't used much and that you tend to find a lot of very similar looking characters though, can anyone confirm if this is so? It would be quite a waste.

[PenguinJim]

I haven't played it in well over a year, but I've played a lot of MMOs and the character customisation in CoH/CoV was so far ahead of anything else. However, all characters are humanoid, which does limit things a bit - I guess that, at a distance, all people look like a small, medium or large variety of brightly-coloured, darkly-coloured or mono-coloured. I don't recall seeing anyone perfectly white, though.

...I'm going for a free code just to design and start some new characters again. I've just had an idea for a perfectly white character who shoots LASER BEAMS from his eyes! I'ma call him Eye Pod.

I've found that playing other third-person games after playing this makes you long for a travel power in those games! Jumping is my favourite, with flying second for its versatility. I don't think I ever got super-speed, but I hear you run into buildings a lot. Teleportation is technically fastest, but feels a bit clunky in use - it's still good, though.

Hang on, I've started waffling again. I'm going to 'post' before this turns into a full review!

[Father Xmas]

EDIT: Sorry, was going to include useful links but the must have posted 5 times previously has nixed that. Had to gut the majority of the post.

As someone who's been playing this game for many years let me point out and suggest a couple of things for those who are looking to try out the game.

First, Issue 12 isn't out yet, it's still in close beta testing so don't get upset if you sign up and can't find the content they mentioned.

Second, download the game first, then register to activate your account. It's a 2.5GB or so download. You can find the download for the updater by Googling cohupdater.eu.zip from the ftp site client-coh-com (replace - with .) which is the offical ftp site. The reason I suggest downloading/installing the game first before activating your trial is that on occasion, downloading via the updater may be a lot slower than your normal download rates. You can also check to see if the game at least loads to the login screen without an account as well. Why waste any time of your trial just to get the game downloaded.

There are literally tens of thousands of combinations of costume pieces to model your character around three body types, male, female, HUGE male. You can adjust a number of proportions of your character and character's head. Not all characters are human BTW, there are monster pieces and skins for various inhuman like characters. However two arms, two legs, one head is the skeletal type. If you are having a problem selecting individual colors for various costume parts, note that there is a checkbox at the bottom of the color chart that locks all the parts to one pair of colors, uncheck this to set them individually. You may see characters flying around with costume pieces that you can't find in the creator. Those pieces were either unlocked while playing, became available based on number of months playing or were available via an add on.

Once you've created your first character and entered the game (please do the tutorial, there is some good basic info there), you can access the graphics and keyboard options via the menu in the upper right. ATI users should be aware that the generic graphics quality slider will turn on options that don't do well on ATI cards and it's best even with nVidia cards to enable the advance options screen to tweak the graphics for optimal performance.

General information about the game can be found at ParagonWiki (Google for it). The "Player's Guide to the Cities" is a good place to start (love to give you the links but I can't).

I hope some of you find this helpful.

Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker, Victory Server, US.

[Lucio]

City of Heroes was at one point, quite unique as MMORPG's go, the costume designer gives you a LOT of options and choices (about 4 billion combinations!), so it's rare to come across a character that looks like you. It also runs almost entirely on instanced missions, so once you and your team are inside, you won't be harresed by other players (apart from one rare bug I ran into once where I ended up being a hero inside a villain's mission!)

Another nice feature is that if you've got friends who play already, you can easily join them because they can either bring you up to just below their level in terms of HP/Damage, or if they don't mind not earning XP for a while (you earn ingame cash instead), they can be reduced to your level.

If anyone wants a helping hand, when in game type /gfriend @Almighty Bob if you're on Defiant or Union, though I tend to play entirely on Defiant atm!

[Ferral]

Bought City of Villains a few days ago direct from NCSoft. Tried downloading it via the client but it just won't go for me so pulling the 2.5 Gb file down from FilePlanet at the min.

Anyone else going to be playing as a villain, be pretty cool to get together on it and wreak some havoc!

[Ferral]

Anyone else going for this, been playing it last night and have to say its pretty cool and have paid for a subscription.

Give me a shout ingame in Villains, name is Garrick and I am currently on the starter island (Mercy Island) doing missions for the Mercenary.