Feature: RPS's womb
I shall always have the softest of soft spots (ew) for City Of Heroes. Not just because it was the first MMO I ever properly enjoyed and wanted to play all the time, but because it kinda sorta gave birth to RPS.
City of Heroes
8 months ago
2 years ago
Feature: World of Absence
There's a real urban fantasy gap in the gaming industry, and it's never made much sense. We see a thousand Tolkienesque fantasy games a minute (rough napkin calculation) and the future's typically so bright, even the lens flares need shades. Yet when it comes to that line where the mundane meets the magical, mostly what we've had for the last few years is false hope.…
3 years ago
Feature: Welcome to the big time, pal!
Even by Blizzard's standards, The Mean Streets of Gadgetzan is taking the piss. In case you missed it, which I know you didn't, but work with me here, it's the newest Hearthstone expansion. The trailer is wonderful. The setting is a corrupt crime-town full of gangsters, hoodlums and mugs, all fighting for cash and control in a tongue-in-cheek mix of Lord of the Rings and…
Feature: In no particular order...
One of the main reasons I got into RPGs back in the day was that if you bought one, you were getting a lot of game for your money. That was important when there was only one birthday and one Christmas a year, and not much chance that some relative might pop their clogs in sync with Ultima VI coming out. Years later I no…
Feature: Defending your home away from home
As many hours as I've spent playing them over the years, MMORPGs always fill me with a touch of sadness for what they could have been. I'm thinking of the original optimistic dreams of people like Richard Garriott, talking of his world where players accidentally killing too many sheep would draw the wrath of a nearby, now hungry dragon, back in that innocent time before…
Feature: Revisiting DC Universe Online
In this era of a hundred comic book movies a year plus spin-off shows, it's getting harder and harder to remember that not so long ago trying to take a superhero off the printed page and onto some kind of screen was basically a recipe for failure, mockery, and a way of flying a promising creative career into a great big rock. Hell, even now…
Feature: What MOBAs get right about character.
Hello there. This week, I'm writing not just as an RPG columnist, but as president of the newly formed League Of Folks Who Don't Really Play MOBAs But Are Bizarrely Hooked On All The Trappings. As far as I can tell, our membership is roughly a billion people and counting. That's what happens when the likes of Blizzard and Riot spend literally tens of dollars…
Feature: Videogames saved the radio star
There's something oddly comforting about radio. Comforting because it's so familiar, so natural. Odd because it's a comfort that most of us don't really use all that much these days, at least not in the ways that games just casually assume. It's a little like the whole audio diaries thing - it makes a vague sense that everyone in a city like Rapture might record…
4 years ago
Feature: The death and partial return of the superheroic MMO
Three years ago, I wrote an epitaph for NCSoft's axed superhero MMO City of Heroes, and for my beloved character within it. "The City of Heroes has been closed down forever, and so The Entomologist is dead. Does he still exist on some dusty server, or have the bytes that made him been wiped forever? It doesn’t matter. There’ll be no Jean Gray resurrection for…
Feature: RIP, Two Years Late
Sometimes you can wait too long, think it's okay to put off saying that important thing to the game you love, and then they're gone. Then time goes on, and it becomes less and less relevant to say. Then you never say it. City Of Heroes shut off its servers about two and a half years ago. Alec had the sense to eulogise it then.…
6 years ago
Feature: Days of future past
I left him in there to die. I wish I'd at least taken one last screenshot. I thought I didn't care, but now it hurts like hell. He's gone forever.
7 years ago
Feature: "We Are Heroes. This Is What We Do."
The official meticulously articulated RPS stance on City of Heroes' upcoming closure is this face :( Legions of superpowered super-fans, of course, share that sentiment – whether we're talking eight-year crime-biffing veterans or recent arrivals from the stagnant shores of normalcy. Out of the blue, NCsoft announced that it was pulling the plug, and many folks started feeling understandably Hulk smashy. But while videogame fandoms…
Feature: Roses are red, violets are blue, epic items are purple
As RPS' only painfully single person at the moment, I'm happy to inform you that Valentine's Day is cancelled. A pox on all happy couples, literally and figuratively. Return to your empty, silent houses with the biggest bag of sweets you can, turn off the lights, and spend the evening sobbing until the sweet, sweet chocolate oozes out of your eyes and anus. ...or alternatively,…
8 years ago
Feature: City of Heroes Interview
The MMOnitor is a new series in which we ask the developers of various MMOs to explain what is going on with their game, and what that means within the wider context of the MMO. We're kicking off with an interview with City of Heroes' Brian Clayton, Studio Director and Executive Producer. City of Heroes went free recently in the Freedom update.
You know, the only MMO I've ever missed playing, apart from Eve Online, is City Of Heroes. I am vaguely tempted to see if I can somehow resurrect my age old tanker character in the new, free world that NCSoft are touting. I bet it's changed a bit since I was last in there over three years ago. The latest update "Freedom" has a bunch…
City of Heroes will be NCsoft's first major foray into the strange, wild land that is free to play MMOs. There is, though, the little matter of what the superhero game's current subscriber base will make of this. Well, they can find out right now, more or less. The free to play reboot, City of Heroes Freedom, won't launch fully until later this year, but…
Well, looks like later in the year City of Heroes is going to be free-to-play-until-you-are-overcome-by-hat-greed, according to Paragon Studios and NCSoft. They’re calling it City of Heroes Freedom and it’s set to contain all the content garnered from the 20 expansions to the game thus far. The free account will let you biff and kerpow until level 50 and give you access to all Hero…
While RPS is displeased that Britain's future king elected to go against tradition and marry a woman instead of a horse, we're not entirely without heart. As such, we're going to make the big day thematically appropriate for City Of Heroes players by giving away City of Heroes Wedding Packs. That's right: NCSoft have give us the premium wedding DLC, worth £5.99, and we can…
Gosh, the venerable superhero MMO has hit its twentieth major update! The expansion is called Incarnates, and NCsoft explains it like this: "Players will be introduced to the game’s new Incarnate Trials, group encounters featuring a series of innovative game mechanics that will test even the most powerful characters. Taking place in the seemingly utopian empire of Praetoria, Heroes and Villains will find themselves challenged…
Feature:
Yesterday, as you may have noted, Dr Rossignol began our lecture series on the most important PC games of all time. Much like The Christmas Lectures, The Reith Lectures, and the TED Lectures, this definitive series has been a part of our institution as long as the Earth has borne stones. In this second part Professor John Walker explains the varying importanceness of a second…
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