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I've never had to wait to log on to City of Heroes and City of Villains.

Server maintenance is generally an hour or less around 8:00 or 9:00 AM Eastern, and things are generally very smooth and happy. There have been problems when large patches are released (the big patch right before City of Villains was released caused a bunch of lag, etc. for people; in their defense, it was enormous).

Granted, there aren't millions of subscribers, but shouldn't the enormous piles of money sitting around at Blizzard HQ be able to pay for some additional '486 boxes to run as servers? ;-) Seriously, they must be 5' deep in greenbacks there.

They probably mentioned CoH since NCSoft has published (or planned to publish) a fair amount of different MMOs in recent years, with CoH (arguably) being the most recognizable/successful.

That depends on whether or not anyone has that mission.

http://www.cityofvillains.com/

Well, allow me to recommend City of Heroes/City of Villains. This is a Superhero/Villain based game available in two flavors (although they can be installed Symbiotically so you can play both with just one subscription). You do have to pay $15/mo for it, but it meets all your other requirements I think. Its easy to solo, fun to play, can be quite challenging, and most importantly *almost* every type of character can solo more or less (some way better than others mind you), and you can easily jump on, do a mission for 20mins then quit, and feel like you accomplished something. As well, its very newbie friendly - particularly if you find a suitable guild to play with - as characters of every level can effectively play with characters at other levels via the Sidekick/Lackeying system that allows characters to temporarily assume a higher level when partnered with someone - if you did choose to group with people. The game is primarily focused on doing missions, and so combat oriented for much of its content, but it has some great storylines to follow, and the combat system is far superior to most other games IMHO. City of Villains is the newer of the two games, and thus the more evolved. City of Heroes will catch up with future expansions I expect.

For free games, you might be ok with GuildWars. Its a fantasy based combat game with some adventure/roleplaying elements. It is primarily PvP (player versus player oriented) and I personally didn't like it, but it doesn't have any monthly fees and you only need to buy the original boxed edition to play it. As the name suggests though, it may well be group PvP oriented and might not be as welcoming to a casual player. I tried it in beta and disliked it for various reasons, but your mileage may vary.

Links:
City of Heroes
City of Villains
Guild Wars
EVE Online

Hope that helps :)

Similarly, Cryptic's excellent City of Heroes hasn't had a single expansion (unless you're one of those folks who consider City of Villains to be an expansion) since release, although it has had six major updates released for free. New power sets, new archetypes (like classes in most regular MMOGs), new zones, new graphics, etc.

Be nice if they'd create, or allow, a Mac OS X port of their games. I'd love to be able to play City of Heroes and City of Villains on my iBook in the living room instead of my XP box in the basement.

Rumour has it that NC Soft blocked Cryptic when they wanted to do (or allow) a Mac port. *shakes fist at Lord British*

It should be free, its the same damn game with a red interface

No, it's not. There are a bunch of differences between City of Heroes and City of Villains. Sure, they share the same concept and a lot of the same game mechanics, but this is a LOT more than just an upgrade to City of Heroes. If nothing else, the content alone is as big as City of Heroes is, and that doesn't even take into account that a lot of features will be added for existing City of Heroes players.

If you're in the beta, you know that already. If you're not, well, I'd love to expound upon the differences, but I can't. Here are some that are already public knowledge:

• Bases (for villains and heroes)
• PvP "Crossover" zones
• Many new zones, not just the one-off that comes with a game update
• All new graphics (already pointed out) and animations
• Many new villains in addition to (not instead of) the old ones
• New mission types

...plus, a bunch of other stuff you can read just as well from the press releases (flash site). I'll stop now because this is starting to sound more like an ad than a comment.

Anyway, the point is that this game is much more that just an update, and NCsoft is reasonable in expecting people to go out and buy it, and I think it's pretty nice of 'em to not ding existing subscribers with an extra service fee for playing it, because now we don't have to choose which one we want to play or go broke playing both.

It should be free, its the same damn game with a red interface

No, it's not. There are a bunch of differences between City of Heroes and City of Villains. Sure, they share the same concept and a lot of the same game mechanics, but this is a LOT more than just an upgrade to City of Heroes. If nothing else, the content alone is as big as City of Heroes is, and that doesn't even take into account that a lot of features will be added for existing City of Heroes players.

If you're in the beta, you know that already. If you're not, well, I'd love to expound upon the differences, but I can't. Here are some that are already public knowledge:

• Bases (for villains and heroes)
• PvP "Crossover" zones
• Many new zones, not just the one-off that comes with a game update
• All new graphics (already pointed out) and animations
• Many new villains in addition to (not instead of) the old ones
• New mission types

...plus, a bunch of other stuff you can read just as well from the press releases (flash site). I'll stop now because this is starting to sound more like an ad than a comment.

Anyway, the point is that this game is much more that just an update, and NCsoft is reasonable in expecting people to go out and buy it, and I think it's pretty nice of 'em to not ding existing subscribers with an extra service fee for playing it, because now we don't have to choose which one we want to play or go broke playing both.

CoV is more of an expansion than a separate game. You can either play it standalone with only the new villian content (new zones, bases, etc.), or you can add it to your existing CoH account and play both games. PvP takes place in special zones and even if you dont have CoH, you can still PvP against heroes with just CoV.

Still sound boring?

All of this is in the FAQ: http://cityofvillains.com/faq/faq.html

Such a thing is already here...

Be the bad guy: http://www.cityofvillains.com/
Be the good guy: http://www.cityofheroes.com/

So you want something like this? It's been announced etc. already, just no ETA yet.

Should take care of the n+1 punks whining at the lack of PvP. Also, should make the PvE side cleaner, as I've noticed that many of the inconsiderate and immature people I've met in the game seem to be waiting for CoV. It doesn't interest me much as my playstyle is very casual, but it'll be nice to get rid of the most obnoxious individuals who only make the game worse for the others.