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It has a few minor texture display problems for me, mostly involving textures on items in the very far distance etc. Other than that its been running better than the windows client did when I was booted into XP under Bootcamp

The client is free for download, all you need to do is get it and sign up your account.

Here's a guide to the Mac version:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12899365&an=0&page=0#Post12899365

You can then visit:
ftp://client.coh.com/US/

and download the client dmg and the updater
there should be some instructions near the end of this thread I think:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12897870&an=0&page=0#Post12897870

Or you can just buy it for $20 and download it online, just make sure to apply the code you get to your original account so the benefits apply to your old account and not some new account :P

What much of the commentary here misses is that a significant number of CoH and CoV players have been ASKING for in-game ads from real-world companies from some time.

Paragon City (and the Rogue Isles) are sprawling metropolises with billboards, public transportation, store fronts, movie posters, video screens, and the like. In a real city, these are all COVERED with advertising. We don't get quite the volume of advertising, fake or otherwise, in CoH, so our city feels a little lacking in that area. City of Gyros, Infront Steakhouse, and El Super Mexicano all have a ridiculous number of locations throughout Paragon City. It'd be neat to see at least a few of them replaced with other restaurants. If they happen to be real restaurants, then more the bonus.

COH Forum thread for player Q&A. COH Devs are typically very forthcoming with information, so there's quite a bit of real information here. Posts by 'Red Names' are either game devs or NCSoft reps.

COH Players discuss what kinds of ads they WANT to see.

Brian Clayton, manager of NCSoft Norcal where COH is developed, makes the announcement and discusses logistics.

Players discuss the announcement. There's some wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the discussion here is mostly on logistics.

City of Heroes/Villians is my favorite, GMs actually help, the devs aren't mysterious figures concealed from public view, the system is setup so that gold farmers are rather worthless, none of your abilities lose their usefulness as you level...
Helps that they've got the only pet class that I think feels like a real pet class. Warlocks are weak mages with their own tanks, hunters are archers with something else to worry about. But a Mastermind, ordering around a squad of 6 mercenaries, sending out buffs, debuffs, and the occasional attack of your own, THAT'S a pet class.

The only MMORPG I've ever played that I really enjoyed is one that completely lacks any sort of crafting system. I am a total City of Heroes/Villains addict. The game is about enjoying the experience of playing, and there is a very limited amount of stuff to buy in-game: enhancements and inspirations. That's it, nothing else can be purchased in-game. No crafting, very little player-based economy and it was MMORPG of the year last yeat.

Jesus, I am absolutely stupefied that people do this.

I've already written one comment about this in a different article and mentioned it in a blog post at my blog, so I'll try not to repeat that stuff here.

But for real, I'm truly saddened that the "RP" in MMORPG means so little these days. Everyone keeps taking about how much they hate grinding levels. Funny, when I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with my buddies, I never seemed to mind that my wizard was only level (whatever). Why? Because the point of the game wasn't to win, it was to have fun and (gasp!) socialize. Those of you who remember the old pencil-and-paper games, can you imagine a player offering a game master five bucks for 1,000 freebie gold pieces? If I were the game master, I would immediately figure out some heinous irrevocable death for that character.

What some people see as mindless grinding through levels, I see as an opportunity to meet other players, some of whom are rather interesting. What some people see as farming for game currency, I see as an opportunity to roleplay and boost my reputation. Not this silly reputation by ownership of a cool gametoy, but the reputation as someone who is fun and interesting to run missions with.

My MMORPG of choice is City of Heroes. One of my favorite characters is a Taxibot. We hardly ever level. We can't kill crap by ourselves. We have a lot of fun. The fun of the game isn't mindlessly killing mobs of enemies, although I do get fleeting enjoyment from figuring out strategies to defeat particularly tough enemies. The fun isn't even getting that new high-level power, although I do get fleeting enjoyment from seeing the cool effect of it. These things are supposed to add to the enjoyment of the game, not to be the enjoyment. My advice for MMORPG players (most MUD players figured this out a long time ago): If you really want to get long-term enjoyment from the game, get over that stuff quickly.

I get frustrated because I often wonder how many people even bother to read the mission descriptions they're given before they go to empty a warehouse full of villains. Sometimes I'll be in a group of people and I'll say something game-related ("We can't let Ubelmann succeed!"), and I often get responses that indicate that the people in my group have no clue ("Who's Ubelmann?"). Needless to say, those people don't get invited to run in a group with me again, and the people who do run with me regularly have lots of fun "grinding" levels, even if it is the 100th time we have been to disable the Rikti portal devices.

If level grinding has got you down and you've having so little fun that you feel the need to buy stuff on eBay or Sony's Station Exchange to use in the game, I'm begging you to play Progress Quest instead. We'll all have more fun, and you don't even have to spend a dime!

I know what the first replies to this post will be: Wah, people play games for different reasons. Yeah, well, if your reason is so that you can brag about your über-whatever with a gazillion gold to the lower levels, you're not playing at all; you're being a pompous ass that the game would be better off without. Do you go around in real life bragging about how much more money you've got than people on welfare? We're not impressed.

Damn, so much for keeping this post short. Oops, maybe I'll do better next time we have an "Buying virtual goods is a good thing" type of story.

City of Heroes

I've been playing the game for a few months now and I really enjoy it. The developers are fantastic. The official forums at http://boards.coh.com/ are a great source of information for gamers at any level, and for once the developers actually listen to what we suggest! It really is a beautiful thing. City of Heroes recently released Issue #3, which is a free expansion pack to the original game. That's right, you get free updates to the game. So far, they have released a new update once every 4 months, and with each update we've seen huge improvements. With the release of World of Warcraft, the number of players in City of Heroes has dropped..but when I look at the genre of game.. I'd rather be a super hero than an Orc.

Actually, I've notice Ogg poping up in several other games, most notably City of Heroes. If you decompress the data files, you find all of the audio files are stored in Ogg format.

I was pleasantly suprised. It does make sense tho, since using mp3's in a product costs money, but Ogg is free.

I was looking forward to Guild Wars however since it is being created by NC Soft I will now skip that one too.

Actually Guild Wars and City of Heroes are published by NC Soft, but are created by ArenaNet and Cryptic Studios respectively. And there is a world of difference...CoH is pretty much the antithesis of Lineage 2 in terms of MMORPG philosophy: a shipload of character options, fast-paced and exciting combat, no crafting, and no PvP (yet). So don't hold Lineage's suckitude against the other dev teams...

NCSoft is acting as a publisher here. The only titles developed by NCSoft is Lineage and Lineage II. Of NCSoft's other titles,

Guild Wars is being developed by ArenaNet , a group composed primarily of former Blizzard employees who worked on Diablo that left in the Vivendi Universal bankruptcy debacle over the possible sale of the games division (including Blizzard). They could have picked a name further from BattleNet, though.

Tabula Rasa is developed by Destination Games, the Austin, Texas group headed by Richard Gariott composed primarily of people that got fired from or left Origin after EA scrapped the Ultima Online 2 project. They were actually far into Tabula Rasa before being signed on with NCSoft.

City of Heroes is developed by Cryptic Studios based in San Jose, CA.

Finally, Auto Assault is developed by NetDevil .

All of these developers are completely autonomous as far as design goes. NCSoft is only the publisher and the billing gateway. For the sake of the independent developers that just happened to have signed up with NCSoft, please don't confuse their works with that of other developers.

I still find EQ to be the least boring of all of them

Never played City of Heroes, I take it?

It's about a superhero who couldn't give a toss about saving the world.

One point in the story line was that there were multiple universes. In one of these universes it was all populated with superheros and only one normal person, who was being pestered the heck out of.

In a world where everyone wants to be a hero, who plays the normal people?

One of the things, well really the only thing that makes MMORPG's is the human element. I think this alone is what may stunt the growth of such games. If all the normal characters are NPC's then there are no worries about secret identitys and a lot of players will treat the NPC's as fog of war.

By the way, anyone who can't wait until 2005 I recommend you check out City of Heroes which plans to Beta test in early 2003 and has some nice movies of the gameplay. They also have a very indepth FAQ (Geek level :)