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City of Heroes EU Release Date Announced

Posted by Zonk on from the up-up-and-away dept.

GamesIndustry.biz has the news that NCSoft will be releasing City of Heroes in Europe on February 4th. The EU customers get all sorts of fancy doodads to offset the delayed release. From the article: "European customers will receive a special deluxe edition of the game, which includes all of the content updates to date, an 88 page comic, and a number of serial codes which unlock special items in the game."

10 comments

  1. Infomation for us! \o/ by djsmiley · · Score: 1

    as a ex-eq player, i wondering few things which i can't be arsed to google, and if i did i would have to post them anyway, for people will ask anyway.

    1. This game any good? Anyone drop us a small peak review?
    2. It avaible already in the UK or not?
    3. How much is the monthly cost, whats the update system like, how many updates do you get for FREE (or buying addons?).
    4. Any other info players think we should know?

    --
    - http://www.milkme.co.uk
    1. Re:Infomation for us! \o/ by Squatchman · · Score: 3, Informative

      1. Up to your preference. It reminds me of a Massively Multiplayer diablo 2. take it as you will
      2. I've already met players from the UK and EU so they're out there. This is probably going to give them their own servers.
      3. Monthly cost is about $15USD. Updates are usually pushed out before they're released and then activated after an incremental issue fix so the servers don't get bogged down while every member in the game downloads the monthly update all at once. As well, there have not been any gameplay expansions that one would have to buy like in Everquest. The monthly update includes new areas, missions, task forces(large quest?), and usually new enemies.
      4. It's not that difficult to get into, but your overall experience of the game will be much better if you find a group of people who play at the same time as you do. A group of four can be rounded out enough so handle just about anything for the bulk of the game.

    2. Re:Infomation for us! \o/ by djsmiley · · Score: 1

      thanks for that, one more thing?

      Whats the presence in game like with GMs (game masters?), are they ever there if you have a problem?

      Do they ever do such things as give you live events (or is this covered pretty much by the game its self?)

      Cheers

      --
      - http://www.milkme.co.uk
    3. Re:Infomation for us! \o/ by Squatchman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As far as I have noticed over the last few months, the GMs pretty much stay the hell out of my business unless I ask for them. If I ever get stuck on a piece of terrain, or find a mission that could possibly be bugged I can call them. Their response times for me has usually been less than two minutes for just about any issue.

      If the GMs are spawning the pre-scripted events then they're doing it very quietly.

    4. Re:Infomation for us! \o/ by slaker · · Score: 3, Informative

      CoH is exactly the MMO I want to play.
      There is no crafting. There is only the barest notion of "treasure" (bad guys sometimes drop enhancements to your powers). There is no notion of "camping" as I understand the EQ definition.
      It is very easy to just load up CoH and PLAY, without worrying about the secondary and tertiary activities that seem to overwhelm the actual game in UO or Everquest or SWG.

      I've played with folks from Quebec and from Finland. Players on the coh.com boards occasionally mention their foreign locations. I don't believe the game is available yet in the UK, but some players there HAVE gotten it.

      City of Heroes to date has had three free updates, each of which has added content (new city zones and bad guys). The most recent update added addition powers and character classes for the high-level folk. Minor updates are normally issued on Tuesdays, and consist of ~5MB downloads for game patches. Major content updates (called "Issues") seem to happen roughly quarterly, are free of charge, and represent a fairly substantial download. The client runs a patcher prior to the start of play, while the Issues are available for download several weeks prior to their going live.

      The game costs $15 a month in the US. I have no idea what pricing will be in Euroland.

      The player base is generally friendly and talkative in my experience. Almost no one roleplays on the server where I spend my time.

      Near optimal CoH-playing experience requires 1GB of RAM (EQ players have needed a Gig of RAM for a couple years IIRC) and a Radeon 9600 or 9800. The $400+ cards from ATI and nVidia add nothing to the game at the moment, and anecdotally I understand that nvidia hardware seems to have more display bugs in CoH. The game will run on 256MB, but I wouldn't suggest trying that.

      Gameplay-wise, the best advice I can give is that you take things slow, read the clues you get in missions, and work with a team. There are a limited number of indoor settings, which is a little bit of a disappointment, but over time the devs have done really great work to make the settings for important missions more and more unique (e.g. the burning building in the "Bonefire" mission almost everyone gets at level 6).

      Someone looking to make friends in-game would do well to make an Empathy (Healer/Buffer) or Radiation (Healer/debuffer) defender, or a Tank of some kind. Those two types are almost ALWAYS in demand for grouping, and Tanks are pretty easy for beginners.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    5. Re:Infomation for us! \o/ by MacroRex · · Score: 3, Interesting
      CoH is exactly the MMO I want to play. There is no crafting. There is only the barest notion of "treasure" (bad guys sometimes drop enhancements to your powers). There is no notion of "camping" as I understand the EQ definition. It is very easy to just load up CoH and PLAY, without worrying about the secondary and tertiary activities that seem to overwhelm the actual game in UO or Everquest or SWG.

      My sentiments exactly. Since I have job and a spouse I can't play any game 24/7 like I used to do with MUDs 10 years ago. This means a MMO needs to be playable casually, and this is where City of Heroes excels. Only have 30 minutes? Fine, load up the game and go do a mission, or just arrest villains that plague the streets. No need to sit in PoK or whatever looking for a group first. On the other hand, if you like teaming up, CoH has it down pat, too. The team seek functionality is the best I've seen in any game, and the concepts of sidekicking/exemplaring mean that it is possible to team up with absolutely anyone else, no matter what level they are.

      I am an European player. However, most likely I will not be joining the new EU servers. There are two reasons; first, my server (Justice) works without any noticeable lag, so there are no performance issues solved by switching. Second, Cryptic/NCSoft have announced that they will not be offering a chance to transfer characters to the new servers. Money is no issue for me.

      I can understand this policy (it prevents ebaying), but I've put 4 months worth of my precious free time into my few characters. None of them are even level 40, but I've grown very fond of them. The idea of doing the lower levels again with them just is horrible. As I said, I'm not a powergamer per se, and don't have the option nor the motivation to quickly pump hundreds of playhours into the game just to get back where I am now. I play the game to have a fun, and the minute it turns into a chore, I'll quit.

    6. Re:Infomation for us! \o/ by ghztew · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

  2. Google is your friend by cwford · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    ...be arsed, as it were.

  3. Too bad Vivendi doesn't give Europeans a treat... by code-e255 · · Score: 1

    It's too bad that Blizzard / Vivendi doesn't give us Europeans a treat for making us wait for months until we can play their game (hopefully the wait will soon be over). There's no good reason for the delays over here, except for bad project management. Obviously, they can do what they want, but it's quite pathetic that Europeans are always (except for now, of course - /salute City of Heroes dudes!) treated as second-class customers by American MMORPG developers/publishers. We're just as large, MMORPG gamer-wise, as the Americans.

    It's too bad that City of Heroes is only getting released in Europe this late. With World of Warcraft getting released some time in February too (presumably), most MMORPG gamers probably won't give a damn about CoH.

  4. Re:Too bad Vivendi doesn't give Europeans a treat. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    > There's no good reason for the delays over here

    You have multiple languages in your region. Just standardize to English and you'll see games hit your shores with much less delay.

    English is the defacto language of the European Union already, anyways.