Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Last week, I took some time to revisit the City of Heroes universe to give everyone a new "first impression" of the game and what the NCsoft NorCal developers have been up to. I knew things had been added and changed since I left, but trust me when I say this; if you quit over a year ago, you have no idea how much the folks at NCsoft have improved and expanded upon the title. The amount of information I've been bombarded with this week is nothing short of mind blowing.

Look, Ma. I can fly!

First and foremost, I'll officially state for the record that I still think CoX has the most diverse and interesting character creation system of any game, in any genre, on the market today. There are an incomprehensible number of possible combinations available when making the hero or villain of your choice. As I said in my first article, I spent over an hour creating my demoness and I could have spent another hour tweaking everything so it was exactly the way I wanted her to look and feel. At the same time, the system is intuitive and complete enough that you could have a character created in a matter of minutes if you so choose. To say the system is an unbridled masterpiece just doesn't do it justice - it's that good.

To add to the customization masterpiece, you also unlock new costume slots at levels 20, 30, and 40. You can unlock an additional slot by trading in Halloween salvage. On top of that (through specific quests), you gain a cape at level 20, aura choices at level 30, and you can even craft wings for yourself later on in the game. By the time you reach level 50 (the current cap), you can have five completely different looks for your avatar.

Not only can you have various looks in CoX, but with this week's release of Issue 13 (essentially a free expansion pack), you can also have two different power builds. You'll need to remain within your primary and secondary powersets you started out with, but you can freely choose new pool and ancillary power sets at any trainer. Gone are the days of having to respec your character just to have a different set of power combinations available to you. This is a godsend to those that prefer one build for their PvE play and another build for the days they just feel like going on a PvP rampage.

Massive spell effect goodness!

Being a lowly villain (and by that I mean low level), I decided to hook up with a friend of mine in the game to check out the sidekick feature. By becoming someone's lackey, you're raised (or lowered, if wanting to be a malefactor), to one level below his or hers. This allows you (and thus, me) to check out higher level content it would normally take you days of playing to experience on your own. With a quick accept from Stravana, my handy guide, I was ready to explore the world as a level 49 character!

There's one little caveat I forgot to mention. Even though my demoness of destruction was now level 49, she still only had those powers already available to her. When you get boosted in level, you don't gain any new powers, new costume selections, et al, but it does give you the opportunity to go play with your friends no matter what level they are by boosting your health, power strength, etc. I've always been a huge fan of mentoring systems that allow friends to group, especially when those acquaintances have already been playing the game much longer than you. There are few things worse than having to start up a new alternate character to play with your low level buddy when you've already fallen in love with your current incarnation.

So what's a newly boosted level 49 villain of mass destruction supposed to do? I don't know about you, but the first thing I wanted to do was cause some mayhem, and what better way to do that than in CoX's Mayhem Missions? That's right. They actually named a set of missions "mayhem". Pretty darned spiffy, if I say so myself.

Everything is better with explosions.

These “mayhem” missions definitely live up to their name too. As a villain, you've got fifteen minutes to break into the bank and escape after being whisked away to your own instance. The developers could have made you get to certain markers to add a little time bonus to your mission, but aside from being boring that would also qualify as lame. Fortunately for us, the way you extend your time limit is exactly as it should be: you blow things up.

The Mayhem Mission instances take place on the pansy side of town (the Heroes portion) and that just makes the act of raw destruction sweeter than your grandmother's homemade apple pie. Along with blowing things up, there are also random unlockable side quests in each Mayhem Mission you can complete as well. Doing this greatly increases the amount of time you have to finish your mission. After completing one of the side quests and destroying more city property than Godzilla on a rampage, we had a comfortable window of 25 minutes to get the loot and get out of Dodge.

There was plenty of experience points to be had by me in our ruthless adventure (yes, I did set every civilian I saw on fire), but what's in it for the character that was kind enough to drag you up in levels? Since Stravana was 50, she didn't receive any experience, but she did gain prestige points and if you want a base of your very own (and trust me, you really do), then you'd better grab every prestige point you can lay your grubby little hands on.

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