If You Could be a Superhero...

Who would you be? That's the question posed to us in the game City of Heroes from Cryptic Studios, published by NC Soft. City of Heroes is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game set in the massive Paragon City, a city constantly under threat by villainous hordes set upon by villains hordes of Rikti aliens, Council megalomaniacs, Nemesis robots, and countless other factions of enemies of peace and prosperity with nothing to stand in their way... except you!

Be Anyone You Can Imagine

City of Heroes has what is perhaps the most extensive character creation system in existence. For each different individual area of the body you are able to pick from a wide array of different looks that can be modified for color and different patterns, and you not only can alter the texture, but you can modify your character's physique and build as well. With this powerful tool you can make everything from sword-wielding knights, gun toting commands, heavily armored fighters of the future, and of course cape clad spandex-loving heroes. If you can dream it, your character can look like it.

Beyond Character Classes

But not only can you make your character look the way you imagine; you can also make your character have nearly any kind of powers you can imagine. Character generation is surprisingly simply yet very deep and innovative. Gone are the simple character class progressions some are used to in other roleplaying games. In City of Heroes you pick from one of five Archetypes, with more being unlocked later, these archetypes are the Blaster, Scrapper, Tank, Defender, and Controller. Each archetype has a number of primary and secondary powersets. When you make a character you get to pick one primary and one secondary powerset, ensuring that every member of each Archetype is different. Not only that but as you gain levels you can pick from power pools available to all heroes. As you progress you get to select new powers, and add "slots" to existing powers to make them stronger. Since you get more powers available than you can have, you get to pick and choose which powers from your set you want, and which ones you don't, as well as which of the powers you do have will be stronger than the others, and in what way it will be stronger. This gives you amazing freedom to take your character in the direction you envision!

Streetlights and City Nights

But all of this means nothing if you don't have an awesome playground to play in. Paragon city is a large thriving world full of people, each different district of the city having it's own unique flavor and flair. You won't have to worry about taking eternity to travel around the fair city with the modern convenience of the public tram, and your own ability for fly, leap, teleport, or simply run extremely fast to move around. Paragon City has quiet, peaceful areas areas of metropolitan growth, upscale homes with an old world flair, and islands comforted by warm ocean currents. Of course there's also devastated ruins, the earth churned cracked and split as if angry, overgrown wild areas, and dank infested sewers all as part of Paragon's many "Hazard Zones". Paragon City provides the perfect stage for your heroic exploits.

What do you mean, "On Virtue"?

Virtue is the name of the server which The Icons reside. It is one of the many different servers that you can decide to create your character on in the game. Each server is independent of the other ones, so if your friends were on Protector, for example, then you wouldn't be able to play with them unless you decided to make a character on Protector. However, Cryptic has given us global chat, which allows you to send messages to your friends and chat on in-game chat channels that go across all the servers so you're never out of touch with your friends. The Virtue server tends to attract players interested in roleplaying. Also, it's the best server. Really! Honest! I'm not just writing that because I play there.

How can I see more?

City of heroes has a great website full of game information, background, an active forum community, and various other updates that are constantly keeping the living world of Paragon City moving. You can learn all about this by simply following the link to the City of Heroes website below. From there you can learn how to make an account and get into the game. Hope to see you there.