City of Heroes

City of Heroes is an action based game, stemming from the superhero comic book genre. I began my journey in the world of City of Heroes by creating a character and selecting an archetype, then selecting my primary and secondary, then I began to create a unique costume. In final steps of finishing my avatar, I was asked to write a brief backstory (this was optional) to my hero and a name. Players are given the option to go through a tutorial or skip over it and continue onto playing the game. A character's level increases by earning experience points from defeating enemies, completing missions, and exploring zones, then returning to a trainer.The advantage of leveling up is you receive more health, power, slots to find more power and larger inventories, as well as costume changes.Players are required to complete missions in order to level up. Missions consist of beating a boss or finding items.

City of Heroes has reward items within the game, but unlike most games the items can be called as intangible items, that have characteristics beneficial for the character to level-up. Inspirations are temporary power ups, enhancements cover array of items from magic enchantments to training techniques, and instead of money characters use influence.

Over time expansions of the game were developed, coming out with games like City of Villains. City of Heroes has a team of developers that keep in touch with players by playing as characters in the game and playing with their consumers. They have an online forum, like boards.cityofheroes.com, that help build the game for the players and the culture of the game. Like any mutliplayer game its merely impossible for their not to be griefing involved. I found that City of Heroes had more griefing involved than Champions online did. City of Heroes over the years has developed its own culture, unlike any of the other MMOs that I have research. It has truly developed its own culture that is not pertinent to the game but also to the world around. City of Heroes has inspired novels, comic books, collectible card games, RPGs, and soon to be movie.

Although City of Heroes has such a rich culture and the players seem to be more casual gamers. They were very friendly and for the most part I found that they were willing to help. I had the options of sending in world chats or private messages. In City of Heroes if you want to dual with anyone of the same faction you must go to the coliseum. If any players want to duel with a player of a different faction, he must go to a PvP area and announce that they want to dual. People tend to play fairly, when dueling players like to know what their capabilities are, so that they will know where they stand in a more structured duel.