City Of Heroes

[Chojin]

COH has a bunch of good strong points - Character generation, Fun combat, And living cities are all awesome things. :> Where it falls short is where 99% of MMOS are lacking - High-level grinds for XP and every combat situation being the same. There are rarely tactics in a mission beyond drawing/teleporting enemies out to be slain. COH differs in this area slightly when you involve controllers and some of gangs that require special treatment (Sky Raider jets and Freaks in general), but overall it's a grind, and a repetitious one at that. Further complicating COH is the fact that the classes are woefully unbalanced; I haven't played PVP in it yet, but I imagine it's just fire tanker vs. fire tanker battles ad nauseum.

Travel abilities should come WAY sooner than 14th level. The sidekick system is great, but it's useless if the lower level character is under 14 because no-one over that will want to play with your slow ass (unless you can teleport them).

Some of the stories are fun, but the instanced missions are all VERY similar to each other, and differ only in text bubbles from some core NPCs of said mission.

Character generation is the best of any MMO out there, but still a ways from the detail of the WWE Smackdown series. Also, while you can make your character look unique, everyone runs, jumps, fights, and does emotes exactly the same. It's also robust in parts that are really unnecessary (23409 versions of a one-piece dress and tattoos), but severely lacking in essential character-defining parts (faces, hats).

Overall, it's a really fun game, but is accidentally designed to wear on you faster than it should.