My Lore Apologia

Or, Samuel Tow, I'm Sorry!

Another consequence of bopping around Millennium rather than Paragon City is a fresh appreciation for something CoH has in abundance, even back at launch when it didn't have much else- a strong, unique underlying story.

One of my earliest criticisms of CO, back when it was announced and the forums erupted with the de rigueur wailing about how it was going to be the "CoH Killer" (joining the tail end of a long conga line composed of every other high profile MMO release of the past decade, with WoW itself leading the charge.....turns out the true CoH Killer was inside the house the whole time!) was that while Champions as a rules system was a terrific playground for superheroic exploits, Champions as a game world was little more than a dim reflection of  Silver Age Marvel mythos.

Hydra?
VIPER!

Shield?
UNTIL!

Dr. Doom?
DR. DESTROYER!

etc etc etc.

Whatever your opinion of CoH, its story was its own, fueled more by the primary sources of classical mythology itself than a Jack Kirby interpretation that same material.

As I said, while everyone I knew used the Champions rules, NOBODY used the Champions setting. And there's just no way to translate those wonderfully flexible yet ridiculously unbalanced Champions rules to a videogame.  Balance is inconsequential in a pen and paper setting where the human GM always has the trump card.  In an MMO, anything abusable WILL be abused, mercilessly and perpetually until a developer fixes it, and balance in some form must drive the design if a game wants to succeed.

So if in my pen and paper Champions campaign a player wanted something ridiculous, say a 10d6 No Normal Defense attack, as the GM I can just say "No way in hell. How about 3d6 or come up with another power."

But if you let the equivalent of a 10d6 No Normal Defense into an MMO, you're looking at a ravening horde composed of most of your playerbase running amok with it until you make some code adjustments.

So, if not the rules what exactly was Cryptic buying when they licensed Champions for their MMO?

The mythos.
Or in forum terms, the lore, that foundational collection of ephemera all games possess and of which I've been so dismissive over the years.

Which is likely all we'll have left of CoH once NC turns the servers off.
Turns out the lore of a game is its spirit, the bit that  survives the 'death' of the physical infrastructure.  It existed before there was a gameworld, and will persist after the game world powers down.

So while I will continue to insist that lore concerns take a back seat to good game design once a game is up and running, in the sense that lore is a much more malleable, flexible thing than the gargantuan slab of code supporting a modern MMO, I was wrong to downplay its central importance in creating the gameplay experience.

Because in spite of my 'skim over the story' style of play I find myself noticing the derivative, threadbare nature of CO's lore even as I'm playing.

In CoH I didn't necessarily pay close attention to the storylines but looking back its simple existence had a powerful influence on my perception of the game world.  It was like an iceberg, 9/10ths submerged.  While I was generally happy to zip across the surface in pursuit of my next hit of shiny, when I did pause to dig the game extended as far down as I cared to excavate.  Knowing that everything you 'saw' in game was backed up with this impressive depth of story made it more real, even when you didn't feel like plumbing those depths.

By comparison in CO such bouts of occasional curiosity lead to the discovery that behind the velvet curtain lies......an unfinished, splintered plywood wall, studded with nails that bent halfway in and were hammered flat & covered with spray painted construction graffiti.

CO lore is a Potemkin Village,  a glossy facade of civilization fronting barren fields reaching to the horizon.

All of which is a longwinded way of saying Samuel Tow, you were right and I was wrong.
While it can't do the job of solid game mechanics, lore is indeed the lifeblood of any MMO.