What made CoH Special?

That's the question I've seen most often since the shutdown.

 From players, from successor teams looking for 'the secret', one I asked myself innumerable times as I struggled to reconfigure my reality around the empty space left by the shutdown, incessantly probing the wound like it was a pulled tooth.

 What did CoH have that other MMOs lacked?
 What exerted such a powerful attraction that the only thing able to distract me for more than a few days was an acute case of Adult Onset Parenting?

 The usual responses take the form of a list of small, appealing elements: easy teaming, simple mechanics, I CAN FLY!, etc. Occasionally someone will widen the focus & laud it's 'casual' or 'solo friendly' nature, generally supported by more mentions of how casual and solo friendly it was.

 All correct in their own ways, but even compiled into a single grand list (as was done by an enterprising soul in a forum thread I came across) they did not fully satisfy my own mournful curiosity about just what ineffable quality CoH had that no other MMO I've ever played managed to capture.

 I mean, yeah, it had to be relatively solo friendly to keep me around, because I mostly solo'ed. And I'm the very definition of 'casual' in my play- even at my most crazed & obsessive I never played more than five or six hours a week- I simply didn't have the time, even before my son was born.
 And obviously FLYING! was always completely amazing, even back in the old days (who else remembers the forum thread that proved sprint + hurdle was faster than base Flight speed? Hah!)

 But none of that entirely explained the quality of my persistent affection for game world, why the thought of logging in created the same enjoyable anticipation as sitting down with a really good book you were perpetually about halfway through, or easing into a hot bath after a long day.

 As I'm prone to do with such inconclusively resolved questions, I put it on a back burner and let it simmer, periodically checking in to stir the pot. And last night as I was slipping into Dreamland & drowsily considering the new post I'd been working on, it came to me.

 So simple, a variation on my Sam Tow Apology, and another situation where I'd let an obsession with mechanics obscure the truth.

 The people.
 The community.

 Duh, Goat!

 But wait, all successful games have people playing them, and where people gather community is the inevitable result, right?

 Yeah, but what made CoH special, or rather what *kept* it special was that the game was your ally, or to use a CoH centric metaphor, mentor. How many times have I found myself in another game having to navigate a ridiculously convoluted system just to reach out and speak to other players?  I've played more than a few games where the chat system felt like it was designed to prevent players from finding and speaking with one another.

 In CoH the basic local chat was handled by wonderfully engaging and thematic word bubbles, which always delighted me.  Later came the crown jewel, the one system which I've concluded "made CoH special"- global chat channels.

A mechanism which had the same galvanizing effect on in-game player connectivity as that radioactive spider bite did with Peter Parker.

 That's what made me feel like I was part of the CoH community even when I had almost no time to team or even play- I could still pop in and hang out in TheMarket channel or the Triumph global, or the Crazy 88's, or whatever. I'd see what people were doing, I could chime in advice or join in acclaim and laughter, it was an entree into everyone else's game. No need to be part of a guild, no need to mess around with external servers or systems, once you set things up it was just there, waiting for you.

 So, to all of the successor teams out there wondering how best to recreate the essence of CoH, once you've finsihed your deep, flexible costume creator and created a fun, interactive world for us to superhero around in....make sure you absolutely nail down a flexible, elegant universal chat system.

 We'll do the rest. =D



PS:
Carol 'Staci' McAllister noted in the Save City of Heroes Facebook group that the forums were also an integral part of the 'specialness' of the game, and I agree.   They were like the Internet Archive of the community, a tremendous resource for players new and old, while the globals were more Twitter, instant and ephemeral.
I wanted to mention that without having to re-write the whole thing....  =P