City of Heroes

On a complete impulse buy, earlier today I picked up the install DVD for City of Heroes at Big Lots. At least one person on Twitter thought it was odd that I would be involved in such a thing when I’ve gone on record as being underwhelmed by things like Second Life. My problems with Second Life are that the interface sucks and has a serious learning curve, that it is hard to figure out what to do and that the aimlessness of it is a barrier to entry. The conversation goes like this:

Me: “What can I do with this that is interesting?”

Second Life Dude: “Oh, it’s wonderful. You can do anything!”

Me: “Ooooooooooookay.”

As I said earlier, if I’m going to fart around with any MMO, I want to be able to punch bad guys through walls. My hope is that this has enough structure than unlike Second LIfe I’m not stuck wandering around boring things wondering what to do. If anyone reading this wants to join up and do whatever one does with other people, let me know. I have yet to start up the game because I first installed the program it had 1.8 gigabytes of updates to download. I assume that the MMO part means that I can hook up with friends to go on missions or what have you. Come join up with me and we’ll fight bad guys together! I don’t know how to do that yet, so it’s all learning curve.

Update: I’ve tried this under VMWare and Parallels and neither one runs it. This might be an epic, or it might be an EPIC FAIL!

FInal Update: Neither VM solution nor running under Boot Camp allows me to play City of Heroes, so this is done. Sorry guys, it sounded like fun but I am saved from myself by my MacBook.

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

6 thoughts on “City of Heroes”

  1. “Ick” on the no run in Parallels, dude. Bummer. I’m actually halfway to digging out my old install myself (it’s not installed on my new machine, and my accounts not active…but they never go away) and joining you. I’m no expert mentor or anything, but it’s a fun game. Keep us in the loop…if you get it running, I may jump on.

    WRT that tweet…between your reply there and here, I started to think that I was misremembering a comment I thought you once made. But no…Google outs you! *grin*:

    http://evilgeniuschronicles.org/2006/02/10/mmorpg/

    “I have made the command decision to never ever play one of these things, not even for one minute on a borrowed machine. The worst thing that could happen to me would be to get addicted to one of these games and begin sinking time in. I’ve decided that if I’m building things and adding value, I don’t want it to be in some damn game.”

    That’s the comment I was referring to. Note: I not even for a second thinking it’s bad you’re trying out a game; good for you, dude! We all deserve entertainment and fun time. My remark was just a gentle gibe…the MMO does indeed suck everyone in eventually! Even an Evil Genius. Well, if it will ever run on your Mac, I guess. LOL

  2. OK, you busted me on that one. I think what you are seeing is me giving up on the idea of productivity. Truth be told, I already spend enough time playing online poker that if I just moved that time into COH it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Really, if I have to set this up under Boot Camp that actually works out OK for me because that isn’t going to be something that I do all the time or casually.

  3. I hear ya, Dave. Trust me, it wasn’t meant as a criticism. It kind of boggles my mind that I’m enough of a EGC fanboy to have remembered the comment. *grin*

    I struggle with the whole online productivity vs. fun deal as well, so I know where you’re coming from. I count work on projects as a win, and TRY not to beat myself up too much over gaming, since some days my brain is just fried by the end of the day.

    As soon as I track down my COH login, I’ll flick you a line. If you want to form a super-team, I’m in!

  4. Logged in successfully. My characters are on the Infinity server, and names are Monoscope and Stump. Lvls 10 & 7, respectively, so it’s not like I’m uber-high level or anything. Going to go remind myself how to play for a bit now…LOL. I expect I’ll be on and off during the weekend. Feel free to IM or email to schedule a time if you like. I’m no expert by any means, but I’ve played enough to at least help a brother out a bit.

  5. I’d be glad to help you out as well….I only started playing in December, but I’ve gotten the lay of the land. I’ve got a number of characters up….just e-mail me.

  6. hmm my RSS reader just gave me 2 weeks worth of your posts that it had been ignoring, hence me only just suggesting crossover in the other post.

    If you can get it working I think you’ll enjoy City of Heroes; it’s great in that you can jump in for short periods of time and still feel like a hero. I’ve been playing on-and-off since it released in April 2004 😉

    Oh and the 1.8gb download is probably because you have a dvd from release, the client now includes content for both City of Heroes and City of Villains.

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