I have played the game from open beta until now. I've had a great time in it so far, with few headaches.

For many players, they never read comics, or they just prefer the fantasy motif and would be much happier playing EQ/EQ2/WoW, or whatever. This is completely understandable, imho.

I've also noticed that CoH presents some paradigm shifts that some people can't get their heads around, or just don't want to. I noticed that some players were still in the "˜camp and grind' mentality that they inherited from their last MMO. The idea of doing missions didn't even occur to them. I recall more than one player saying "screw missions, I just want exp". I consider being able to get nearly anywhere in the game world within a fairly reasonable amount of time to be a plus for the game as well.

Being a casual player, I don't mind the absence of crafting, raids of 50+ people, needing the best gear (of the week) to play the game, or having to spend weeks/months working on a flag/key to access content I've never seen before. Being able to do a task force or trial with 8 people means I can be doing something quickly, as opposed to waiting for 50 people to show up, broadcasting "who needs a group? Send me a tell if you do"…" a dozen times, only to have 5 or 6 people shouting that they are ungrouped when you are trying to move the raid out and get something accomplished in a timeframe such as 2-4 hours.

I think Cryptic went slightly wrong in not designing the game with the idea in mind that people would hit the level cap quickly. For example, as noted above most people have all of their powers by the time they reach level 42, yet the current level cap is level 50. I have seen complaints raised on the official CoH boards regarding lack of content, but I've yet to confirm this.

Granted, I'm level 30 – but people were saying "there's no content after level 20/30/40", and I've yet to find this to be the case. Of course – zones, missions, mission types, enemy groups, badge collecting, and trials have been added since launch; although I can see where the pace of added content might not be fast enough for some of the more hardcore players.

The one major flaw I've seen raised is that the game seems to be more of the same, and I can agree with many on this because on many levels we as players are doing "more of the same": we get missions, we beat up villains and their minions, and we enhance our powers. The devs have noted this, and have mentioned that they are trying to implement some means of breaking up the monotony without turning the game into "a half-arsed time sink".

The introduction of badges seems to be a starting point for this, but again I can see where this might be a case of "˜too little, too late' for many players. For now, I'm willing to give Cryptic the benefit of the doubt, and see what happens. I can see where the releases of WoW, EQ2, GW, and Tabula Rasa might help stimulate them on that road a bit.

I really enjoyed it until now. I just last night cancelled my sub; the guys that I played with regularly fell out of it, and I realized that I hadn''t played in almost a month. Fun game, but it definitely suffered from ''more of the same'' syndrome. Also, the small SG that I was in made it difficult at times to find people playing at the same times that I was.

<slightly off-topic>
I''m hoping that WoW becomes the game de choix in these here parts and that there is an active guild so''s I can easily find folks to play with. I also hope that the guild system is a little better than CoH; only 75 members to a SG made it a bitch to try to keep track of everyone and their alts with all of your characters and alts.
</slightly off-topic>

I really enjoyed grouping with you in CoH, so I''m glad you''re going to play WoW. I think WoW will lend itself more to people sticking with a single character; I know I will probably spend 90% of my time with my main.

I hit lvl 47 tonight. I''ve had fun throughout. I picked it up about a week after release.
The trick for me was in gettign w/ a good supergroup. I log in daily and defeat a different archvillian or see content I had never seen before.
In the past three days, I''ve defeated about 7 different archvillians I had never seen before.

The only reason I am leaving, is to pick up World of Warcraft, and I cant justify paying for two MMOs at the same time.

It was great for 3 months or so, then it started to feel like work.

Level 37 stone tank here, going strong since May. I have played many mmorpgs, but I''ve only played 2 other games longer than this (UO and AO). As with most mmorpgs, by the time you hit the high levels it''s essential to have a regular gang of folks for teams.

It''s a fighting game, no bones about it. No crafting and little downtime to lend itself for roleplaying. I play 3 or 4 nights a week with my wife and some rl friends, and I''ve been satisfied so far that the release of new content has stayed ahead of our rate of advancement.

I played for about 3 months. The wife didn''t really get into as much as I did and she wanted to get back to a game we could play together.

I did begin to notice the feeling of ""same thing different level"" around lvl 20. It was a fine game while I played though. I definantly liked the lack of timesinks and lack of need to have a huge bank to store stuff that I would most likely never use

I still play maybe once or twice a week, and still get some enjoyment out of it. I see the ease of getting a group as one of the key strengths of the game. It allows you to play around with
group dynamics in a way I couldn''t in other mmorpgs (EQ, Neocron) Being a controller myself, sometimes I''ll make the grp
heavy with trollers and fill out with blasters and a def. other grps I''ll make out of primarily brawlers. Others will be a tank fest.
Depending on our foe''s strength''a and weaknesses sometimes the skewed grp will dominate, and other times it''ll take heavy teamwork to make our way to victory.
If a session runs too long, ya it turns into a bit of a grind. But a few days later I''m ready for another go.
So for me, it''s held up pretty well.