Over the weekend I took a few minutes to take NCSoft up on their invitation to jump in and play City of Heroes again on my computer. These free-play weekends show up every so often as an excellent incentive to get back in and bust some heads with your super-powered characters and try and get you hooked on the game again. I did have to download the game into my laptop, not having played it on this computer before, and thankfully the download and install process was pretty painless. The game itself, though, hasn't changed much, at least in the looks department.
While I imagine their salvage-based crafting system might have addressed my old lack of interest with the game not having the "loot factor" of other games, not having the visuals get much better is something of a downer. One thing I noticed recently in the news, however, was the upcoming feature of letting end users write their own missions for the game, submit them online for others to download and play, and have player votes determine the best ones to earn fame and fortune. I've noticed more than a little similarity to the level sharing system that LittleBigPlanet should sport at launch. While I used to be a frustrated creative writer in my distant past, this isn't enough to get my creative juices flowing by itself, but it's still something I'll be watching with great interest. A publishing platform, regardless of what the medium is, could be something that becomes a vehicle for discovering good writing talent.
Seen on Kotaku.