I’ve been playing City of Heroes, fairly regularly for five years now.
What keeps me coming back?
I think part of it has to do with the setting. Superpowers in a modern day city. Hero or Villain, you can choose either side. Its comic book sensibilities appeal to me in many ways. There is an insane amount of customization, so I can get characters to look the way I want. A space for you to write the character’s biography in game that other people can read.
Then there’s the fact that I can play the game and not be bored. The combat, while simple, is just fun to play.
I guess another aspect that keeps me coming back is that I’m often entertained by the other players, as opposed to fed up with them. Every now and again, I’ll meet another Hero or Villain with a real background to them. I’ll look at their carefully constructed character bio and they act in game accordingly.
And now they’ve announced the second full expansion to the game, Going Rogue. Now characters have an alignment system and can fall somewhere between Hero and Villain. Additionally, in true comic book style, they reveal a mirror universe as an entirely different game world.
Looks like there are a few more years in the City of Heroes for me.