CoX Issue 13 takes a page out of EVE's book

Fighting evil by moonlight

Filing papers by daylight

Always ready for a real fight, she is the one named… oops, sorry.

City of Heroes’ Issue 13 code name: Architect, is going to be introducing DAY JOBS!!! Because, staying up all night fighting good and evil alike just isn’t tiring enough, you have to put in your eight hours at a job. EVE Online has had offline progression from Day 1. Having your character progress in some way even while not logged in is genius, though this is more along the lines of The Sims’ day-job-you-never-actually-see than EVE’s skill training, which occurs whether you are logged in or not.

Where you log out determines your job for the day. Log out in a university, and you’re a Scholar, and you earn Salvage. Log out in a hospital, and you’re a Caregiver, and get Health Regeneration buffs. Any place of note you can log out, gives you SOME sort of job. As well as the stuff you get just for doing the job, there are badges and titles available if you do the job consistently enough, and they increase your earnings for the job. Do multiple jobs and get Accolades for even more rewards.

My ex-main that I haven’t logged in for a year or so would be Paragon City Mayor by now, I bet. Though I imagine they will cap the amount of rewards you can accrue while logged out.

But that isn’t the best thing. Issue 13 also brings along player-generated missions and story arcs. This is the sort of thing which will be the salvation of MMOs, in exactly the same way it’s been the salvation of FPS and RTS games for the past decade. Give the players the tools to make their own content, and a lot of it will be crap. But some of it will be an order of magnitude beyond what anyone else has done.

Write GOOD missions as determined by the community, and even more exclusive rewards open up.

This is VERY exciting stuff. CoX has the big advantage here in that their mission environments are procedurally generated, whereas games like World of Warcraft make theirs by hand. It’s good to see they are taking what I consider a weakness – bland, generic missions – and turning them into a strength.