Praetoria unveiled in depth for City of Heroes

If you play City of Heroes, you're probably not counting the days until the release of Going Rogue just yet, as it's a little too far in the future. (Fifty-one days if you count today, incidentally.) But August will be here before we know it, and today the official site takes a look at a portion of the expansion which is at once easy to forget and yet ubiquitous: the world of Praetoria itself, the utopia created through absolute power. As we've known for quite some time, it's similar and yet slightly different when compared to the setting of Paragon City -- both familiar and threatening.

Emperor Cole's near-total salvation of humanity resulted in a sweeping change of the world as a whole, as discussed in Tyrant's biography quite some time ago. Praetoria is a world without borders or nationalities, wherein everyone is a citizen of the empire rather than the panoply of countries in the real world. The tantalizing hints of the world's architecture are readily visible in our gallery, which showcases both the concept art and the in-game layouts of the major new setting for the expansion. Take a look at our gallery, and head to the official site for more information on the twisted mirror of City of Heroes.

City of Heroes preview of Praetoria

Reader Comments (4)

except for the big thing in the middle the buildings look pretty much like all other building in that game. /shrug

Yeah it really doesn't strike me as too fresh and new looking. More city environments? Blech. 6 years of a city environment is enough. I think these guys should have made something a bit more epic and original looking like an alien world. The canon in this game is also tiresome - the main characters are just alternate versions of each other (for the most part).

Ultimately, I just hope G.R. adds some fun, new elements to it. Positron really made some poor moves and the exodus of players is proof. Star Wars and DC are on the horizon - I will likely go there if G.R. does not deliver the goods. I have stopped my CoH sub. until the G.R. launch and hope I enjoy it then. I have a fun group of toons I would love to play if there was something new and fun to do :)

I'm taking a break myself. Having spent several years in Paragon City, it was definitely time to stretch my gaming wings a bit.

It is a bit disappointing that Praetoria is just another cityscape. A pretty one, with some fantastic architecture, but it's still just a cityscape in the end, and the game is full of those already. A moon zone or underwater zone would have been better to help break up the game's one real flaw: its repetitiveness. Repetitiveness is still the most common thing you hear about on MMO forums for why people tire of the game.

I have to defend Positron here, though. The systems he put into place during his tenure as lead designer are going to make for superior content in the future. We've already gotten a taste of it in I17. Future content in CoH is looking to be pretty amazing, thanks to Positron's systems.

The downside of Positron's focus on systems was that while it makes for great future content, it creates a lack of current content. The consequence of that was the game lost quite a few subs due to very little content coming out over the last two years. Every advantage comes at a cost.

CoH is still one of the most solid MMOs on the market, and I'm sure I'll be back in Paragon City some day.

I quite like the look, myself. I'm hoping that Praetoria is a mix of COH's ease-of-travel due to intelligent layout and COV's personality. Looking forward to more info on GR, although I'd like to really see more substantive stuff (like how the Incarnate System works in-depth, plans for i19 and beyond, etc).

Praetoria unveiled in depth for City of Heroes

City of Heroes preview of Praetoria

Reader Comments (4)

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 1:28PM Thac0 said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 3:05PM Superfan said

Posted: Jun 29th 2010 5:55PM Daemodand said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 10:50PM Sam not Spam said

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