History YMMV / CityOfHeroes

** Freem![[labelnote:Explanation]]From a [[https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/April_Fools'_Day April Fool's Day newspost]] promising the addition of [[WrittenSoundEffect "visual sounds"]]. "FREEM" is used as the onomatopoeia of an energy blast, and caught on as an {{Inherently Funny Word|s}}.[[/labelnote]]

** Freem!

* ThatOneLevel:
** Certain mission tilesets, including the "layer cake" room in several caves and the Circle of Thorns' city, Oranbega. The Shadow Shard consists of four entire ''zones'' of scrappyness and are all but deserted nowadays.
** "Defeat all enemies" type missions are known for being time-consuming, but combined with the more complicated tilesets above can sometimes lead to the party needing to scour the map top to bottom searching for that [[LastLousyPoint last lousy mook]].

** PPD Equalizers and Ghosts are a very common offender. If you don't kill one immediately, they will use a very long duration debuff. The Equalizers have a Glue grenade that is autohit and slows you to a crawl, while the Ghosts' Flashbang, [[LuckBasedMission if it hits]], neuters your chance of hitting and dodging.
*** It's especially noticeable because heroes never really fought the PPD - until a certain story arc featured a faction of villainous rogue PPD. Cue hero-players horrified at how overpowered the 'new' group was.
** [[ManaDrain Mu Mystics]]. Against Arachnos as a whole, many characters have to prioritize Mu enemies or lose their endurance quickly. [[ThatOneLevel A few missions pit you against nothing but Mu Mystics]].

** Statesman and Lord Recluse... jus-just Statesman and Lord Recluse! - They act like two bitter exes who can’t stop thinking about each-other. With Statesman hoping to one day get back together with Lord Recluse, and Lord Recluse devoting his every waking thought to spiting the guy that dumped him. It is ''EXACTLY'' what it sounds like!

** A much, ''much'' earlier example would be the Headmen Swordsmen in ''The Lost'' enemy group. They have [[{{BFS}} giant swords]] they pull out of [[{{Hammerspace}} nowhere]], possibly [[AssPull their asses]], that deal insane damage. Needless to say, Headman Swordsmen can be a pain for [[TheBerserker Scrappers]], who are melee-based and not that good in defense, as well as [[{{Ninja}} Stalkers]].

* ThatOneLevel: Certain mission tilesets, including the "layer cake" room in several caves and the Circle of Thorns' city, Oranbega. The Shadow Shard consists of four entire ''zones'' of scrappyness and are all but deserted nowadays.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny:
** Younger gamers who never played ''City of Heroes/Villians'', and are more familiar with ''VideoGame/DCUniverseOnline'' and ''VideoGame/MarvelHeroes'' may look at videos and records of ''City of Heroes'' and wonder what the big deal was. But it's hard to understate how big a part of internet culture ''City'' was in the mid to late 2000's. In its heyday, the game enjoyed a popularity (in culture if not an actual headcount) on par with ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''!!
** Younger gamers also might be surprised at how its in-depth character creator was lauded as one of its features - with the sheer amount of options and flexibility beating out even some more long-running and recent [=MMORPGs=]. The game actually beat ''VideoGame/TheSims2'' to market. These days, players might wonder what was so special about mere character creation options.

** In general, any signature or high-level character is canonically an archvillain/hero or elite boss, making them strictly better than the player's character. This is true no matter the character's significance to the story, how many times you have defeated them in the story, or even their health in the story. This gets truly irritating toward end-game for City of Villains, where players may have to team up to defeat the Vindicators, Franchise/TeenTitans [[{{Expy}} expies]], making it the equivalent of [[Characters/SupermanLexLuthor Lex Luthor]] summoning the LegionOfDoom together to defeat Beast Boy.

* TheScrappy: Fusionette, especially to anyone playing a melee character at the time.

* ItsPersonal: Fans of C.o.H. ''still'' speak of NC Soft in absolutely ''scathing'' terms over the loss of the game.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Nemesis is either a brilliant schemer with a hand in friggin' ''everything'', or an egotistical blowhard who keeps trying to take credit for other people's work.

* DracoInLeatherPants: Ghost Widow. Scirocco also gets this occasionally.
** They're the most borderline-good of the Arachnos patrons. A planned future update would even have seen Scirocco abandon Arachnos to turn fully heroic (and, in the process, allow heroes access to previously villain-only Patron Power Pools without having to switch sides), justifying his "leather pants," [[WhatCouldHaveBeen had the game not been shut down.]]

* FanNickname: When the Council were first introduced, they were known by many as "Sazis" or "Spazis" (for "Space Nazis"). Seems to have died out, though some still call the masked Galaxy soldiers "[[MaskedLuchador luchadores]]".

* FridgeHorror: Some might notice that the entangles produced by the [[CombatTentacles Carrion]] [[NightmareFuel Creepers]] power continue to deal damage to the defeated enemies. Apparently dead bodies are tasty.

* HoYay: Statesman and Lord Recluse... jus-just Statesman and Lord Recluse! - They act like two bitter exes who can’t stop thinking about each-other. With Statesman hoping to one day get back together with Lord Recluse, and Lord Recluse devoting his every waking thought to spiting the guy that dumped him. It is ''EXACTLY'' what it sounds like!

* RootingForTheEmpire: The fight between the Loyalist Praetorians and the Resistance was supposed to be various shades of grey for the Going Rogue expansion, with logic being more or less "At what point is peace oppressive, and at what point is a noble rebel cause anarchy"; But Emperor Cole and his Praetors, with possible exception of [[TokenGoodTeammate Praetor White]], are so corrupt/insane that you really can't fault the rebels for anything they do even when blatant terrorism is on the menu.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Younger gamers who never played ''City of Heroes/Villians'', and are more familiar with ''VideoGame/DCUniverseOnline'' and ''VideoGame/MarvelHeroes'' may look at videos and records of ''City of Heroes'' and wonder what the big deal was. But it's hard to understate how big a part of internet culture ''City'' was in the mid to late 2000's. In its heyday, the game enjoyed a popularity (in culture if not an actual headcount) on par with ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''!!

* ValuesDissonance: A key factor in why the game was shut down, and remains as such, is the differences between South Korean and American/western cultures with Creator/NCSoft representing the former and the gamers and developers representing the latter.
** Superheroes are a distinctly American phenomena, much in the way of UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}} and hot dogs. As such, the game was by far the most popular in North America, and as mentioned above, the beta was such a bomb in South Korea that it wasn't even released there. South Korea heavily emphasizes the need to look out for their own, and the fact that ''City of Heroes'' wasn't even a thing in [=NCSoft=]'s home country played a big role in why they didn't think it was worth keeping. The fact that it was popular and profitable overseas meant little. [[HarsherInHindsight Only for Superheroes to suddenly skyrocket in global popularity within the same year]] ''City of Heroes'' shut down, and become a globally acclaimed genre.
** The game was shut down in part because even though the game was profitable and had a devoted fanbase, it didn't rake in the same money as their other products like ''VideoGame/GuildWars'', ''VideoGame/{{Aion}}'' and ''[[VideoGame/Lineage2 Lineage]]''. All of them were more profitable in part due to their greater grind which ''City of Heroes'' lacked, on top of its superhero premise not meshing with the fantasy themes of the other titles that gave them far greater appeal in their native Korea and other Asian countries. It's generally believed their idea was that if they shut down ''City of Heroes'', the player base would've migrated to their other games. Not only did this fail, it actually caused many if not most to ''swear off all [=NCSoft=] products forever'', and their name remains akin to a curse word in many western communities and fan successor sites.
** Finally, after ''City of Heroes'' closed, there were a number of companies, and even celebrities who were fans of the game, that offered [=NCSoft=] big bucks to buy the IP and resurrect the title. Many companies would've taken it, but not [=NCSoft=]. In South Korean business culture, it's frowned upon to sell your failed product to someone else and see it perform better, as the stigma is that it makes the original owner look bad and seem like they were holding it back from greatness (even if ''this is entirely true''), instead of it failing due to general bad luck or outside circumstances. Accordingly [=NCSoft=] view it better to leave the series dead so they can look good in South Korea, an idea that's viewed with widespread bafflement everywhere else.
*** Sadly for [=NCSoft=], it's also lead to them becoming a massively hated by the fans, as they made it [[ItsPersonal very personal]] for those who loved the game, resulting in [=NCSoft=] taking such a hit to their reputation in America that most of their other games took insane hits to their own playerbases; many of those who were playing them were ''City of Heroes'' players trying a new game out or taking a break from ''[=CoH=]'', and decided to take their business elsewhere when ''COH'' was shut down. The company has never recovered, and they don't really know how to handle the failure, which in turn, somewhat ironically, doesn't help fans of the game, who want it resurrected. As such, it's left [=NCSoft=] with a lot of burnt bridges with American and UK players, and they have no idea what to do to fix it. Assuming they even want to.
** A modern player might feel quite uncomfortable working with the Paragon city Police Department, because the attitudes towards police have changed ''very'' much since TheNewTens.

** Even prior to Praetoria this was the case for many. The Rogue Isles are a playground of scum and villainy, but there is zero pretense as to what they are. It is a [[SocialDarwinist Social Darwinist's]] utopia, dedicated to hedonism in which AssKickingEqualsAuthority. After looking at the conspiracies, corruption and, in some cases, stupidity, that pops up through-out Paragon law-making, [[StatusQuoIsGod to maintain the status-quo]], it is hard not to root for the society breeding new evils as the intended end goal instead of as an accident due to an incompetent system.

** [[GhastlyGhost Tammy Arcanus]], aka [[NightmareFetishist Diabolique]], was a [[FromNobodyToNightmare simple sorceress]] in the Praetorian Midnight Squad who had an unhealthy obsession with dark, eldritch magics and Death. Accidentally causing her own body to wither into nothing, Tammy [[{{Patricide}} murders her father]] for his failure to save her and [[YourSoulIsMine enslaves his soul]] with the mystic medallion he used to anchor her soul. Diabolique would then flee the Midnight Squad and eventually become the magical attack dog of Emperor Cole, taking great pleasure in murdering numerous other mystics, including the entire Ravenwing Cabal, even if she couldn't refuse to do so. When Tammy, now called Diabolique, managed to acquire the medallion that was binding her to Cole's will, she journeyed to Primal Earth and joined forces with Mot. Exploiting the hatred of her enemies, the Talons of Vengeance, Diabolique tricks them into gathering more people to kill and further empower her new ally, delighting in all the death she brings wherever she goes. Upon her initial defeat, Diabolique is empowered by Mot and exploits her master's defeat to [[TheStarscream take his powers]], thereby becoming [[AbstractApotheosis Death Incarnate]], setting her sights on conquering not only Primal Earth with Death, but Praetoria and all other Earths.

* IdiotPlot: Some of the plot points in arcs are fairly contrived. An example, a warrant is put out for the arrest of [[spoiler: the second Ajax after he revealed in his time capsule letter he killed the original Ajax]] even though at that point the character in question had redeemed himself beyond a shadow of a doubt. Although there is still the fact that he ''murdered a superhero''. Regardless of redemption, [[LawfulNeutral the law still has to figure in.]]

* AmericansHateTingle: ''City of Heroes'' gathered a devoted fanbase in North America, but never took off in South Korea, with the full game release actually being [[NoExportForYou cancelled]] there after the beta failed miserably. This unfortunately played a role in the game's eventual shutdown, as South Korean company [=NCSoft=] (who acquired the IP from its original, California-based creators) was primarily concerned with their own market.

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: ''City of Heroes'' gathered a devoted fanbase in North America, but never took off in [=NCSoft=]'s native South Korea, with the full game release actually being [[NoExportForYou cancelled]] there after the beta failed miserably. This unfortunately played a role in the game's eventual shutdown, as [=NCSoft=] was primarily concerned with their home market.

* AmericansHateTingle: ''City of Heroes'' never took off in South Korea, with the full game release actually being [[NoExportForYou cancelled]] there after the beta failed miserably. Considering that its publisher [=NCSoft=] is ''based'' in South Korea, and are first-and-foremost looking after the Korean market, this is believed to be a major factor in the eventual shutdown of the game.

** However, PPD Equalizers and Ghosts are a very common offender. If you don't kill one immediately, they will use a very long duration debuff. The Equalizers have a Glue grenade that is autohit and slows you to a crawl, while the Ghosts' Flashbang, [[LuckBasedMission if it hits]], neuters your chance of hitting and dodging.

* NeverLiveItDown: ''City of Heroes'' is ''still'' remembered fondly by its former playerbase, and [=NcSoft=] has never fully recovered from the blow it took to its image as a result of their shutdown of the game.[[note]]And the company's image after the ''VideoGame/TabulaRasa'' shutdown and its attempted fraud with Creator/RichardGarriott wasn't exactly sparkling, either.[[/note]] The fact that their hope in seeing those players migrate to their other games didn't pan out pretty much ''at all'' has lead many to think they will never be forgiven for it by players of ''[=CoH=]''. (That, and fans of a Western MMO with Western comic book tropes were not going to decide to play ''VideoGame/Lineage2'' or other free-to-play Eastern [=MMOs=].) Given the vitriol they still get to this day, that theory may well be correct.

* UncannyValley: There are a number of strange creatures in the game, but the [[BuffySpeak Uncanny Valley-est]] are, by far, the Arachnoids, part-human/part-spider creature that lurk beneath Grandville. They have eight eyes, no ears, and four extra limbs growing from their back. They have an exoskeleton that is pushing through their skin, in such a way that it looks like their skin is ''peeling away in layers'', and to top it off, a portion of their abdomen is missing, allowing you to see the ''inner side of their spines through where their stomach should be''.
** Baby New Year was also rather uncanny-looking, having an adult face on what was meant to be a baby's body. Behold: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Baby_New_Year