City of Heroes Previews

Two new hands-on previews of Cryptic Studios' comic book-inspired MMORPG, City of Heroes, have hit the web. The first is over at GameSpot:
The game will automatically create a Web page for every superhero character you create, and you can use this page to create a profile for your character that lists your own personal interests and those times of the day when you're available to play. This way you can actually seek out and find regular teammates. In addition, the developer is promoting teamplay and a sense of community--among both casual and hardcore players--by implementing three levels of player grouping. Teams will act as temporary adventuring parties; supergroups will be permanent player associations of up to 75 people who may have their own costume color schemes and chat channels; and task forces, which are intended for expert players, will be the only groups capable of taking on "trial zones," which are extremely challenging group missions that take about 10 hours to complete from start to finish.

And the second can be found at IGN PC:
There are a lot of features in City of Heroes to talk about, but one of the biggest, most important, and most fun is the character creation. All other MMO's can take note from this robust system of character creation, because it's just plain awesome. There are buzillions of different combinations available here, driving all of us mad with choice. I think all of us would happily spend quite a bit more time giving glorious birth to new colorful heroes, but we figured actually getting into gameplay was pretty important too. But for now, let's give a little tour of character creation.

Obviously, if you have an idea for a character already in mind, it's going to be a bit easier creating the look and feel that you want. Unfortunately for me, I live in the now and did now planning at all and was immediately immersed in a torrent of choices.

Your first choice is an origin. This choice has very little to do with actual gameplay aside from your own role-playing and the availability of enhancements (something I'll get into in a bit). Science, Mutation, Magic, Technology, and Natural origins will set you on your path. In my case, I decided to go through Science simply because I always liked the idea of an experiment gone wrong.