How is the population for this game on the lower leves for both COV and COH.

I've been playing on a trial account for a little longer than a week.  Everyday I've gotten at least half a dozen private tells asking me if I want to group up.  This doesn't include the looking-for-group requests in public chat.  As a trial account you can't reply to a tell though or talk on anything other than the local channel and the local channel is very short range.

If you hang around areas where NPCs are walking around and you click on them when they are near, one will occasionally say how many 'masks' are in that part of the city you are in.

Low level populations are fine. This game has more replayability than most games. Once you hit the level cap most people go make a new character and run through again. You will see quite a few people with a lot of vet badges playing the low level areas.

Originally posted by grunty

I've been playing on a trial account for a little longer than a week.  Everyday I've gotten at least half a dozen private tells asking me if I want to group up.  This doesn't include the looking-for-group requests in public chat.  As a trial account you can't reply to a tell though or talk on anything other than the local channel and the local channel is very short range.

If you hang around areas where NPCs are walking around and you click on them when they are near, one will occasionally say how many 'masks' are in that part of the city you are in.

You may also type this command into your chat line: /whoall

It will give you a listing of everyone in the zone not hidden from searches. It will not include characters who are inside missions or bases.

And the Exemplar system makes level not too much of a concern anyway.  I just finished running some missions with a level 39-43 ranging team (me being 43) and one of the people friends was level 30 just exemped him to 42 and we are good.

I play on Infintiry which is probably 3rd or 4th most populace.   I never have problems, pop is fine and I get tells for groups basically within 20 minutes of logging in often multiple tells at least Hero side.  Villain side is less populace.

CoX is the most group firendly MMO around.  Seems funny since its the most solo firendly MMO around too.  This is becauyse grouping is good XP and its more interesting than solo.  I like to solo but the larger spawns with more bosses and such is definitely more interesting, especailly on a Scrapper.  Unless I am pressed for time or kind of afk'ing in and out I almost always accept invites.  And I never persue groups.  Like ever.  Its all just invites from other people.

I would say you need easily half the population other MMOs need  to get a good group going.  The way content is dynamic, the Exemplar system, just the general community, and the best LFG/Who tools of the WoW and earlier games all make it really easy.

This game really puts to death the myth that solo play destroys group play.  In fact the solo play parts of the game make it easier.  I have often gotten tells while in a solo mission and taken the invite when i am done.  In a game like EQ I would have just logged off with not much to do.

One thing about the PUGing in CoX is that it is usually about 1 hour or so.  People flow in and out of the groups pretty easy since there is no need for a holy trinity  and any size is good.  This is nice for casual play but groups often kind of dissolve of their own accord after about an hour or two unless its some kind of dedicated thing like a Task force or a Supergroup thing.

As long as you aren't a rude dick and drop group in middle of mish everyone is pretty good about people coming and going.  So people are not held by social obligation.  This makes grouping mostly worry free, but sometimes they just dissolve when like 3 people need to go do something.

As far as I can tell you really do not need a huge population on at any time to get a decent group.  Obviously certain graveyard times take some patience and work but all in all population itself is far less of an issue than you see in most tank and spank MMOs.  Because in those games its really about the population of tanks and healers.   In CoX I am perfectly fine with a team full of scrappers, or heck anything else on my Scrapper if I have a tray full of purples

Also this last issue released the Shield Defense powerset.  I am not sure how many new Shield characters are still around, but for a few weeks there were tons of people in the lower levels.

There are just plain tons of alts anyway though.   Many people have well over 20 alts.  I don't think people even use the word "main" anymore.  I know if I hear a CoX player say "Main" in chat I am a little like "huh?"

Most small groups of friends in CoX feel no pressure to "keep up with the jones" in leveling since you can always exemplar.  So you have a huge spread of levels. 

They even recently added "Leveling Pacts" between two chars to keep them at the same level which is essentiually a permanent split of XP regardless of grouping.  I mean how many MMOs have players that would be willing do that?

My advice, don't worry about levels, except for getting to level 20 Stamina makes the gmae much more fun.