I originally played CoH at release, I think it was maybe by 3rd MMO and I will admit I didn't fully understand the MMO concept, to me it was an online game.  I didn't figure out the tank-healer-dps concept until I'd been playing WoW for a year, so yes, I was the ultimate noob at that time.

Due to a lack of other games out there at the moment I've recently returned to CoX and as you can now play both sides I've been trying out Villains but I'm going back to the Heros side tonight as being a Villain doesn't seem quite right - I must be a good guy at heart - although there are a few people who would disagree.

Anyway to my point, I wanted to ask the folks who have played both sides which you have more fun at playing?

I think the missions on the Villian side are more interesting and have more advanced dynamics often times than what the majority of the missions on the hero side have going for them. However, the trade off seems to be that most of the villian archtypes are a massive pain in the ass to play because they are so damage focused with little or no defense.

My first villian was a brute who kept getting killed all the time. He did a ton of damage and when I would attack a group of enemies he would kill one of them right off the bat but then the others would turn on him and kick the crap out of him before his powers had even recharged. If I surived a fight at all it involved sitting around forever waiting for my health to regenerate before I could attack the next group. It was slow, boring and annoying. I finally deleted that guy. I then tried a stalker with similar results. Attack a group, kill one guy instantly, then get the crap beaten out of you by his buddies. Stalker deleted. I finally tried a Mastermind and he was atleast able to survive a fight long enough and deal respectable damage, so to this day that mastermind is the only villian character I really play. But he still isn't as good as many of my characters on the hero side.

So I have to give my vote to the hero side. Although I like the style, atmosphere and missions on the villian side better, I HATE the villian archtypes. So I usually end up playing on the hero side.

I change my mind from day-to-day.

It's interesting that you say "I didn't figure out the tank-healer-dps concept" since it's that rigid line of thinking I prefer to get away from. There's nothing wrong with having that, until people start insisting you always have exactly that. I prefer to take a good team, see what you have, and find ways to make those tools work.

So to that end, for the likelihood of non-rigid teams, villains gets the nod. Sure sometimes you find people who absolutely postively have to have 1-2 brutes and a couple corruptors. But I frequently play the "tank" role with my Mastermind (as it was largely designed to do). And I was on a team earlier tonight with 2 Brutes, 2 Masterminds, and me on a Dominator. And guess who was always the first into combat? (Hint, not the brutes or MMs.) Because playing is looking at my tools, looking at the situation, and figuring out how to make it work.

Villains, by not being as clear-cut as actually naming ATs "Tank" and "Blaster", leads you to that flexible team situation more easily.

However, all Villains have an attack powerset - melee, ranged, or combined. Because of that, they're all somewhat "centralized". Oh not compared to other games, but compared to Heroes.

In Heroes, I can have big fun with a team of 8 Controllers. In theory that should be a horrible team - no Tank, no DPS, and potentially no healer. But with good players it's a great experience for exactly the reasons I described - because you're not just following the formula.

So if I were to casually hop-on and form a pickup group, I'd prefer Villains I think. But if I were able to play the game the way I want to play it, I'd prefer the more role-focused characters of Heroes, but with the team not so role-centered.

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As for content, at first I thought villainous stories would bother me. That hasn't been an issue, mostly because they're so hard to find! So many of the CoV stories start with "I wouldn't ordinarily ask you to rescue someone, but ..." And you do stuff like "get this item of power and hand deliver it to me." Or worse, "get this item of power and destroy it to keep it away from bad guy X".

Or the favorite for shared content like RWZ or ITF: "A new danger appears so threatening that the Heroes and Villains must band together to stop it." Yeah, every time. Where's the new prize so tempting that the heroes and villains must band together to steal it? Yeah I didn't think so.

There are some decent villainous missions, in that you do evil stuff. But the essential problem with villains, as I noted immediately when CoV came out, is that a villain is proactive.

What is Batman's day like? Find out what Joker, Penguin, Riddler, or any other bad guy is up to. Then go find them and stop it. Works perfect for a mission-based MMORPG.

What is The Joker's day like? Invent your own plan and put it into action. Pretty unlikely to come up with my own evil scheme to take over the world, and then go find some Arachnos agent who just happens to want to give me missions to do exactly that. So Villains ends up feeling like you are running errands for the real villains, with them occasionally telling you how evil you are. Insulting, really.

So story-wise Heroes gets the edge too. But I feel like Villains deserve a shot. The ATs are well-designed and although the population V-side is smaller, I feel like there's a slightly higher caliber there.

But of course the real answer is that most people have both.

Ahhh, the century-old debate... really, it's all a matter of what you're looking for in an MMO.

My personal experience on European Servers has taught me this :

Heroes, as has been said before, are more group-focused. A single hero will generally have a hard time doing anything before level 32-38 (by which time he gets his Ultimates and pwns the living hell out of anything < Boss), but a team of heroes seems to hold incomparable powers, with their well-defined roles. The whole definitely more than the sum of its parts.

Villains on the other hand, is more solo-friendly. Provided you don't get cocky and set your reputation to Un-freakin'-touchable, there's almost no mission you can't handle on your own (that I know from direct experience). What makes this possible is that they're more offensive than their Heroic counterparts. Almost every Heroic class has its Villainous mirror (excluding Epics, they're a whole other story, and The Mastermind, a story on its own), only slightly more aggressive. Not that they actually do more damage, but they're tailored for brutal gameplay. See, the Tanker's Special, Gauntlet, dictates that every blow he deals attracts a little aggro. The Brute, on the other hand, gets Fury : the more hits he takes, the harder he hits back.

This makes for a subtle difference in the mindset you play them in, too. Heroes, in some sense, can be played quite straightforwardly. A Tanker tanks, a Blaster blasts and that's that. Villains require a little more flexibility, all depending on the context of your game. A Brute teamed with a Dominator won't be the same as a Brute teamed with a Stalker.

So. As a hardcasual working type, I tend to prefer Villains myself. I can jump in the game and play straight from the beginning, group whoever asks politely afterwards, and quit after 30min-2hrs and feel sated. I DO play Hero, but I find it harder to be "forced" to group to have any hope of achieving something meaningful. I have to add, though, my personal feeling regarding the communities is that Heroes tend to be more outgoing and friendly whereas Villains are not that prone to offer grouping.

HTH