I'm continually baffled the farther I get into this game that it's playerbase is somewhat lowish.  Every time I log on, I end up finding a new and interesting thing that's either new, or just executed better than other MMOs.  This is a very rosy look at this game, and while your mileage may vary, I encourage you to try it out, especially since it's free to play.  So, in no particular order..

1. Power Customization: You can change the colors of your powers if you are a Gold Member.  This adds on to the already massive level of customization that your costume can undergo (even as a free player)
2. Always something to do.  Your quest log is rarely empty, and even if it gets close to that point, you can always check your crime computer to literally look for trouble.   Quests make up a substantial majority of the experience you'll be acquiring, and many zones will scale to you.  Speaking of scaling, this game brings back CoH's popular sidekick feature, allowing your friend to level up to you immediately in a limited capacity, or for you to level down to his/her level so you can quest together.   There's RP at many hours of the day for those that are interested. (check the club scene).  While PVP in the game is somewhat map-limited, there is fun to be had in CO pvp, although you'd be wise to research builds first before entering.  
3. Surprise takes on old MMO staples.  For instance, an 'Escort' quest quickly becomes a sudden boss fight as your character is lured away from safety to presumably 'protect' a character that turns out to be a villain in disguise, after trying to run you through a gauntlet of hostile mobs.  In addition, several enemies make reference to their 'MMO habit driving them to crime'.  There's a ton of inside jokes if you pay attention to NPC dialogue.
4. Surprise Quests: Sometimes NPCs will find you.  They will literally walk right up to your character and the quest dialogue box will pop up.  Apparently there's an emergency that needs your attention.  While this is occasionally annoying, it's certainly unique and breaks the monotony of traditional questing and drives home the point that your character is different than normal. 
5. 15 minutes in and you're flying.  All you have to do to obtain travel powers is simply complete a tutorial.  After you've done that once, and you're a gold member, you don't even have to do that.  You just create a new character and it gets a travel power of your choice.
6. Immensely customizable builds.  There's a massive level of detail, and for a real challenge, go Gold and try the 'freeform' archetype, which lets you have access to nearly any combination of powers in the game.
7. Mobile Combat.  A large portion of the game's skills can be used while moving (or even while flying!).  Combat tends to be fairly mobile with the exception of a few powers.
8. Quests feel important, never grindy.  I still haven't met a quest in this game that feels pointless.  Even the tutorial has your defending the city under attack by aliens.  There are some 'kill large number of mobs' quests interspersed into some zones, but they aren't meant to be grinded out individually, and are generally 100% skippable and aren't part of the storyline quests.  Also, quests are arranged geographically in such a way so that you're never going to have to go to basically the same place after completing a quest there and being sent there again by your quest giver.
9. Engrossing storyline with many cut scenes voice acted.  Much of the game is voice acted, from the lowly minion you first face after infiltrating the sewers, to the dastardly archvillains you face as the game progresses.  While the voice acting isn't always the best (Aka Defender's cheesy 'penetration' line, or the voice actress for Zoe villain overacting her lines), the game seems to have at least something going on auditorially once every few minutes.
10. Engaging combat system.  PVE in this game just feels right.  It's like they've taken a great single player game, and placed it into a multiplayer game world.  While every archetype uses the same 'energy' system, there's enough gimmicks in each archetype to make them play and feel unique.  The statistic system is also a step up from normal, where (if you're gold), you can choose which stats you want your abilities to emphasize.  While some abilities scale off specific stats, the choice is always yours to make how you want to build your character, and many archetypes support multiple stat builds.  (Shadow, for instance, can be built for Cons/Endurance OR Dex/Cons, or even Ego/Cons.)  You pick which 2 stats scale your damage and aren't restricted to the 'classic' 'only the power stats do anything'.

I only need one reason: cos it's fun.

Seriously, after having gone through so many deep MMOs with complex crafting, complex bosses, complex economies and complex combat, when I am playing CO I just log in, and blast things away with beams and explosions while flying, teleporting all over the place or moving at superspeed, and it's great fun.

Funnily enough, building a proper free-form toon can get very complex too, if you are into weird builds and testing new things out.

1. Power Customization: You can change the colors of your powers if you are a Gold Member.  This adds on to the already massive level of customization that your costume can undergo (even as a free player)

I would just hang out for hours watching Costume Contests.

As always, a lot of the "gold only" spiffs are purchasable via the C-Store. Not to say a Silver member can't have fun without the purchases, they are just a bit more limited.

I playes CO from launch-for about 6 months. I leveled 3 toons and had some other alts. It was a fun experience, but grew boring doing the same content over and over (as it will in any game). The customization in looks and powers can't be beat. I had a character that used powers from 6 different sets and was very powerful. You can't really gimp a toon if you want to make your dream superhero (except if you want to pvp-even though no reason to pvp). Which is the main problem-no challenge. You can solo (easily-even on harder settings) all but maybe 8-10 missions that require a full group, no death penalty, no system to make pvp relevent, etc. It is a fun game to level a couple toons (good graphics, fun combat, most are well made missions, but besides having different fighting styles with alts-still grows old. Good for casual.

Originally posted by wyldmagik

1. Power Customization: You can change the colors of your powers if you are a Gold Member.  This adds on to the already massive level of customization that your costume can undergo (even as a free player)

 

^^ The opening of this post has to make one wonder... ? Not to mention the "go gold" parts in alot of the other bullet points lol..

 

come on please :D

The account is active enough. It does not look like viral marketing or whatever you are suspecting, at least not to me.

He is probably recommending going gold becouse the game is so much better with a gold account. I don't work for the company (heh, I already had my bit of working for the gaming industry and not again, thx), but I am always recommending ppl to go gold. Beeing able to customize your toon down to the very last power and advantage, beeing able to make exactly the toon you want, is such a big plus that it's almost like you are playing a different game.

Originally posted by wyldmagik

1. Power Customization: You can change the colors of your powers if you are a Gold Member.  This adds on to the already massive level of customization that your costume can undergo (even as a free player)

 

^^ The opening of this post has to make one wonder... ? Not to mention the "go gold" parts in alot of the other bullet points lol..

 

come on please :D

It's a subscription game, so there are some things that they only give to subscribers.  It's $15/month to get everything you need (except for extra character slots), so it's not some outlandish item mall where whoever pays the most wins.

Originally posted by ropenice

I playes CO from launch-for about 6 months. I leveled 3 toons and had some other alts. It was a fun experience, but grew boring doing the same content over and over (as it will in any game). The customization in looks and powers can't be beat. I had a character that used powers from 6 different sets and was very powerful. You can't really gimp a toon if you want to make your dream superhero (except if you want to pvp-even though no reason to pvp). Which is the main problem-no challenge. You can solo (easily-even on harder settings) all but maybe 8-10 missions that require a full group, no death penalty, no system to make pvp relevent, etc. It is a fun game to level a couple toons (good graphics, fun combat, most are well made missions, but besides having different fighting styles with alts-still grows old. Good for casual.

The game is getting a decent amount of updates lately, so you may want to come back for a month, enjoy the new content and then leave again. 

Could some of you guys currently playing the game give me an estimate of a content amount? Let say I play as a Gold member 4-6 hours a day, solo or in a small group (2-3 persons). How long till I reach the phase when only thing to do is to repeat the same quests/dungeons over and over again?

I have followed these forums for years and I just now made an account just for this post. I tried Champions at launch and then again a few months later. It was ok but it was just missing something. I picked it up again here recently and I was shocked at how much better it is. The quests are better. The cut scenes make you feel like it is more than just grinding through quests. I recently played through one of the weekly (i think it is weekly) issues and there is a quest where u are in a little girls nightmare and you have to lead her to her room by calling her name while her demented mom is trying to find her. It was extremely creepy and kinda like a horror movie. Anyways I usually go for a less instanced game but I really am enjoying myself at the moment. If only it had released somewhere near this state at launch.

Originally posted by wyldmagik

1. Power Customization: You can change the colors of your powers if you are a Gold Member.  This adds on to the already massive level of customization that your costume can undergo (even as a free player)

 

^^ The opening of this post has to make one wonder... ? Not to mention the "go gold" parts in alot of the other bullet points lol..

 

come on please :D

Come on what?  I only needed a week to decide that I liked the game enough to go with a subscription.  I've played WoW for a pretty long time prior to this so subscription isn't anything new to me.  This game does have an item shop.  Yes, it does have items you can purchase will real world cash, but said items aren't more than vanity/leveling aids/limited use items.  It's best to think of this game not in the context of it's item shop or the belief that the majority of it's income comes from their store.  This isn't quite a cash shop centric game.  Rather, it's best to think of this game in the context of a 'Freemium' game where the trial is unending, but is ultimately still a free trial with less commitment than normal.  If you are the type to ala-carte, you can take nibbles at the gameplay, but ultimately the biggest and best feature, the freeform archetype, is not available to those that don't pay a monthly subscription (or have a lifetime account).

I mentioned 'with gold membership' because I don't want people to be surprised at some of this list not neccesarily being fully accurate to a silver player who trials the game.

CO is a great game but there is no end game content unless you like doing the same instances over and over again just to get new costume pieces or farming "dark speed". 

Originally posted by bloodlich

CO is a great game but there is no end game content unless you like doing the same instances over and over again just to get new costume pieces or farming "dark speed". 

Technically comic series and adventure packs could be considered in some way endgame(they are for any level) since they provide great equipment at elite difficulty. However, you are right in the sense that there is no real need for gear grind("raid or die") requirement for Lairs(dungeons). Therefore, you can reach 40 and go to any Lair without having someboy inspecting your equipment to see if "you are prepared".

The main bribe in this game is the costume pieces unlocks and cool devices, which are the main objects of farming.

No, this is no wow in spandex. It follows a bit more the CoX model before incarnates. For endgame gear grind dcuo or CoX incarnates might be good choice among superhero games.

Yeah it's fun and a good game. But, I was bored after 2 months. Quests were just the same old formula and there are only 4 adventure packs so by the time you've done them for the 20th time you just can't face them again. Elite mode helps, but it's still the same content as you've done many times before, just harder.

I played the !@#$ out of this game for like..6 months! It was fun but there was no challenging content and it got boring :(

Im totally going to test it out if I stop playing SWTOR though!

What is this elite mode thing? o.o Is that like hard mode? Does it work for lairs too?

Originally posted by Vallador

Could some of you guys currently playing the game give me an estimate of a content amount? Let say I play as a Gold member 4-6 hours a day, solo or in a small group (2-3 persons). How long till I reach the phase when only thing to do is to repeat the same quests/dungeons over and over again?

Not much tbh.

You'd probably be bored before the end of second month. Most definitively would have a maxed or almost maxed toon before the end of the first month.

If you are an altoholic and get a gold subscription then you can probably have fun for 4-6 months. The amount of combinations you can do when you can mix up your powers pretty much anyway you like is insane.

Still it's worth a try, and I recommend you go gold. The toon building system in this game is awesome when playing gold.

Combat is very fast paced, specially for an mmo, and dynamic. You fire your skills while flying, enemies come in big numbers and from everywhere, and you can teleport or move at superspeed while fighting, grab things like a truck and throw it at the enemies, and such...

It's just a fun video game. Don't expect any deep crafting, meaningful pvp, factions, economy, and such. It's just about blasting things away with your superpowers. But it's plenty of fun.

Won't last long, but you'll have fun meanwhile.

Originally posted by Castillle

I played the !@#$ out of this game for like..6 months! It was fun but there was no challenging content and it got boring :(

Im totally going to test it out if I stop playing SWTOR though!

 

What is this elite mode thing? o.o Is that like hard mode? Does it work for lairs too?

Elite mode (at least it was this way when I left the game) only works in lairs actually.

Basically, mobs hit harder, faster, are harder to kill, use their skills more often and etc etc... Everything is harder in general. Rewards from drops are better too.

i used to play Champions Online a while ago but suddenly started to get bored of it and now im having a blast in DCUO. i like CO character customization more but the rest of the game i prefer DCUO.

I'd have to disagree and say after the beginning area quests become very boring and grindy. the kill 15 of this kind where the theres not even exploration involved as you just cirles around the same block or building piking of respawns.  Wanted to like the game really (got it when it first came out) but for my money it was a let down in the 10-20th levels so much so I couldn't be bothered with the grindy quests