City of Stupidity
City of Heroes permits an incredibly small set of options in character customization, so few options that since thousands of people play you can run across the same superpowers and the same costumes (with only color as a variation) over and over again despite the fact that reviewers constantly acclaim its wide variety.
In fact, superhero powers are so redundant that all characters using "mind control" on a single-person hypnosis effect will say exactly the same thing, gesture exactly the same way, and the same color light will appear. If this happened in comicbooks to the extent it happens in City of Heroes, comicbooks would not sell.
Also, every mission is pretty much the same: the heroes run inside a mission, beat up bad guys, and are victorious or beaten. There is no attempt to really, really adapt the complex situations appearing in comicbooks into the game. It's even simpler than four color comics of the Golden Age and lacks the wide range of difference that appeared in those comicbooks.
In fact, six squares with seperate colors are all still squares. A rectangle that is red is not very different from a red square. This is what City of Heroes permits: a red square, a red rectangle.
This game plays like it was supposed to be an ipod game or a background function game. There is not much choice, not much intelligence in the design, and notably most of the players fall into four sets: bullies, sex-fiends, bored undereducated folk, and people who are just trying the game out for a few seasons without figuring out how foolish it is yet.
Sorry if this sounds like a wild complaint, but I began playing this game back when Behemoth were in Perez Park, there was no Dark Astoria, and the game world was much smaller. I do not like the way the game developed and can only suggest you do not buy this game, suggest that you do not trust Cryptic nor its employee (not to hire nor purchase games they've designed), and suggest that you treat any subsidiary company of NCSoft as very likely to be corrupt, unpleasant, and not the sort of people who should design computer games but rather who should design their own ethics.