It's all Nathan's fault! I received the game, “City of Heroes”, as a holiday gift and I am addicted.
I am not fond of most games, especially those where shooting other players is involved. I have enjoyed playing “Age of Empires” in team mode, but even that got old after while. I really enjoyed “There” for it's unique chat interactivity, so I was interested in the concept of Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games, however, I had not seen a MMORPG that I felt offered me a less combative role.
CoH encourages team-play by making each character-type deficient enough in some powers that individual players find it difficult to complete missions or level up without assistance from other characters who have different, but complimentary, powers. Players don't shoot other players; the computer generates all the opponents. Certain characters, like my “Magic Defender“, can actually heal other characters whose hitpoints are damaged or drained during battle.
I love running around Paragon City, Galaxy Park, and King's Row healing lower-level players after they've finished off some bad guys. Jim says it's because it's my nature to practice random acts of kindness.
Anyway, Coh is very addicting but I'm not complaining! When I'm in the game I feel like I'm helping, which is a nice escape from a world of frequent frustrations and feelings of helplessness.
Now, I just have to find Red Warlock. :)