f13.net

CoH never got an Australian release as far as I saw, so I was a bit surprised to see CoV on the shelves.  I had thought this was an expansion for CoH but I cant see anything on the box that says it requires CoH to play.   So is this an expansion or a stand alone client?  I'm all confused now.

Yes to both.  It can be used alone, but is also billed as an expansion.

You can either upgrade your CoH account (expansion), pay the same (well, they actually raised the sub 0.04 USD but that's another story) - OR - if you don't have or want CoH, you can use it as a complete game for the same sub fee as CoH.  If you already own CoH, however, there is no reason not to reactivate it if you've cancelled and upgrade to use it as an expansion.

ok thanks.

So buying CoV alone means I am limited to creating villain characters only?  Will there be zones and parts of the game I wont have access to?  Most games seem to make it pretty clear whether its an expansion with original client included or whatnot, I dont know whether i'm having a stupid moment or if they made this more confusing than it needed to be.

You will only experience the villain side of things.  No Heroes.  No hero zones.

City of Villains is a complete game on its own.  It's not a "new" game, per se, but it's complete and can be played entirely without City of Heroes.  You even get to PvP with heroes- you just can't join them or go into their "safe zones".

So... If I just have CoH, will I be able to do PvP vs Villians?

Initially, my understanding was that you would have to have both titles to do PvP.

However, since Issue 6 (the patch for CoV) has been released, everyone has been able to enter the PvP zones (Warburg, Bloody Bay, Siren's Call) regardless of whether or not they own City of Villains.  I can personally attest to this.

So, unless this changes and I doubt it will, yes, you can PvP with the opposing faction even if you only own one or the other of the two titles.

Which explains this painfully long 1.6 GB download I'm doing right now.

Yes, that's another point.  If you're adding CoV to your existing CoH account, you'll download the CoV zones as part of the Issue 6 patch.  There's no need to install anything from the CoV CD.  You'll only need the CD key (which you can buy right from NCSoft online, btw).  You just launch CoH as normal and you can create villains and access the villain-only zones right from the same screens as you do your heroes.

Could I get a CoV key (I dont have CoH) and d/l the game?  If so I might, I can't stand going to gamestores and buying another stupid box and cd case that just sits around getting in the way.

Hmm.  I know a friend of mine did that for CoH when it was first released so I'd think you could do it for CoV, too.  But I don't know for sure.

I think so, too.   This  (https://secure.plaync.com/cgi-bin/plaync_buy.pl) takes me to the page where you can buy instantly, but I think you have to be logged into your PlayNC account to access it.  It doesn't seem to work if I'm not logged in.

Yeah you can do that, I grabbed both CoH and Guildwars tru their site. Which rocks.

You should be able to. Go to:

https://store.plaync.com/home.php

and click on the CoV Buy the Game Instantly... link.

The installer download can be found here:

ftp://ftp.cityofvillains.com/client/US/