City of Heroes Going F2P?

So, my good friend, Steady over at Steady's Gaming Blog, let me know that City of Heroes was going Free to Play in the upcoming issue 21. City of Heroes was the first MMORPG that I had invested enough time to get a character to the level cap. Don't get my wrong, my first MMORPG that I played was Everquest Online Adventures on the Playstation 2, but I never got to the level cap there or any subsequent MMO (Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest, Everquest II, etc). until I found CoH. At around level 5, my wife and I found a home with the Moonbase Gamma supergroup, which eventually evolved into the Combat Engineers gaming community, that I'm still a part of today (yes, I know, those people are crazy for keeping me this long!).

Anyways, I later started playing World of Warcraft, got addicted, and moved more away from CoH, and devoted most of my game time towards World of Warcraft (yeah, like that's worked. I still try every game known to man, and I still keep coming back to WoW). So, to make a long story short, I may come back to City of Heroes, depending on what content is being offered for free. I don't think I'm willing to pay another monthly subscription (with Rift, WoW, and now Gods and Heroes [see next blog post, coming soon]), but if I can still play my level 50 and access new stuff, finish off certain badges, etc, and maybe level a new character as well, I may be coming back.

Now, as with Steady, I share his concerns. Will this new F2P model ruin the game with an influx of new people farming characters to the level cap, without learning to play their character, and then attempting to play the end-game and ruin PUG groups in the game completely (they're already dreadful enough as it is)? The game already has a problem with paying subscribers farming their toons to level cap and then attempting the end-game content without knowing how to play their character (hence the current state of most PUG groups). Don't twist my words here, I'm not against farming levels completely, and I've taken part in and benefitted from the practice as well. However, a person that farms a character from level 1 to the level cap without learning how to play said character should not then attempt to jump into any end game content. Learn to play the character. Run some of those missions you missed along the way, learn about the powers that you have and when you should use each one. Find out with enhancements work best with your character. Find some friends and run some task forces and once you feel like that character is your in-game persona that you know like the back of your hand, then maybe dabble in the end-game content. Hopefully, these new F2P players will grasp that concept, but if it's anything like some of the current subscribers, it's kind of doubtful. Granted, I can still play with my current Supergroup, but most of the people that used to play it actively, have moved on to another game as well (usually WoW).

-Ashton