Meanwhile... in a secret underground lair of villainy...
The last time I played Cryptic's City of Heroes was about 5 months after launch, and while they had already released some impressive updates for the original game, it still felt rather monotonous and shallow to me. I loved making new and unique heroes, but as a mostly solo player, I was usually just doing missions inside the same offices, caves, and warehouses over and over, and it got boring. I decided to cancel my subscription and give it another look when City of Villains was released.
Well, I'm sold. City of Villains really fills in the areas that were most sorely lacking in City of Heroes. The mission system in particular has been greatly expanded and improved. Story arcs are much more varied and interesting now, and in just 20 levels I've played solo missions that had my villain robbing banks, blowing up outdoor generators to sabotage a radio station, assaulting a power plant, blowing up a landmark in Paragon City (an instanced version of Paragon- you don't actually go there as a villain), and more.
PvP is available as well, but the PvP community seems to be in it's infancy right now, as you might expect. The PvP system seems very team-oriented, and I expect it'll be some time before the community gets it's bearings and manages to do anything more than sweep the PvP zones for solo players with bad peripheral vision. Still, the tools are there and the incentive is there in the form of zone rewards and base assaults, etc. We'll see.
The graphics in CoV have been improved over CoH, making use of more advanced depth of field and bloom effects. However, these effects are taxing and *will* drop your framerate even on a good rig, and the structure beneath the new effects is basically the same CoH engine you're familiar with. It does look good- and the design of the Rogue Isles is much more intricrate and detailed than that of Paragon City.
A list of new costume options have been added on top of the already amazing CoH character customization. This has always been Cryptic's best feature, and they don't disappoint in CoV. Most other MMORPGs force you to create a character that looks and fights like everyone else, but in CoV, you truly can pick a theme and just run with it. You can look completely unique and even fight differently than most. I've got an 8-foot tall lizard man with a top hat and beard named Abraham Lizard, if you need an example of CoV's amazingly flexible character customization.
In my opinion, the current MMORPG scene is topped by two games with decidedly different takes on the genre: WoW, with it's traditional formula polished to a high sheen, and City of Heroes/Villains, with it's more innovative action-oriented gameplay. If you basically liked WoW, but hated the crafting, the cookie-cutter characters, and the auction house, then CoV may well be worth a look. If you like comics or enjoyed CoH, it's definitely worth checking out.
That was the worst closing paragraph in a game review ever, but since I'm not being paid, I'm not going to rework it. So there.