I'm an active City of Heroes player, and want to add a few comments.

Each server has a favored place to gather for the trials (either Rikti War Zone or Pocket D, both places that characters from both factions can get to peaceably). Then people say what they're looking to join or what they want to lead a run for, and matchmaking ensues. What it's most like with regard to WoW is the way we put together dungeon runs in vanilla, with the ability to then teleport to the dungeon rather than (ugh, flashbacks) then make the run to Maraudon or Dire Maul.

Help channel, available on each server, can be as much of a wasteland as Trade, but there are people around who do like helping, so anyone who asks "How do I find a trial, now that I'm 50?" will get the info they need. And it's got very mellow official forums, and each server sub-forum has that info available, too.

These days, the equivalent in WoW would be to restore a global LFG channel, and then let folks form up and use the dungeon/raid finder. Which would be great, but I'm not holding my breath waiting - Blizzard doesn't seem to get what they tossed out. :(

And it all works relatively well in CoH partly because of its audience, which is (I've read) among the oldest in average age for MMOs and definitely widely invested in keeping things accessible for everyone.

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