.....FINALLY!! After years of hunting and even MORE years wasted on other games where staff see the players as obstacles to be overcome instead of an asset they cannot live without....I have found my home. :-D

City of Hope is set in a small city in California named Prospect, so there's plenty of room to move around and RP while not being overwhelming huge. Speaking of RP, there's a LOT of it. In all seriousness, I have /never/ encountered a player base that is this friendly and accommodating to new people, I've already made a few friends here and I've been on grid less than a week. They are willing to alter scenes to suit everyone's taste and players are quick to run scenes themselves for the enjoyment of others.

As for staff, they are helpful and polite without being overbearing and micromanaging psychos, which as many of you reading this review will realize, this is pretty much the opposite of how every other world of darkness mush operates. This is a good thing.

While character generation sticks to it's rules strictly, no extra points to start, we all have the same starting numbers, the staff is very lenient on concepts and character ideas.

On that note I also want to mention that this game also offers just about every sphere that OWoD offers. (Yes, OLD World of Darkness...no Reqiuem here! :-D)

Now for the biggest perk I've seen on this game so far... The one thing that turned off A LOT of people from playing these types of MUSHes is simple...the character creation process. The point assignments and powers have always been simple, but the requirement of a small novel for a biography has sent many a prospective player running in horror. Let's be honest, one can be an amazing roleplayer but simply not be that great at writing giant stories or, like myself, do not have the TIME to do this.

If this sounds like you, then you will be pleased to hear that this game does not require a giant biography. While I think you should write up a little something for your own notes and character development, all that is required here is for you to write a description for your character, fill out its character sheet and add a little note for each of your merits/flaws. That's it.

Not only does this make it easier to complete the character generation process, it also means that staff do not have to read 37 pages of history per character to get them approved. So, this means that the approval time is usually finished the same day you complete everything....a BIG change from most games that have you idling for over a week just to get put onto the grid.

So, in summary, this game is by far the most approachable and easy to get into, and once here, fantastically fun of all the World of Darkness games I have EVER encountered...and I've been at this for more years than I care to admit.

Come try it out, I don't think you'll be disappointed! Tell 'em Vincenzo sent ya! :-D