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When I log into CoH its *work*: boring, tedious work. Why does it take so long to level in City of Heroes, I believe the answer is very obvious, its because City of Heroes is a business, and businesses exist to make profit.
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I think the biggest problem is that the reward doesn't justify the work. Doing missions or street sweeping just doesn't give noticeable gains in terms of leveling, so it makes things really SEEM like work. I played the World of Warcraft stress test, and I like that method of leveling a lot better. One could argue that most early level quests are collection quests, but at least I could get easily 1/4th of a level from completing the quest. It may not have been the most exciting thing in the world, but the reward justified the work in a big way.
And besides that, each quest had a different surrounding. It wasn't just "goto warehouse A that looks exactly like warehouse B and arrest criminal X that looks exactly like criminal Y." There was a variety of interesting enemies and zones to explore, each with its own theme and enemies.
One thing that worries me about City of Heroes has become apparent in the latest update. The Hollows is a new zone, yes, but it looks exactly like every other zone. I explored it for about 30 seconds only to realize theres nothing to see there. Nothing of interest. I heard the Shadow Shard is fairly cool, but I'd like to see more variety in earlier level zones instead of just the same old broken buildings that are seen in Boomtown, Faultline, and now the Hallows. New content should be fresh and exciting, and keep people coming back for more. Asheron's Call, in my opinion, was a good example of a game that was (and still is I believe) constantly updated with new and interesting content (new items, spells, quests, etc) and helped keep my interest far longer then it really should have.
