A question for long-time players

[TheSupaPope]

I am a one-time player considering re-subscribing my account. I quit shortly after the release of a patch that disabled my ability to see any text in-game(long-time players should be able to remember when that happened). I noticed a huge drop in players overnight, and even when a patch correcting the problem was released, there still wasn't as many players as there had been. With the release of Core Combat, I wonder if the number of players has increased? Not having alot of people playing the game took the fun out of the game for me-before the patch, I remember getting in 200+ battles every hour or so. After the bad patch, the battles were maybe 30+, and that happened once in a blue moon(in my experience). Honestly, has the number of players increased, or is the game world still sparsely populated? Also, if I were to resubscribe, would I need Core Combat?(I'm considering buying City of Heroes right now-it's either resubscribe or City of Heroes). Thanks for your input.