Why MMOs aren't holding me.

We've all heard the accusations leveled at the dreaded WoW Tourist. For the first few days of Aion, nothing was discussed in general chat other than World of Warcraft. It's the big elephant in the room that somehow simultaneously feeds other MMOs while pushing them out of the way.

I very much enjoyed Champions Online and Aion. I purchased both, and thought they were both fun, well-produced, streamlined takes on the genre.

Notice the past tense there.

I let both accounts lapse. This was partly because of my life-consuming addiction to League of Legends, which, by the way, makes terrible blog fodder because it requires so much specialized knowledge to have a discussion about. But my lack of continued interest in other MMOs is mostly because of how grindy they are. And I don't really mean that as a criticism, since they are exactly as grindy as World of Warcraft has always been. It's just that I can't healthily have room in my life for more than one grindy game. I already went through the grind in WoW to get where I am today, and I just can't stomach another grind to reach an endgame that I don't even know will be exciting. At least with WoW, I know I'm going to enjoy instancing and raiding and gearing up and learning my class and playing with my established guildies at 80, so I know that the grind of an alt is going to be worth it. But I really have no idea how worthwhile the effort I put into CO or Aion is going to end up being, and that makes it very difficult to put in the effort required.

(note: I played both games extensively in beta for months. So even though my live account only lasted a month, I actually played the games for longer than most current subscribers have had enough to time to. So I'm not sure I can really be called a "tourist" at this point.)


The core of the grinding problem is the same complaint that was leveled at WoW, even in its first year: it's two different games. After 60 levels of solo questing through an exciting world, perhaps sprinkled with the occasional 5-man group, the transition to max-level play was jarring, as it was suddenly completely dependent on grouping, and to a large extent, raiding, which is a very different activity from leveling. Very little of the WoW leveling experience prepares you for the max-level experience; it's almost like starting from scratch. CO and Aion felt the same to me.

So far, the MMO genre has suffered greatly for grafting together a grind engine (leveling and questing) with the actual game (grouping, PvP, raiding, etc). It's starting to feel a lot like saying that you can't play Team Fortress 2 or Starcraft unless you do 20 hours of Minesweeper first.

So I'm calling for MMOs to all start giving you the "real" game UP FRONT. From 2 hours in, at the latest. Questing can be fun (though this is highly dependent on setting and art direction), and I'm not saying you need to get rid of it. There's a reason it's been so successful as a grinding device. But Cataclysm will need to let you go to Deadmines or whatever around level 12. Champions needs to have some kind of real grouping content starting as soon as you get to Millenium City. And Aion needs to find a way to open up PvP and grouping sometime in the mid-teens. Hopefully, APB will let you engage in its core mechanics early, and SWTOR will launch you into the core story immediately, and STO will let you have some Starfleet battles and away teams right after the tutorial. Those activities, not questing, are the reasons why those games are interesting. Let the players actually play, instead of requiring they invest hours and hours of time to grinding first before being allowed to start the game they actually paid for. If you must have grinding, let me grind the actual game instead of some unrelated pre-requisite.

League of Legends has a progression system, called the "Summoner" system, where you as the player gain meta-levels outside of matches, allowing you to unlock talent points and rune slots to augment your in-game abilities. And how do you gain experience for your summoner?

Playing the game.

Let's have more of that, please.

Champions Online: The Honeymoon is Over

Champions seemed great in beta. With everything else going on in the gaming world and the fact that your beta characters would be wiped at launch, I didn't really delve too deeply into the game because I wanted to save enough of the content for playing the game I'd paid for. I tried about 7 different power sets and played up to about level 15 a few times, but left the rest for Live.

At my current rate, I might end up not seeing that content anyway.

Sure, part of that is because of all the time I'm spending in LoL, along with the necessity that I now log into WoW every day to get my goddamn triumph emblems from the daily heroic. Thanks so much Blizzard, for the privilege of having to do that annoying daily grind of faceroll content just to keep up with current raiding. I hate you so much.

Add to that the fact that my 10-man WoW guild is currently dying in a fire against Mimiron hard mode (mastered the first 3 phases, hopefully get phase 4 down tonight!) while exploiting the cheap gear-reset known as Trial of the Crusader (or it is Champion? I can never remember) for all its worth. It takes us less time to clear that place than it takes to fly from there back to Ulduar where the real content still is. These Triumph Emblem vendors outside ToC are very accurately named:


Glad you find this phoned-in, anti-casual (forced to log in every day) patch hilarious, Blizz. You better really enjoy the recliner you've made out of my money.


But the competition isn't the only reason I'm not playing Champions half as much as I expected. I still love the character creator, love the ideas behind picking your powers, and find the game mostly fun. But a lot of problems are cropping up that are keeping me from even getting to 25 to try out my Nemesis (who should have been available from level 10 or so, frankly).


1. Account Problems

First of all, there was a screw-up in the Champions database where some accounts conveniently forgot that they had been activated by a product key. And Cryptic didn't really say anything about this, or respond to the numerous forum threads about it. It took a service ticket on their website and finally a follow-up phone call to get my girlfriend's account re-activated, since the system would no longer accept her product key because, well, obviously it had already been used. My account worked even though we both entered our keys side by side exactly the same way, while sitting in the same room, and were both able to play on day 1. When we tried to play again on day 3 (this was well before that "early start keys no longer work" thing on the 6th, so that's not the culprit), suddenly hers didn't work anymore. I chose not to play out of solidarity while we waited for a response from their website, and the 3 days of waiting seriously sapped our enthusiasm about the game. It's hard to commit to an MMO after a mistake like that.

It took a phone call a few days later to finally get it fixed. To Cryptic's credit, there was zero wait for a representative and she was extremely polite and helpful and got the account up and running in a matter of minutes. But playing the game you paid for should not require a phone call.


2. CO's "action-oriented" engine can't handle it when you hold a key down

CO is supposed to be a more action-ey MMO. So how come the controls just completely break down when you try to time a block or use a "charged" or "maintained" power that requires keeping a key pressed? Almost every other battle the following will happen:

1) I hold down the 4 key to activate my maintained attack.
2) Nothing happens
3) I notice and let go of the button
4) I hold down the button again
5) The power activates for half a second as though I had tapped the key, putting the ability on cooldown while doing almost no damage, because it wasn't "maintained."

If I HOLD DOWN the key twice and the game thinks I tapped it once, it fails. This happens constantly, about half the powers require you hold a key, and I've heard it mentioned by every reviewer or blogger who has talked about the game. It's a universal error, and inexcuseable in a game where all you do is fight.


3. The quest gap

There aren't enough quests in the game to cover your entire leveling experience. "So what?" you say, "just grind mobs!"

Except the game is balanced such that, for example, a quest will give 5,000 xp while a mob gives 10. You do the math about how many mobs I need to grind to cover for one missing quest.

I thought this was a great idea in beta, because it discouraged grinding. It would have been a great idea if there was enough content to get you to 40.


4. Repetitition, followed by repeating rehashes

Making multiple characters is the fun of the game! Getting new powers and trying them out is a blast!

None of that matters because you have to do the exact same content every single time! If I have to do the tutorial again, I'm going to kill myself! Powers are doled out so slowly it makes people waiting in line at the DMV feel bad for you!


---------------------------------------


So we don't log in much, when faced on our mains with the prospect of scrounging for what few quests we can find with the next big carrot (nemesis) still seeming so far away and our powers only occassionally actually working anyway. We could go play one of those other characters we so excitedly designed in the creator, but then we'd have to grind through the same boring content again.

The honeymoon with Champions is already over - but I'm not looking for a divorce. However, I am afraid that one day I'll wake up and forget I ever met her.

It's looking like I'll let my sub lapse at the end of the month, but I don't yet regret my purchase. I strongly suspect that I'll come back to the game a few months from now, after patches fill in some of the gaps, turning this into the game it should have been at release. In the meantime, I just can't fit it in between WoW, LoL, and now Aion.

I'm sorry if anyone bought the game partly based on my recommendation and was disappointed. The first 20 or so hours of playing with the character creator and seeing the early content for the first time IS a blast, and I still really like the game. It's just not quite winning in the competition for my gaming time right now, but I expect it will again in the future.

Champions Online Guide to Not Gimping Your First Hero

Brief tips to help you avoid building a gimped hero right off the bat:

1) Characteristic Focus: This is the most confusing aspect of the stats in CO. Here is a simple analogy:

You know how, in WoW, warriors want strength to increase their damage, while rogues want agility?

Those are their characteristic focii. The only difference is that you get to pick them instead of having them be intrinsic to a character class.

The 2 Characteristic Focus stats you pick are the stats that increase your damage.

This damage increase is in addition to whatever benefit the stat gives you (such as DEX's increased crit chance or END's increase to your endurance pool).

Starter rule of thumb: pick gear that has your Characteristic Focus stats on it.


2) Presence is the healing stat. It is also the threat stat for tanks.

3) Instead of picking a class you pick a framework. It simply refers to the theme of your powers, and not to your character's role, which I will discuss in a moment. The pre-build frameworks come with an endurance-building auto-attack power (you only get one of these per character, ever) and a nuke, as well as a starting stat layout based on a theme, such as "indomitable" (high ego and strength) to "Genius" (high intellect and presence). In most cases the stats you get are the ones that are most helpful to that framework. Though which stats you pick really only matters for your support powers and passives usually.

For instance, all of your attacks will scale with whichever super stat you pick. But your heals scale with Presence, while your passive defensive ability might scale with Constitution or Endurance, depending on framework. You're generally safe just going with the stat outlay tied to your framework, but if you want to change it (as I did with my Telekenesis hero, by switching out Constitution for Endurance) you can do a custom framework using the 2 starter powers from that set, but a different stat pick, and see no ill effects.

The 2 stats you favor at the beginning should be the ones you plan to make into your Characterstic Focus stats.


4) You unlock powers in your framework by picking up more powers in that framework. You also unlock more powers in other frameworks as you go, just at a slightly reduced rate. You can get to the big stuff faster by staying in one framework, and I recommend you do this at first. Make more varied characters and dip into other sets once you get a handle on the game.


5) Pick up talents (stat bonuses) that increase your Characteristic Focus stats. (durrr)

6) Put your Ranks and Advantages points into the attacks you use most often, at least at first.

7) As you play you will unlock Roles. These work a lot like Death Knight Presences or Druid forms. You start in a balanced role, but you'll eventually be able to get an offensive role (that increases damage but reduces defense), a tanking role (higher defense and lower damage), and a support role (improved healing and energy regen). So your powerset framework is more a theme for your character, while the Role defines how you will play in a group. If you want to be a healer, hold on to gear with high presence so you can switch into it when needed (much like putting on your spellpower set in WoW).


There. Now you can get on with the playing and learning while minimizing the risk that you'll gimp your character right out of the gate. Have fun!

Champions Online Launch Today

I'm excited to see Champions go live today, despite this equation:




crowds + collision detection =












Here's a "State of the Game" post from the Cryptic Team that's a good, short read.

I have to congratulate them on what was the most bug-free and stable open beta and early start I have ever seen, despite seriously worrying problems with the initial patcher and the complete failure of the early start's special invasion.* If that disaster is a sample of things to come, then I'll know exactly which MMO monthly fee to cut out of my budget. I'm choosing to give them the beenefit of the doubt currently, especially considering that the dev team was probably taking their first weekend off after going gold before the craziness of live release. Still, it was badly handled. The SotG reflects how responsive the dev team has been to player concerns in other areas, so I have high hopes for their stewardship of this online world.

They're also already announcing the first major content patch, which adds a new power set. Woot!

And here's a launch interview with designer Bill Roper (previously designer of Diablo 2 and Hellgate: London) that I found interesting, as well.


Enjoy Millenium City!


*The special non-combat pet available to early start players requires that they kill 100 invading aliens as part of the invasion event. At first, each invasion would last 10-15 minutes and occur every half-hour, meaning it took about an hour total to get the pet. After the first day, something bugged out and the events lasted, at most 30 seconds. So if you wanted the one-time-only pet, you had to camp the spot in the middle of a crowd for 1/2 hour, then had 30 seconds of desperate, frenzied activity, and hope you got a few tags (usually 3-4 per time) to get closer to the 100. It got the point where people were timing each shard and jumping from shard to shard to follow the event, making each spawn even more crowded.

Despite playing for hours every day of the preorder event, and in fact having been in the beta for 4 months beforehand, I still ended up with nothing to show for being there early because I refused to do the boring camp.

Champions Online Beta Review: Should You Buy It?

Let me get this out of the way first:

I love Champions Online.

So now my job is no longer to tell you whether or not I like the game. My job is to tell you why I like it, and what it is about me that makes me the type of person who would love this game. Then you can compare yourself to me, and see if you might love it too.

Another thing to get out of the way first: I've spent a lot of time playing the game, but I have not proceeded past Millenium City, which is the level 12-20ish zone. I can't tell you anything first hand about the endgame or even the later leveling zones, the Nemesis system, or how heroes play once they've built up a lot of powers. Instead, between the closed and open beta, I rerolled a dozen different characters over the past few months, trying different powersets and both early zones, getting a strong feel for the character creator and the early levels.

What CO gets right:

Aesthetics: Sure, not everyone is going to love the the cel-shaded graphics with the thick black outlines, but there is an easily-located check-box in the video options that turns all that off. Then it just looks like a next-gen CoH. Not the visual revelation Aion is, but a leap ahead of WoW, and still pleasantly stylized.

But the real victory of the visuals is in the animations, the costumes, and the power effects. I can't tell you what you will think of them, but I can tell you to me, as a long-time comic-book and video game fan, they just feel right. The animations are dynamic, varied, and exciting. You really get the feel of being a powerful superhero. Superpowered punches distort the air around them with visible impact, while a sword-wielding ninja spins and flips while cutting down her enemies, and a sorcerer deployes magical circles and runes across the landscape to assist the gadgeteer's mechanical gun turret. The travel powers are really standout here, especially the spot-on rocket boots, ice-surfing, and fire flight. The costume options not only dwarf even CoX, but they show appropriate variety and even a sense of humor. You can make a hero with a cartoonish nuclear rocket strapped to his back and a "1/2" emblazoned on his chest, with tentacles for a mouth, furred cybernetic hands, mandibles emerging from his waist and boots that would be more at home in Gundam than Gotham.

The powers look good, and get bigger and flashier the more you level them up and acquire complementary powers. For instance, at level 1 your psi-blade looks a bit small and weak. Rank it up and it gets big and fiery. Pick up Ego Form and suddenly you're dual-wielding big, pulsing id- blades in a flurry of destruction.

And that's not even mentioning "power replacers" that you can pick up throughout the game to selectively modify your powers visually. The clearest example is one that changes the look of your hero's sword.

I'm someone who cares about aesthetics. Unlike a lot of other bloggers, I care what my mount or vanity pet or armor looks like, and what my character's animations are. One of the deciding factors originally for me to pick WoW over EQ was the more appealing (to me) visual style. If you are like me, and care a lot about how a game looks and feels, you won't be disappointed with CO.

Customizability: Not a lot can be said here that hasn't already been said. Character creation puts other games to shame. Powers can be recolored and have different emanation points. Powers, including weapons, can be visually replaced. The power system lets you pick and choose from any powerset at any time, with a loose tier system being the only thing keeping you from going completely nuts. There are tons of different powers to choose from. You can use any name you want, even if someone else already thought of it. You can even heavily customize the controls (even choosing between gamepad and mouse/keyboard!) and the graphics quite heavily.

Accessibility: You'd think, with all these options, the game would be hard to get into. It's not. There's all kinds of optional presets when creating a hero to help you jump in quickly, while still giving you access to the full power of the system. If you don't care to delve too far into the creator, you can be ready in a minute or two. The power set structures are easy to understand, and there to guide you, while still offering the "custom" option for advanced players who want to delve further. The game plays like others you are familiar with. It has the most lenient death penalty I have ever seen in any game. It marks your quest objectives on the map, simplifies your inventory, keeps your gear decisions limited and relatively simple, and slowly ramps up your powers and abilities. Yes, there are some partially-obscured game mechanics, but it comes nowhere close to most other MMOs, where you have to keep a guide open in another window just to figure out what your stats mean or where to go next. You get your travel power right after the tutorial and early leveling moves at a brisk pace.

CO is going to be very good for whatever chunk of time you have available, whether that be 20 minutes while the baby naps or 4 hours on a sunday afternoon alone. It's easy to pick up and play.



The thing that brings all these positives together into one package is a trick stolen from Blizzard (no surprise, given that one of the head designers is one of the early Blizzard guys): combining the best elements from other games. You're going to level up through a series of quests you get from people with yellow exclamation points over their heads. You're going to encounter WAR elements like public quests and having quest objectives labeled on your map. You're going to see statistics, and gear, and instanced group missions. In short, you are getting every feature you'd expect from a modern MMO. So really, the only questions you have to ask yourself are:

1) Do I like the way the game looks and feels?

2) Is the combat and character advancement system deep enough for me? Do I want something this accessible, or will I get bored when I'm not balancing 5 stats with my 40-talent-point build while skilling up my wand skill and juggling 15 pieces of gear?

3) Can I enjoy a "care bear" game with no world PvP or major consequences for death?




What CO gets wrong:

• The powers system is mostly good, but it builds far too slowly. You spend the first 45 minutes or so with only 2 abilities, and then only 3 for another half-hour. At level 12 you still only have 4-5 combat abilities. In most MMOs, you'll have that many by level 4.
• Lack of innovation in questing: this is a WoW-alike.
  
• Controls are a little wonky, especially targeting. I often find myself accidentally mistargeting, and having to retrain myself for the fact that I have to either use an attack or hit tab, but if I do both I won't be on my desired target. It's also a hassle to ensure that your auto-attack stays active when you want it to. Interacting with objects requires a keypress (though sometimes I can right-click a quest giver, but I can't figure out why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't), and if you are close to multiple interactive objects, you'll get a hard-to-navigate list of them to choose from. I can't count the number of times I meant to pick up a quest item and accidentally hefted a nearby truck instead. I think this will improve as I adjust, but it feels more detached and less responsive than, say, WoW.
• Super Stats are poorly explained. They are actually very interesting, because the two super stats you select become the only stats that raise your damage. Essentially, you have complete freedom to choose which stats you want to chase, rather than, for instance, being a WoW warrior who has to gather strength and ignore intellect.
  
• The stats system has another flaw: powers often scale with specific stats, and it's easy to put yourself in a situation where you favor, say, ego and strength, and find that one of your powers scales off of endurance, and thus will always be gimp.
• PvE Balance: In closed beta, I would get decimated by groups with even two enemies in them. Every fight was a dangerous struggle, seemingly no matter what power combination I picked. Defensive powers helped, but the game didn't do enough to encourage me to pick them up even though I'd consider then almost mandatory (hint: the first power you get upon leaving the tutorial should be a defensive passive!). But even with them, the game was on the hard side. This is completely changed in open beta. I have to ass-pull three packs to even be in danger of dying, and have just mowed through even group quests as long as I have a defensive power active. The sweet spot is somewhere in between.
  

So far, replay value is mixed. The downside is that there is only one tutorial zone, so you are going to get sick of those first four levels very quickly. There are two early leveling zones, then Millenium City. The two zones are quite different from each other, but don't really offer any alternate branches for replaying, so it's a lot like the choice between the Barrens and Silverpine for the Horde. For most power combinations I tried, the first 10 levels were nearly identical. You start with 2 abilities: an weak auto-attack that builds Endurance, and a bigger attack that spends it. There is some token variation among these (some end-builders are ranged, some of the attacks can be charged up, or need to be held, etc), but the differences are minor. Upon completing the tutorial at level 5, you are gifted an orgasm of upgrades (you get no new powers during the tutorial, even though you "level up"), including a new fighting power, a travel power (what a blessing to get it this early!), a Super Stat, and a "talent" (stat boost, such as +8 Strength).

The upside on replayability is the flexibility of the character creator and the power system. Cryptic nailed the character creator. Prepare to hear raves about it in every review about the game. You can spend an hour in there, per character, and not even notice the time passing. There are enough options to make almost any humanoid you can imagine. I've seen everything from busty supergirls to robots to hulking Cthulu-lookalikes 5 times wider than the average man, to tiny people who only reach your knee, to hunched, slavering demons, to comically stretched-out beanpoles.

Combat is another mixed bag. It's a bit more action-oriented than other MMOs, and sports a much smaller pool of available abilities compared to competitors, though the block system and "roles" (similar to warrior stances) offer some extra depth. The low ability count is both a blessing and a curse: while easy to learn and pleasingly streamlined, it also has a tendency to get even more repetitive than WoW.


One thing I want to bring to the forefront concerning the beta is how quickly Cryptic makes changes and improvements to every aspect of the game. The open beta so many see today is almost unrecognizable as the closed beta I first launched 2 months ago - and even the closed beta I played 2 weeks ago - especially when it comes to interface and useability. So I'd recommend against being dismissive of the game because of minor issues. So many things I had been prepared to complain about were fixed in the open beta - and not only fixed, but brought up to exceed my expectations and surprise me. The early closed beta was a mess, but the open beta fixes almost every issue I had, and more. The costume creator makes more sense, the controls are easier to set up (the game gives you full control setup packages at the start, including one modeled almost exactly after WoW), the power tooltips are now actually informative. They must have been working hard over at Cryptic HQ to polish the game.




TL;DR version: Buy Champions Online if you:

• Want to feel like a superhero
• Care a lot about aesthetics. The game looks and feels great, and is full of visual customizability, aesthetic novelty, and vanity items.
  
• Want to play a WoW-alike with less depth but more action
• Would enjoy a further refinement of the WoW playstyle with even greater accessibility
• Like soloing as much as you like grouping

Do not buy Champions Online if:

• You think games that lack open-world PvP or "real consequences for failure" are for "carebears" (go play Darkfall instead, you'll like it!)
• You don't really like superheroes
• Strongly prefer slower and more complicated games that are a bit more work to figure out, like EQ, and dislike how accessible or action-oriented WoW is in comparison
  
• You are really sick of questing
• You don't care at all about aesthetics, or strongly dislike those of CO
  
• Are only interested in group dungeon crawls and have no interest in soloing

Champions Online is currently in "open beta" (requiring preorder or, I believe, Fileplanet membership) and will be released on Tuesday, September 1.


UPDATE (8/31/09):

The comments gave me a few good ideas of things I'd like to add.

Champions contains a mechanism for microtransactions. This is supposed to encompass things like novelty and vanity items and additional character slots. None of the purchasables are implemented yet, as far as I can tell, and little information is known about the details.

If you won't buy the game simply because it has a mechanism for microtransactions, then I encourage you to stay away from Champions so I don't have to interact with you. WoW has microtransactions too, called, for instance, paid server transfers, so you better cancel that account too, kthxbai. Learn about the prices and what is on offer before you dismiss the game. You may find you have no interest in what is for sale, and also find the game quite complete and worthwhile without the microtransactions.

There are more than enough costume options and character slots (8) available for my needs, so it doesn't bother me. If the microtransactions were blocking heavy swaths of content, then I'd be pissed. Again, consider the details of the particular system rather than dismissing something out of hand as soon as the word "microtransaction" is mentioned.

------------------------

For me, the carrot luring me through the levels is being able to get more powers to play with. If that doesn't sound exciting to you, then consider what it is that excites you about a new game before you buy Champions. Champions plays a lot like WoW. It is a questing game. You will kill ten rats, you will fedex, you will collect 15 monster teeth, you will click on 5 objects, and you will escort someone defenseless through packs of enemies. If you are tired of questing and are tired of WoW's gameplay, don't buy Champions. If you enjoy WoW's gameplay and just want a change of setting, aesthetic, and a fresh, streamlined look at the character-development systems, then give Champions a chance.

One big mistake it makes is that it starts slowly, and holds your hand through the tutorial (it assumes you've never played an MMO before). A lot of the more exciting stuff doesn't happen until the later levels, such as the Nemesis system and the meatier team missions. However, leveling is fast. The game appears to be much more focused on encouraging you to level multiple characters to try out all kinds of powers and costumes, and much less focused on getting one "main" to the endgame and grinding away. This makes me suspect that replay value is going to be kind of poor if you care a lot about content, because you'll end up leveling each character through the same zones over and over. Hopefully it won't come to that, but it is something to caution you about. Hopefully patches will expand the game laterally by adding more leveling content.

I very much enjoy Champions, but I cannot recommend it to everyone. The best way to make your buying decision is to gather as much information as you can about it, and see if those things appeal to you.

MMO Roundup: 7/31/09

Champions Online: I really want to be a part of this hype train, hopefully it starts up soon. As it stands, I can't really say much because of the NDA.

They've begun outlining the powersets on the Champions website. This is a great idea. The powers are one of the main attractions. I really can't wait until someone codes a web-based character planner (are you listening undoubtedly-overworked CO web team?) Then again, I'm exactly the kind of geek who can pass half an hour playing with a WoW talent calculator, though I wonder if I'm the target audience.

I had been wondering what the end game would be, and a recent interview with lead designer Bill Roper revealed that, at launch, the endgame will mainly consist of a randomized series of 5 daily team missions that can be completed to unlock a 6th, more epic mission. These missions will reward tokens that can be redeemed for rewards. So in the fashion of the Champions so far, they've taken an idea from WoW and rebuilt it from scratch to fit their game. And it's right up my alley: randomized, small group, alternative reward system . . . it's like they read my post about endgame grinding! Or at least part of it.

Beyond that, the Nemesis system sounds like good fodder for mid- and endgame content. At level 25, you can design your hero's own arch-enemy, and then get special missions where you face him and storyline seeds such as ambushes from his minions (whom you also designed). And these are all shareable with other players, so for instance you could be doing a 3- player mission and run into a supervillain who turns out to be your teammate's nemesis.

But this is all speculation, it remains to be seen how this will play out in reality. I'm looking forward to the beta becoming open next month, when I'll be able to talk a lot more about this game.

Cryptic recently announced their pre-order bonuses as well. Puzzlingly, Amazon and Wal-Mart do not offer head-start access (log into the live game a few days early), while Gamestop and Best Buy do. So ordering from GS or BB seemed like a no-brainer. Since I'm not a fan of Gamestop, I wanted to pre-order from Best Buy. Unfortunately, Best Buy doesn't have any preorder bonus details up on their website, and in fact even has the wrong release date for the game. Rather than risk missing out on the open beta or early access or even the first week of the game due to BB's lack of interest, I ended up swallowing my distaste and pre-ordering from Gamestop. Hopefully Cryptic can get BB to get their shit together. Champions recently topped GS's sales list, and I'm betting that's because they were the only retailer to offer early access and detail the preorder bonuses on their website, so GS is probably receiving the bulk of the preorders.

Retailers, take heed. Paying attention to the MMO audience pays off.


Aion: Surprisingly slow simmer on this front. Voices were added to the game for this weekend's beta event, which is nice because the first version of Hatch ended up with a hilariously high-pitched voice when I was forced to choose without being able to preview them (and they were still using the Korean voice acting). Still on the radar, but I have to say that while this one looked solid to begin with, the more polish Cryptic applies the Champions, the more it looks like Aion won't be getting my full attention this September.


WoW: As we await Blizzcon, a few things of interest have popped up.

By now, you've all heard that Sam Raimi will be directing the WoW movie. This announcement makes me think 2 things:

1) Cataclysm might be the name of the movie, not the xpac. I hope it's the xpac, because nothing short of a world-changing revolution is going to keep me interested in WoW for another 2 years.

2) Sam Raimi is not to my taste, so I'm disappointed by the pick. His direction is serviceable for the most part, but I find a lot of his unconventional camera work to be more annoying and unprofessional-looking than creative (see the scene from Spider-man 2 where Doc Ock first wakes up and kills the medical team that was about to remove his tentacles for an example). It feels cheap. And though I enjoyed some of the humor in Army of Darkness, that's largely due to the writing and acting; I don't think the directing helped it along much. Though Spider-man is my favorite comic book character ever, I was disappointed with the films overall, and most of that can be attributed to the directing (and the casting and the acting, except for J. Jonah Jameson). This news is almost as bad as Shia LaDoof getting cast as Y the Last Man (sidebar: DEAR GOD WHYYYYY?!?!?!!?)


Other than that, the WoW zeitgiest is focusing on the patch. Evidence is mounting that the patch will be released this coming Tuesday rather than the post-Blizzcon release I predicted.

1) MMO-Champion pointed out that the current PTR patch is labeled "Retail", a sign that it's almost ready to ship.

2) Blizzard released a Q&A today about the two major new features in the patch: the pve instances and the pvp battleground. As we know, PR is done when a weakness needs to be covered. I think they are seeing a lot of confusion from players about how things will work, and the fact that they chose NOW to clear it up rather than later points strongly to an impending release.


As a player, I don't really care either way. As a blogger, I'd like to be proven right. :)

We'll see how it goes. Until then, have a great weekend!

Champions Online Microtransactions

Champions Online will allow you to pay some real-life cash to buy some novelty stuff.

Anyone who is whining or complaining about this can feel free to click the following link:

http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/points/store/c-9-wow-in-game-codes.aspx

At least Cryptic is willing to call a spade a spade and be honest about their microtransactions, instead of hiding them behind another product and marketing nonspeak gobbledygook.

I too am skeptical of microtransactions. Like many others, I look upon them with suspicion that the Big Evil Corporation is using them to "trick" me into giving them more of my money for less product. I feel my suspicions are well-founded. But I don't think the fact that a game will have some form of them is, on it's own, a reason to condemn the game or get all up in arms.

I generally am not a fan of micro-transactions, but if we're going to jump on anyone for them, it should be Blizzard first (cough$25tochangeavalueinaspreadsheetcough). They just didn't use the dreaded word "microtransactions" themselves.

General Laziness

Swamped at work. Here are some brief things I've been wanting to get down, but haven't put in a post yet:

Aion, overall: Best described as "satisfying" and "pretty". If you like to play WoW, and you look at pictures of this game and like the asthetic, then I recommend it. It plays well, is serviceable everywhere that isn't impressive, and actually works this early in the beta process (owing much to already being out in another country). I had fun with it.

Champions, Online: I'm worried about two things about the publicized powerset system:

1) Will it be too easy to "gimp" a character? I know they are keeping this in mind, but it still worries me. It would be very comforting to see some sort of recommendation stuff in place. Like, "it's highly recommended that you take a defensive power at level 5" or "block replacers may not look like much, but they are actually usually one of the most powerful and useful abilities you'll have" (I don't know if those are true, just making up fake examples). This goes hand-in-hand with:

2) It's dangerous to have each powerset have "hidden purposes". What I mean is: I recently read an interview with one of the CO designers about powersets, and he starts talking about how "such and such is actually a tanking set in disguise" and "this powerset won't do as much damage as this other one, even though they both look like basic blasting powers". This seems like a really dangerous route to go down. It's going to be all too common for someone to pick a powerset because it looks cool or goes with their character, then find that the higher in level they get, the more they fall behind because the powerset was designed for some other role without any indication before you select it. If you are going to design the powersets around roles, then you NEED to tell the player ahead of time what those roles are.

Hopefully these will be addressed before the game hits. If not, the open beta is going to be a clusterfuck as a massive number of people find that their character is nothing like they had every reason to expect it would be.

PuGs, being douches: I ended up the de facto raid leader for my guild because no one else felt like doing it. When I pug things like VoA, I purposely refuse to lead the group. PuGs are my time to be just another member of the raid. You know why?

Because leading the raid is more effort than just being a member.

Let's keep that in mind as we go forward, shall we? This is the reason why your entire faction can stand around the Wintergrasp portal spamming "/inv plz" when there is no raid group, and none of those 50 people will form a group themselves. It takes one person to finally give in and be the one to do the work of inviting people, just so that things will finally happen. These are the people whose impatience outwieghs their laziness. I would normally be this person, except I already lead raids for my guild for pretty much that reason.

So when someone else forms a pug, remember that they are volunteering to do an unpaid job that you aren't willing and/or able to do yourself. If you don't like the way they run the group, then that's fine. Constructively criticize, offer to help (and I do not mean "pass lead plz" after they've done all the work starting it up and you just want to invite your undergeared friends), or leave the group. But give the raid leader at least a tiny token of respect, or else they are going to feel like even more of a sucker for being the one to take on the extra work for your benefit. And pragmatically, that leads to there being fewer suckers on the server who will start a raid for you. Even if your impulse is to be a douche, or you really are just such a waste of a human that you can't be even halfway nice, at least try to stretch your tiny brain to think one step ahead to realize that the worse you treat pug leaders, the fewer of them there will be. And since you aren't willing to start a pug, that means less loot for you. Think about it, random childish pug douchebag who I'm sure doesn't read my blog. I'm sure I'm just preaching to the choir.

I say all of this because enough of my guildies and friends were all standing around WG together just after a victory, spamming "LFG VoA 10", and they started suggesting that I put one together. Which is the biggest curse of being the raid leader: people expect you to be the one who assembles pugs as well. You have members in your guild who will say "we should do ____ ", but they almost never actually put a group together themselves? They leave that up to the one sucker who got in the position of raid leader? Yeah, thought so.

So I finally got tired of waiting and just put together a pug myself. When I make a VoA 10 pug, I aim to get as close to one of each class in there as possible. Murphy's law dictates that if you don't bring a class, all of the loot dropped will be for that class. This way, everyone has a better chance of getting a drop. I was playing my resto druid alt. This becomes important later.

So I'm forming this group, and we need 2 more dps. So I say in chat, "LF2M DPS VoA 10", and am immediately inundated with tells. To be fair, the majority of them are perfectly nice. But most of them are classes we already have, so I decline, and keep advertising. One of the people who whispered me is a douchebag and someone I had recently had a fight with in a pug. I wasn't going to invite him, and it amazes me that he even bothered to try to get into a pug I was running, considering what I had said to him. I don't respond.

After a bit, he whispers me saying "Why didn't you invite me?"

"Don't you remember how a week ago I left your group because I didn't like you?"

His response was "Baby gonna cry?" which borders on nonsense. I promptly put him on ignore.


Then, I get a whisper from another druid. He says "why didn't you invite me?"

"Because I'm trying to get one of each class"

"Aha! You just don't want competition!"

"That's right. :)"

"Don't smile, that's fail!"

"Of course I don't want competition. I'm not going to apologize for it. It's not just for me, every person in my raid is happier because they don't have to compete. If you don't like it, make your own group. If you can't be bothered to do that, then you don't get to complain."

And it went on like that for a bit.

Sigh.

People were such entitled dicks to me that it made me never want to lead a pug again. And I'm pretty good at it. So good job, douches. The funniest part is that you don't even realize this is 100% your loss.

Champions Online: Beta Impressions

Champions Online is an upcoming superhero MMO developed by Cryptic, the same company that originally designed City of Heroes, and has since split off from the CoH team (now part of the game's publisher, NCSoft). So it's no surprise that the game looks and feels like a sequel to City of Heroes. Essentially, it is. But it also used to be a Marvel MMO before the House of Ideas pulled out and left Cryptic with a half-finished game and no license. They picked up the rights to the Champions tabletop RPG universe to replace Spidey and friends.

I was granted access to the beta by pure luck, so I have no special treatment as press. They didn't give me a free account so I could write about their game. In fact, if not for this implied consent (still no further response as of 6/12/09), I'd be bound by an NDA to not even reveal I am in the beta, let alone provide my impressions. As it stands, I am only allowed to talk about what the press has seen: the character creator, the tutorial levels, and bit of content beyond. I'm not allowed to talk about the promised features from the later levels, such as the Millenium City zone or the Nemesis system (which lets you design a personalized nemesis NPC for your hero to fight throughout your career).

As you'd expect from a CoH sequel, the character creator is a cut above the rest. It's not even yet fully implemented, and still it blows everything else currently available out of the water. You can choose from an overwhelming number of sliders to change the size of everything on your character's body, from hand-width to brow-depth. There are an unbelievable number of options for every body part. It builds on the CoH creator by adding even more options, including the highly-requested capes, trench coats, and wings (right from the start!) and convenience by allowing you to choose "key" colors at the start and remembering which colors you have previously chosen, making the entire process of color-coordinating more user friendly.

The coolest addition to the character creator is the use of "stances", which change your hero's posture and demeanor, and each come with their own full suite of separate animation sets. For example, you can choose "heroic" to have your character walk around with his chest puffed out, legs spread, and hands in fists. Or you can go for a more casual look, or choose "bestial" to have your hero run around on all fours.

Once your look is to your liking, you get to move on and choose powers. These are also unfinished at time of writing, with the promised "custom" templates not yet available, and the power descriptions confusing and incomplete. What is there looks very promising, however. There are nearly 2 dozen power sets, ranging from Telepathy to Dual Blades to an Iron-man style Power Suit.

There are no classes in CO. Instead, you select whichever powers you think fit your character. The power sets are arranged into tiers, with the more powerful abilities at the top. You can stay in one tree and climb the tiers faster, but you can also climb the tiers, albeit more slowly, by taking powers from other trees. It's entirely possible to make a force-fielded character who breaths fire and swings a giant sword, if that's the kind of thing you want. You are left with the choice of either specializing to reach that tier faster, or picking from a broad range of powers to be versatile, but get your uber-moves more slowly. This could turn out to be a beauty or a disaster, depending on the balance, but it looks like a great idea on the surface.

Every hero starts out as a simple damage-dealer, which at first glance seems like a poor recipe for MMO teamwork. This is where another nice innovation comes in: dual spec (well, multi-spec) is essentially built-in. As you level, you naturally gain the ability to change your role amongst offensive, defensive, balanced, and support with the click of a button. So if you join a group that needs a tank, you just pop into defensive mode and tank it. There are no simple "healers", and no power set that focuses on healing or defense the way CoH's Empathy tree did. Instead, each power set has a few support abilities, such as group buffs, minor heals, or force-fields. Any player can pick up a few of these while leveling up, and play a support role in any group that needs it. It remains to be seen how this will hold up in the long run, as I didn't really get to test it.

The other thing you do before creating a character is pick a type for your character, such as "the professor" or "the intimidator". These allow you to select which stats your character is strong in, and thus which you should focus on. To make a simplified analogy: in WoW, a rogue wants Agility and Attack Power, while a DK wants Strength and Critical Strike Rating. The stats you want in WoWare determined by your class/spec. In CO, you can choose to focus on Dexterity and Constitution if you want, or Ego and Strength, or any combination, regardless of what type of character you play. You can use the brute-force "Might" powerset but choose to focus on the Intelligence stat, if you want. This is very confusing at first blush, though I suspect that they simply haven't yet integrated the final explanation into the game yet. CO also does a neat twist on each stat in that they all provide some secondary benefit, like making you harder to put in CC or increasing your potential knockback. This adds a nice extra dimension to picking which stats to focus on, and keeps non-focused stats from being useless.

As you level, you'll alternate between stat boosts, new powers, and Advantages. Advantage Points can be invested in any powers to augment them in much the same way a glyph in WoW or an enhancement in CoH would. For instance, you can use 2 Advantage Points to increase your main nuke by a rank, upping its damage and effects. Or you could spend one point to give it a 10% chance to return endurance on use, and the other point to slightly increase your flight speed. This ends up working a lot like talent points, as a way to customize your character toward your playstyle. You can sink your Advantage points into offensive, defensive, or support powers to make yourself better at your preferred role, or take a more balanced approach.

After finally completing your character (honestly, my beta sessions tended to involve more time in the character creator than out, and I never even noticed the time passing), you're dropped into a tutorial zone. Insectoid aliens have invaded a small section of Millenium City, and there has been a forcefield conveniently erected around the area to contain them (another concept taken directly from CoH).

Visually, the game uses a cell-shaded comic book style (which you can turn off in the options menu if you don't like it). It can be a little blocky or plain at times, but overall it's up to par with what you would expect in this day and age. The animations are where the game really shines. They all look great and have a ton of personality. I was especially impressed with the martial arts and sword animations, which are far from the boring swings you see in WoW. Instead, each strike is lightning-fast and dynamic, with your character leaping, twisting, and spinning. The powers are visually exciting and look quite cool. Though the art style itself is plain, the animations have so much personality that they help the game stand out, just as Blizzard's unique art style helped make WoW a success. And in a praiseworthy move, you can customize the color of every single ability, as well as it's emanation point. For instance, I can shoot a laser beam from my eyes, chest, palms, or fists, and that beam can be any color of the rainbow.

Cryptic has said that they aim for a more action-oriented approach to MMOs with CO. The entire game can be played on a control pad, and an eventual Xbox 360 port is expected.

The game controls much like CoH or WoW before it. I found the transition between my daily WoW playing and this new environment to be very smooth.

Combat is simultaneous simpler and more interesting than CoH or WoW. Since the game is meant to be played on a control pad, your action bar and hotkeys are limited to just 9 abilities. CO's heroes don't have mana bars. Instead, they all have an "endurance" bar that starts out empty. Every powerset starts with a low-damage auto attack called an "endurance builder". Using this ability fills up your end bar, which you can then spend on other, more powerful abilities. It reminded me a lot of playing a Death Knight, where you use abilities to build up runic power for other moves.

Many of moves that use end are chargeable, meaning you can decide, by holding down the button, how much damage you want it to do and how much end you want to spend. For instance, my energy character could fire off a quick force blast for 20 damage and 10 end, or he could charge it up for 3 seconds and deal 55 damage for 20 end and have a better chance at a knockback. This system also works for holds, as I found I could encase my foes in a force field for a longer time if I held down the button first. This adds a fun little tactical element to what would otherwise be button-mashing.

A system like this has some nice balancing mechanisms baked-in. You prevent the Paladin alpha-strike syndrome that plagues WoW pvp at the moment (just like rogues must build combo points, or DKs RP and set up their diseases, before unleashing their strongest attacks). It also helps reduce downtime, since you don't need to drink to refill mana. Health regeneration is also streamlined, requiring only that you stand still out of combat for a few seconds to wait for your health bar to refill. Don't even need to purchase or click on food.

Combat is further enlivened by a natural "block" ability bound to the Shift key. You can use it to strategically reduce damage of incoming attacks. It adds a nice action-gamey element to the combat, and raises the skill cap considerably. It's especially helpful when you see a stronger foe have a Batman-style bubble appear over their head with the word "POW" or some such in it, signifying that they are about to unleash a big attack (another aspect that adds depth and tactical interest to the combat).

I can't help but think the combat system took a few pages from the excellent Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (if you haven't played it, download both episodes NOW!), which made extensive use of blocking and mini-game-based attacks to liven up the tired old Final Fantasy-style JRPG turn-based combat.

I've only just started, and I already can say that I think I prefer this combat style to that of WoW. Cryptic has obviously taken as many lessons as they can from WoW and built upon them.

And though that's a great strength of what I've seen so far, it's also where the game gets derivative.

From the very start, you are taking "missions" from NPCs with yellow "!" over their heads. The questing is fun enough, but still mostly of the "defeat 10 aliens" or "collect 5 first aid kits" variety. You pick up gear from quests and from random drops that you can equip for stats. Enemies still stand off in small groups waiting for you to come beat them up. It plays like a super-streamlined version of WoW with superheroes.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. CO's greatest leap may be the level to which they've borrowed ideas from other MMOs and combined and streamlined them. Beyond quests and gear from WoW, you'll see public quests in the WAR style, and your quest objectives will automatically be marked on your minimap with big orange circles signifying the area you need to be in to do the quest (I think this came from WAR as well?). All of this is done automatically, and much of the complication is taken out. You have only a few gear slots (3 primary, 6 secondary), and each piece of gear only has few stats. You have relatively few powers. You get your travel power as soon as you complete the tutorial, at level 6 (HURRAH!!!!). The death penalty is as minor as WoW's (begone, XP debt from CoH!). And yet, those parts of the game are still no less fun, and in fact you can get to the fun more easily because there are fewer impediments in your way.

Welcome to the enlightened next generation of MMOs, where the failed Everquest "vision" of tedious, unrewarding grinding in an unforgiving environment is thrown away, and only the fun kernel in the center is left. I, for one, am a fan so far.


-----------------------

Champions Online is both a sequel to City of Heroes, and a complete reinvention. It's not yoked to the name or the expectations of the CoH fanbase, and thus is free to make choices and take the game in a new direction, while also finally providing many of the fan-favorite improvements that CoH still hasn't seen.

If we were to sketch a rough history of MMOs, starting from MuDs, we'd see a few generations. To oversimplify, Gen 1 was Ultima Online, Gen 2 was Everquest and its ilk (I'd include CoH in this generation, and possibly one of the last of its generation), Gen 3 was WoW, WAR, and others, and CO (as well as KOTOR, Free Realms, and others) constitute the new Gen 4. Each generation took the lessons from the previous ones, integrated their best ideas as a base, and then shed things that weren't working and built something new.

But it's difficult to call CO "something new". In my limited experience with the beta, I encountered countless game mechanics and features that were clearly ripped wholesale from other games. But this may actually be a good thing, because they were all good ideas. Isn't it better to combine them all in one place, instead of leaving some out because they aren't "original"?

The thing that really heartens me about the CO beta is seeing that even though many of the ideas are borrowed, they are all well-executed and pleasantly streamlined. And isn't that a lot of what WoW did? Just steal EQ while making it more fun, and doing everything well and with a big coat of polish?

The beta is making me even more excited for the game, and I can't wait to see what it looks like when it releases in September. Hopefully the new release date gives the team plenty of time to up the presentation and make the systems more understandable. It has the potential to be a great MMO, but there are still a lot of places where things could go wrong.

Champions Online Beta

I've begun to frequent an MMO blog called "Bio Break".

The author, known as Syp, recently posted his thoughts on the Champions Online Beta. Champions Online is a superhero MMO set to be released this fall (think and updated City of Heroes with more action and features). It's the upcoming MMO that I am most excited about, being a big superhero fan and a former CoH player. Now, the beta is under an NDA that forbids beta players from even acknowledging that there is a beta and/or that they are in said alleged beta. Syp got around this by writing a letter to Cryptic (CO's developer) and gaining permission to write, as he posted about here.

Seeing this post, I decided to write a story here about something that theoretically could happen if I were in the CO beta, [ATTENTION LAWYERS] NOT THAT I AM.

In this fictional story, I wrote a similar letter to the CO team using 2 different official email addresses that seemed like likely candidates. All I got was auto replies. I even referenced Syp's letter and told them I wanted to give them free publicity. Still no response. A few weeks later, I, FICTIONALLY, finally get the following response:

"Hi Hatch!

Just making sure you've heard back about blogging Champions Online. Let us know
if there's anything else you need!

The Champions Online Team"

That's it.

To which I, FICTIONALLY, replied,

"Hi CO Team!

I have not heard back on this subject, save for the below email checking to see if I've heard back.

I'm going to take this response as permission to blog about the beta using the same guidelines that you put Syp of Bio Break under: only writing about what was available to the press.

I'll put up a preview in the next few days. Thanks for checking to see if I had heard back!

-Hatch"

We'll see in a few days just how fictional the above story is, I guess.