[PIGMI] Champions online MMORPG

[George]

Hi Shannon,

I bought the game about a year ago and gave it a one month trial. I 
enjoy MMOs and in particular have always liked the superhero genre 
(comes from a misspent youth reading comics).

It probably sums it up well to say that I didn't feel it was worth 
playing after the one month included game time.

The main problem to me was the absence of gameplay. I felt there was 
virtually nothing much in the game except for combat, and combat was 
shallow and repetitive, even for an MMO.

I'm actually familiar with the old Champions pen and paper superhero RPG 
(again, from the aforementioned misspent youth) and although the online 
draws from it, (using the same stat names for example) there is 
virtually no link between them. The MMO mechanics do not at all mimic 
HERO game mechanics, which is a shame I thought.

I am familiar with the previous superhero MMO City of Heroes/City of 
Villains, and it would not be at all unfair to label champions-online as 
City of Heroes v2.0, as there are very strong similarities. Not entirely 
surprising as it was the same development team responsible for both, but 
it seems odd to make an entire new superhero MMO that bears such 
resemblance to the one you've already built before.

Character creation seemed to enable significant choice and variety at 
first, however after playing for a while it became apparent that there 
were particular power/stat combinations that were vastly 
superior/inferior to others. I struggled with three different characters 
to level 10 before coming across a particular combo (fire powers with 
REC/END stats) that seemed to then utterly blitz through everything 
including being able to solo bosses. Significant balance issues there.

The items/loot system was a little strange, with your superhero using a 
bundle of particularly bizarrely named items to boost stats and powers. 
It never really seemed to gel with the game and appeared a bit kludgy 
and tacked-on.

I seem to recall some interface issues as well, such as l unclear 
tooltips and lack of responsiveness. Compared to say WoW, the general 
level of polish was lower.

I understand that champions-online is free to play now (effectively it 
died a death and was bought out by Atari), so by all means check it out 
if you're interested. There may have been updates to the game after I 
stopped playing, but as it was there just wasn't enough for lasting 
interest.

I'll be checking out the DC heroes online MMO and hoping that fares a 
bit better.

As a side note, if you like superhero games as much as I do, you can't 
do better than Freedom Force - although not an MMO, I think it was one 
of the best, most enjoyable games ever!


On 31/01/2011 3:46 PM, Shanon Loughton wrote:
> Hey all
>
> What do people think of http://www.champions-online.com
> ?
>
> Is it new or been around a while?
>
> ToWeR
>
>
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-- 
   George