Regular readers may have noticed a distinct lack of posts about Fallen Earth and Champions Online recently.

I just wanted to very briefly explain that I’m not posting because I’m not playing, but the reason I’m not playing has nothing to do with interest level in the games.

I have a semi-chronic condition with my left arm — I’d say it was carpal tunnel except it isn’t in my wrist, it’s higher up my arm. My upper arm starts to really ache and my fingers start to go numb, and WASD (and to a lesser extent, typing in general) aggravates the condition when it flares up. And I’m in the middle of a doozy of a flareup right now.

I work at a keyboard all day (I’m a web developer by trade) and I write posts for ITWorld; neither of those activities can be curtailed. So the only ‘break’ I can give myself is to stop PC gaming and stop ‘recreational’ writing until things calm down.

So sadly, frustratingly, that’s where I am now. I keep logging in to Fallen Earth because I’m so drawn to it, then after 10 minutes my arm is really hurting so I log off.

Thankfully I have console games to get me through. Using a controller doesn’t bother me (different muscles I guess?). Oh, for an MMO on console. C’mon Turbine! C’mon SOE! Get those console MMOs finished!

Anyway. I just didn’t want anyone to construe my lack of posts with me losing interest in either of the games I’ve been talking about recently. Quite the contrary…I’m itching to play (and post). I just can’t right now. Hopefully I’ll be back soon!

Someone on Twitter was asking me how Cryptic handles all the skills with a gamepad.

See the X, Y & B indicators on the first 3 skills? Those are the ‘unmodified’ bindings. If you hold down a modifier like one of the triggers, those little indicators move to show which hotkeys they now map to. So they jump around dynamically.

It works pretty well, and the game is a ton of fun to play with a gamepad.

Hope this helps someone.

In lieu of blogging, I’ve been having some fun writing up silly little ‘origin stories’ for my Champions Online characters. But since these are ‘Pages’ and not ‘Posts’ they aren’t going out on the RSS feed. I’ve linked to them in Twitter but figured if I did a WordPress ‘post’ then the RSS feed would pick them up. This is not a blog post!

Warning: I’m a blogger, not a fiction writer, and it shows.

The format of these pages is a little origin story, then some thoughts on what I’d doing with the character.

The best one is probably The Highwayman‘s page, since I ripped the fiction off from a famous poem. He was my first ‘live’ character and is the highest level so far (which isn’t very high…level 10). Mundane guns and mystical swords.

My next favorite I think is The Collective. Ever hear an author talk about how his or her characters “won’t behave” or take on a life of their own, seemingly out of control of what the author had planned? That’s what happened with The Collective for me. So now I have a glimpse into how these authors feel.

CanTANKerous was my attempt at filling a “trinity” roll, but CO doesn’t really have the tank/healer/dps trinity set up quite that clearly. You can make a character that fills one of those roles, but most characters are hybrids of some kind. Anyway, CanTANKerous had a long-ish origin story and is, I hope, an unlikely hero.

Last is Electric Blue Angel. Her story was an afterthought…I just wanted to make a character with flashy powers and birds wings, and I wanted to have at least one, and eventually a couple, of female characters in my stable.

You probably don’t want to read all of these, and you quite possibly won’t want to read any of them, but a few people who’ve read them have gotten a kick out of them so I figured I’d share; if you aren’t in Early Start and are chomping at the bit these might scratch that itch for you, at least a little.

Personally I’m having a blast with Champions Online so far, but in some ways it feels tailor made for me. Very alt friendly, huge character customization, both at creation and as you level (you can craft enhancements that unlock costume parts assuming you have the associated powers slotted). I’ve created 4 characters and they all feel and play differently, and I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of what is possible.

If you’re considering giving CO a try, disregard any opinions (good or bad) that are based on less than 5-7 hours of gameplay. The game that CO seems to be when you first launch it is very different from the game it actually is. I’m not saying you’ll like it — you might hate it. But it’d be a shame for you to miss out on a game you might enjoy because someone plays it for 2 hours and passes judgement as it being like all the other MMOs out there.

So yeah, I’m not yet able to let this go.

Since last night my irritation with the whole situation continues to grow. However I feel myself become less irritated with Cryptic, and more and more irritated with the blogging and forum-using community.

Here is the situation:

I spent $5 for a pre-order box at Best Buy. I took the box home. I created a Champions Online account. In the process of doing this, the web site popped up a “Take advantage of our Special Offer” interim page. The offer said I had to buy before Sept 1st, as this was a limited time offer. I clicked “Not now, thanks” feeling I’d like to at least sample the game before I made that decision, and in addition I saw no reason to fork over $200 ahead of time.

The Best Buy pre-order came with Early Access. I figured if the launch went well, I’d take advantage of the special offer comfortably in advance of the Sept. 1 deadline.

Following creating the account, I was sent an email, again soliciting me to take advantage of the special offer. It referred to the offer as “Limited.” This was moments after seeing it referred to as a limited time offer.

I assumed, since there was no physical component to this offer, that Limited referred to the Limited time.

Then, Monday night they announced, on their website, that they only had a limited quantity available. By the next morning they were gone. Monday night I was playing in the Open Beta Ending event; I never even saw the announcement until they were sold-out. I pause now to point out that they have a directed means of communicating with players: the launcher. We see that every time we start the game. They chose not to use that avenue to convey the “limited number” nature of the special deal.

I have since read that Cryptic announced that there were limited quantities of these deals in their forums. Have you been to their forums? They’re disgusting. No more disgusting than any other game’s forums, but I avoid gaming forums as much as possible since they are all vile places.

The fact remains that when Cryptic ‘pushed’ their marketing offers to me, they didn’t mention limited quantities. Just limited time. My bad for not accepting things at face value and digging through their forums in case they’d posted info there that they hadn’t bothered to ‘push’ to me.

OK, so that’s that.

I have a beef with Cryptic. I’m not saying they’re evil. I’m not hoping they go bankrupt. I don’t want Champions to fail and I’m not saying they’ve broken any laws. I personally disagree with the way they’ve handled the issue, and I would very much like for them to reconsider the decision to artificially limit what is a virtual product.

The only ‘leverage’ I have to work with is this blog (and let’s face it, Dragonchasers isn’t a force in the industry — if I get 10,000 visits a month I’m doing great) and my wallet.

So I’m doing the only thing I can do to dispute the decision: opting not to buy the game. And really, this is between me and Cryptic, as far as I’m concerned.

So what I don’t get, and what is really, really starting to annoy me, is people on the sidelines chiming in to take pot shots at me and other people in the same boat as I am. For the most part, this is happening in those wretched, vile forums (which I continue to monitor in case they do opt to re-open the offers.. apparently the forums are Cryptic’s primary way to communicate with their users), but there are bloggers jumping on the bandwagon too. (I’m still trying to puzzle out what Tipa meant by her comment “Did the game become less fun because of the ending of their pre-launch offer?” Was it a legit question? I’m honestly not sure if it was, but I accepted it as one, and answered her as honestly as I could in the comment section of her blog.

So my question is, if you weren’t interested in these special deals, or if you were interested and took advantage of them and are all set, then what is your interest in the situation? Why do you feel the need to snidely comment on something that has nothing to do with you? Does it just feel good rubbing salt in the wounds of people who are already frustrated to begin with? What do you, the bloggers and forum posters telling us we should have known better, or just “QQ more, crybaby,” hope to accomplish by your blog & forum posts?

I’ll reiterate what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m trying to convey to Cryptic that I feel strongly about their decision and have $250 that I’m ready to hand over to them if they decide to change their minds. If they don’t, I’m sure there are other developers who’ll be happy to sell me product.

Comments CLOSED on this post. I’m too angry to have a rational discussion about this topic at this point. (And yes, I realize how foolish it is to close topic on a post that I asked a question in…my questions were for the most part rhetorical.)

Early on, I scoffed at the idea of Cryptic offering a couple of special subscription offers (a Discounted 6 month sub, and a Lifetime sub) before the game released. All their marketing material said these were limited time offers that ended on Sept. 1st.

I scoffed, but I kept playing preview weekends and “open” beta, and found myself enjoying the game and slowly being sucked in. Finally I decided that I’d snag one of the two special offers, but I wasn’t sure which one. I had until Sept. 1st to decide, so there was no rush.

Last night, Cryptic posted a notice on their website shifting their story and saying now that “Supplies were limited.” By this morning, they were sold out. I didn’t see their site last night as I was busy taking part in the end of beta event. Nothing about this was in the launcher.

How can you sell out of a virtual product?

When I found out I’d missed out on these special deals, I was pretty upset. Had I known the offer was a limited time one, I would’ve purchased early. And I know now that I would’ve actually sprung for the Lifetime Sub. First of all, it comes with 8 extra character slots, and this was clearly a game I would’ve gone alt-crazy in. Second, it feels like the kind of game I’d play casually… a little bit at a time, over a long period, so a Lifetime Sub made sense for me (and I’d just earned a $200 bonus from a freelance job, coincidentally).

Anyway, now that this sweet offer has been dangled in front of my nose, then retracted, I find that I’m no longer interested in giving Cryptic any of my money.

Unless they decide to re-institute the offer. The one legit concern I can understand is that the special offers included entrance into the Star Trek Online beta, and I can see where they’d have to put a limit on those.

So maybe, hopefully, they’ll re-open the offers, just with the STO beta entry removed. I’d be fine with that.

I won’t delete the client, in the hopes that Cryptic does the right thing by their customers.

Poor Maynard. Born horribly deformed. His left hand has only two fingers, his left foot, two thick toes. A fleshy fin sprouts from his upper back and below that, a writhing tail with a arrowhead tip. And what’s under that mask? You don’t want to know.

His mother arrived on the steps of a small country church in the throes of labor. Why she sought out a church rather than a hospital would never be known, as she died giving birth to Maynard. Who (or what) his father is remains a mystery that will probably never be uncovered. The priest at the church, seeing the baby’s disfigurements, hid him from the members of his congregation. He told them the baby had been stillborn and that he was buried with his mother.

The old priest raised Maynard in secret. He educated the boy and was kindly towards him, but Maynard’s total seclusion heavily influenced his upbringing. He lived in the basement of the church, never able to walk in the sun, or to play with other children.

When he was ten years old, the priest took a spill. His head caught the corner of a table. The impact cracked his skull and he started to bleed heavily. Maynard had no idea how to cope. He tried to staunch the flow of blood and in the process became covered in it. Finally in desperation he ran from the church, screaming for help. Help came, but when the villagers saw a blood-smeared creature hovering over their beloved parish priest, they jumped to conclusions. They attacked Maynard, thinking they need to drive him away from the priest. He fled to his basement, where he was cornered.

And that was the first time his powers manifested. With no understanding of what they were or how to control them, his force lashed out, and several villagers were killed before Maynard broke free and fled into the night.

Maynard’s remorse over the incident twisted him further, but he has pledged to use his powers to try to do good in the world. To try in some small way to make up for the lives he took. And so he became an unlikely Champion, with his withered shoulders and sinewy tail. Shunned even in the diverse world of the Champions, Maynard follows a solitary path, fleeing from the demons of his past.

* * *

Eh, it’s a work in progress.

Maynard is a “Sorcerer” template character. The builder says his primary stats are Intelligence and Presence. Hmm. Presence helps reduce threat level. Intelligence reduces the energy cost of powers. Turns out the Sorcerer framework has some healing powers in it.

What I’ve taken to doing, at level 5, is heading to The Powerhouse and stripping my Champions of all their powers, then building them back up (it sounds like you won’t be able to do this for much longer, though). When you pick (ugh, I hate that I can’t remember the terminology) a Trait (I think — 0ne of the customizations that heavily impacts your base stats). Anyway, when you pick them in the Powerhouse you get a much better idea of what each stat does than you get just from rolling over the stats on your character sheet.

Since I mostly solo, Presence does very little for me, so I rebuilt Maynard with high Intelligence and Endurance. Endurance impacts max power points. During the tutorial, Maynard couldn’t fully power up his main attack because he didn’t have enough energy to do so, even when is bar was full. Hopefully the extra Endurance will help with that.

For his third power I took one of the Sigil powers. I expected this to be a kind of ‘belt’ of rotating doo-dads that did damage to attackers, but instead it throws out sigils in a rather large circle around him. So it’s more of a skill for when you’re going to stand in one place and fight. It reminds me of Shaman Totems in WoW, or healing Runekeeper Runes in LOTRO.

I didn’t get too much farther than the 1st tutorial and then Powerhouse. I spent a long time making this deformed Champion… Oh! And just to reinforce his creepy weirdness, I gave him tunneling as his travel power.

I have to correct two errors tonight.

The first one is mine. I said you could unlearn all your skills and powers at any point. Apparently that is not correct; I just never got high enough to where I had more than you’re able to unlearn. So sadly, at some point you’re stuck with powers you’ve been using for a while (you unlearn in reverse of the order you learned them in…think of it like ‘unstacking’ your powers).

The second correction is something I’ve heard as a criticism of CO: small zone sizes. In the screenshot below, I’m maybe one third of the way across the zone, looking back at where I started. The structure you see is Project Greenskin, the 2nd Tutorial Zone. Note how small it looks. These are not small zones. I think there were 150 people in this zone when I entered it.

Someone on my forums asked about targeting in Champions Online — how it worked. As strange a question as it seems, the answer is somewhat interesting (I think, anyway).

So how to target a mob? Well you can click on it, of course. Or hit whatever key you have bound to “Select Enemy” and toggle through mobs in the vicinity. But there are choices beyond that. You can set an option that will have you auto-target anything that attacks you (provided, of course, you have nothing currently targeted — this option won’t switch targets on you). You can set an option that lets you target a friend, and instead of attacking your friend, you’ll attack whatever he has targeted (kind of a dynamic assist). Or you can set an option where hitting an attack key will automatically target the nearest enemy. I can’t recall seeing that last option in any other MMORPG, but I may be wrong. The other options are common enough, but it’s nice to have them all available, and all optional, in Champions Online.

Now let’s talk types of skills. I’ve found four so far.

First is the Energy Builder. This is a rapid fire, low damage attack that builds up your character’s energy (used to perform other skills). You can choose how to access this skill. You can require a key to be held down constantly while it fires, or you can choose from two ‘toggle’ variations. In the first, the skill will continue to auto-fire until you turn it off; this is a great way to draw lots of aggro if you have the ‘auto-target’ option on. Or you can choose a toggle that gets canceled when you change targets. I suggest that last option. Your energy builder will continue to fire on your current target whenever you’re not using another skill — basically it’ll work like a default auto-attack in other games.

Next skill type is what I call a standard MMO skill. You hit a button, the skills sucks down some of your energy and fires off, then a cooldown timer starts and you have to wait to use the skill again.

Skill type three is the charge up. This kind of skill gets more powerful the longer you hold down its hotkey, and only fires when you let the key back up. There’s an onscreen meter that fills up to indicate how charged the skill is. I believe some of these skills have some extra effect if you charge them to the max. With a little practice you get a feeling of how much you have to charge a skill in order to kill off a wounded baddie, without wasting the time of over-charging it.

The last skill type is what I call the Charge Down. These skills start firing as soon as you press the hotkey, and will continue to fire as long as you hold it down, or until an onscreen meter empties (essentially the charge-up meter in reverse). If you manage to get off a full ‘clip’ you’ll get some bonus effect at the end of using the skill.

I’m no CO expert, so there may be more skill types I haven’t discovered yet.

Playing different characters that use different types of skills feels a lot, well, different, and I think it’ll give some legs to Champions Online in terms of alts (or re-speccing). This is even without looking at the “Power pools” and damage types of the specific skills.

I hope anyone who knows more about the game that I do will jump in and correct anything I get wrong in these posts!

Thanks to Zoso for pointing out to me I’d somehow skipped a drop-down and missed all the headwear in CO’s character creator. A trip to the Tailor and now Drifter is looking a lot more like the mutated Clint Eastwood he was supposed to be. Thanks Zoso!

Yesterday an acquaintance said on Twitter: “I’m pretty unimpressed with the graphics of CO. Jackets and other items look like crap. Only good costume is a sleek one.” (I’m not linking because this person has protected her updates.)

Y’know, she’s absolutely right. In the midst of having great fun making truly outlandish costumes for my Champions, I’d overlooked that the basics are so bad. Look at the Drifter pics in my last post. Look at how his pants drape around his shins. They look bloody awful. His shirt is totally nondescript and boring, too. There weren’t any ‘normal’ looking shirts — he’s wearing (iirc) a t-shirt with a ‘creased’ texture applied. No hats to speak of, either. Doh! Silly me, see comments for how badly I mangled this point.

Cryptic has done a great job with things like wings and other accessories, and if you’re making a spandex-clad Super you’re going to be fine. But if you’re trying to make someone more ‘normal’ looking, you’ll find your options are both limited and pretty bad.

I don’t know if Cryptic can fix this easily: my guess is that there’s more to it than just creating new art assets — there’re physics involved with cloth, after all. But I hope they can.

After all the nonsense of yesterday and this morning, I’m happy to report that the Champions Online “open” beta was performing much better tonight, at least for me and for friends on Twitter.

I was hoping to try an experiment. One of the neat features that CO has is the ability to save a character ‘template’ and then use it again, or even share it with friends. Normally for open beta I’d just create a total throw-away character, but since I figured I could save it, I opted to spend some time and try to create a champion I might re-use in beta (ultimately I failed, but that’s beside the point for the purposes of this experiment).

My idea was originally for a basically human cowboy-type hero. He’d use pistols as his energy builder/ranged attack, but then Ego melee weapons for his close range.

The character creator wouldn’t really stretch far enough to accommodate my vision, so the character morphed as I made him. I stuck with drab colors, but his ears and eyes got very alien, and his hands grew claws. His proportions are off, with huge forearms and calves, but thinner biceps and upper thighs. His nose is flat-ish. I wanted to give him a slight muzzle but couldn’t manage it. I wanted to give him a cowboy hat, too, but couldn’t find one. There was no duster, but there was a trenchcoat.

His name is Drifter and he’s deliberately ugly and is meant to be creepy. He looked creepy in the character creator but (as others have noted) characters never look as good in-game, sadly.

Anyway, I saved his template and was delighted to find that they save as a jpg!! Here it is:

In theory, if someone downloads this and sticks it in their screenshots folder, they ought to be able to load it in the character creator and make a clone of Drifter. Actually note that character isn’t quite complete. My ‘finishing touch’ of Drifter was to give him the Bestial attitude. I ended up deleting that version because running on all fourss he just looked silly. But here’s the full version, ready to launch, version, complete with running on all fours like a beast:

I’d love for someone to try this out; see if you can really load a character template from a jpg. I assume the data is really in the file name: that 303963158 number. But who knows? If anyone tries it, can you leave a comment and let me know if it worked? If so, I can see a cottage industry springing up around people doing character design for others (not me, obviously…I’d be a customer!)

Back to poor fugly Drifter. Here’s a couple reference shots, from the launcher. I spent so much time messing about in the character creator that I didn’t even get out of the tutorial area!

And this one is gamma corrected like mad so you can see what few details there are on the costume:

So Day 1 of Champions Online “open” beta was kind of a disaster. Patcher problems galore. I never did manage to get into the game. As I type this I’m d/ling a new iteration of the OB client from Fileplanet. My Closed Beta client wouldn’t patch, so I tried my pre-loaded Fileplanet Open Beta client. That wouldn’t patch. Then at 10:30 PM (or thereabouts) Cryptic finally offered some info and mentioned there was a new build on Fileplanet, so I’m going to try that. Note to Cryptic: 10:30 PM is too late to start issuing updates. You’ve got customers on the East Coast.

So on the one hand, this is what beta is for…to smooth out problems like this. On the other hand, launch is right around the corner, and getting into this (quite short) open beta was one of the perks of pre-ordering, and this is where a company can really shoot itself in the foot. Because they tied OB to pre-orders, they gave OB a fiscal value in the hearts of gamers, and so these gamers are rightfully irked that they can’t play. They are owed their open beta period.

Cryptic’s explanation of what happened doesn’t fill me with confidence, either. A few things contributed to the problems. First, they claim their game & account servers can handle 40,000 concurrent users, but apparently not their patch servers? Some players are currently experiencing issues where the Patcher can “freeze.” The main problem is we’re delivering a 400 MB patch to ~20,000 people simultaneously. Every time a patch rolls out (particularly in the first month) all those users (and for Cryptic’s sake I hope we’re talking about a good deal more than 20,000 players!) are going to be hitting those patch servers. They need to be able to hold up as well as the account servers; that seems like an obvious thing to overlook to me.

And then their web servers couldn’t handle the strain. How many times do we see this in MMO roll-outs? They always, ALWAYS seem to forget the web servers. Adding more web capacity isn’t rocket science and it isn’t really very expensive.

Lastly, the initial client being delivered by Fileplanet was borked. 3.6 gigs worth of files were in the wrong directory. How did this not get tested? Didn’t anyone d/l and install the client ahead of launch?

Yeah, it’s easy to stand on the sidelines and criticize. But hey, I’ve been on their side of things plenty of times, too. Just part of the job.

Cryptic can still get back on track. If everyone can play tomorrow, and if the actual launch is free of these issues, all will be quickly forgotten. But if this is a preview of launch day, they’re going to be flamed hard, and it won’t be much of a leap before Roper’s Hellgate: London fiasco starts being brought up.

Tuesday AM Update: So as I mentioned, I re-downloaded the client from Fileplanet last night. This was the client that didn’t have 3.6 gigs of files in the wrong directory. The client they updated yesterday evening. I started the patcher and went to bed. Why on earth did I need to patch a version of the client they’d *just* released? I can’t answer that.

This morning I found the patched had timed out. Overall progress: 0%. What little progress it had made before I hit the sack was lost.

So I ran it again. This was at 6:30 am ET, 3:30 am PT. 30 minutes later, it’s 4.9% of the way finished. This despite Cryptic’s assurance that the patcher logjam would clear up in “about 6 hours” (which would have been about 4:30 am et).

But what’s really annoying? They released yet ANOTHER version to Fileplanet, and this latest version is all patched up, according to another update at Champions-Online.com. Why on earth didn’t they put this version up when they ‘freshened’ the client last night!?

Now for all I know, they had a zip of the ‘fixed’ client laying around yesterday and uploading it to Fileplanet was quick and easy, but I still think that a better plan would have been to say “We’re going to prepare a fully patched version of the client and put it on Fileplanet, so we suggest you wait and download that.” This sequential refreshing of the Fileplanet client smells of panic to me.

So now I have a decision to make. Kill the patcher, and d/l the Fileplanet client for a 3rd time, or trust that the patcher will stay connected while I’m at work today, and finish up.

Update to the Tuesday AM update: So there’s a 3rd option: a stand alone patch. I downloaded that. Ran it. Started Champions Online. And guess what? It’s patching some more. So the stand alone patch to bypass the patcher issues still needs to use the patcher? But the good news is, *that* patching went very quickly (maybe it was just applying the files that were in the download). So in theory, Champions Online is finally ready to play.

So I am the ultimate authority on everything related to Champions Online, given that I beta tested for a whole 2-day preview weekend and got a Champion almost to cap (level 11). So *anything* you want to know… I’m your source.

I know my regular readers don’t need this disclaimer, but for the random passerby, the above was sarcasm.

Anyway, I got into a preview weekend a few weeks back and created 3 different characters, the highest getting to level 11. I have not really followed the game, or hung out on forums, or anything like that, but based on my weekend I did pre-order the game and am looking forward to playing more.

If I had to sum up the game, I’d say: City of Heroes 2.0. You can see a lot of CoH in the game, but of course the Champions RPG system changes things a lot (I assume…I’m also not familiar with the Champions RPG!). If you hated City of Heroes you’ll probably hate Champions Online. If you loved CoH but are ready for a variation on a theme, then boy, are you gonna be a happy camper.

Random tips for 1st time beta testers

Character Creation: I totally missed all the goodies on my first toon. There’re some tabs at the top of the character creation window that you have to click on to change your costume. By default you see the stuff to change the avatar model itself. The legs tab doesn’t show at all and you have to click a triangle that is supposed to be an arrow to find those.

I know I know, very obvious. But the first character I made, I missed that those tabs were clickable UI bits, and I’ve seen at least one other person claim there’s no way to change legs, because he missed the triangle-arrow thingie.

During character creation you’re going to pick 2 skills. One is a low-damage “energy builder” and the other is your first powerhouse attack (that uses the energy you’re going to build). Those two skills are going to be with you for the life of the character, but every other skill you take can be unlearned, so once you get leveling, experiment with abandon.

You get travel powers at level 5 (maybe an hour in). When you go into the training hall, choose your travel power *last* before leaving. Why? Because when you return to the training hall, you can unlearn the last thing you learned for free. So you can unlearn “Tunneling” and try “Rocket Boots”. By learning a travel power last, you can try several to find one you enjoy. Rocket Boots are the fastest and I warn you: it’s hard to use anything else once you’ve enjoyed the speed of Rocket Boots.

The early game reminds me of LOTRO beginnings, if you’ve played that. You first go through a small tutorial instance. Then you travel to one of two starter areas which are also instances, but that might not be immediately evident. Player population in these was really limited in closed beta (~25 people) and you can spend a decent amount of time there. So don’t get discouraged thinking “This is it? This isn’t an MMO!” Once you defeat the Foozle of the area you’re in, the walls come down, the zone opens up and you hit much larger population zones.

If you’re going to craft, DO pick a crafting profession and level it up in that 25-man instance. There’s a LOT of low level crafting mats in there, and once you head out into the big game world, finding enough materials to get your first 50 points or so of crafting becomes tedious.

So why’d I pre-order?

I really enjoy the character creation, same as I did with CoH. I am NOT one of the “I’m sick of questing, sick of levels” MMO player contingent. If you are, then you’re going to disappointed in Champions Online, as it is absolutely about questing and gaining levels. But there are no classes, and that’s one aspect I really enjoyed. Once your character is created, you can choose skills from any power pool, so you can really customize your character in interesting ways. That said, many skills have prerequisites that nudge you towards being a bit focused. So a Martial Arts Power might have a prerequisite of 2 Martial Arts Powers or 4 Powers (Pool unspecified). That means you can take it as Power #3 if your first two Powers were also in the Martial Arts tree, but it’ll have to be your 5th Power otherwise. So by sticking to 1 or 2 Power Pools you can get higher ‘level’ Powers earlier.

Knowing myself, I see me with a bunch of low-mid level characters with bizarre skill sets. I don’t think this will be an “Achiever” game at all for me. It’s going to be about creating strange superheroes and seeing how they play.

Which leads me to my biggest concern. As far as I can tell, there is just 1 “Server” (with every normal play zone instanced and allowing ~100 players inside) and you have X character slots (I don’t recall the number. 6, 7, or 8 I think) for your account. I can easily imagine running out of character slots, which is the one thing that makes the Lifetime membership intriguing (it comes with 8 additional slots).

Sorry this is so scattered and rambly… I didn’t prepare a post in advance and I’m bashing this out while eating lunch at work. Also why I have no art… screenies are all at home.

Having stayed up much too late playing CO last night, I’ve flip-flopped back to being excited about the game. Obviously the NDA is in place so I can’t say too much about it, but one of the things I do like (that has been talked about in previews) is that as you gain levels you can pick powers from any of the power-pools, which means your Champion can be really unique both in looks and skills. It just seems like the kind of game that will really cater to alt-aholics like myself.

So I’m thinking of pre-ordering. Trying to decide where from. It’s a complicated decision. Gamestop and Best Buy both give Early Access & $5 worth of points to spend on micro-transactions. Walmart gives $10 worth of points but no Early Access. Amazon gives $5 worth of points. Direct Drive and Steam give you the convenience of not having to deal with shipping.

Gamestop, Best Buy & Amazon give access to Open Beta starting on the 17th, Walmart and the digital distributions do not (though in my case, I have a File Planet Key that should cover that).

All but Walmart give different virtual items, but the descriptions are so vague that it’s hard to weight them against each other. Is an Insectoid Airfoil better than a Grond Vanity Pet? Who knows? Walmart skips the virtual items for a map and an iron-on t-shirt decal.

One thing I haven’t yet found out is, how long is this Early Access period? Is it 2 days? A week? Open Beta starts on the 17th and launch is Sept 1 (15 days later). I have to think Open Beta is at least going to span the following weekend, taking it to the 24th, so the max Early Access can be is a week. Realistically if it’s 4 days then we get the game a weekend earlier, which is mostly what matters to me.

Details on all these perks here.

But I ask you.. could they make it any more complicated?

And let’s look at that Lifetime Subscription again. I’m actually tempted, now that I’ve had a chance to see the game in action and see that it isn’t a total disaster. Why? Eight additional character slots. It seems like there are no discrete servers in CO, and so the 6? 7? 8? character slots are all you’re going to get, and as I said, this seems like a really alt-friendly game…just creating different looks and skill sets to mess about with. (Though if they’re smart, they’ll offer additional character slots as on of their RMT items.)

I think this is going to be a really “blogable” MMO, too. So much to discuss in terms of character builds and such. Looking forward to the NDA dropping!

Thanks to Massively giving away 1000 keys, I weaseled my way into the Champions Online Preview Weekend.

Sadly (well, in gaming terms) we have company this weekend so I’m not going to get a huge amount of time to play, and of course the NDA is in effect so I can’t say much anyway.

But I lamented on Twitter the other day that I was sick of posting negative rants here (like someone is holding a gun to my head, right?) so at least I will use this opportunity to say something positive.

So far, I haven’t found the skeletons I’d assumed were hiding in Cryptic’s closet, and suddenly I’m pretty excited about the game again.