Champions Online: Superheroes Required…

This is just a quick post about the latest goings on with the industries latest big fanfare release, its not a full review and more of an overview of how the game launched.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the world of superheroes. Champions online finally launched a few weeks with the usual fanfare and crap that surrounds the launch of a new MMO and it was especially prevalent and important to people like me because of the run up to this point. Some of you may have read my dislike of the game due to the fact they charge a subscription fee, and have an item mall where you can buy items that make a difference, as well as the usual fluff crap. I was wondering exactly how bumpy the game would release, would there be sudden bugs, would the servers cope or would it steam ahead like the smooth action of a Japanese train flying across the country side.

Strangely enough and almost against my wishes, the final option was infact the one that held true, the game launched as smoothly as our friendly train, carefully monitored by the developers who had worked to tweak the tracks and train before launch using the good old beta to get everything crisp and clean like a new £20 note from a Halifax bank machine. In the whole time there was only one small hiccup, which was the fact Cryptic basically build the tracks straight into the side of a mountain and had built the train without brakes or reverse.

Everything going well, someone internally decided that this shit was not going to fly, they already alienated some people with their greed tactics and several revenue streams (anyone that throws the fact server transfers etc are offered on other games can piss off, cos you cant buy any kind of win on WoW or Lineage 2 etc). Unhappy that only a small proportion of people, whom most claim would never have played anyway were unhappy, cryptic quickly moved to recruit terrorists to take their game down quickly and efficiently, with a badass series of nerfs to players and buffs to mobs to render the game fucked up. The superhero game where players had previously and admittedly been overpowered, was quickly shot into oblivion with the majority now extremely pissed that they were no longer super heroes, but fodder for the piss weak mobs in the game.

Now to be fair, some of the issues were down to player error when they made bad choices in terms of gear, powers and so on. Thankfully you can roll back changes like a talent reset, and thankfully for me and others who were enjoying the warming flames of the burning train, cryptic still had a tank of petrol up their sleeves for the survivors…delicious. The talent changes they had in were insanely expensive, because they had limited the amount of gold (resources LOL) available to limit possible dupe issues and such. This meant nobody could reset their characters at all, and finally result in some people whinging that it will be available for a cost in the item mall soon. Probably just angry outburst but god I loved reading them. Cryptic finally provided a full free reset for people a week later, which is awesome cos im pretty sure a fair amount of people will have rage quit, and in between then and the time it takes them to sort this bullshit out, Aion will launch, and from my own experience it IS balanced, it IS running like a dream, and as long as this carries over to launch its going to be one of the most flawless releases since WoW.

Looking at the bigger picture overall, you have to wonder what sort of dickweed is in charge of Cryptic Studio’s because they cornered the market with City of Heroes, and took it one step further with City of Villains and worked it from there. A market that they basically controlled and they have decided to go out and compete against themselves, the game isn’t even a real successor and it seems they are a bit fucking moronic overall, but im sure theres a legion of diehard followers out there that will buy anything.

Ill finish by clarifying the title of this entry, by allowing you to choose the ending with whichever you see fit:

1. Champions Online: Superheroes required…to clean up the developers self made trainwreck launch
2. Champions Online: Superheroes required…cos seriously the game needs to get them back in or its in the wrong genre
3. Champions Online: Superheroes required…BRING MONEY COS WE ALL KNOW SUPERMAN BUYS HIS POWERS FOR IRL CASH