Champions Online Trial Weekend

Champions Online had a free to play weekend a few weeks ago, and I’ joined the heroic fun to see what it is like.

Right out of the box download this game is made for comic fans.

The character creation (much raved about by folks online) lives up to its reputation, and the selection of powers is staggering. No 6-9 classes here, you want it, you can create it. I honestly had no idea on a character concept before I started, which made the choices even harder. If anything the 15 or so default power sets make the choice so varied, you’re not stuck for choice, as you have huge freedoms.

The “random hero costume” option has yet to show anything which was not totally strange (and I mean friggin bizzare). Shark head with cybernetic legs and zombie feet? OK. I’ll called him Robo-Zombie-Jaws, or RoZoJaw. Uh. That said it was also hard to not think of toons that are straight from comics themselves. I made a sniper, a robotic tank, and an ice-blaster.

Awesome news for tweakers and power gamers – this is a must try game. I guess a goal I had was to know what the “end-game” content and experiences are like, but trialing from level one will never do that.

So after a very short weekend I think had wow not already have my regular income, and the patch not hit recently; I’d be playing Champions. But keeping closer to the curve in wow is more appealing to me that starting again in Champions.

Expansion news is distracting

All the damn expasnion news is distracting, and especially irritating as I can’t play at the moment. I can say that “I told you so” about all these guild changes. I knew it was a tad obvious, and if wow is going to stay ahead of the new MMORPG curve, then need more stuff like this. Need more shiny stuff. And I suspect they’re slamming the news at the moment to take momentum away from Aion and Champions Online. Good luck Blizzard, I know at least 10 people who have left wow and are trying either game.

The player base in World of Warcraft is getting tired and wanting new games. Good on them. It makes total sense to me that people would want to not play the same game 2-3 nights a week for several years. Even if people end up playing the same amount of time, the change is healthy.

I’m not sure either of Champions or Aion has longevity to shutdown WoW for good though. Both games don’t have a lot of content as yet (from the blogs and reviews I’ve read – pure speculation). That means that folks might try, play, enjoy these new games, and return to WoW later. Its not like wearing epics will hurt the leveling process from 80-85.

That said – I saw the character creation screens of Aion on Tuesday and the options are off the scale. So are the pc system requiremements, so that game won’t see me any time soon, unless I find an awesome laptop in a trash compactor somewhere (I wonder how many you’d have to dig through?).