I want to like the game, but a lot of things mentioned above plus the teaming system’s brokenness really hampers that.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know how much of my feelings about Champions Online is due to my love of the original IP, my shear joy that comes from playing a Superhero MMO, or what. But I keep wanting to see the good in CO. It has succeeded at a great many of it’s promises. It IS a darn good rendition of the Champions IP into a MMO existance. This existance WORKS for this IP. And that is a good thing.

And then there’s the overall ‘feel’ of the game play. It comes across very high energy, and high action. It also comes across like it’s taking the core of all that makes Blizzard’s WoW work. For example, the average player, early on in the game, will be picking up quests left and right to do, such that he starts to have to pick and choose what to do, and a lot of the quests are interwoven such that while you are working on a Defeat Named Mob B, you have collected all the items from your Collect X Items quest, and likely defeated all the mobs for your Defeat X MobAs quest. Until you reach around level 12 or 14 (at the speed of things right after launch, anyways) you always have things to do and you are always coming across more people with ‘!’ above their head ready to give you more to do.

Of course, then you come to a screeching stall as you try to find what to do at level 13 other than go visit your crafting stores in the City. All the while traveling through areas with mobs that are at least 2 levels above you, and maybe more. And if you try to find something to do at your level in Canada or the Desert, you find that everything outside that area you just finished appears to be level 20 or worse.

And all this is especially hard if you managed to miss taking a passive defensive power, as you spend a lot of your time hugging dirt. So yes, I would say that there is power balance and content issues. But no worse than any other MMO I’ve played in it’s first couple of months after launch.

Part of my personal problem (and one that keeps my wife away from the game) has been mentioned in the comments, above… random ‘travel agro’. You’ve picked a non-flight travel power and it seems that EVERY mob in creation between the quest giver and the area that the wonderful green (or orange) circle shows seems to want to swarm you as if you were carrying the football in the superbowl and they the opposing team. And since ALL attacks always hit in CO, and BEING hit turns off the fastest level speed of your travel power like they are all shooting glue guns at you, you DON’T get where you are going very fast. (Yes, I took acrobatics, not flight. I LOVE CO’s Acrobatics… but I wish I had taken flight no matter how out of character it is.)

My wife had it worse. We choose Canada as the starting area. And the Open Quest for that area is smack dab in the middle of the BASE such that friends turn into zombies and start chewing and attacking everyone in the area… most likely that newbie just trying to get to the Powerhouse door to get his travel power, or that newbie rising up in the resurrection circle because some other zombie was too much for them. AND all of them love agro’ing on ANYONE nearby, even if they never even looked their way.

NOT a good newbie experience there. Yes, the open quests are good. But what gave them the idea to have one in the middle of a presumed ’safe’ area like the Powerhouse entrance??!

Anyways. Last thing then I will quit boring my readers… maybe:

The biggest problem I have with Champions Online is that places where you can pause and catch your breath or leave your character standing there while you hit the loo, are few and far between. When you are playing PvE in Champions Online, things are always HAPPENING. They don’t stop because you have to. This is a ACTION game. You pull or jump into one group of mobs out in the world, it is VERY likely that during your fight, even purely solo, some other mob is going to come along and get on your case. And if one runs away from you, he’s going to come back with friends. Lots of them.

I get so stressed out, sometimes, playing CO that I have to just find myself into someplace safe (like the INSIDE of the powerhouse) and log out… go do something else. Maybe play some facebook game or something. Games are supposed to be fun and relaxing… but with Champions Online, if I want to play, I have to be ready to give it 95-100% of my attention, and be ‘on’. Not even time to properly type for a little superhero roleplaying and emoting. No time for witty banter while fighting. Sorry, too busy. And team up with others?!? Hell No!, that would just make it WORSE and demand 110% of my attention.

I -want- to like Champions Online. I am a ‘Lifetime’ subscriber. I love the IP. I love the graphics. I want to play. But the game keeps pushing me away. I’m going to stick with it, but it’s sure not taking me away from City of Heroes any time soon.

The zones are dead folks. It’s hard to find a few thousand people logged into the servers at peak.

This game is over before it began because of dumb policies from people who didn’t learn from previous bad policies they have made. I just hope that my lifetime subscription will carry over to the Star Trek game, because if it doesn’t there is going to be hell to pay.

Also, it is astonishingly easy to pick useless “defensive” powers. The archery power that lets you somersault backwards three times looks cool. And it says “Buffs your avoidance by 10%!” on the text. Seems useful, right? Well no, not if you’ve played long enough to know how avoidance works. But that’s a power the game prompts you to take at level 5. Just one of scores of examples of useless crap you can take on accident.

I actually think that most players will be completely thrown off by something else: the need to take powers outside of your “class”. Coming from a WoW background I assumed that my Telekinesis “class” would be where I should take all of my abilities, unless I wanted to be some sort of gimpy dual-class. THAT is the assumption WoW players bring to the game, and it gets them killed.

1) First off its not obvious that you need to take a defensive
2) Offensive Passives are not balanced at the moment.

The game is good, but you need to think a little bit ahead on all things. I am at level 19 at the monent, but I have picked all the powers I am going to take and in what order. I can’t even get Telekenisis working well, so I really don’t understand where all the negative stuff is coming from in this review. There are faults, like content gaps and a few quests are a bit buggy at times, but it’s nowhere NEAR as bad as is being made out here.

Since they didn’t SAY they intended to obsolete the death penalty, I’m guessing this is something they overlooked, and the price for donations will go way up again soonish.