Champions Online: Beta Now Open to All

And you can check it out at FilePlanet:

http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/champions-online/beta/?_cmpid=fp191

See for yourself if the game is truly innovative, or simply City of Champions!

WoW: Cataclysm Expansion Confirmed

And the info is all here:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/cataclysm/

Woo!

And the Trailer:


I noticed that you could play a Goblin Priest, so guess who'll be switching up when the expac hits. Mwahahahaah! Little goblin on a fat kodo!

FFXIV: Updates from GameCom & Leaked Gameplay Footage!

Read it all here:

http://www.ffxivcore.com/index.php?/topic/424-ffxiv-at-gamescom-updated-all-the-time/

I'm totally jealous. Looks like they had a playable and polished version there.

And the vids? Sooo sekasi!!

Some leaked game play footage!

Aion: 1.5 Trailer From Games Con!

Where's my Aion Count Down Clock?

Champions Online: First Impressions

Let me begin by saying that it took me pretty much half of Monday to get the game working. Yes, the Patch servers were being hammered (it's expected in any game), so I don't hold that against Cryptic, but I do feel gypped that I had pre-loaded an unbeknownst to me broken ass copy of the game from FilePlanet like a good little lemming, only to find out I had to download another version. That was also broken. Slightly. Add into the mix that it took about three hours to download the final 200 KB of a 74 MB patch (it would restart itself at 99.6% over and over again), suffice to say I wasn't a happy camper.

But I, like many others, trudged on, after a good 12 hours, made it to a shitty loading screen with a giant flaming monkey on it.

Queue my internet crapping out on me.

Yay!

So, in rolls Tuesday and I finally begin to make my character.

Character Customization: As promised, Champions Online has an extensive Character Creation System. It's pretty awesome, down to adjusting just whether you want your left or right eye pupiless or what not, to the cool looking 'Mecha options for your Super Hero Gundam dude. But if you have ever played the CoX series, you will not be *that* impressed. For as many things they added to adjust, it seems that Cryptic also recycles as much from CoX which while annoying, is not a game breaker in anyway. Additionally, I found the face selection--even with the sliders--lacking, and that only by scrunching the crap out of my character's face (I had to use a Mood to trick it), could I make an Asian sort of character. Plus, I couldn't really give her anything but ho bag skin tight pants, which wasn't the look I was going for. On the other hand, there were more power sets to choose from, from Force to Sorcery to Gadgetry and more, so I ended picking up dual blading, just because it seemed to go with my whole generic Asian super hero concept.


Graphics: I wasn't that impressed with the game world that I saw, and I did have stuff jacked up to the highest setting that I could. The environment looked cardboardy and plain to me, but I think that's because you can't get that detailed when you can break most of the scenery (lamp posts, boxes, rubble etc). As for the character models, the faces really aren't that great, but the over all characters themselves, and the effects surrounding them look pretty nice, in a cell shaded way.


Gameplay: Once your character is made, you get thrown into a Tutorial area, just like in CoX. You begin with 2 skills, an energy builder, then a bigger attack you can only do if you have enough energy. That means that you're always attacking, and the more energy you have, the more you can chain in your bigger and stronger attacks, ultimately ending a mob's life with a huge finisher. Pretty simple, and very fast paced--no real standing around in this game. You also have a "block" button, because every so often, mobs will do a BAM! or some other cheesy Batman Comic Book SFX attack which does a ton of damage. You will get ample warning, not to mention this giant bubble above your enemy's head.

As you level, you get talent points to buy more abilities, improve your abilities, add stats and so on, so forth, and as you do improve your skills, they get flashier and flashier. Pretty sweet, though some of the skills kinda' suck, but I imagine, those are a work in progress. You also get a travel ability at level 6 (pretty fuckin' soon), ranging from the standard super jump, flying, and then, tunneling. Like a mole. Stupid looking yes, but it gets you there and safely.

Leveling: Questing is done through the standard kill, collect and FedEx quests. AND, if you've ever played WAR, a complete and utter rip off of the PQ (Public Quest) concept, except without the ability to win sweet lewtz. It seemed to go pretty fast though, leveling you up within a handful of quest turn ins.

Lewtz: Since your outfit is whatever you created in the Character Creator, there's no real "gear". What you instead get are items you "socket" into primary and secondary categories. These are 1X each of a Primary Offense, Defense and Utility socket, then 2x each of a Secondary Offense, Defense and Utility. And example item would be, Wand of Magic Missile, Primary Offense, +10 Nerdiness +5 Geekiness +1.5 Spell Damage. A secondary version of this would be weaker.

PVP: Can't write much about this as I don't know how the PVP is first hand (the days I was playing, the queue was broken, but from what I read, it's not a huge part of the game). There is a camp of those who have tried it say it's super (no pun intended) fun...while the another group blames it for causing a bunch of unnecessary nurfs to their PVE power sets and hate it. I'd like to try it later on this week before the end of Open Beta to make a decision for myself, but I'm thinking big ranged boomers will dominate over charge-less melee types like myself.

Miscellany: WTB new voice actor for Witchcraft. Oh, and you can't play a villain, which is much much MUCH more fun. And probably reserved for an expansion of some sort. (Maybe you get to play as your Nemesis in the future? Hmmm?)

Overall: I played CoV for quite a bit a few years ago. I loved my Mastermind, and I loved seeing the goodie goodie two shoes Super Heroes get beat the fuck up--unfortunately, after a little while, for a hard core gamer like me, there's only so many times you can beat the same Super Heroes the fuck up, so I moved on. And CO, unfortunately, gives me the same feeling. Don't get me wrong, the game itself is quite a bit of fun...as in a burst of fun. But will it have long term potential? (By which I mean, longer than it takes to create your character?)

The other thing that I've been alluding to, is that Champions Online is nothing really new. If they said CO was the new expansion for CoX, I wouldn't blink. I bet if you got someone to play COX and told them it was CO, they wouldn't blink. Heck, even the names, CO and CoX are similar. The gameplay and ideas are just not that new to me. That being said, if you haven't played the CoX series in the past, you'll probably appreciate CO much much more than me. As for whether or not it will make you want to plunk down money for the game, a sub AND THEN possibly the in-game shop too...is a whole other can of worms.

And I happen to hate worms.

But still a week to go before the end of Beta. Maybe Cryptic will find a way to WoW me. ;) Or maybe WoW will WoW me again with some seksi reports from BlizzCon.

Champions Offline: The Patcher Boss Strikes!

I've had this downloaded for almost a week now and boy, was that a mistake. I guess Cryptic decided to release a different version of the download half an hour before the game went beta live and screwed the diligent folks. Silly me for thinking ahead.

And if you decided to download late, don't worry, the Patcher is fucked up too, so if it even starts up for you, you're in for a treat.

But first, a fix for anyone is in the same fail boat as me:

Patcher fix. has worked for me!!

---

Ok to much dismay and typical mmo release fashion.. champions online launch was far from flawless.. anyone who downloaded the fileplanet pre release before, you're slightly luckier then anyone who didnt.

Basically 2 weeks ago they released a pre launch was about 1.8gb to download and unlocked today, today they sent another prerelease version to fileplanet which is 1.9gb to download and was uploaded and hosted pretty much 5min before the game went live for open beta... if u did download the old version, you need to download the new version too, if u didnt download the old version, u have to download both versions to get the game to work with minimal frustration.

basically you have to install the old version first, then run the launcher, cancel it straight away and go into your game folder. in the folder

C:\Program Files (x86)\Cryptic Studios\Champions Online\Live

or wherever you installed it to, you will see a heap of .hogg files, you need to cut these and paste them in the directory below overwritting the old files

C:\Program Files (x86)\Cryptic Studios\Champions Online\Live\piggs

you will notice not all of the files will be overwritten (as in, they may have been left out of the release, who knows it's a mix up either way i'm guessing) and if you attempt to patch now, there is another 985mb waiting for you. at this point what you need todo is install the newer version of the beta client over the already installed game

go back into the

C:\Program Files (x86)\Cryptic Studios\Champions Online\Live

folder and you will see those .hogg files in there again, cut and paste them into the same folder as before overwritting whatever isnt already there and then you should be good to start the patcher and find you only have to patch about 78mb which ill pause at regular intervals causing you to close and reopen the client untill it's completely updates and playable

I had to repeat this process twice because I soon found that the last step just ruined everything I had previously done for me. So just ignore it; do not go copy pastaing if you don't see any files, just run the patcher after you install the new copy of Champions.

Now let's talk about patching shall we? I kid you not, I only had 74 MB to download, but it's been about, ohhh, 3 hours now and I'm only at 35 downloaded. Again. Yes, since the patcher randomly decides to STOP THE FUCK UP AND NOT DOWNLOAD WITHOUT WARNING ERASING ALL YOUR PREVIOUS PROGRESS, you have to be on the ball and keep closing it, and reopening it again until it decides to load everything up. Trust me, this is HOURS of fun. Better than having to watch "Legally Blondes" or the fuckin' "Hannah Montana" movie.

So in the meanwhile, I've been reading all the Open Beta reviews that have been showing up, and WOW, there are a shit ton of bad ones. I asked my friend who skipped work and managed to get his game going in 7 hours as opposed to my 12, how it was, and he said, "If you like CoX, then you'll like Champions. You'll spend hours on the character creation alone."

And so I sit here, leveling my lowbie Warrior in hopes that maybe, sometime tonight, I'll get a glimpse at all the shit I'm missing. :(

AOC: Your Account Has Been Frozen

Dear Age of Conan customer,

We are sending you this mail to notify you that the subscription period for your account XXXXXXXXX ended on August 09, 2009.

Once you are ready to continue your adventures, please log in to https://register.ageofconan.com to reactivate your account. Your friends and enemies in Hyboria await you.

We wish to thank you very much for spending time with us and we hope to see you again soon.

And my love affair with "Age of Conan" is finally over.

Again.

I had really hoped that things had changed for the better. As I wrote when I first came back to Hyboria, Funcom did a great job fixing all little problems with loading, zoning and questing that caused super nerd rage on the forums when the game was first released. But once again, these are things that should have been there in the first place, not a year later. Sure, they added one area, and as pretty as it is, it's just too little too late. I couldn't bring myself to continue leveling--I had no drive, because even the "fixed" gear, was still kinda' off. (And ugly as sin.) My ToS didn't even have any new fatalities. Even worse, no new dances! BOO!

And try as I might to find a raid, I couldn't find anything going, much less a mini-game to get into. I sat in queue for about an hour and nothing but the same guy screaming over Global to get more 80s to sign up. The game felt so deserted from how it I remember it when I first played.

So will I be going back when the expansion is released? Absolutely not. Not unless it's for free, just to see what they've done. And even if it were free, I just don't know. Funcom broke my heart with AoC the first go around, and it broke it again when I went back.