Our Champions Online Preview: A Super-Gorgeous MMO

If you were interested in Champions Online, then be sure to check out Chris "Pwyff" Tom's preview of this graphically packed MMORPG!

Have you ever wanted to play as an amphibian samurai with butterfly wings in an MMORPG setting? No? Well, too bad, because that's exactly what I did in my latest Champions Online Closed Beta Preview. Not only that, but this has been one of the first games to truly dazzle me with their artistic development and incredibly expansive character development system.

Announced to be released on September 1st, 2009, Champions Online will be the second super-hero MMORPG to hit the markets since the recently updated City of Heroes. Now, I have to admit at this point that I've never really been a comic-book guy - in fact, I would say that I'm only really 'aware' of Hollywood reincarnations, like Batman, Iron Man, X-Men and Watchmen. When I first set foot into Champions Online's massive universe, however, those initial uneasy feelings of not being the 'target demographic' quickly disappeared as I got to experience this fun, energetic super-hero MMORPG.

Before you even begin your adventures in Millennium City, Champions Online allows all of their players to create a loose archetype for a customizable starter character, and then spend the next four hours sampling their massive character creator to make the aesthetically perfect super-hero. If you've been taking notes up to this point, you'll recall that I went down the path of a Samurai with butterfly wings and a frog's head. As a tactical choice to gain the advantage of surprise, I decided to make this Toad-Samurai a gun user and, therefore, he will never draw his samurai blades. Clever, I know. Either way, realize that this amphibian is only one choice of (literally) millions of combinations customizable parts that come together to form your super-hero. Because the CO team currently limits the duration of play tests to two days out of the week, I knew that I had limited time to sample this world, but I could literally spend half a day (and I almost did!) just making random characters in the game.

Setting foot within Millennium City, it's easy to see that the team spent a lot of time developing those first few levels of your playing experience. Players are thrown into a city in chaos and under siege by alien insects, and it's up to your wickedly designed hero to wrest it back. I have to say here that of all of the MMORPGs I've played over the years, Champions Online has, hands down, some of the most stunning graphics I've seen in an MMORPG. The team decided to go for a cel-shaded comic book style with this game, and let me tell you, it works. The game is loaded with graphical goodies, and I don't think I'll ever be happier with the aesthetics of my Samurai-Gun-Toad than I am in Champions Online.

As for content to place within this beautiful world, sadly, I'll have to note that while the game occasionally throws out a unique mission here and there, the first real 'quest' of the game involves killing three gastropods. Yay. On the other hand, combat in Champions Online is a nice deviation from your average MMORPG. In combat, players can 'charge' their attacks to make them do more damage, or gain extra utility in their execution. Not only this, but the game utilizes a form of 'endurance,' that goes up as players use light damage 'charging' moves, and is then expended when the player uses a heavy damage 'draining' move. Think of it like the Warrior's 'Rage' system in World of Warcraft, or the Warpriest / Disciple of Khaine in Warhammer Online. Interestingly, the game only allows players the ability to use seven abilities in any given scenario. Players can switch between three 'roles,' each with a customizable ability toolbar of 7 abilities. This effectively gives players a total of 21 powers to use when switching between one of their three stances, although switching stances comes with a yet to be determined cooldown. What this effectively does is allows players to break out of the one-character one-role cliché, and it doesn't clutter up combat with 50+ skills.

On the technical side of things, and remember, this is where the team can really make some big changes, I did notice that the UI was terribly clunky and that abilities are fairly unexplained in the first few moments of playing the game. I consider myself a veteran of MMORPG game play, and I'm not quite sure if someone much less 'MMO-savvy' than me will be able to figure out their abilities or UI.

All in all, Champions Online is shaping up to be a solid MMORPG, even if it is in beta, and for anyone interested in non-stop action and incredible character development depth, I'd highly suggest this beautiful MMORPG. Keep an eye out for the Incredible Ooglar - the greatest Toad to ever walk the land!

Chris "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
ZAM.com

Comments

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my 2cents
# May 21 2009 at 5:35 PM Rating: Decent
lets say the screenshots are the "cream of the crop" of the look (who wouldn't release the best screenshots they can). Even at 1/2 that detail this game is going to looks rad! The cell shading is amazing. In the first screenshot I saw (http://www.zam.com/Im/image/gallery/128915) I can see the flying chick looks like she is wearing metal while the pink caster looks to be wearing cloth... Bravo on not only designs and shapes, but textures!

I too and a bit concerned about only having a few skills (at a time) But, it is in beta and I want to see how thing pan out between now and release.

Tamat, thanks for the comments on the playability!

Kudane

Edited, May 21st 2009 9:36pm by Kudane
Spin much?
# May 20 2009 at 4:42 PM Rating: Default
Quote:
Interestingly, the game only allows players the ability to use seven abilities in any given scenario. Players can switch between three 'roles,' each with a customizable ability toolbar of 7 abilities. This effectively gives players a total of 21 powers to use when switching between one of their three stances, although switching stances comes with a yet to be determined cooldown. What this effectively does is allows players to break out of the one-character one-role cliché, and it doesn't clutter up combat with 50+ skills.



Only 7 powers?! There are other ways to "break out of the one-character one-role cliche'" than limiting the player and the game. And "it doesn't clutter up combat with 50+ skills."? Holy crap. Is that the best way you could think of to spin it? Really needed an exclusive, eh? Don't worry, you warp enough morals and you'll eventually get there.



In a completely unrelated matter... you know what I'd like? A game that doesn't have 50+ skills cluttering it up. Man, I'm so SICK AND TIRED of games having STUFF in them. I hate STUFF in my games. Why doesn't anyone make a 20 million dollar budgetted version of space invaders?!!!!!??!?!!! That didn't have much STUFF at all.





...morons.
Spin much?
# May 21 2009 at 2:01 PM Rating: Excellent
The average healing spells cast by a Restoration Druid in high-end PVE:

Lifebloom
Rejuvenation
Regeneration
Swiftmend
Nature's Swiftness (3 minute CD)
Innervation (6 minute CD)

Then you've got the pre-fight casted spells that are never touched during the fight.

Tree Form
Mark of the Wild
Thorns
Battle Res

That's 6 skills used constantly during battle, with 2 of those skills used once or twice per battle. That leaves 4 abilities spammed.

Or hey, I can give you two better ones:

Or maybe the average DPS cycle of a super DPS Enhancement Shaman with infinite mana (...):

- Stormstrike
- Lightning Bolt
- Earth Shock
- Water Shield
- Windfury Totem / Grace of Air Totem / Tranquil Air Totem (just like in Champions Online, you change your skill-set based on the party you're in and the combat you're doing)
- Strength of Earth Totem
- MP/HP Regen Water Totem (I forget the name now)

That's 7 total abilities. The real 'skill' of a true Enhancement Shaman in TBC came from staggering your totems so that you only had to burn one GCD every minute to refresh one totem, keeping your aggro below the tank (EnhShams have crappy threat mitigation), and making sure your Windfury hidden cooldown doesn't proc before Stormstrike.

---

The average damage cycle of a BM Hunter in PvE:

The Beast Within - Aimed Shot until BW up.

To be honest, if you have too many skills, it gets ridiculously complicated to try to play. Games based on movement and the mastering of key abilities is where you really want to go. Take DotA for example - if you heard that this game was always played on the same map, with only 3 stat types and 3 abilities per hero, would you think it's a complicated game?

Indeed!
Spin much?
# May 26 2009 at 6:36 PM Rating: Default
Well, I wasn't going to comment to this. I think anyone would be able to see the BS, or idiocy (whichever it truely is...) for themselves easily enough.


But I've got nothing to do right now, so I will. Not that anyone even cares about this article anymore.

But you forgot about various macro's, both for combat and noncombat. For the druid, if you've ever played one, you'd know that you still want easy, quick, permenant access to moonfire, starfire and wrath (it gets kinda boring with just those other few abilities, need to mix it up a bit without being stuck in some dumb "build timer." Also, you missed the druids big heal... and its regrowth not regen, but that's not important... So druids are 3 hots, a big heal, 3 attacks (for fun), natures swiftness and swiftmend... oh, and hey, forgot cure poison and cure disease. And the new rezz (not battle rez, normal..) and of course *battle* rezz doesn't really fit in "pre-fight" now does it? So, what are we at now, 12? 13 if you count the out of combat rezz. 15 with buffs. And we haven't even touched macro's/binds/etc.


Your assessment of DPS shammies is just, well, frightening. I hope you don't actually play like that...



And, to make it all worse, at the end of the day we're comparing CO's complexity with that of WoW's. WoW's! And CO is losing. As much fun as WoW is, it's still an easy simple game. And CO is even simpler. That's deffinately doesn't sound like a good thing to me. But then I have a couple brain cells which still work. So maybe I'm just not quite as low as CO's common denominator.
o
# May 20 2009 at 1:28 PM Rating: Decent
For all the dazzle, is it a big system hog? Does it look like crap with details scaled down?
o
# May 20 2009 at 7:18 PM Rating: Excellent
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1,577 posts
I can't comment much because of the Non Disclosure Agreement, but I can say that the graphics are unique in that they look good no matter what the settings are at. I have a decent computer and run the game almost flawlessly.
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Fly High Daevas,
Tamat ~ Andrew Beegle
Community Manager
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