Champions Online

[bluemeanie]

So I've NEVER played one of these MMORPG type games before. Never liked the idea of subscribing to play as I wouldnt want to find myself thinking "Well you've paid for it this month, you should get some more hours in"

Also I'm not overly sociable in my gaming... or generally really.

Any-hoo, a mate bought a Left4Dead bundle and gifted me a licence so while I was putting that on I saw Champions Online is now free. Literally free. Just go into Steam, download it and thats it. Apparently you can pay money for upgrades or additional character options but for casual monkeys like me I cant see my missing those.

Not played it yet, only finished downloading late last night, but definately going to be giving it a go. Hoping its on a par with Freedom Force. Even if its not it isnt costing me anything.

So anyone else played this or is thinking of? Any tips for an online game newbie? I genuinely dont have a clue how games like this work. Can I run around single player for a while and do lots on my own or do I need to find others straight away?

Oh... and before anyone says, yeah... looks like you can
http://imageshack.us/f/64/judgebedlam.jpg/

[Emp]

You can spend a lot of time doing your own thing. Higher lvls quests sometimes need a group to complete.

Generally you can get to the maximum level in the game without ever teaming up with people...just take a bit of time revisiting quests that were a little too hard a few days ago and you might miss out on some dedcent gear.

Champions had a novel twist to it in that you crated you own arch enemy and his minions would turn up to hassle you..(ususally at the worst possible time.)

I enjoyed it while it lasted...think i got the free 30 days out of it then maybe another month or to of subs before it started to become repetitive (mind you its more than i got out of Star Trek or DC online, cancelled them before the free trial ended.)

Enoy.

[bluemeanie]

Get the feeling I'm gonna spend a few hours tonight blissfully happy while I design my guy... then play the actual game for 10 minutes

Either way, looking forward to it. Been told the problem with a lot of these games is low subscription but apparently since this one went free its exploded... big surprise I know

cheers for the info

[Mardroid]

I tried downloading this the other day... then it turned out I don't have enough disk space.   I did look before hand, but the system requirements section was difficult to find. (I think I did it with a Search in the end.)

Apparently with the free version you're stuck with specific hero archetypes, (i.e, fire guy, wizard guy, muscle man, etc) so you've less options when designing a character. (I'd imagine you can still choose what options you want within that section when levelling up, etc.) For a free game, that's not bad though.

I've heard City of Heroes is going to be free too. Free to play that is, I think you'll still have to buy that one. I checked out a comparison online and Champions came out on top overall though, although I think it's a matter of taste (I.e some things are better than others.)

[bluemeanie]

Yeah... I've gone a bit Steam mad! Got Left4Dead 1 & 2 as they were cheap, this as it was free and now downloading Team Fortress 2 as thats free as well... and 10gb  :/

Wanted to get the GTA4 pack which is that and the two add ons as its only about £6 but the disk space it wants is mental!

Anyway, yeah... limited character types, only half available but still decent. My guy is a sword monkey so I REALLY cleverly opted for flight as the transport power so now he can hover over bad guys and uselessly wave his katanas at them.

Character design was loads of fun. Game itself is very cool so far and there's loads of other people running around which is pretty cool too. Obviously I'm at the very early stages and its introducing me to all the customisation I can do while giving me some "go punch these guys" missions.  Always wondered how missions worked on big multiplayer games so its been interesting seeing the scripted bits steering me within a big area of other players. Even spent half hour last night flying around over the park watching other players do the mission I had previously done but with different powers.

Cant fault it at all so far. Other than the fact its probably going to eat up all my free time for the next week or so at least

[ThryllSeekyr]

I brought/played this game over a year ago and stopped playing when my time ran out. I had about sixty days. Now I wonder if I can continue playing the same characters for free.

[Mardroid]

I brought/played this game over a year ago and stopped playing when my time ran out. I had about sixty days. Now I wonder if I can continue playing the same characters for free.

I did a similar thing with Guild Wars, and wonder the same. (It's always been free to play incidentally, but there's a free try-out for the game itself before buying.) Not everyone'd cup of tea, I'm sure, but I quite like fantasy so I quite enjoyed it. Not as much character selection as WoW, but again, free-play covers a lot.

[bluemeanie]

After MUCH faffing about I sussed out my first co-op with a mate today.
Took us a while to work out getting in the same "instance" etc and especially the headset deal but was loads of fun once we had. For some reason I found the fact his characters mouth moves when he speaks AWESOME

[Mardroid]

I had a look at the spec and it looks like it's a bit too much for my machine. I need an extra meg of ram for my laptop really. Even then they site 1.8 for a dual core processor and mine is 1.7. I suppose that might just work but it might be slow.

I might try it out when/if I upgrade my ram. We'll see.

[ThryllSeekyr]

Damn, I keep getting disconnected from the server when I choose one of my characters:(

[Noisybast]

Dowloaded this and gave it a spin. It's almost exactly the same as City of Heroes (not a bad thing per se, but I'm all COHed out).