Lacking anything new and fresh
And the speed - oh lordie - 8 Mbit/s instead of poor old 56K (or something). You could get grey hairs watching those stupid pages load. And all the flash and javascripts did make the suffering ever worse.
Aside from downloading certain big files and watching streamed movies - now was the time for playing games online! I had had (is that really right?) my eye on a certain little game to start out with - City Of Heroes. To be able to play a superhero was a dream come through for an old marvel-nerd as myself.
The gameplay proved to be simple and fun. I became hooked and have since played COH from time to time for about 5 years. But the best about COH was probably the easy way to communicate with others in-game and also the community around the game.
Now, when Champions Online came out I thought that now was the time to check out the new era of online superhero gaming. I decided to give good old COH to my dustbin (also my new ATI card did not like COH so whatever).
And if you played the original this is really easy to get into. Even the tutorial is an carbon copy, really. Sure it is a bit extended but could was the developers not able to come up with something a bit more fresh!?
And the main story is again that our precious world is facing an alien invasion. Nothing new here. But at least they are not called Rikti.
Gameplay is still simple and easy to grasp. Did not hurt that I had a little experience with the genre though. It is still heaps of fun to beat up stupid villains of different races and sizes. On that part Champs does it almost as good as it's older brother.
Graphics are now cell shading and it is nothing I mind, cause it make the whole thing look a bit more cartoonish.
Leveling up is also a ever present function in this kind of games. Every time you level up you get points to put on any of your 8 stats (strength, constitution, intellect and so on). You also choose new powers and also get points to - in different ways - improve them. Can be a little bit overwhelming at first but after some time it can be rather fun to play around with your stats.
One thing though. The more levels you gain the more different powers you can get your character. There are be a bunch of different classes based on how you want to play (long range blaster, in your face tank and so on). But the way you choose power in this game can get you to be anything in the end. A tank with powers to heal others or a mage that is an expert in close-up combat. The ways to create a character anyway you want it to be is fun at first, but for me it took something away.
I may be conservative in this matter, but I liked the old strict archetypes of old COH. When I tank was a tank and a healer was a healer. And then every individuals personal strength adds to the group as a whole (lol).
It was also easier, when building a team, to know what archetypes you get. If you want a healer or a blaster or whatever. At least I don't want to ask everyone what kind of build they have.
About building teams. This is the absolute downside to this game in my opinion. Interaction with others is for some reason way harder in Champs than before. And when you at last get to form your little band of supers (often not more than 3 or 4) it is mostly under constant silence you bat away at your opponents. I don't know, maybe everyone except me are using mics these days. There are almost no in group-message writing in this game.
In COH half of the fun was typing silly messages to each other. Sometimes the typing even took over the fighting and the game became more of a chat room. None of that fun here!
And were are all the supergroups? Surely after almost 2 years of Champs running there should be a myriad of them. In COH, if you are "supergroup-less" , you got several people asking you to join this and that like every time you log on. Sure it could be annoying after a while, but in champs I cant't even join a supergroup even if I wanted it, because there are almost no one drafting.
I don't know if it is my inconsistency playing this game. Because lack of interest I canceled my subscription several times and have to come on and of the game with several months appart and could not build up any relationships with anyone in-game. And if I did all those people seemed to tire of the game as well, cause them and their characters seemed to be vanished when I'm looking for them.
So Champions Online is great if you are the type of person who likes to play your online-game alone. But why play online then?
When you hit lvl 25 you get to create your personal nemesis. A rather innovated idea and one of the things that got me interested beforehand. You create your nemesis in a similar way you do your own character - choose he's/her,s appearance and powers and so on. Your nemesis will then level up like yourself and through the game you will encounter each other on several occasions. It is like your own personal in-game story.
It is fun at first but I find the clashes between my characters to be rather generic after a while. You get a message - your nemesis are wrecking havoc somewhere - go and defeat it. And all over again. It is just like any other quest, in the end. Go to the cave, defeat silly minions and then bash the nemesis for trying to blow up the whole world.
The generic quests was a problem in COH. It is a little better here (for example - more fighting out in the wild than crawling in caves and abandoned offices) - but in the end it is more of the same. And after a while it becomes dull.
I had high hopes for Champions Online, but in the end it was a let-down. I have given the game a couple of new chances but it just cannot keep me immersed.
It was, btw, the same story with Age Of Conan, for similar reasons. I don't know - maybe I have grown out of online gaming...
So so long, we probably won't be seeing each other again.