Grab Bag

Today was an oddly busy news day for a Friday.

Champions Online

I’ve been wondering for weeks now if Poz was still running the Champions Team over at Cryptic. He hadn’t posted on the forums in weeks and the level of communication from the team had really deteriorated. So, I wasn’t surprised by this announcement that Poz hitting the pause button. The thing that’s odd about the news is it’s half written like Poz is on vacation and half like he’s left the company. Rob Overmeyer is taking over, which is also not a surprise since he did the excellent follow-up Ask Cryptic for April.

Besides the (possibly temporary) change in management, Cryptic also posted a new Costumes and Concepts page. The Champions team is going to use this page to give players a peak at upcoming costume designs and get feedback. I really like this idea and hope they keep it up to date. Costumes are a major part of the superhero genre, and the more Cryptic can add to the game the better. Plus. it opens more lines of communication between the development team and the players, and I’m all for increased communication.

Star Trek Online

The other half of Cryptic’s been busy too.

The Breen Featured Episode rerun is underway and offers players who missed out the first time a chance to get the Breen Bridge Officer. The team’s also added a new equipment set, so player’s who’ve already been through the FE have some incentive to go back. I really like the idea of reruns while we’re waiting on Season 4 to come out, of course I’d like new FE’s better but this will help pass the time a bit.

Besides the reruns, Cryptic released a massive Ask Cryptic for May. Fifty good questions and nice detailed answers by Executive Producer Dan Stahl. Here’s some of the highlights, although you should still go read it yourself:

  • Some big new Borg-related coming, including a revamp similar to what the Romulans got.
  • Rare particle traces are getting their own icons. I know this sounds minor, but when I return to Spacedock and I have a row of rare traces in my inventory, it is so slow to hover over each to figure out which one stacks where.
  • Season 5 will focus on End Game and Fleets.
  • Featured Episode series 4 doesn’t have a release date yet. Stahl is talking like they want to make sure they’re setup for a consistent FE schedule with two weeks between each before series 4 comes out.
  • Despite the possible delay in FE4, Dan said, “The next”content release may not be a feature episode, but something bigger.” So maybe we’ll may see some type of expansion similar to the Season 2: Ancient Enemies?

One other thing I wanted to mention. It feels like the team has a big content change coming related to the Borg. Stahl mentioned that they were getting a graphical and mechanic overall like the Romulans got in FE3. He also mentioned that the Undine would be back but not before the Borg “make their move” which he hinted could happen before FE4. Lastly, Stahl answered a question about the Gorn Rebellion by mentioning it depends on whether or not their homeworld get’s assimilated.

I also feel like I should mention that Cryptic announced the winning design for the Enterprise-F. Apparently there was some voting done by the community a while back and the fan-favorite isn’t even on the Runners Up list. This of course has resulted in a fifty (when I wrote this) page thread full of nerd rage, trolling, and pleas for sanity. I don’t recommend reading them, except to check out Stahl’s follow up posts here, here, and here. Personally, I like the winning design more than the one some of the community is upset about.

Rift

Finally, I wanted to highlight a post on the forums by Producer Scott Hartsman regarding character names on RP servers. I generally don’t look at the Rift forums outside of the dev tracker, so I’m not informed at all on the “excitement” Scott’s referring to. I’m inferring from his post though, that there’s been some kind of drama over character names. Which doesn’t surprise me much. Were the server not marked as RP in the launcher, I’d have no idea based on the high number of immersion jarring character names I see running around. I try to keep an open mind about it, but I’m pleased to see Trion talking about clarifying what the naming policy is on RP servers. I’ll be even more pleased (and a little shocked) if they’re enforced.

That’s Much Better

I complained earlier about the poor level of communication on the part of Cryptic’s Champions team, especially as compared the the level of communication that the Star Trek team maintains. There was apparently enough community feedback that they did an Ask Cryptic, Part 2. This one is much better.

First, the post is explicit that the questions are being answered by Producer Rob Overmeyer, so that whole vague anonymous feeling from the original post is gone. Second, the answers are informative and detailed without losing the humor from the original post. Not to mention there’s just more of them.

Besides the second Ask Cryptic, there’s also a State of the Game for April. Also done by Rob, it does has some crossover with the Ask Cryptic, enough so that Rob is planning to start doing alternating months for the posts.

I’m feeling lukewarm about the upcoming Resistance Adventure Pack. I had issues with Serpent Lantern and I haven’t even attempted Demon Flame. My hope when Adventure Packs were originally announced was that they were nice multi-mission story arcs, but they ended up being mini-dungeons complete with boss fights. It just occurred to my that STO’s Featured Episodes were actually what I’d had in mind for AP’s.

The two things I’m really looking forward to are the Golden Age and Pulp Comics costume sets. Even though they’re C-store items, I’ve got enough Atari Points from my stipend to get at least one for free.

Besides more costume options, I am curious about the Hideouts coming in July although I can’t imagine getting a lot of use out of it once the initial novelty wears off. I’m also interested in seeing what the team does with their AP replacement, Comic Series. It sounds much more like the FE’s that they were inspired by, and even though a lot of challenge focused players probably won’t like it, I hope they drop the boss fights. I’m just interested in experiencing more stories, not snapping my keyboard in half in frustration.

 

A Tale of Two Cryptics

I’ve been noticing a difference in the level of communication between the Champions and Star Trek teams for a long time now, but the April Ask Cryptic posts provided a pretty stark contrast.

The Champions’ Ask Cryptic is about 15 questions, if you’re lazy like me and count the question marks. The answers provided are all pretty short and generally uninformative, although funny in several cases. Overall, it was a disappointing update. It also bugged me that there’s not mention of who was doing the writeup. Was it Poz? Were the questions handled by different team members? It felt very non-personal to me.

Star Trek’s Ask Cryptic is about 51 questions, calculated the same way. There are actually thirty-two questions listed, but most of them are actually at least two questions. More importantly is that the answers provided are detailed and informative, and the writeup is done by Dan Stahl.

I still enjoy playing both games, though I’ll admit I’ve spent more time in STO lately than CO, so I hope that the level of communication from the Champions team improves. Stahl’s team is definitely a tough act to follow.

Champions Launched… Again

Yesterday was the big F2P relaunch for Champions. The patch notes are pretty extensive, which I think  highlights how much work Cryptic has done to improve the game both for existing subscribers as well as new free players. There were two surprises about the launch that I wanted to highlight, and you can see them both in the minimap image to the left.

First there were thirteen instances of Millennium City when I logged in last night. I’ve not seen more than two or three in a long time. I honestly wasn’t expecting such a large turnout for the launch, but I’m pretty excited to see such a large turnout. I’ll be very curious to see what the population looks like a week from now and then a month from now. How many people were old players just popping in to check things out like me? How many were former subscribers trying out the silver-level version of the game? How many were brand new players? I wasn’t paying much attention to the chat last night so I’m not too sure about any of the answers to those questions. Yet.

The second surprise was the new store icon. It’s the orange circle with the Atari logo on the bottom left of the minimap. Atari and Cryptic are dropping the idea of Cryptic Points in favor of Atari Points, apparently you can now buy Atari points which are good for more than just C-Store purchases. The Atari Points stipend that subscribers get though is locked to the Champions C-Store only. The original C-store button was just a menu item under the Champions C button (top left in the minimap) so the new store button is more visible. But I do like that it’s less conspicuous than the LotRO store button.

While it’s much much too soon to declare Champion’s F2P switch a success, I’m very surprised by the initial level of interest and pleased at how subtle the C-store integration has remained.

Champions Free-For-All Date Announced

Champions has announced their F2P update will launch on January 25th. With DCUO having just launched on the 11th, I’m very interested to see how many new players the F2P release brings in, how many stay, and how many upgrade to a subscription. I’m not expecting to see a doubling or tripling of revenues though like Turbine experienced with LotRO.

I’m a little more excited about this than I thought I would be. Not much changes for me since I have a lifetime subscription, I’ll still have access to everything I did before, but now I’ll also have a stipend of 400 Cryptic Points a month. I’m very curious to see if I can use those points in the STO-side store as well as the Champs-side store.

Besides the points, the F2P launch also includes a substantial revamp of the 1-20 experience as well as a few new powers for each of the existing frameworks. I’m definitely going to roll a new hero to check out the changes.

I know a few people were upset that the free players wouldn’t have access to the fully customizable hero system, but since they are allowing full access to the content (with the exception of adventure packs) they had to do something to incentivise people to subscribe. Like Turbine’s games, Champions is not a true F2P game but a hybrid subscription model.

The more I’ve thought about it though, the more their plan makes sense to me. The open system for building a hero is great for experienced players, but can rapidly get confusing and not-fun for a new player. Things like passive and active defenses, energy forms, etc. are probably more than a new player wants to worry about right away.

Looking Forward to 2011 – MMOs

This will be an interesting year.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

A lot of hopes have been pinned on this game. Some people’s expectations for TOR are so high, that I don’t see how the game can match them. So there will be a lot of disappointed people when the game launches. I myself have been trying to stay away from the news and hype for the game as much as I could for most of the year.

It’s Star Wars so I know I’m going to get it and give it a shot for the first month. It’s basically KotOR 3 (only this time finished unlike 2) so I’m sure I’ll play through at least one or two of the storyline (probably light-side Jedi of some flavor and a Smuggler), but I’m also not expecting to still be playing this game in December. This is basically a single-player game with a subscription fee, it’s something I’m not particularly excited about money-wise, but it is Star Wars so what can I say.

Rift

For the longest time I had trouble differentiating between this game and Tera Online, so I’m glad that they’ve changed their name.

Unlike TOR, Rift was not an instant buy for me. I didn’t have any interest until I started see some of the news and videos about their rift system for dynamic PvE content.

I’ve been in a few of the semi-closed beta events and gotten a chance to experience the new system. It is quite a bit of fun, and in several ways rifts could be considered a more dynamic version of Warhammer public quests. The game is an evolutionary mix of WoW’s and Warhammer’s game designs with a touch of Aion’s graphical style. In short, it doesn’t break the DIKU mold common to MMOs, but it is fun.

Like TOR , I don’t foresee this being a long-term subscription for me. LotRO has been my main fantasy game for years now, and I expect that to continue, but who knows. A lot can happen in twelve months.

Guild Wars 2

Here’s the short version: excited for the game, hesitant about NCSoft.

The original Guild Wars has a lot of faithful fans, but I’m not one of them. I bought the game when it released and I’ve played it off an on over the years, but never for very long. Primarily, I think, because of the focus on private over public instancing and the number of invisible walls in the outdoor maps, the game’s just never clicked with me. So it’s been exciting to me to see that ArenaNet is addressing both of those issues in Guild Wars 2.

NCSoft though has me worried. They’ve had some real problems with their security in the last year, and their customer support hasn’t been much better. Hopefully they get their act together before GW2 launches.

MMO Wish-list

If my personal predictions turn out correct I won’t really be playing any of the new 2011 MMOs all year. Come December, I’m expecting that my core games will still be: Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Champions.

Star Trek Online

Of all the MMOs I currently play, this is the one I’m the most happy with. Cryptic’s made a lot of improvements in the eleven months since the game launched, and I like a lot of the plans that I’ve heard Daniel Stahl talk about for the game.

Some of these are things that Cryptic has talked about and some are, but here’s some of the changes (both small and large) that I’d like to see happen this year.

  • Ship-wide uniforms. It’s a real pain right now to keep my bridge officer’s uniforms consistent, and there’s no to customize crewman uniforms for when walking around the spacious hallways of my ship.
  • Speaking of spacious, there’s got to be someway to bring the scale of the interior maps down at least a little bit.
  • Allow bridge officers to have multiple uniform slots just like command officers do.
  • Improve the save/load functionality in the tailor so that uniform saves are easier to distinguish from one another.
  • Make the pop-up dialog that occurs when crossing zone borders optional. I’d like to be able to leave Sol and set a course for DS9 and not have to keep an eye on the ship to approve warping from one Sector Block to the next.
  • Ability to disable ships rather than destroy them. Even if it’s only a cosmetic change where enemies pull some kind of emergency warp. It wouldn’t even have to happen all the time, but incorporating disabling ships in some fashion into the combat system would make the game feel just a bit more Trek-like.
  • Change the ground combat system to something cover-based. I would love to see Cryptic borrow some design decisions from Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 and make STO’s ground combat more about moving from cover to cover rather than standing still out in the open and depending on personal shields. Tweaking melee combat so that it’s not a Benny Hill kite-fest would be good too.
  • Keep doing the Featured Episodes! Taking a month off here and there is fine, after all TV does too, but I’d love to see a commitment from Cryptic that this is a permanent feature of the game.

Champions Online

Even with my interest trailing off in the second half of 2010, I do enjoy hopping into the game from time to time and heroing about. Of course I’m a bit concerned about how the F2P switch will turn out, but I’m not worried about the same over-commercialization happening that happened with LotRO.

First, Cryptic already has a store interface in the game and it’s not nearly as prominent as Turbine’s is.

Second, there’s no way to earn Cryptic Points in the game (or there wasn’t last time I checked), so there won’t be an annoying pop-up message anytime I finish a Perk or Adventure Pack reminding me about the store.

Third, a little commercialism fits pretty well into the Champions setting. I’m also don’t have emotional ties to the Champions property that go back to my childhood.

So aside from seeing how the F2P change works out, all I want from Cryptic’s Champions team is more. More new zones. More new mission. More new costume pieces.

A few new levels wouldn’t hurt either.

Lord of the Rings Online

Last year with LotRO was a real roller-coaster for me. A one-two punch of little to no content updates and way too much marketing of the store.

My hope is that this year Turbine turns things around, and given recent interviews where they claim to have tripled their revenues, they really have no excuse not to.

  • There needs to be a configuration option to turn off the store buttons and TP alerts. I don’t care if I’ve earned another 10 Turbine Points. I may care if I can buy a consumable to speed up crafting sometime, but I usually don’t and I’d rather not be reminded of it every time I open the crafting panel.
  • Regular content updates. They don’t have to be large and I actually prefer that Turbine keep them small and frequent rather than dropping a single large one half-way through the year.
  • Expanded cosmetic system: more costume slots, the ability to bring one’s cloak hood up or down without switching cloaks, and cosmetic weapons.
  • A total revamp of the legendary item system. Drop the lottery aspects and make LI’s work more like a person’s skirmish soldier.
  • For the love of Tolkien, find someone to make some decent hats.

I’ve always felt the Turbine did a good job of staying close to the spirit of Tolkien’s lore even if they had to bend the letter of it to fit the MMO genre, but the commercialism that’s invaded the game since it went free-to-play has gotten out of control.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed, Turbine, don’t let me down.

Looking Back at 2010

December is done and 2010 along with it. Seems like a lot of people are happy to see 2010 go, but the last twelve months of gaming here in Kae-land have been pretty good.

New MMOs in 2010

There were four MMOs scheduled or rumored for 2010 that I was keeping an eye one.

Star Trek Online

The game launched on time and pretty smoothly. At least smoothly enough that I don’t remember encountering any problems eleven months later, unlike Anarchy Online’s launch which I still rememberyears later.

The game had a larger flood of launch players than I expected, but it seemed like that initial wave passed through pretty quickly. Say what you will about Cryptic, but I do like their single world architecture. Not only do you not have to play the server-coordination game with your friends, but there’s also no drama over server queues or merges.

For such a new game, not quite a year old yet, STO has made a lot of improvements. Cryptic has added a diplomacy system (months before I expected them to), several new sectors of content, revamped the crafting system (twice, although more work needs to be done on it), updated sector space, done two month’s worth of weekly episodes, and done an excellent job of following through on their promises of transparency with their Engineering Reports. They’re also close to releasing a user-generated content system, the Foundry.

Of course, Cryptic has caused a lot of drama and made a lot of mistakes this year as well, but I have to give them credit for their responsiveness. The Star Trek team has been especially good at gathering community feedback and then acting on it. Daniel Stahl has done an excellent job since taking over as Executive Producer, and I’m very optimistic about the future of the game.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Even with all the new information this year, my expectations haven’t changed much.

I like the emphasis on story. Going fully voiced will be an interesting experiment to see how players react and the impact on adding content. I’m sure I’ll buy this even if I don’t subscribe past the first month just to see for myself how Bioware did. Besides the original Knights of the Old Republic was one of my favorite games on the first Xbox.

One thing has changed though, I’ve been surprised about how poorly Bioware has managed the hype for the game this year. In 2009 they’d been doing an excellent job of keeping people excited for the game without letting community expectations get unreasonable. I can’t say the same about Bioware for 2010. It seems to me like the backlash I was expecting to follow the game’s launch has already started.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

My expectations for Cataclysm were set at “wait and see.” That was where they stayed right up until the expansion launched. Despite my general lack of enthusiasm, I did end up buying it. I blame Twitter.

I played through the Dwarven starting zone again (up to level 11) to see what the old world was like now and came away pretty disappointed. It was different, but it was just streamlined a bit and not the Azeroth shattering new experience I expected.

I also started a Worgen Mage and I’m about halfway (just judging by levels) through their starter area as well. I have to say, it’s fun so far but it’s not living up to the hype. That’s the tricky part of this. There’s a lot of hyperbole out there about how amazing Cataclysm is and how fantastic the new zones are, and I don’t think that the game lives up to it’s reputation.

Who knows, maybe I’ll change my tune once I finish the starter area. December just hasn’t been a good month for me to spend enough time with any MMOs.

DC Universe Online

DCUO was supposed to release in November, but SOE pushed it to the beginning of 2011. I think this was smart for two reasons: Cataclysm was scheduled for December (duh) and they listened to the feedback from their beta testers (something more developers should do).

I said back in January that I would wait until I’d had a chance to beta the game and make a decision close to launch of whether or not I’d play it. Well both of those things have happened, and I’ve decided to give it a pass. The reasons for that decision deserves a more in-depth treatment than I want to go into just now, so let me just say that there’s nothing that DCUO does for me that I can’t already get from playing either Champions Online or Arkham Asylum.

Old MMOs

At the start of 2010, there were three MMOs that I was playing regularly and/or subscribing to: Lord of the Rings Online, EVE Online, and Champions Online. (I’m thinking of making a New Years Resolution soon to boycott the use of the word Online in MMO titles.)

Lord of the Rings Online

Whew, what a year it’s been for LotRO and Turbine. It started out as my favorite MMO. I was (and still am) in a great Kinship (which it still is) and was having lot’s of fun in the game. Then came June 4th and the Free-to-Play bombshell. I was completely blindsided by the announcement. Maybe it’s because I played on Landroval, which was always one of the most populated servers, but I had never considered the possibility that Turbine would go the DDO-route for the game. Eventually, after the shock wore off and I was able to look at the details, it really didn’t seem like the F2P change would have a huge impact on my playing experience.

Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be quite correct. My minute to minute playing experience is mostly the same as it ever was, and I’m not paying any more to play the game than I was before, but the level of store integration into the UI really started to get to me. Between the alert that shows up anytime I do something that earns Turbine Points and all of the little gold buttons that link to the store (of which there are three on the crafting panel alone), I’ve found that my interest in logging in and playing as dwindled down to nearly nothing.

EVE Online

I was doubtful that I would still be subscribed to EVE by the end of the year. I did end up stopping the subscription on my second account, and would have canceled my primary except that it renewed before I got around to it. That’s not totally a bad thing as I’ve continued to train skills (towards no particular goal) and I’ll get a chance to try out the new character portrait generator when it comes out. Regardless though, I’m definitely letting the account lapse in March when the current six month cycle is up.

Champions Online

My plans to have this be my other primary game besides LotRO turned out to be true until I go my first hero to max level in March. After that, I played with some alts and returned for the Serpent Lantern Adventure Pack, but my playtime has dwindled down quite a bit this year. I have to be in a certain (rare) mood to enjoy re-experiencing content, so once I’ve been through the game once my playtime almost always declines (which is true for me in all MMOs).

Console Games

Mass Effect 2 was my favorite console game of the year. Great story, great graphics, and much improved combat over the previous game.

Red Dead Redemption was my second favorite console game, and one I almost missed. I hadn’t paid any attention to it at all until Scott from Pumping Irony asked me if I was getting it. I’m glad he did, because it turned out to be a really good game and the first Rockstar game I’ve ever finished.

Star Wars: Force Unleashed wasn’t new but I’d skipped it on release because of poor reviews. I ended up picking it up after news that a sequel was going to be release, and it turned out to be surprisingly good. So good, actually, that I was able to add it to my very small list of completed games. Ironically, based on several trusted sources, it seems like the sequel is a stinker. That’s too bad, but at least it got me to buy the first one.

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions turned out to be a disappointment. The game was way more linear than I wanted it to be and has ended up in my limbo games stack. These are games stacked up next to my 360 that I feel I should finish but probably won’t.

Fable 3 was also a disappointment and will likely be joining Shattered Dimensions in limbo soon. It’s really too bad considering how much I loved playing Fable 2.

PC Games

Minecraft! Minecraft! Minecraft!

I’ve played and enjoyed a lot of PC games this year, most of them acquired via Steam sales, but the stand-out PC game for the year for me has been Minecraft.

I’m still surprised by how much I enjoy this game. I’m usually a shallow gamer. Good game-play is important of course, but no more so to me than the good graphics. Generally when a sequel to a game comes out I stop playing the older version, even if I don’t enjoy the new version as much, because it just looks better. What can I say.

If you qualify as a Crafter or Explorer personality type, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. If you do end up liking it, come check out the multi-player servers I’m running.

C-Store Stipend

One thing missing from Cryptic’s hybrid-subscription model that I really liked in Turbine’s was a monthly allowance of free store points for subscribers. Apparently it was something being discussed internally but not decided on until yesterday. Poz announced on the forums that yes there’ll be a stipend for subscribers, although no word yet on how much or how frequent (although I’d assume monthly).

It wasn’t if the points could only be used in the Champions store. Currently Cryptic Points are attached to you account and can be used in both the Champions and Star Trek C-Stores. So, unless they change their sales system, it’s likely possible that subscribers to both games could use their free points from Champions to buy items in Star Trek. This is something that Turbine doesn’t allow between DDO and LotRO.

Even though there’s not much in the C-Store that I’m interested in purchasing, it’s the thought that counts.

Special thanks to Nod for the heads-up.

Champions going F2P

I got a little surprise in my email from Cryptic this morning that Champions Online was going F2P in Q1 of 2011. First thing I did was check the site and found the official State of the Game announcement, confirming it was real. My first thought after that was I should shut off Twitter for the day while the drama storm blows through, obviously the forums as well.

Before I get into the changes, let me say that this announcement didn’t cause the same emotional panic that Turbine’s did. First, I don’t have the same history with the Champions lore that I do with Tolkien’s books (impossible to match given my childhood exposure to Middle-earth). Second, Cryptic’s using the same hybrid model that Turbine is using so my expectations are pretty much already set.

So what are the changes?

Gameplay

There’s going to be a review and update of the power documentation and interactions. Poz highlights some streamlining of holds in order to eliminate some weird problems that have been cropping up.

The big change is the addition of Archetypes. This was something that set off alarm bells for me, since archetypes is one of the things I didn’t like in CoH. Apparently though these archetypes don’t map directly to team roles or to power frameworks, but mimic certain types of comic book heroes. F2P is launching with eight of these with plans to add more later. No powers are being removed, existing characters won’t be impacted, and new characters can be just as flexible by using the Custom Archetype , although that is limited to gold players.

I’m not planning to use Archetypes myself, but I can see this being a benefit to new players who don’t understand about super stats, passive defenses, talents, etc.

Outside of the power/character changes, they’re revamping the 1-20 leveling experience. The content changes seem pretty smart, as far as I can tell. The tutorial could definitely use a refresh based on lessons learned from Vibora Bay and the Adventure Packs, and having the players go to Millennium City after the tutorial rather than the Desert or Canadian crises makes MC more of the hub zone is should be.

Subscriptions

Just like Turbine did, Cryptic is using a hybrid model, although theirs is a little simpler. You are either subscribed and a gold player or playing for free as a silver player. Lifetime subscribers are considered gold players.

Gold players get all zones, levels, adventure packs, costume parts, and powers. Exactly the same as subscribers do now.

Free players have access to all zones and levels (except adventure packs), but don’t get access to the Custom Archetype so they’re more limited in what combinations of powers they have access to. They are also limited in their inventory and bank space and market access.

Check out their Feature Matrix for more details.

Summary

Cryptic’s current plan is more free-to-play than Turbine’s is. You can level a hero from 1-40, you just have some limitations in inventory slots and are more restricted in your power selection. But based on what they’re currently planning, you can get to max level for free in Champions Online, which is not something that you can do in Lord of the Rings Online.

All in all, just like with Turbine’s announcement, not much changes for me. I’m not upset that I bought a lifetime membership, I can still play how I want whenever I want and don’t have to spend money on a monthly subscription. As much as I enjoy the ability to mix and match powers based on a character concept, a silver plan would never have worked for me. Had Cryptic offered lifetime gold, gold, and free silver plans at launch, I would still have bought the lifetime gold.

Help Wanted

Questions?Making a new hero in Champions Online usually happens for me in one of two ways: either I have an idea for a name and then build a costume and powers around it, or I have a costume in mind that suggests a certain power build and a name.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about a new hero, but so far I’ve not been able to come up with either a name or a costume that I like. His powers will be primarily from the Archery but with some Supernatural additions, so far including Command Animals and Soul Mesmerism. I’ve gone through the character creator several times hoping that something would click for me, but no luck.

If I can come up with a good name then the costume should come to be pretty easy. So, I’m crowd sourcing my imagination. If you have any ideas, please leave it in the comments.