I took the day off from work yesterday because it was my birthday and played video games all day. With a wife, a 16 month old son, a job, a home, and two dogs, this was a big deal to get a whole day (guilt free) and was very very fun. It isn’t often that you can give yourself time, but that’s what it feels like I did yesterday. I played a about 2 hours of of LotRO and and hour of EVE, but most of my time (nearly 7 hours) was in Champions Online. There also happened to be a big patch yesterday in Champions and it caused some issues.
Lag? Lag. Lag!
I started in Monster Island and was having a lot of problems with rubber banding, freezes, and stutters. I found Millennium City to be a lot smoother (which is counter to some peoples experiences based on the forums). I also did a little crafting and didn’t have any of the item loss some people were complaining about. I don’t remember the client patching anything, but the lag issues did seem to be mostly solved by yesterday evening. I’m planning to pop in tonight and see if Monster Island is still having issues.
As a side note, even in the middle of the day on a week day there were plenty of players on the server. I was able to group up several times for missions within minutes of asking in zone chat.
Paid Expansion Already?
Besides the patch and lag issues, there was also a State of the Game released two days ago. Most of it was interesting to me but not exciting until I got to the part about a new zone, Vibora Bay. I’m not at the cap yet, my main is at level 34, and I’m still doing Monster Island content. I haven’t done the crisis mission for Lemuria yet. Still, new content is always a good thing. The expansion wording that Roper used didn’t even click for me until I was reading through the forum follow-ups and say this one from Daeke. Paid expansion before the game has been out a full year?
Of course the nerd rage on the forums has gone super nova.
My initial reaction was disappointment. When I read the SoG message I assumed that this was a free update. I think partly because Champions now occupies the same position in my mind that City of Heroes used to and CoH always had a lot of free content updates. After some thought though, I’ve gone from disappointment to wait and see. First, I realized that I just paid $20 for a mini-expansion from Turbine. Second, I had skimmed Daeke’s post the first time and missed  a very important not that he used. This expansion is not going to be full box price. Third, there are way too many details still missing to have any kind of valid opinion. All we know right now is Vibora Bay has content for levels 37-40 and that it will cost some amount of money.
So, I’m just going to wait and see. The only thing I’ve really decided in the last few days is I need to not read forums for MMO’s, with the exception of the Dev Tracker, in order to preserver my sanity and positive outlook on life.
That’s far too practical. MUST…NERD…RAGE!
I’m with Nod. This is the internet, man. There is no place for moderation here. Pick an extreme and lots of capital letters and punctuation. NOW!!!!
Wait and see is the right thing to probably do, but it’s hard to not get upset about something like this.
I’m definitely in the wait and see camp. No wait NERD RAGE!!! Oh no wait, I’m not even subbed right now. Wait and see for sure then.
I’ve been keeping a close eye on the dev tracker in the Champions forum and there’s been no additional info, which surprises me given the amount of complaining going on. Zone chat on Monster Island and Millennium City was mostly devoid of complaining though, unlike the day before.
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