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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Superheroes away

How clever things new owners sometimes do.

I mean, I liked Champions Online when it turned F2P. But I ran out of steam as it is really, really boring to go through the quests which are a repetition of the same over and over.

Now the new owner, Perfect Worlds, introduced some nice revamping and features to suck me back. It was exactly 160 days since I had last logged in (how nice of them to state that in the login room... :P ) as I punched my Mystic, Mystico to the world again.

The first thing was that the skills were reset. And the whole crafting had been revamped. And there were new specializations.

And a new bar beside the minimap.

Alerts.

You can say whatever you like about random group finder WoW introduced way back when, but you cannot deny the fact that it created waves. Alerts are Champion's ripple of that wave: you volunteer to help in an alert posted by the Defender himself and you are pitted with four other superheroes against a supervillain and her/his henchmen.

Now here starts the fun. And not so fun.

The alerts are quite straightforward fights against various powers and groups of henchmen. Full on, blast away. The fun part is the fact that the low level superheroes (like my level 13, 14 and now 17) are elevated to fight at level 30. Just like in the PvP scenarios.

The not so fun part is the fact that you usually end up in a group where the utility type characters either do not know how to heal or do not possess any healing at all. So as a low level superhero you are out of luck if you get the beaten: you are really on your own. Remember to bring your own brews and heals is the only solution.

However, there is a twist which I like a lot. Some of the scenarios are timed, so that if the team doesn't perform properly, you get out without the final reward. So you really have to do your best or you do not get the reward in the end.

Of course this leads to a situation in which people start to choose 'easier' alerts, avoiding the Train Wreck alert completely. I have not been in a group which would have conquered that particular scenario, yet, but I can only hope that the reward from it is spectacular enough to warrant the time limit. Then again, I have already found my 'most hated one' which I avoid most of the time...

There are several tweaks and changes to this great game, and if you haven't logged in for a while you may be in for a treat or two.

Champions Online is far from dying out. So check it out.

PS. My handle is @copra (quite surprisingly) in case you're wondering...