Champions Online

This comic was made in a very early beta. LM went to the Desert Crisis zone after this, while Moonmist tried the Canada zone.

This week marks the start of the Champions Online open beta, the end of Aion’s closed beta, the beginning of the Fallen Earth open beta, and right now, MMO gamers just have to be asking themselves why they PAY for games when they can just jump from beta to beta? Gordon of We Fly Spitfires thinks the whole “beta” thing has simply gone out of control, with the true meaning, if any, entirely lost. He looks back to the times when a game’s release date meant something. DM Osbon has sworn off betas since Warhammer’s escapade last year. ...

The first of three comics set in Champions Online introduces Moonmist, the least famous member of the supergroup “Celestial Light”. This comic was made early in closed beta and the game’s look has improved substantially since. Also, the plot of the comic has absolutely nothing to do with the actual storyline of the tutorial.

This has been a pretty decent week in EVE Online, which is running neck and neck with Wizard 101 as my main game. Earlier, Otakudyne corp officer Sredans made a Dominix battleship for me as reward in part for a couple of nights of mining; I’ll be able to fly that Sunday evening. I was kinda disappointed to not find the skill to fly Gallente Battleships among the skills sold by the Federation Navy loyalty point store, so I put in a BUY order for the skill at a 20% discount from the average regional price set to expire just about the time I will need to train it. If nobody sells me one for my three million ISK, I’ll just buy it, no big woop. After all, I AM a millionaire. ...

I THINK this screen shot came while we were raiding the City of Mist for Jalanea’s shaman epic. Remember when guilds used to raid the City of Mist? Something I really liked about EverQuest was the mix of raid targets in leveling zones. Now it’s all instances and keeping people away from each other as much as possible. Sad. ...

Hey, everyone ELSE returns to WoW…. And why not? Rumor has it that Blizzard is definitely going to introduce the Worgen and Goblin races as new playable races… something ever World of Warcraft player has been expecting since before Burning Crusade was announced. With news of the new expansion and the Starcraft II delays already making the rounds, Green Armadillo asks what else could Blizzard possibly have in waiting to surprise Blizzcon attendees? ...

I got a spam comment today which mentioned, while complimenting me on explaining some vague idea to them, that they were unsure of this blog’s update schedule. Geez. When even SPAMMERS wonder why you don’t update every day, it’s getting out of hand ;) Fact is, most of the time I am doing boring stuff. CrazyKinux linked to a blog once that insisted nobody wants to read about someone running mission in EVE Online, so once I read that, I stopped posting about my adventures in EVE. I’m leveling up a character in Wizard 101 so I can do Grizzleheim with level-appropriate characters, but that takes time. I do fit in little bits about what I’m doing in EVE and Wizard101 now and then in these blogrolls… but they don’t seem worthy of entire posts! ...

Back in EverQuest, the raid leader had banned all mage pets because they tended to push bosses into walls. The mages were not amused. Aion: Next WoW killer? Caliga thinks Aion might take that coveted #2 spot of ranked subscription-based MMOs right behind World of Warcraft with a final tally of 800,000 players. He’s forgetting that WoW players always return to WoW. Always. My own prediction? 200,000 six months in because A) it’s a WoW-like, and B) it isn’t WoW. ...

Well, would YOU bet $200 on a game that nobody but press is allowed to talk about, a month before it’s released? When Lord of the Rings Online offered the same deal – A Benjamin and his identical twin for a lifetime subscription – you had a month to think it over. Not so with Champions Online – if you insist on playing before committing, the offer goes away. Probably the best thing about the offer – access to the Star Trek Online beta, and Mirror Universe outfits for same. So, if I want to play STO and get all the best goodies, I have to toss two c-notes Champions’ way? ...

Sorry for the entire and almost complete lack of posts this week… family stuff. Guess I should have called it the “WEEKLY Blogroll”…. What makes an MMORPG an RPG? Nowadays, EVERYTHING seems to be called an RPG. First person shooters like Call of Duty 4 are suddenly RPGs because they include levels (and, arguably, classes as well). So is that it? Is any game with leveling now automatically a Role Playing Game? Zubon of Kill Ten Rats wonders if that’s all there is. Psychochild responds by taking a look back at the origins of the term in pen-and-paper gaming. These days, I tend to regard games that don’t force you into certain paths as more of an RPG that on-rails MMOs like WoW. Zubon has a point when he says Second Life is more of an RPG than most games that claim the title. ...