Whoa!

Is this what the City of Heroes Spines powerset wishes it could grow up to look like?

Back in the saddle again!

... For this weekend anyway. Paragon Studios is offering a free-play double-XP weekend for their City of Heroes games. After not playing for more than 3 months or so, I've reloaded my software and took the game for another test drive!

Quickly found out that Virtue Server is truly the place to be as two quick PUGs (Pick Up Games, for you non-players) and I raised my brand new character to level 16 over the course of about 5 hours of play! Pretty sweet! It was really just a matter of playing follow the leader as the team leaders quickly ran through different missions to get as far as they could in as little time as possible. No time to enjoy the scenery or even to read what the objectives of the missions were... Just bash badguys and collect XP.

Which reminded me of one of the reasons I don't play anymore. It's such a well-worn linear path up the XP ladder. Nothing new to challenge us. Great new special effects for powers with the new Power Customization options, and some new power combinations to explore. Just no new opponents. No new in-game models. No costumed villains. Sigh... That's one thing Champions Online has over COH: a World-of-Warcraft-like variety of opponents both in character models and in the physical size of the opponents. It was always discouraging to go up against an arch-villain in COH and the Huge-sized Tanks and Scrappers would surround the villain and defeat them before I got a chance to see what this nemesis looked like.

Anyway...
I'll play when I can this weekend. I don't think it'll change my mind about playing COH anymore but we'll see...

Again, with the WOW envy...

Over at WOW.com, there's an announcement of a new version of the WOW Modelviewer.

When I was playing COH, I found out about this and instantly saw its possibilities for creating comics and machinima. So of course I posted on the COH message boards about something like it being available for CO*. No one else seemed to share my interest as they only kept going on about the CO* EULA. How about an official dev-created version, I asked? Nope, nothing more than declaring I was pipedreaming with more reminders of firm statements about the EULA.

It was one of the many times I felt like CO* would be stuck in a dead end if it was being run by people who posted on the forums.

WOW Envy. Again.

I know I should probably just play World of Warcraft and stop wallowing in envy. But then I see how I barely play during the Champions Online Beta even though it's free, and I have a tough time justifying the monthly fee.

But one thing I've noticed is the active online community I see surrounding WOW.

Compare that to the listing of fan sites at the COH website. It's kinda depressing how many of the websites haven't been updated since 2005. Sheesh! One blog I do follow is Blog of Heroes, and even the owner's starting to look over to see what Champions Online is up to.

Meanwhile, sites like WOW.com keep fans appraised of new developments and geekery surrounding WOW.

Does anyone know of any sites that are still interested in COH enough to keep up with news, developments, and fan-related activity?

How Superhero MMOs Can Be More Like the Comics They're Inspired By

Giant typewriters and other interactive props.

Can't you just imagine the PVP possibilities?

I betcha even DCUO is too serious to try this out...

"They keep pulling me back!"

Those COH folk make it harder and harder to stay away.

Dang it.

It's been a couple of months. Was it really as dull as a I remember it...?

COH: WoW Envy

I wanted to address something that'd been bugging me for years while playing on COH.

WoW Envy.

Serious WoW Envy.

See, I was raised on a steady diet of "The Mighty Thor" and Thor was simply amazing. He was a mythological character engaging with a modern world setting of superheroes and supervillains. In one issue, he'd be duking it out with the monstrous troll Ulik, then in the Avengers he'd help take down Zodiac or Kang the Conqueror. He'd appear with Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up, but would help out his pal Hercules against the hordes of the god Pluto. There was just no limit to the places he'd go and the villains he'd defeated.

So, flash forward X number of years later. COH is out, but so is WoW. COH was my first MMO and I only played WoW long enough to do the 14-day trial but that was an eye-opening experience.

In COH, I'd have to beat criminal gangs like the Hellions and the Skulls for a long time before I ever saw my first costumed supervillain. Or a slightly different in-game model. See, from working in the game industry for even the short amount of time I did, I knew that the folks at NCSoft used the same 3D character models for the gang members but used different texture maps to differentiate between gangs. Nothing wrong with that. It's just that I knew enough from animation that I was looking at the same silhouettes over and over again. Sure, different texture maps, but the monotony of got really discouraging after a while. In WoW, the variety of shapes and creatures and opponents was really varied and exciting. Even at the lower levels, my characters ran across wild boars, wolves, and all sorts of bandits and such to keep me interested. COH by contrast is a world without animals of any kind; no cats, dogs, birds, elephants or anything.

Not even a robotic dog.

Just those stupid Rikti monkeys.

So I looked at all the cool creatures in the WoW universe. I thumbed through the guide books and RPG supplements. I scanned through the screenshots and captured movies.

And I developed a healthy case of WoW envy.

Which didn't mean I wanted to play WoW. I just wanted to set my CoH characters against some of those WoW opponents. I wanted to go up against a huge freakin' dragon with my electric blaster. I wanted there to be a lich causing all those zombies to rise in Dark Astoria. COH just seemed so... dull. Meanwhile WoW really seemed to live up to its initials.

To be continued...

Shape of things to come?

I was doing some wistful dreaming, browsing through the Paragon Studios' job postings when I came across the listing for an Animator. The job description was pretty much up my alley... maybe about 7-10 years too late, but that's another story for another time.

Anyway, I came across this line in the description:

Experience with unique or non-bipedal rigs

That sounds extremely... evocative. Especially for a game like City of Heroes which has resisted adding quadripedal creatures. Granted the Arachnos spider robots have more than two legs, but it sure sounds extremely... evocative.

The lure of the Glowies. Ooooo... Pretty...

I'm taking a break from playing City of Heroes for a number of reasons:

1) I was bored.

2) It's tough to solo a Level 31 Electric Blaster. It gets pretty lonely on the Liberty server sometimes. :(

3) I've been play-testing Champions Online. It's nice. It's not stellar yet, but the missions and bright colors sure are a nice change.

4) I feel like the COH franchise has to play catch-up. Their Issue 16 announcement offers a feature which comes standard with Champions Online. Wow. A whole issue devoted to being able to change colors? I know that's a big deal in terms of behind the scenes coding and game resources and such, but sheesh! After The Mission Architect release and even the 5th Anniversary Issue (which I couldn't enjoy -- see #2), this seems kinda underwhelming.

5) The screenshots for the DC Universe Online MMO just look so pretty.

They make the environments in COH look so flat.

6) In fact, the character models in DCUO are really, really well done. Better than Champions Online (which remind me a bit of the models from World of Warcraft).
Which begs the question: "Sure the art direction is spectacular, but how does it play?" I'm not sure yet, but that hasn't kept DC and Sony from promoting the game at SDCC.


Seriously, I'm pretty interested in seeing more details about the game.

7) I've been playing other games. Among them, FreeRealms.com, FusionFall, and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord. This last one is especially addictive. Unfortunately it has the side effect of confusing my son who is wondering when we'll stop beating up the heroes and start acting like one for a change.

8) I've been working on my own Poser characters.

9) The kids are all home for summer vacation. Who wants to play solo when I can play Super Smash Bros. Brawl with my kids?

I think I suggested this a while ago...

Some pictures posted on the City of Heroes website Forums suggest upcoming changes for Issue 16.

Nice, but, I dunno. The graphics still look so 5 years ago. I've really come to enjoy the graphics for Champions Online. I even suspended my COH account because, well, I was bored. Still, we'll see. Maybe we'll see what happens as more info gets released.

It's in Open Beta!!

Shields are coming to City of Heroes! I can hardly wait for all the not-Captain America clones!

Lemons into Lemonade

I was just over at Newsarama, reading about Sean McKeever's plans for the upcoming Terror Titans series. I've been a bit turned off by the violent turns in recent Teen Titans storylines (not that I've been picking them up, to be honest... I've been reading them when they show up at my local Borders!). Even though the artwork looks pretty good, my days of picking up a comic because it looks good (even though the story is yucky) ended a long time ago. They're just too expensive!



But I was looking at the cover art and wondering if a team like this will appear in the upcoming DCU MMO or in City of Heroes, especially with the upcoming Mission Architect release.

The closest I've seen to a COH villain team was in one of their promotional ads for Issue 8.



Which is why the upcoming Mission Architect seems so interesting. With it, I can create my own adventures and, possibly, my own adversaries. Right now the specifics on the Mission Architect are a little vague, but it looks like I might be able to manipulate mission adversaries to make them a bit less generic; how much manipulation is possible hasn't been revealed but it's got me speculating and planning. Maybe I'll be able to create my own "Terror Titans" to share with other players.

It'd be kind of nice to use a comic I don't read as the basis for something I'd want to play and share with other people.

Geoff Johns to wrte DCUO backstory

DCUO (or DC Universe Online) is Sony and DC's MMO project set to be released next year. Today Newsarama reports that Geoff Johns is set to write the backstory for the game: http://www.newsarama.com/games/090815-DCUOJohns.html

The more I hear about this game, the more geeked out I get about it. It's enough to make me question my loyalty to City of Heroes. Maybe there's room in my wallet for both games, but if I had to choose one over another I might lean towards DCUO. I dunno, the online community might skew younger (mentally and emotionally) with DCUO since it'll be on the PS3, but the graphics and screenshots sure look more exciting and vibrant.



Story developing...