A Confession to Make
I have a confession to make gentle readers. This weekend I cheated on WoW. I didn't plan it this way, it just sort of happened.
It was Friday night. It wasn't a raid night so I didn't need to be online at any particular time. Of course, my weekend nights are not my own so my first order of business was seeing if my wife had made any plans for us to go out with friends. She hadn't so I was free to do whatever. I did what I usually do. I checked my Facebook and Twitter and my 3 email accounts. Yes, I have 3. One email caught my eye "Champions Online Free Trial Weekend".
I had seen Champions Online back when it first came out, but I wasn't willing to shell out $60 and another $15 a month to check it out. But free? Maybe I would just download and make a Hero. Just to see what it looked like. I have never played another MMO besides WoW. What could it hurt to just see what it looked like.
While it was installing I looked over the Templates. I figured they were like classes. Only instead of 10, they had like 20 or so. My first thought was to make a Gadgeteer. They seemed pretty cool, but the more I read about it, it made it out to be a pet class. That wasn't the way I wanted to start a new game. Then I saw Power Armor and decided to try that because the description said it was a good soloer. I named him SAMAS (Strategic Aerial Military Assault Suit - 5 Hammer points if you get the reference without looking it up).
I played through the tutorial mission, and it was all very familiar. I picked up the game really quick. They used the same exclamation points, and question marks to mark quest givers. Powers were linked to hot keys. Everyone worked on an energy type system. You had a light attack that gave you energy an a heavy attack that took energy. It was a very fun combat system and I only had two powers. I played through the whole tutorial and got to the first trainer. I was able to train my Travel power and saw one was swinging. Immediately I thought about making a Spiderman type character. It was really difficult and needed a custom power setup. That was a little over my head. But one of the templates I looked at as a possibility for my Spidy was Martial Artist. So I made a character based on Street Fighter II's Ryu. I wasted a whole summer back in the early 90s playing SF2 at an arcade.
All of sudden the night was gone. Then I got the crazy idea to the user the Telekenetics template to try to make a Jedi. But it was too late. The idea stuck in my head and the next night I fired up Champions again and made my Jedi. He was cool, but not as much fun as the Martial Artist. Then I decided to try the Might template. It was to make a hero like Juggernaut, Hulk, or Thing. (It's Clobbering TIME!) I used it to make a Hero that looked like Collosus. I even wrote him a back story. I played him all the way up to Level 8.
Before I knew it the weekend was gone and I hadn't log into WoW. I had a really good time playing Champions, but now my trial is over. I'm still not sure I can swing $15/month but at least the initial layout of $60 is taken care of. It was really cool to be in a different world, but I still have unfinished business in Azeroth, namely Arthas.
This week I'm on a business trip and away from my gaming rig. I can't wait to get back and see if my team has made any headway in IceCrown.
It was Friday night. It wasn't a raid night so I didn't need to be online at any particular time. Of course, my weekend nights are not my own so my first order of business was seeing if my wife had made any plans for us to go out with friends. She hadn't so I was free to do whatever. I did what I usually do. I checked my Facebook and Twitter and my 3 email accounts. Yes, I have 3. One email caught my eye "Champions Online Free Trial Weekend".
I had seen Champions Online back when it first came out, but I wasn't willing to shell out $60 and another $15 a month to check it out. But free? Maybe I would just download and make a Hero. Just to see what it looked like. I have never played another MMO besides WoW. What could it hurt to just see what it looked like.
While it was installing I looked over the Templates. I figured they were like classes. Only instead of 10, they had like 20 or so. My first thought was to make a Gadgeteer. They seemed pretty cool, but the more I read about it, it made it out to be a pet class. That wasn't the way I wanted to start a new game. Then I saw Power Armor and decided to try that because the description said it was a good soloer. I named him SAMAS (Strategic Aerial Military Assault Suit - 5 Hammer points if you get the reference without looking it up).
I played through the tutorial mission, and it was all very familiar. I picked up the game really quick. They used the same exclamation points, and question marks to mark quest givers. Powers were linked to hot keys. Everyone worked on an energy type system. You had a light attack that gave you energy an a heavy attack that took energy. It was a very fun combat system and I only had two powers. I played through the whole tutorial and got to the first trainer. I was able to train my Travel power and saw one was swinging. Immediately I thought about making a Spiderman type character. It was really difficult and needed a custom power setup. That was a little over my head. But one of the templates I looked at as a possibility for my Spidy was Martial Artist. So I made a character based on Street Fighter II's Ryu. I wasted a whole summer back in the early 90s playing SF2 at an arcade.
All of sudden the night was gone. Then I got the crazy idea to the user the Telekenetics template to try to make a Jedi. But it was too late. The idea stuck in my head and the next night I fired up Champions again and made my Jedi. He was cool, but not as much fun as the Martial Artist. Then I decided to try the Might template. It was to make a hero like Juggernaut, Hulk, or Thing. (It's Clobbering TIME!) I used it to make a Hero that looked like Collosus. I even wrote him a back story. I played him all the way up to Level 8.
Before I knew it the weekend was gone and I hadn't log into WoW. I had a really good time playing Champions, but now my trial is over. I'm still not sure I can swing $15/month but at least the initial layout of $60 is taken care of. It was really cool to be in a different world, but I still have unfinished business in Azeroth, namely Arthas.
This week I'm on a business trip and away from my gaming rig. I can't wait to get back and see if my team has made any headway in IceCrown.
Comments
It's OK to cheat on WoW. We tried Guild Wars last weekend ourselves. Just wasn't the same though. I kept trying to use my WoW keys to do stuff. I guess I'm not quite ready for something new yet!
I tried Champions when it came out and thought pretty much the same thing I did with City of Heroes: decent game, but not enough to pull me away from my friends in WoW.
I did think that they could've included a few more details with certain aspects of the game at the beginning. For example: without digging through some external reference sites, I wouldn't have known that the two stats you choose to make Super Stats now affect all of your damage. I was assuming silly things like Strength for melee and Dexterity for ranged. It worked out anyway since I chose the stats I thought were affecting it, but that's kinda important information for them to have left out.
I miss the good old days romping around the outskirts of Chi-town with my Mind Melter and his motley crew of allies.
Much fun was had by all.
We will now speak no more of this.