So anyone give into temptation about CO?

I really think the only thing keeping Champions Online a float is that you can really make just about anything. Of course the issue there is that somethings look great on paper but fail at practice; the freedom is still there when it comes to choosing your character's traits and abilities.

Never will Seraph be Seraph in CoX like he can be in CO at this rate. But there's the problem, there's just nothing too exciting to do. Maybe it's the shards but there's hardly a RP community and it's hard to come across folks. The content just doesn't hold me enough.

It sucks because Seraph is a gun toke'n (yes I know it's totting) swordmaster-slashing demon slayer just trying to have a good time... there's just nowhere I can take him that I feel he would fit properly. Most of the time I'm either fighting Viper (think Malta more or less) or aliens (Quularr) or even giant veloceraptors.... there's mysticism here and there, dealings with occults but compared to the rest, feels to me there's just not enough.


I think DCUO is going to beat it. If there's one thing SoE does right, it's the faction system some of their games hold. And since, according to the E3 showing, we'll be able to make Villains and have stuff to run them through; this already puts DCUO as a challenging competitor. Cryptic is pretty much repeating similar mistakes they've done here. One moment they give us something good and the next... take it away.


At this point it's clear to assume that CO is just a resource to funnel money into their STO project. They've known the IP long enough to incorporate some of their own ideas, making development that much faster and in doing so created a half game in hopes that people paying will get the lifetub sub so they can retrofit it to their STO IP.

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Originally Posted by Apogee They way I see SOE is along the lines of 'fool me once (EQ) shame on you, fool me twice (SW:G) shame on me.' Whether they produce or run a game, I will not be fooled again.

To be honest, the NGE version for EQ2 actually did the game more justice. SoE can create some fun games but it just depends how focused they are on the project. I enjoyed EQ until it became expansion quest where every month, so it felt, we're on a new adventure trying to beat the next learning curve.

Of course what ticked me off about EQ2 was how they butchered the world itself Lore wise, transforming everything I used to know into islands or how they completely destroyed Kunark (level 50+ expansion pack now) when I remember starting at level 1 on my Iksar and venturing through Field of Bone. Then of course Estate of Unrest used to be a famous level 20-30 haunted mansion which in EQ2 you couldn't enjoy until after you were level 70.

And then the faction system changed. Because they were trying too hard to compete against WoW's alliance vs horde, so the good / evil became the new theme where as in EQ there was always two sides to each coin, the Iksars were hated by everyone for example so it felt accomplishing to go out and end up being welcomed in Qeynos (human, elves, half elves goody city).


Anyways SoE does do a good job as long as they're focused. The issue I always had with them is they wouldn't actually change something unless they saw their player base leaving, which meant they wouldn't really change anything unless they had to; so if they had the players they wouldn't care what needed to be nerfed/buffed.

Well for those who don't know....

1) All 1 year and 6 months subs were RE-activated through the day that they first stated after the public out cry. Did I like that they changed it to quantites limited? No. But they still righted a wrong and that gives me hope.

2) They just announced that ALL pre-launch toons that were made BEFORE LIVE on 9/1/09 are now getting a FULL, FREE retcon (respec). So they are listening to the community and trying to do right by them.

3) The 'lines and cell shading' in the game can be turned down and tweaked so that you barely even notice them. I personally think the graphics and the costume editor are amazing.

4) The "goofiness" of facial expressions can actually be changed. There are at least 4 options you can choose for both facial expression AND character stance so you can costumize how they look. PLUS the characters actually blink, react to emotes such as '' and they'll smile or '' and they frown.

5) Full toon costumization. Sliders for EVERY part of your toons body and face. Costume parts for every part of your toons body and face. Capes at creation. Girls can actually wear nailpolish. They guys might be able to as well, but who wants to play an icky boy??

6) Travel powers at level 5.

7) In game vanity pets that you don't have to wait HOW many vet months to get? You can earn them in-game and some were even offered with the purchase of the game or by using Cryptic Points.

8) Even more costume parts and in-game items that can be opened via perks (badges) and cost the player NOTHING to unlock except the time in earning the perk.

9) Comical villians that make you feel like a REAL super-hero.

We have screenies posted on our CO forums... you can find it by going to our CoH forums if you are interested.

I personally find the story line fun and fresh and the character creation as well as the world beautiful.

I have dual subs, as you can tell or I wouldn't be posting here. I plan on playing both for each has it's own likes and dislikes for me.

Though I am all for everyone having their opinion I know there has been a LOT of bashing from CoHers towards people trying out CO and even liking it. (I didn't see any of that in this thread btw but I know of it happening to friends.) They talk about "loyalty" to the game. And I ask you, WHY? It's a game! I owe CoH nothing. I paid my subscription, they gave me game access and content... it's a business transaction. Gamers, true gamers, try all types of games and systems be it on the PC, PS, PS3, Wii, X-box, etc. I would never give anyone a hard time for trying out a PS3 game just because I LOVED the PS2. ALL technology is about progression and in my humble opinion, CO is a part of that progression that I intend to play.

*Now waiting for the mod slap and bashing.*

Another poor point on Cryptics behalf... PVP, it's not necessary. The game has no PVP incentive and face it, if you're looking for something competitive; you'd get more out of Guild Wars. Game shouldn't of had it because for the simple reason that it wasn't made for it. If they were, are, going to make villains an expansion... they should of added PVP in then.

I bought into CO, and I enjoy it for the most part. It's not perfect, but what MMO is? The player population is, unfortunately, not quite as good as it is in CoH. It's amazing how many people figure out how to get to Millennium City from the starter zones, but can't figure out how to get back. There are also a number of idiots who bash CoH at every opportunity, and treat CO as the god of superhero MMOs, which gets tiresome. That's probably why I've spent almost all of my time soloing, although it would be nice to find an SG that isn't full of total idiots and motards.

I tried CO, didn't care for it. Cell-shading gives me massive migraines. I've heard the arguements "It's a new game, give it time." "They just need to polish it a bit." "Wait and see, it'll get better."

I'm sorry but, time isn't something CO has. There are too many better MMOs coming out on the market for me to throw my money at. By the time CO puts that "final polish" on their game, I have a feeling those other MMOs would have already hit the market. I'm looking at Swtor, Final Fantasy, etc.

So, no. There was no temptation.

Besides, Cryptic wants to compete with Swtor once it comes out. I have a strong feeling they'll be using CO subscription money to launch their other MMO campaigns..I'm looking at Star Trek.

I like to know my money is going towards the improvement of the franchise I am paying for. Not to fuel another project.

Basically I have both games, one I do yearly one I never have to pay a cent for again.

I can do most looks in both games.

RP happens in CO, just trickier to get around non-rp'ers.

Honestly I was playing WOW and COH at the same time and I heard no complaints from folks about WOW.

I am not going to play WOW anymore, I will However play COH and CO, but please folks who don't play both stop the bashing its getting annoying.

Well, as someone who is subscribed to both games, and beta tested CO, have had contact with its Dev's and has actually made suggestions that have made it into the game, I find I cannot help but feel infuriated with the bait and switch at release.

The game was a lot of fun, I felt like hero in it.

Now.. its a shallow shell of its former self that is no longer fun.

Frankly, those of us who have shelled out a LOT of money in the current economy for the game and one of the subscription plans have a right to vent our frustrations.

This is real money, that some of us have been saving up for a long time. We paid it out and got the product we paid for changed to something we did not want.

Nuke the bastards in my opinion.

(("So anyone give into temptation about CO?"

That's the OP's question. So either we can give our opinions and reasons as to why we are/are not tempted to play CO, or we can give this thread a quick death by restricting our answers to "yes" or "no".

A lot of my friends are playing CO now, and I'm getting lots of invitations to go over there. So in that respect, yes there is a bit of temptation, but the game is so unenjoyable for me, and I find the characters so unattractive, that the game itself kills any sort of incentive for me to go there again.

I think all of that falls within being a reasonable answer to the OP's question. And I'm not bashing CO. I'm just saying that my own experience with it has not been at all satisfying.

But for those of my friends who enjoy it, I do wish them well and I hope they have fun there. ))

I tried it for a while.

It became immediately clear that the game was still nowhere near ready for release, even after delaying the release multiple times. It wasn't just a "lack of polish" - it was glaring bugs and problems everywhere, some dating back to closed beta still without resolution. Simple bugs - like too low spawn rates for mobs - were acknowledged and not fixed. Major bugs, like quests that couldn't be completed, left to sit and rot. Claiming it's an MMO and "they'll patch it" isn't an excuse for releasing something with that many glaring bugs. It never has been and never will be.

They shot themselves in the foot again with the repeated bait and switch from closed to open and through release. Plus a complete and total lack of focus or organization with the developers. I met a good number of closed beta people who said that open beta "wasn't what they tested." I rolled two characters to test; one could take hits from +5's with impunity, while the other was a glass cannon that could one-shot just about anything near the end of the tutorial. Then they started playing games with the XP, less than a day before effectively eliminating XP testing. (I had the luxury of chatting with several developers and CMs, who stated in no uncertain terms that they had no notice or idea that change was coming.) I also know that despite the ridiculously heavy nerf they delivered with release, both are pretty much still able to do the same as before. Other people with similar/same builds who play have told me as much.

Though I suppose ultimately their attitude toward players is what really sealed the deal. They still haven't said how to get a full retcon, other than "when we decide it's warranted." (Which we've already seen, is only when a large number of players scream about a wholesale change. And then they strictly limit it to a relatively small number.) And thousands of customers are finding out too late that the only way to get their 30 days "free" is to either have already bought a time card, or to let Cryptic put their credit card on file and sign up for a subscription and cancel it before first billing. To say nothing of the lifetime fiasco. Forget reaching anyone in billing support - they've been understaffed and backed up for days since before launch.

It's blatantly apparent that certain people at Atari and Cryptic think their playerbase is a bunch of idiots. And I'm just not interested in paying $15/mo to be jerked around while playing something I wouldn't dare call release if it had my name on it. It's just not anywhere near ready, and the people working on it seem to have no plan to actually make it a release quality game.

I preordered the game so I got to play in open beta and head start. And they said you had a limited time to buy the lifetime subscription. Sadly, that's all it takes to tempt me to spend money; Limited Time. I figured the game would just have to last 14 months or more for me to save money, plus I'm in beta for Star Trek and get the Mirror Mirror uniforms, which I really wanted. And I get an additional 8 character slots. So I got that while the download was still crashing and starting over from the beginning...

So I play both, Mariel, so I guess I get to rant.

I don't like the graphics. It's weird. Your characters looked like rotoscoped claymation, with a bit of 3-d cgi objects that don't fit. Like 2 styles of art in the same universe.

I love the character creator with twitchy tails and tenticled feet. Plus you can loap like a critter or waddle like a hulk or strut or stroll. And 4 basic attitudes if you don't have a critter head. If you do have a critter head, it has only 1 emotion. I just wish they had someone like Sexy Jay to do the art.

I'm an altoholic and have 7 characters so far and I am really beginning to hate the tutorial which will take you to level 4-6 with only your first level powers and 20 minutes to an hour depending on if there is kill-stealing (well, rescue stealing in the tutorial actually).

You can really pick what ever combo you want, even if that gimps you completely. However your first 2 powers make you like a ranged or meelee scrapper, with an energy building attack, so you have something to do while out of blue and a good attack.

Teaming is horrible. Teams are hard to find, they accidently disband. Half of the missions can't be team shared (which means only the owner gets the bonus) and you don't know where the heck you are going if it's not your mission.

Soloing can be from too easy to impossible not based on difficulty, but based on your build.

They are using the graphical sounds Coh said they were using 2 April firsts ago. Including Freem! I don't know if this is legal, but it looks cool.

The cut scenes and sounds are much better than the graphics. I like the sounds. In the snow there is one catgirl villain you need to defeat and convert, and she says some random funny stuff, like cat girl surgery is expensive, so she had to steal to pay for it. Or she's not really a villain, just a furry who fell in with the wrong crowd.

The end of beta was sort of fun. They leveled you to 40 and had giant robots invade everywhere to defeat and get killed by. Head Start was horrible. they had 1 invasion every 45 minutes that lasted less than 3 minutes each time. First day they buffed villains, nerfed all powers, expecially defense and the few healing powers, and all the travel powers. But your missions send you across maps longer than IP, and they slow you down!! Jack at his most famous.

As an altoholic, the game is VERY repetitive. Here I can start off doing my contact chain or a sewer run, or level up quickly in AE. In CO, I have to spend up to an hour on the dang tutorial then I have one of 2 environments I am stuck in until level 10 and should proably remain in until level 15. And you can use up all your missions in your environment and be stuck with nothing to do in your level range.

So I piddle with CO when I get up very early and can't find anyone on line here. But CoH has better players, better teaming, more consistant graphics and I find it more fun. I'm subscribed to both, but I'm onlyh going to continue to pay for one. (And I'm not talking about the numerous micro transactions that CO has announced, like a way to get the vanity pets)

I was in Open Beta, pre-ordered, weaseled into Headstart, then canceled my pre-order.

So I guess yeah, I fell to temptation.

I can safely say CO caused me more frustration and MMO burnout than any MMO I've EVER played, and I played a few. Including Korean grinders.

Emmert and Roper are like a bad comedy act, because they repeat the same jokes they got booed for in the last show. It's shocking to me, because if I made the same mistakes over and over doing my job, I'd be fired by now. These two bastards are still employed and getting paid more than I do, probably.

I could harp on about 9/1 nerf, but others have done that already. Instead, I would ask of the Dynamic Duo why is it that they still live in 2003.

There's been a lot of activity in the MMO world in the recent years. There are highly publicized stories of success and failure (their own included). All it takes is reading, and then not repeating the same mistakes made by others.

Players don't like nerfs.
Players hate lengthy tutorials.
Players will solo if they can, but they will team if it pays and it is fun.
Camping, ninja-ing and kill-stealing are infuriating.
Grinding of any kind (collect me 9000 boar livers) sucks if you are catering to Westerners.
Bugs happen, but you have to be very generous with the people who are paying YOU 15 bucks a month to beta-test your unfinished product.

CO commits all of those sins and then some.

That's why my temptation was just that: a fleeting temptation.

Cryptic clearly never learned their lessons from CoX.

Just sayin'.

I was never tempted by CO, because Jack Emmert was working on it. If you notice my joined date, I played Emmert's CoX. However, I'm only a 15-month veteran, because I only stayed after Emmert left. I think it is a much better game now than it was then.