Superhero MMOs part 3

Champions Online.

I can write the most about this at the moment since I've been reading up a fair bit on it. In the then untitled part 1 I voiced my ethical concerns about looking forward to the game, so here I'll just talk about what excites me about it, and where I've got concerns.

The fighting systems looks interesting and the requirement to use energy building attacks so you can unleash more devastating ones is something that sounds good on paper, but I'll hold off having an opinion until later.

I have to say, my only major concern at the moment is the server system. Rather then having different servers running separate and independent of one another as most MMOs do, CO is using a shard system. Basically there's one massive server and every location in it has a maximum number of players, once that's surpassed the server makes a new location for excess and so on and so forth. While this means it's easy to meet up with friends in game, it's also highly problematic. City of Heroes had plenty of times when some of the servers would go down, and players had to migrate to other servers just to play. Imagine that on a single server, if it went down every single player would be screwed.

Plus I'm a roleplayer, even when there aren't official server designations people try to label servers into types. If I'm roleplaying, I don't want to be bothered by some wanker begging people to power level him and calling them cocks if they don't

But I have to say despite that it looks pretty good. The nemesis system is clever, at level 25 - a little over halfway to max level 40 - you can create a Nemesis using the same system as is used in character creation (with the ability to describe the kind of villain they are, mastermind, thief, psychotic, etc) who is used in generated missions. I have no doubt people will come up with ways to make shit Nemesis for easy experience, but this really gets me going.

The character creation looks impressive. The physical creator looks more in depth then City of Heroes, but I've heard it has less actual costume pieces, at least to begin with. The actual leveling up and power system looks incredible. I'm seriously all goey in my manparts with anticipation. Just reading the half or so mix-and-matchable powersets they've released details on so far has me coming up with dozens of character ideas.

You see, instead of just picking your class and powersets, the game is open-ended in its design. You pick your opening powers from any powerset you want, and later on you earn roles that you can switch in and out of (with four total equating to most MMO class slots - Balanced, Offence, Defence, and Support). Individual powers within the sets have a number of power requirements you need to satisfy, usually just X (a lower number) of powers already from within that set, or Y (a higher number) of powers from outside of that set. A gun-wielding hero can dip into Supernatural and grab Regeneration with immense ease, or a Might-based hero can dip into Battlesuit for technological attacks.

I know I shouldn't be getting any distractions, now that my Honours Thesis is due in two and a half months, but fuck me this looks awesome.