I’ve been hooked on massive multiplayer online RPGs ever since Diablo II. I know, Diablo II wasn’t actually an MMORPG, but it planted the seeds that would eventually sprout when I spent hundreds of hours in Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings: Online, and a handful of other MMOs. At any given time, I’m usually playing at least one and convincing friends to join in. When I first saw Champions Online at E3 2008 I was hooked already, and began mentally preparing myself to invest months of my life in the tabletop RPG turned online gaming sensation.

I quit in less than a month. Here is a why I won’t be playing more Champions Online.



Things start off really well. The art style is nice, and fitting for the genre, trying to look as much as possible like a comic book in motion. That, mixed with the fact that the character creation tools are easily the best in the history of MMOs, leads to really good early impressions. When it comes to creating a hero, every aspect can be changed, tweaked, and modified to allow for nearly limitless design choices. Want to make the superhero you’ve been drawing on notebook paper since 4th grade? Easy. Recreate popular characters from comic books? Done. When I played, my main character was Jonathan Cooper, and looked just like me if I had beam guns and jet boots. I also made Dig Dug, who dressed nearly identically to the iconic 80s character. While playing, it's a treat to look at other characters to see what creative designs people were able to come up with. The act of creating a character is a bit hard to manage, and sometimes it feels as though it’s more difficult than it should be, but it’s forgivable considering how much is possible. 

After creating a character, you’re able to pick skills. While the game has a number of pre-set paths available, the character customization continues to the skill set, something which reminded me of the wonderful leveling system in Star Wars Galaxies (pre-SOE ruining it). Every class needs to begin with two basic attacks, one which gains power and one that draws from that pool. It’s simple, and serves as a wonderful replacement for the auto-attacks that turn many MMOs into snore-fests. These attacks don’t have to be from the same class, though, and it’s possible to use a sword for up-close attacks to gain power and a machine gun from afar to spend it. This customization extends through the entire game, and allows anyone to do anything they want. Some choices obviously go better together, but that’s not the point, the point is to let players make that mistake (and spend a few hundred resources to fix it later). Creating and customizing a character is where the entertaining part of Champions Online ends and a mediocre and forgettable MMO begins.

Since it’s an MMO, some things can be forgiven. It’s glitchy, but glitches get fixed. It’s unbalanced, but that can be changed. As long as there’s nothing game-breaking, there’s really nothing to worry about. Other problems are a bit more substantial. There’s a general lack of content, and later levels are spent doing nearly every quest to make it to the cap. It’s something that could be easily fixed if quests gave more experience, but they don’t, though it is something that can be remedied if Cryptic decides it’s actually an issue. Then again, odds are most people won’t even make it to the point that it becomes a problem.

The problems start to present themselves early on, and I can’t see many people wanting to play for more than a few days. In my few weeks with Champions I made several characters and played with a few others reviewing the game. By the end, I was the only one who hadn’t quit playing, and I was still far from the level cap. To get a better understanding of the game, I jumped into a game with some of the developers, asking them to show me what an end-game battle is like in Champions Online. It was nearly exactly like the early missions, except with more hit-points and better rewards.

Champions Online’s biggest issue is that it tries too hard to be like other Massive Multiplayer Online RPGs. Cryptic took the complaints from City of Heroes to heart, and decided to make up for the shortcomings by including everything everyone expects from an MMORPG. However, many of the elements usually associated with the genre are tied closely to fantasy, since the earliest games to really define them were Ultima Online and Everquest, both of which fall into the swords and sorcery realm.



Let’s start with the most obvious: items. After spending two hours creating a character, the last thing anyone wants to do is cover their perfectly designed character in mediocre armor or replace their sweet sniper-rifle with a low-level pea shooter. Cryptic knew this, but they also learned from CoH that people want better rewards for completing missions. With this, they met players halfway, and gave them strange items that give random boosts to stats but don’t actually show up on the character. They usually have strange names that don’t really describe what they do, and just barely fit the bill of “stuff that a boss drops so no one complains about loot.” To convolute things even more, there’s a crafting system to make the items in question, because nothing screams superhuman like crafting. For as fun as they are to find or be rewarded with, there’s little satisfaction for creating something to give a few points to a skill. 

Next up, there’s PvP, which can make or break an MMORPG. Let me be clear: player versus player is not vital to the MMO experience. It helps, and makes for one hell of an end-game, but it is in no way a mandate. The option to duel? More or less necessary. Organized PvP? Not so much. Cryptic apparently missed the memo, and decided to include several combat arenas to fight in. It’s obviously an afterthought, and while it’s great to be able to test powers on something other than a quest, the powers are in no way balanced for that type of combat. Even at low levels, it’s a mess of stuns and snares, which isn’t even remotely fun for anyone but the stunner and snarer. Later in the game, it turns into something much different, best compared to games like Defense of the Ancients and League of Legends, but the issues persist.

Lastly, there’s the actual content. The game’s opening is nice, showing Millennium City being attacked by aliens. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence in comics, so it makes sense and serves as a workable introduction. After finishing up, two options are unlocked: the Canadian tundra and a mutant-infested desert. Despite having distinct visuals and enemies, neither feels dramatically different, and they certainly don’t give the sensation of being a superhero. Once you’re able to return to Millennium City, it’s a breath of fresh air. At level 30, a few areas more are added to the mix, rounding it off at five total zones, a far cry from what should be available.



There are certain things Cryptic did right. Being able to choose any character name lets players be more creative, and taking advantage of instanced zones to have one large server is downright brilliant. Choosing a travel power from a long list of options (that includes Spider-Man-like swinging, burrowing, flying, hovering, and nearly every other type of super human travel) continues the customization, and there’s something awe-inspiring about a group of heroes using their different abilities to reach a quest. They also knew to steal Warhammer: Online’s public quests, which is a brilliant, if not all that original, move. The ability to create a custom nemesis, too, works in the game’s favor, but cannot save the game from its other faults.

These great strides towards improving MMOs are held back by a game that seems tied to the tradition it tried so hard to break from. It’s a missed opportunity. Adding in a hackneyed and confusing item system wasn’t necessary. The game didn’t need PvP. Questing doesn’t need to feel traditional; it can be more… fun, and substantial. There are ways around all of these issues, and most of them involve taking steps away from tradition and creating something new. Cryptic didn’t do that, and instead they stuck to their guns and tried to blend together City of Heroes and World of Warcraft.

City of Heroes, through all of its faults, pulled off giving players the tools to feel like a superhero. Champions doesn’t, and couldn’t feel any more like a stereotypical, mediocre MMO. If there were fewer games in the genre this might be enough, but it’s not even the only popular superhero game in the works, so it’s going to be hard to justify continuing to pay a monthly fee for an experience that has its climax moments after installation. The result isn’t something I wanted to continue playing, and I’d be willing to bet you wouldn’t either. With DC Universe still many months away, I implore Sony Online Entertainment to look at the faults of Champions and build off of them, because I truly want to be sucked into a superhero MMO. To my surprise, this game didn’t do it, and if the recent price drop is any indication, I’m not the only one feeling this way. It’s not too late for the game, and there have been worse games that managed to pull together through patches to fix problems, but I’m not going to hold my breath.