Well, you’ve fought and scraped up from the bottom, defeating
nefarious foes at every turn. You’ve entered the major
leagues, hitting the end game content in Champions Online.
You’re no longer a mere sidekick or hero-wannabe; no,
you’re a bona fide hero with a capital H! So, the pertinent
question for our discussion today is how does the end game experience
stack up for CO?



The end game experience is yet another vital component of a good MMOG.
For one, the player must feel rewarded for all his hours and effort in
playing the game. Second, you (the game company) want to keep the
player entertained and to have goals in order to keep them playing.
Normally, an MMOG has a number of vast raids, increased pvp action, and
high end crafting to keep players grinding away for weeks and months in
order to get the best shiny.



We’ll examine various aspects of the end game experience in
CO, and we’ll look at the good and bad of these aspects. For
our purposes, we’ll be using the level range of 30-40 to
define the end game experience. It is within these last 10 levels that
the last few zones in the game open up for the player, whilst a few end
game experiences are reserved for characters of level 40.

Zones
and General Missions

You will spend the majority of your time, end game wise, in two zones:
Monster Island and Lemuria. Fortunately, these two zones are easily the
best looking and interesting zones in the game. Monster Island is an
island filled with not only with your typical evil organizations and
aliens, but also the half-man, half-animal hybrids which are the
results of genetic experiments.  In addition, the lush
tropical landscape is also home to dangerous dinosaurs as well. After
hitting level 31, you can go to Lemuria (the crisis mission is level 34
overall), which is the undersea kingdom of a lost civilization. Lemuria
is unlike any other zone in that the entire zone is an underwater zone,
so you definitely need to keep an eye out for dangers not only around,
but also above and below you as well. This zone, where the domed cities
of the Lemurians reside on the ocean floor, is probably the coolest
looking zone in the game.



There are a couple of major missions in this level range,
such as Rhinoplasty, but there are some gaps that will occur when
you’ve done all the available missions and cannot find any
more in the zone you’re at. The most notable gap is in the
low 30s when you’re on Monster Island. The answer to this is
to leave Monster Island and go to Lemuria, where you’ll be
able to pick up a lot of new missions, even though they’ll be
a couple levels higher than you. In a pinch, you could also retake the
few grind missions, such as kill x number of things, over again to gain
xp. I hope Cryptic continues
to add new missions to the game over time
as there’s really no excuse for having empty gaps in a
character’s mission journal.



Nemesis

Eventually, your first nemesis will be put away and you’ll be
able to create another one. Overall, the nemesis system is fun and
there are some cool missions. I would have preferred to keep my old
nemesis in play whilst being able to add to my rogue’s
gallery by creating additional villains. Still, the nemesis system
provides some nice action during this stage of the game.



PvP

Sadly, pvp in the end game is only marginally better than in the
previous parts of the game. There is an additional map, lava temple,
for the UTC fights and the Apocalypse: Stronghold Prison scenario. The
Apocalypse scenario actually has some strategy to it. In the scenario,
the heroes are assigned to be either the villains attempting to escape
or to part of the group of heroes trying to prevent said escape. This
scenario is a decent pvp scenario, but there are a few flaws in that.
The most notable is that there’s no time limit. There have
been times when I, personally, have felt that I’m in prison
waiting for the scenario to end. Despite the addition of the Apocalypse
scenario, pvp is still rather pitiful in CO. Cryptic really needs to
address this issue as that pvp tends to become very important to those
players who like to continue to play their end game characters.

UNITY
Missions and Lairs

When your character hits level 40, they will be invited to join UNITY,
a super hero team that acts on behalf of the UN. Once a character is
part of UNITY, they can partake in UNITY missions. These missions are
pretty well designed overall. The main purpose of these missions is to
provide an outlet for level 40 characters. You can take up to five
daily missions per day. If you complete all five, then a sixth mission
will unlock. This sixth mission will require a five-man team to go into
a lair. Doing the missions will provide points for the character to use
on special gear (and this special gear is really nice!), but it will
take a long time to accumulate the points needed for the best gear.



There is a distinct lack of high end lairs in the game. The UNITY
missions provide some lairs, whilst the new Nemesis Confrontation lair
adds another. These lairs are great to play in, but a few more lairs
would be nice. What would be better would be to have some huge lairs to
adventure in, such as Naxx in World of Warcraft. Of course, I would
prefer that Cryptic sticks to their 5 man team design concept if they
do create some gargantuan lairs.



Overall, just like in the earlier stages of the game, the end game
experience is a mixed bag. The pvp is dreadful and needs to be
addressed. New missions need to be created to ensure that there are no
lags in leveling up. However, the two zones you’ll spend the
most time in, Monster Island and Lemuria, are the best two zones in the
game and are great to adventure in and are beautiful to behold.
However, once you hit 40, you’re pretty much left to the
UNITY missions. While the missions are nice, there definitely needs to
be some more additional ‘showcase’ lairs to be
created. The Nemesis Confrontation lair has really been a nice
addition, and I’m hoping that Cryptic will continue to build
on that. There are so many things that can be done for additional cool
lairs, such as time travel, alternate dimensions, alien worlds, the
supernatural, and so on. CO has also added a boost to their crappy
crafting system recently. You can create travel devices, but be
prepared to grind for eternity to gather the mats. If I was to grade
the end game experience, I would have to give it a C. An A for the
zones, an F for the pvp, and a C for the missions (need more and some
cool giant lairs to conquer).