Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

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).