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

With the Blood Moon event for Champions Online well underway, Ten Ton Hammer reviews the good and bad of Cryptic’s first holiday themed event. In addition, the Blood Moon event also represents the first major content update for CO with certain aspects of the event staying around after the event (the celestial power set and Zombie Apocalypse PvP map). Was the event worthwhile? Read on!

Next, we look at the Zombie Apocalypse PvP map. This is a quick and fun rumble against zombies and other players. A group of heroes must fight off a zombie horde in a remote snowbound village. The wrinkle is that the zombies are led by an undead hero (a random player). If a hero is struck down, they, in turn, become part of the undead forces. The goal of each player is to be the last hero standing. The longer you can hold out (the zombie horde is always victorious), the more acclaim you receive. Overall, this is a great idea, and I’ve enjoyed playing it. The only downside is that it can go extremely quickly.

Crafting has become an integral part of MMOGs in the last few years. Hated and beloved, Crafting is here to stay. Some games do it better than others. Our question is how does crafting in Champions Online stack up? Is it worthwhile or worthless?

To provide full disclosure, I do not usually like crafting in a game. I play a game to have fun, usually by busting the heads of computerized orcs or villains, or by throwing down in some PvP. I do not play a game to spend hours collecting materials from three different zones from a variety of sources in order to knit the Colossal Sweater of Neverending Doom and Gloom Upon Thy Enemies.

With Champions Online’s launch behind us, it seems like a good time to look back and reflect on what could, and maybe should, have been present in the game at launch. Keep your burning torches and flaming torches away, this is just one crazy man’s opinion.

To start off with, let’s take a look at missions. The missions have been equal on par with the level that you receive them, and the missions have been the normal standard mission types (kill x number of bad guys or retrieve x number of items). I also enjoy the random missions in which a person runs up to you and offers you a mission. My big beef with missions is that there are too few.

Since the dawn of MMO-time, there have been two types of players: The Min-Maxers and the Conceptual Creators. The Min-Maxer likes to run daily-spreadsheets and TPS reports to find the most optimum build possible for their characters, while the Conceptual Creators prefer to let their hearts and souls guide their hero on his or her journey. In Champions Online, either way is a viable play-strategy, but is one inherently better than the other? William “JoBildo” Murphy tries to decide in this editorial.

Holiday themed events have become a staple in MMOGs in recent years, but can new games, such as Champions Online, afford to divert the resources that can be used to create permanent content to make seasonal content? Ten Ton Hammer’s intrepid man of mystery, Mattlow, is here to explore this important issue.

An established game has very little problems when it comes to spending developer time working on holiday themed events. Those games already have a good deal of content, have had a lot of bugs and flaws worked out, and (hopefully) a solid subscriber base. A new game, such as Champions Online, is still working out those problems, especially content and tweaking for balance. They need to address their problems quickly so as to keep their subscriber base happy. Sadly, the developers have their backs against the wall usually as that most MMOGs are released in an incomplete state due to the high costs of making an MMOG.

The subject of reviewing videogames has long been a touchy subject among the hobby’s fans. More than console or standalone titles, MMOGs are extremely tricky beasts to review. There are around FIFTY reviews already out for the recently released Champions Online and it's just now a month old. William “JoBildo” Murphy urges the critics of the gaming world to think carefully before assigning their verdict to a newly launched world in this editorial.

There has been an interesting evolutionary process at work behind the MMOG industry’s rising success stretching all the way back to the late 1990s when  the first few titles that pioneered the concept sprang forth from the primordial MUD soup. As with most dominant genres in gaming, current MMOGs continue to fall back on the foundations created by these early success stories, but for a newer title to be truly successful on its own terms, something new must be added to the magical brew of gameplay mechanics and beyond.

With the launch of Cryptic Studios’ newest offering, Reuben “Sardu” Waters takes a look at both the core gameplay elements in Champions Online that have built upon the foundation of the title’s predecessors as well as the dynamic approach to content design that could very well lead the industry as a whole into interesting new directions.

The Nemesis System – Nemesis is perhaps Champions Online’s biggest leap forward on a scale that rivals WAR’s public quests. By combining player created content, random spawning and a self-contained reward structure this system shatters the mold of linear gameplay. Add in the fact that the entire thing is wrapped in a story-driven mission arc and you have the makings of a new way of playing MMOGs that’s never been experienced before.