Champions Online: Zombies, Werewolves And Untranslated Text! Oh My!

The Blood Moon Patch
If you don’t follow Champions Online or didn’t otherwise know, Cryptic is recently launched the Blood Moon event.  This is the first major content update to the game since it launched several weeks ago.  This weekend the game was free to play this Halloween weekend via Steam so it is likely to see a burst of new players during that time.  The Blood Moon update brings events to the game that introduce a few interesting dynamics, a new PVP map and game type, new badges, and more.  See the video below for the full scoop, right from the Cryptic team:

I still happen to be subscribed to Champions Online, but have not been playing much. I’ve been waiting on this update to see what it does for the game, and will report my findings in my next report. This all looks very cool, can’t wait to jump in and get with the zombie slaying!

Pro Tip: Translate your text to make your game look like a finished product.

As evidenced by the image to the right, the patch didn’t go all that smoothly at first.  There were some pretty big issues, like the PVP instance not being available to people to participate in.  The quest events were not starting correctly in some places, as well as UI errors where generic “untranslated” text was shown.  By the time you read this, most of these things are likely to be fixed in a patch.  Pretty standard fare for an MMO.  Basically, the patch needed a patch to patch what the patch added.  Wait, what?

Zombies in the City and Werewolves in the Desert
So how was my time under the Blood Moon? Well, I started in Millenium City after reading an in-game email from some NPC police chief.  I never found him.  I accidentally deleted the email that was sent to me and couldn’t find the NPC. Since emails are tied to your account and not your character, I couldn’t log into another character and read the email again.  Granted, I did not work very hard to find the NPC that sent the email, but it really felt like there was no easy way to jump into the Blood Moon content.  I just didn’t feel like I was pointed in the right direction and it wasn’t easy enough to partake in whatever was happening.  This is a problem that has plagued Champions Online since its launch, and it has not improved with the addition of the Blood Moon content.  I could see the new Blood Red moon in the sky and hear the sounds of werewolves howling, but that was about as exciting as my evening got.  I never saw any of the new NPC’s shown in the video above.  Maybe it was my fault for a lack of effort, but it is still my opinion that Cryptic did not do a good job of guiding players to the new content.

The Millenium City zombie stuff didn’t do it for me, so I felt it was time to move on to another zone.  I left Millenium City for the desert and some werewolf hunting.  I finally got someone to tell me where the hell the werewolves were, or at least the general area.  I teleported out to the prison in the desert zone and found a few packs of werewolves that were gray con (under my level) and killed them.  After the 3rd pack, one managed to get a debuff on me that did…something.  I got some interesting dark borders around my screen but couldn’t tell if I had actually turned into a werewolf or not.  I don’t think that mattered, since I never saw another player the whole time I was out there.  I’m pretty sure I wasn’t in the right area, but I had no idea where the right area was, and got irritated. My werewolf hunting was done, and now I considered the werewolf content to be pretty bland as well.

Celestial Quest Blockage
I then went to the new and improved power house, but wasn’t able to get any Celestial powers as I think they must be unlocked with some quest or something.  /sigh.  Couldn’t they just be made available like the other power set?  Why do they have to be unlocked with some aggravating quest?  Maybe my tolerance for this stuff has dropped since I haven’t been playing MMO’s over the last few weeks.  I think Pete was right, the further you step back from MMO’s, the more you can see how angry people generally are with their MMO game of choice.  This is the kind of thing that makes this MMO gamer crazy, as there are always “design decisions” that wind up just flat out irritating the player base.  I could easily launch into a tirade on MMO design here, so I’ll reel that in and get back to the story at hand.

So there I was, unimpressed and kind of irritated with the new patch.  I didn’t want to have to do research on the event just to participate, and I logged off.  This time, probably for good.  I spoke to Syp on Ventrilo (of course he was in the Fallen Earth channel getting his apocalypse on) and told him I’d give him the scoop.  Instead, I wound up going the same route he did.  The funny thing is that when I went to cancel, it was already canceled since I had switched banks recently and forgot to update my billing.  I had 6 days of play time left, which I will not use anyway, so it all worked out in the end.

I didn’t just ragequit, mind you.  I was on the verge of canceling my CO subscription going in, and was sort of halfway hoping that the Blood Moon event would be so much fun that I would have to stay subscribed.  At level 28 the questing and leveling had gotten to the point where the action of the combat no longer made up for it being relatively boring.  Fallen Earth and Aion decimated my guild’s population, and I wasn’t really motivated to do the work to find another one, so I stayed solo.  I had already made a ton of characters and explored all the power sets.  I had a very powerful character that could mow through even the toughest of enemies.  I’m sure I’ll be back to check it out some day, and that decision might be easier if CO went free to play (permanently) ala Dungeons and Dragons Online.  It already has a micro transaction based store, perhaps it is already primed for such a transition?  Maybe that is fodder for another article as well.

Blood Moon Doesn’t Redeem
To those of you having fun with CO, understand that I realize I didn’t put that much effort into making the most of the Blood Moon expansion.  1 play session of a few hours (and solo the whole time) is probably no way to try to experience new content in CO.  However, that’s kind of my point.  I’m at a place where I can’t (or just don’t want to) put in alot off effort to have fun, I feel like it should come easier.  It might be that I have more of a problem with level grinds right now than anything, and that this content expansion is alot better than I give it credit for.  Hopefully it is, so try it for yourself.  For now, I’m hanging up the spandex.

- br3ntbr0