Champions Online open beta August 18th

[Aegis]

The Champions Online open beta kicks off on August 17th (American time) and will run 'til the following monday - none of this 2 day crap like Aion ;P

Open Beta Schedule! | Champions Online Official Site

I'm not sure if you need a fileplanet account to get on the open beta or not. They still have section on the Champions website homepage where you can request a beta key so I'm assuming that will get you into the open beta if you're looking to try it.

We?re pleased to announce the schedule for next week?s Open Beta! On Sunday, August 16th, all characters from Closed Beta will be wiped from the servers in preparation for our Open Beta. When the servers open at 10 a.m. PDT on Monday, August 17th, everyone will have a fresh start, and you?ll be ready to experience the game from start to finish!
Servers will be taken down nightly from 1:00 a.m. PDT to 3:00 a.m. PDT for scheduled maintenance. Other than that, you can play all week long until the 24th. At 10:00 a.m. PDT on Monday, August 24th, the servers will be shut down and wiped once more in preparation for the game?s release. The ?Early Start Program? begins on Friday, August 28th, and allows select pre-order purchasers an opportunity to get a headstart on the rest of the world by playing the game a few days before the official release. In addition, all Early Start participants will get to take part in a world event, where special enemies will drop unique items which will only be available until September 1st.

[Milenko]

A 1 week open beta is a bit wierd, no? (Read with a French accent).

[Aegis]

i dunno - gives you time to try out a bunch of powersets. This game is even more customisable than city of heroes because you can pick and choose your powers from any set.

also: lol at ability to turn enemies into teddy bears etc

[Milenko]

Hahaha, sounds like fun.
I'd give it a blast but our cap is super over :/

[KidCynic]

You know they aren't very confident in their own MMO when they bring out:

[Aegis]

haha - they weren't going to do that at all. during the closed beta a ton of the players kept demanding it because they were pissed there was never a lifetime option for city of heroes (where most of the beta players came from). I know i've spent more than the lifetime amount on CoH

[feary]

Just download the chinese beta of Aion if 2 days isn't enough for you

[Aegis]

Okay - so - 24 hours after the beta started I (and all 40,000+ other players) finally got in. What a complete cluster-**** that was. Cryptic, in their infinite wisdom, didn't allow preorder customers to even open their updaters. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, HOWEVER, some ****ing gibbon at Cryptic had failed miserably to test the install file that was sent to Failplanet (the only goddamned place they allowed to to download the installer from). This is where their issues began.

Once the beta file unlocked, we all installed it, opened it up, expecting a small patch to bring it up to the current release. Wouldn't you know it though? a 2gb patch? wtf! The forums start buzzing with people annoyed that we werent allowed to download this ahead of time then just apply a smaller patch on beta start. Anyway, that's fine, except the patching server can't handle the volume. They weren't expecting 40,000 beta activations. Sure enough the updater shits itself. After several hours of stop starts (thankfully Cryptic does write resumable updaters at least) someone from Cryptic finally posts on their site that "oh no, you don't have to download the monster patch. the files are already in the game directory where you installed to, just the copy that went to Failplanet had them in the wrong directory - move all the .hogg files into the /live/piggs dir and restart the updater all will be good!"

after doing that, people started getting flatout failures on certain files during the final update process. several hours later, and hundreds of forum rant pages, Cryptic releases a new installer - TO FAILPLANET - where most people are lucky to get 100kps in fricken bursts. Thankfully I was at work 'til people had actually got a hold of that and was able to get a torrent of it instead, but geebus - why exacerbate the problem by forcing people to go back and use a service a second time round that they resented using for the initial download?!

I know it's a beta still, so problems were expected, but posting the the fixed version to fileplanet only was just dumb.

Anyway, I only got a few minutes in game last night before bed, but I am really impressed so far. below are pics of my hero, OMFG I Got In Man.

The character editor is easily the best I've seen in any MMO to date. The graphics feel great despite (and because of) the cartoonish aspect. and I LOVE that you can run and gun - no standing still while attacking (though will probably have to for sniper attacks). the interfaces are great and it has default key setups for people coming from different games: Fantasy (read as literal WoW setup), Paragon (City of heroes/villains), Champions, and a customisable option (they're all customisable, that one just prompts you to do it immediately if you select it).

Oh, and they weren't kidding about it being one server. When i entered the tutorial zone, it prompted me for the instance i wanted to enter (you can switch between them by clicking on the mini-map) - the list of instances was huge, each with several hundred players in it. The game was slightly jerky, but it seemed to be more that my machine is underpowered than lag.

[Aegis]

also, just noticed internode is now mirroring the open beta client fix: Games On Net File Library :: Champions Online - Open Beta Fix Patch - Champions_Online_OB_Fix.exe

[Aegis]

Oh Em Eff Gee.

Champions, so far, is everything i wanted from an MMO - the initial tutorial took me to level 6 and as soon as it was done I got my travel power (no hanging round 'til level 14 like CoH - and I can actually use it straight away unlike Aion ;P ). I took rocket boots since i figured that went well with power armour - the devs clearly watched the Iron Man movie a *lot* because when flying, my character moves exactly the same way - when he's just hovering it's exactly like the scene when Stark first gets into the framework and hovers about his workshop, only without the burnt cars and retarded robots.



Characters do not make ghey noises when they attack.

I like the combat in this, there's no recharge time for attacks - instead your endurance bar drops a certain amount depending on the attack, though you get one attack that refills the bar quickly. You can also hit shift to block incoming attacks, this also converts some of the blocked energy into endurance for you to throw right back at your opponents. I already mentioned the run-and-gun thing - can't express how happy i am with that capacity - especially now my character launches missiles like a Robotech Valkyrie - just hanging out for his next power: a targeting system that lets you lock-on and engage multiple targets at once (not AoE, still individual targets). There's something really awesome about being a long-range tank..

Characters do not make ghey noises when they attack.

Crafting is pretty easy. Standard thing of buy or find blueprints, learn them if they're in the mastery arc you've chosen (Arms, Science, Mystic), then hunt down the components you need and find a workbench to put it all together on.

Characters do not make ghey noises when they attack.

Missions seem to be a mix of instanced, open world, and public. Though the only instanced one I've done so far was the finale for the tutorial.

speaking of openworld - this player ran past me using a temporary power to boost his size a little bit:



City of Heroes/Villains had some issues with items on the maps that should've hurt you but instead went right through you with no effect. One of those things was spinning helicopter blades. So when I found a chopper in CO, I had to jump through it's blades to see what would happen:



pain. check.

lastly, here's a detail shot (not that my graphics settings are above medium mind you).



Anyway, so far this game contains complete win. They've clearly learnt from other MMOs (the open beta start aside)

[Aegis]

I just need to say: MMOs that let you permanently alter your environment are epic win.

I just completed a mission arc through the indian dude pictured above (with the giant glowing orange avatar protecting the area from the raging blizzard) - and when i returned from the mission instance, having killed the demon creating the weather, the area was no-longer shrouded in this blizzard. Clear skies in all directions. I know that's only a small change, but it's the first time i've seen something like that done in an MMO. very cool.

[Aegis]

omg - swinging + laser sword = awesome



and he's down for the count!


really loving the whole not being locked in place when using any kind of ability thing.

[HeReTiC]

I just need to say: MMOs that let you permanently alter your environment are epic win.

I just completed a mission arc through the indian dude pictured above (with the giant glowing orange avatar protecting the area from the raging blizzard) - and when i returned from the mission instance, having killed the demon creating the weather, the area was no-longer shrouded in this blizzard. Clear skies in all directions. I know that's only a small change, but it's the first time i've seen something like that done in an MMO. very cool.

wow has it in the DK starting zone its call phasing.

and Guild wars did it as well because the whole game is instanced.

[Aegis]

ahh cool but do either of them let you swing on the end of a rope and slice the crap out of enemies with laser swords? i think not!