Media Consumes Me

This is for those of you who enjoy a virtual world, who create your character with a fitting background, and who dedicate hours with other players to achieve accomplishment in a fortress of great evil. There’s a decent amount of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) news this week. Here’s the news, straight, and some opinions.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. That’s right, ladies and gents. We didn’t even take out Arthas yet and the next expansion is slated for a 2010 release. New features? Hold your breath:

New Alliance Race: Worgen – The human nation of Gilneas is infected with a condition that makes them all half-worgen, aka, werewolves. Racials traits include the ability to shift between human and worgen form, an innate sprint, passive damage increase, and bonus to skinning. The alliance gets a bestial race!

New Alliance Race: Goblins – About time, no? The Trolls and Orcs finally get the third greenskin brother to join their ranks. Passive bonuses to gold discounts and haste, each Goblin also comes fully equipped with a rocket belt that allows them to side jump and disengage enemies. Bonuses to alchemy!

Completely Overhauled Old World – That’s right. Darkshore is flooded, the barrens suffer a fissure that splits it into two zones, Mount Hyjal is under attack by the first World of Warcraft raid boss; Ragnaros! Grim Batol, Gilneas, and Uldum are all opened up and the subterranean continent of Deepholm is unveiled. Who lives in Deepholm?

Deathwing – The biggest, baddest dragon of Warcraft Lore has awakened and tore apart the world. Hence, the Cataclysm. Like Arthas and Illidan, Deathwing is the big, proverbial final boss of Cataclysm.

New Profession: Archaeology – Explore the ruins of the past world, before the Cataclysm. Unlock rare artifacts and glyphs to improve your character on a new path of progression, The Path of the Titans. Best part? It’s a secondary profession, like First Aid. Everyone gets it!

So, there you have news flash one, announced at Blizzcon this past weekend. Coming out next week, however, is a game of a completely different type of fantasy. The type of fantasy that filled cardboard boxes with comic books about super powered and super talented characters.

Champions Online. This isn’t just an announcement, this is a review. I had the privilege of experiencing the open beta and there’s quite a bit of game here to discuss. I’ll touch on four major points of the typical MMO for you; gameplay, longevity, customization, and “Is it a WoW-killer?”. That fourth one seems to be every developers dream. Let’s get to it!

The gameplay is phenomenal. The game is more action-based, so ability usage might be more easily compared to a game like Zelda or Diablo. I picked Zelda because a huge mechanic is the ability to block incoming attacks and icons that display above your enemies heads showing when they’re charging up a huge attack, giving you a chance to deflect and counter with a blast of your own! The gameplay is so action-packed that I need to tell you all the story of a demon.

My friend and I, both in the beta, found an item drop that gave us a quest to go to the top of a building at night. On this building, a demon was being summoned. We waited until nightfall and went to investigate. My teammates shot gun and grenade volley and knocked the demon off of the building, where I pulled out my laser sword and the two of us dove face first down to the sidewalk, still battling on the way down. It was truly epic. The environment, graphics, and sound effects pull you into your own comic book storyline.

The powers in the game feel like a collection of cards. Your selection is your hand and how you use them will determine how you perform. It’s a clever and intelligent design. No game is perfect, however.

The team-oriented gameplay takes the backseat until post level 20. For some, that’s a little too long (the standard has become the Deadmines at 15, now… so say the forums!). With only 40 levels at release, that is halfway through your progression, in theory. It also makes introducing the teamplay elements of healer, tank, and support a bit more obscure because everyone is playing the solo game to start. Easily fixed in the tutorial zone, I’m sure.

The UI is slow. It’s a great UI. Make no mistake that they included almost every successful WoW add-on as a feature of their UI (to give you an idea: Quest Helper, Dominos, Gatherer, ItemRack), but something about it is sluggish. When powers are used, there is almost always a delayed response and on occasion, no response. Interacts take multiple clicks to activate and, in my opinion, there’s not enough UI sound effects. In most MMOs, you hear a sound whenever you use something, use something that won’t work, or just hit a button. This UI is very quiet, as if it were designed for ninjas. More sound effects!

Longevity. I can see this game going a long time with the developer already stating that new powers and the like will be released in content patches for the life of the game. Heavy group and solo play at higher levels caters to both styles of gamers. A casual feel with an undertone of hardcore min and maxing availability again succeeds at pleasing a mixture of a player base. One server with every player leads to no complications like, “I’m on server X,” or “But I already got to 30 on this server!”, let alone forking over 25 dollars for a server transfer.

One big theme in this game is its customization. No game compares, I assure you. This game is more fun to customize than Spore (it even borrows some of the tech!). Costumes are saved as .jpgs that the game can break down and reload on any client, on any computer. Sound familiar? Here are some examples.

My Power Armor Knight:

My Alien Captive, freed during an invasion:

Power hues can be modified; emanation points can be changed from palm to fist, head to chest. Want to go Mega Man? Go ahead. Cyclops? Sure! The last thing this game does is something I honestly haven’t seen since Asheron’s Call–there are no classes. There are roles, of course. In group play, you want someone to heal and someone to tank. Two tanks will probably be very different from each other. One might be a vampire with regeneration and claws, while the other may be a suit of power armor wielding an energy sword and shield. A bold plan and, so far, well done on their part.

So, the final question is, does it kill WoW? Is this game a WoW killer?

Of course not. The concept of a WoW killer is childish in this day and age. Warhammer Online was banking on it and look how far that went. Warcraft is no longer just a game, it’s a subculture. It’s the Star Trek or Star Wars of this gaming generation. Four-year-old kids play with Thrall action figures and sixteen-year-olds read Warcraft novels. A Warcraft Magazine, I kid you not, is beginning its published life this coming year. A movie directed by Sam Raimi is in the works. Blizzard is in the process of developing a second, non-Warcraft MMO and quite frankly, I think they’ve already prevented it from being as popular as World of Warcraft. Even if I sat down and pointed out the design flaws that drive me crazy in that game, it doesn’t defeat the fact that it’s easy to play and easy to understand, but hard to master.

The Warcraft Killer is the crocodile lurking in the New York sewer system or the crazy slasher hiding in your cornfield watching you undress. It’s a myth, a legend that everyone is looking for.  It cannot be found.