MMO Friends Will Travel

I meant to update this weekend, I really did. However, when given the option between writing about Champions Online and playing Champions Online, the choice was made clear.

Champions Online launched last week and since then it has become the all-consuming entity of my existence. That my two most trusty compatriots have joined me in Millennium City for super-heroics has only solidified the placement of this game as the center point for my recreational time.

Honestly, I did not expect this to be the case. I bought the game with the mindset that I would make a hero and watch the controlled chaos that is the initial launch of any MMO, if only to say things like “I was there” and “I remember when...”. Champions Online was to be a vacation from the World of Warcraft. Not an MMO. Not a second life online that required daily maintenance and long term planning. Just a video game that happened to have a lot of other people playing it with you.

My above mentioned friends had already essentially broken away from the grip of Azaroth in much the same way when they rediscovered Phantasy Star Online, a game of considerable nostalgic value where I found myself frequently saying “I remember when” during the brief time I joined them.

I did not establish myself as a significant presence in their renewed love for PSO. Likewise, I really didn’t expect either of them to take my recommendation to join me on Champions Online. Though all three of us are tried and true geeks, super-heroes have always been an interest primarily exclusive to myself.

One of my friends, we will call him A.J., because those are his initials, was my companion through our days of City of Heroes, but super-heroes have never been his interest. With Champions Online much more dedicated to paying tribute to comic book mythology I expected he would instead lose himself in the also recently released Aion. It seems I underestimated the amount of time A.J. has to dedicate himself to games as he is currently playing both.

The final member of our trio, we will call him P.D., but those are not his initials, also surprised me when I discovered he had purchased the game. Though he once long ago nurtured an interest in super-heroes, P.D. never played any significant amount of City of Heroes, so his experience with Champions will be unique compared to A.J. and myself.

In fact, I expect this entire period of Champions Online to be an interesting opportunity to examine how the three of us react to the same product.

Immediately I saw the differences between A.J. and I, but the two of us have been playing MMOs for roughly a decade now so many of my observations were expected. A.J. derives his enjoyment out of games by breaking them. Give him a system of number based mechanics and he will work out exactly what he needs to get the absolute most out of it. In contrast, I am much more concerned with thematic elements than I am min/maxing my stats. Where A.J. chooses what he wants to do and then chooses the best playstyle to do it, I choose my playstyle first and then worry about how it performs. In a game like Champions Online, which offers an unprecedented amount of freedom in how you play, this has put us both slightly out of our element. The time each of us dedicate to either creating an iconic character and examining our stats is balancing out. We no longer sit on opposite sides of the spectrum because the spectrum itself has become smaller.

How the next few weeks play out look to be interesting indeed. Will we join forces to become the greatest team of super heroes ever formed, or will we go our separate ways until the next opportunity for our paths to cross comes along?