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A Mild-Mannered Reporter: News from around the superheroic world
I've been talking about superhero games in the conceptual state over the past few weeks, which has been great for those of us who really enjoy that sort of thing. (I also got some very nice feedback from the folks at Missing Worlds Media regarding last week's article, so that's also keen.) But there are two titles in the genre already out, plus one that's not yet out but is rapidly approaching launch. So rather than speak in the abstract, let's talk about the news in review, yes? Marvel Heroes has been making the biggest waves recently with a major beta update that trimmed up systems, changed statistics, and revamped crafting extensively. Champions Online's latest event became a point of some contention when the finale was swapped from being a high-end event to being something for everybody. And DC Universe Online waited until I had just wrapped up my month in the game to launch a big update including housing. So in no particular order, let's talk about all of this.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The rocky road ahead for city revivals
I can't currently talk about The Phoenix Project or Heroes & Villains in great detail because neither game is actually a thing just yet. They're both products of the best parts of City of Heroes fandom, of players deciding that if the game was going to shut down, they were not going to go gently into that good night. No, they were going to just make a new game that keeps all of the feel and winds up better besides. Rather than decrying what happened, they're building something new. This is a good thing, and the thought of having a new game in the same vein as the lost one makes me happy for understandable reasons. But at the moment, it's just that -- a thought. Both projects have big goals, and I don't fault either of them for lack of ambition. Nonetheless, I wonder whether either will wind up coming to fruition. The fact of the matter is that making an MMO is really hard, even more so when you're working in a genre with several pitfalls, and ambition alone does not make a game.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The crafts of heroes
I want to give major props to Cryptic Studios for Champions Online at launch because the studio did something that most superhero MMOs don't even try to do: Crafting was in the game at launch, and while you can say that it was absolutely terrible, it wins respect for existing no matter what else happened afterward. I didn't play around with the crafting at launch, but I can still respect that it was there. Of course, even if I had liked it, it clearly was disliked enough for the game to completely redo its crafting system later. And from what I saw, it was not well loved. But the crafting systems for DC Universe Online and City of Heroes are both not received with open arms either. Don't get me started on the half-hearted effort Marvel Heroes has for a crafting system, which makes The Secret World look downright deep. (Although that could be revamped for release.) So what's the deal here? Superhero MMOs are often ahead of the curve in a lot of areas, so why can't we get a superhero game with a proper crafting system?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: What makes a superhero game?
If I want, I can play the same character in Champions Online that I play in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Pick one, any one will work. I can also recreate my Shaman from World of Warcraft, my Dervish from Guild Wars, or my captain from Star Trek Online. And I don't mean that I can just recreate them within a fair margin of mechanical error; I mean that I can straight up cop the same origin story and everything. That being said, the characters in their original settings are not superheroes. That brings us to an interesting situation. Superheroes are in no small part defined by their abilities, but in another setting, those abilities are in no way out of the ordinary. So it's interesting to try to define what makes one game with mages and robots and supernaturally skilled swordsmen a superhero game while another one isn't.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: DC Universe Online in review
One of the things I like about my job is the part where I have to play a lot of different games. This is not my default state -- I will happily latch on to games that I like and play them into the ground. The 100-plus hours I've clocked into every Mass Effect installment is proof enough of this. But playing a wider variety of games has given me several opportunities to see things in games, nod my head, and exclaim, "Yes! This is what people should be doing? Why do more games not do this?" DC Universe Online had me saying that about a lot of elements. And every time I figured I was good and done, I found another one. A month boomeranging back and forth between lower levels on both factions isn't enough time to get a sense for how the game shakes out over the long run, but it does provide a fairly good overview of the game as a whole. And there's a lot of elements in the game that I found astonishingly clever. It didn't offset the parts that I found somewhat tedious or broken, but it did make the game as a whole interesting on multiple levels.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Shall I play the villain?
Superheroes are defined by their villains. A lot of what makes Spider-man and Batman such celebrated characters is the fact that they've got no shortage of interesting opponents. DC Universe Online knew this when it launched and gave players a villainous option right from the beginning, something that even City of Heroes didn't manage until its first expansion. Not that this is the norm. Admittedly, calling anything the "norm" in a subgenre with only three launched games to go by is a bit complicated, but that's not the point. Champions Online doesn't let you take a walk on the villain side, and Marvel Heroes will launch without the ability to play a villain now or (presumably) ever. This seems a bit odd on some level. We like villains, we interact with villains as readers, we enjoy seeing what the villains will do. But does it diminish a game to lack the option, or does it diminish villains as a whole when you can play as one?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: How superheroes died and why it's good
2012 was probably the worst year ever for fans of superheroes in the MMO space. The best months of the year were just kind of there, and then the biggest game in the genre unexpectedly closed. Unpacking what caused the City of Heroes closure is something that's ongoing to the moment, and I'd be remiss to not talk about the recent anonymous claims that City of Heroes was profitable up to its closure combined with a denial that... isn't, really. At the same time, I'm a firm believer in the idea that bad things can have positive outcomes. So I think that for all the bad that happened in 2012, we might be looking at 2013 as a banner year for superheroes. Not that it's certain by any means, but between last year's media and the current state of affairs, there's space for some awesome possibilities. And a lot of screwups, too, but isn't that always the case?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter Extra: Interviews with Champions Online and The Phoenix Project
I promised you that we would be doing interviews next time, but astute readers would note that I did not say "next week." So welcome to our special extra installment of the column looking at two different sides following the City of Heroes shutdown. We've already seen two projects coming from the ashes of CoH; The Phoenix Project and Heroes and Villains are both currently being assembled by passionate fans of the now-departed game. But we'd be remiss if we failed to note the impact that the game's closure has had on existing games like Champions Online and DC Universe Online. Rather than just speculating on any of this, we decided to just ask. So today you've got two interviews. One is with Brad Stokan, Executive Producer at Cryptic Studios, about how the City of Heroes shutdown has affected Champions Online and the studio that helped bring the game to life in the first place. The other is with the lead staff at Missing Worlds Media, the team behind The Phoenix Project. So let's take a look behind the scenes, yes?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Starting fresh in DC Universe Online
I'm not going to lie to you, gentle readers -- I did not have high hopes for DC Universe Online when I signed in. Why not? Lots of reasons. For starters, Champions Online turned out to be very good, and I'm not in the habit of expecting good luck twice in a row. My last outing with a licensed superhero game left me pretty cold. I already knew the game broke from a lot of accepted superhero conventions, and it sure didn't seem like a game that would encourage the same sort of roleplaying atmosphere I love. Last but certainly not least, it's always dicey playing a game designed for both consoles and computers, since frequently one or the other gets the better interface. Despite all of this, I am happy to say that these fears were unfounded. Or at least unfounded enough for it not to matter, which is close enough to the same thing. DC Universe Online is certainly not a successor to City of Heroes, but it's a lot better than I would have guessed, and it's certainly an interesting game thus far in its own right.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Farewell for now, Champions Online
So I've spent a month in Champions Online, and I've taken enough time to understand most of how the game fits together on a conceptual level. This is from equal parts playing and reading about the game in various places because I just do that for fun. Those of you who were here for my first outing will remember that I was pleased with the game as a whole. Upon further play, though, my impression has... well, remained pretty darn positive. This is not one of those twist endings. Of course, I can also see why the game never quite hit the level of widespread popularity that City of Heroes managed, and some of the problems that plague it are a direct result of what I like about it. So with my first outing in the game out of the way, I'm going to offer a more complete look at the game, starting with the bad and ending with the good.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Tips for City of Heroes refugees in Champions Online
Champions Online has been a breath of fresh air for the past couple of weeks. It's not a perfect game, nor is it a perfect substitute for City of Heroes, but it's a remarkably good approximation. I would imagine that most players familiar with the latter will feel fairly comfortable in the former, once they get over the obvious differences between the two. Not that the hurdles are exactly minor. For all that I've grown fond of Champions Online, it still has a lot of strange fiddly bits, doing with six different systems what most games do with two or three. Just jumping in cold, as I did, can leave you looking around aimlessly and quite possibly result in your making some choices regarding character builds that you swiftly regret. As I also did. So here are a few tips for players new to the game, tilted in no small part to anyone coming over from our dearly departed CoH. I can't keep you from making every mistake, but I can at least help you get a feel for the game's systems in some small part.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Playing as icons in superheroic MMORPGs
For the past week or so, I've been playing Marvel Heroes. If you missed my impression piece on Monday morning, let me spoil the big reveal for your right now: I wasn't very happy with it. It produces some minor thrills here and there, but at this point in testing there's not a whole lot to celebrate about the game. So I'm understandably not champing at the bit to talk more about the game this week, which I had originally planned. I do think there's something to be discussed when it comes to the game's central conceit, however: the fact that you're playing as the iconic characters instead of alongside them. I'm not a fan of the approach in general, but considering the panoply of superhero properties out there, it's worth considering. Could you actually make a functional game in which you play as just the official characters rather than original creations? What sort of things do you need to do to make this work? How would a superhero MMORPG with only the official characters work in practice?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: A new start in Champions Online
Apparently, my phrasing in last week's poll was unclear, so let me make myself totally clear right now: Starting this week and with every subsequent week, A Mild-Mannered Reporter will be focusing on the whole genre of superheroic MMOs. Last week's poll was meant to be a place to start, not a place to end up. With that in mind, it's time to jump into Champions Online, a game that I haven't played since it was in beta... which was enough to convince me to cancel my pre-order after months of being excited. Let me step back. It's not that the game was terribly bad back then; it's that I could tell the designers loved active combat, and as it turns out my computer at the time could run the game in only the most cursory sense of the word. Trying to take part in semi-active combat when every action has about a half-second of delay attached is not what I'd call fun or smart. But that was ages ago, so it's time to give it the old college try once again. I loaded it up on Steam and got started anew, and after some frustration with login verifications and getting the subscription working, I filled in a month of subscription time and went to make my first character.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The end of the city of heroes
"Name?" "Mr. Swift." The small man on the other end of the table sighed as if he'd heard the punchline too many times already. "Sir, I understand that you're unhappy about recent events, but this is a necessity. I don't want to keep you here longer than necessary, but I can throw you in jail for a night for obstructing this audit. I'm not asking for your moniker; I'm asking for your name, and it's only out of politeness." He tapped the side of his laptop for emphasis. "Now before I have to look it up -- your name." It was a little thing, really. But it felt huge. "Orson Herschel Siegal," Swift replied, purposely looking away from the auditor and searching for something in the stark white room to pull his attention away.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The cost of closing City of Heroes
Shuttering a game carries a heavy cost. This seems counterproductive from a math standpoint; after all, you aren't spending money on a game's servers any longer, so how can it be costing you more? But gamers have long if inaccurate memories, and there are a lot of ripple effects that spread slowly outward after the game has gone dark. Some of these costs aren't even obvious when the game closes, and the full effect won't be felt for months. With only a little while left until the end of City of Heroes, I think it's only fair to look at these costs. Obviously, I've discussed some of the unseen costs already, but all of those have been looking at the cost of losing City of Heroes for the players and the developers. Today, I want to see what it actually offers NCsoft because there's a long list of things that are getting burned away by this closure, and I'm having trouble pointing to any given element as actually being a benefit for the company in the long run.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The passion for City of Heroes
Chronicling the last months of City of Heroes has been a strange ride. A sad one, certainly, and that's part of it, but it's also just been strange in certain ways, such as how every single column on the subject -- and I do mean every single one -- has garnered at least one person acting shocked that this column would continue to cover the game on the way to its shutdown instead of just throwing in the towel back in October or something. I really don't get that, considering that this column has been running for nearly three years without interruption, even when I had to send the text off to someone else because I was out of power due to a hurricane. There's no way I'm not going the last few feet. But I think some of it comes down to not understanding what about the game makes some of the players so passionate about the city. Passion is a lot of things, none of them logical. It's not possible to just point to items on a list and say, "I'm passionate because of that." But I can try to outline what's made the game so special beyond just its length of operation, and I'll do the best I can with today's column.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The story of City of Heroes that wasn't
I started playing City of Heroes for one reason and one reason alone: I love superheroes. Yes, the game entranced me afterward, and there were a lot of things to like aside from the superhero aspect, but I came first and foremost expecting a game of superheroes. And while I've occasionally taken issue with the way the game tries to model superheroes, that doesn't extend to the game's lore in the slightest. Lore is an important part of what makes superheroes work, after all. That sense of a bigger world, that sequence of big events that rewrite the world as a whole every so often, the cadence of enemies rising and falling. There's a certain feel to superhero universes, one that City of Heroes had to replicate without shamelessly copying another world -- and the team at Paragon Studios succeeded in doing just that. Unfortunately, we're never going to see all of the revelations in the game that could have stretched on for many more years, but the recent lore AMA answered a lot of lingering questions about the game's universe and backstory. So as we enter our final month, yeah, I'd like to look at that.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: A tale of two shutdowns starring City of Heroes
It's been about a year since Star Wars Galaxies was shut down, and for a lot of people that wound is still fresh. For a sadly vocal minority, that wound is so fresh as to provoke a lot of groundless vitriol toward any available target -- but that's not the point. The point is that what happened to that game is happening again, to City of Heroes, and the players are just as powerless to stop it. Except that it's not the same thing, not really. There are different reasons behind the closure of City of Heroes, different protests, and different player organizing taking place. The result is a scenario that's both a clear parallel to an earlier tragedy and its own unique blend of awful circumstances at the same time. When we first heard the announcement, fellow City of Heroes player and former Star Wars Galaxies player Brianna Royce asked me if I felt the same way about CoH as I had about SWG. As we talked about it, though, it became clear that there were certain parallels being drawn that just didn't work. So I'm going to talk about what happened to both games, starting with the very significant difference between the two games shutting down.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Potential new homes after City of Heroes
Despite what many of us might feel, the world is not ending when City of Heroes shuts down. Just our world. But the sun will continue shining, other games will continue running, and most likely your interest in video games will not evaporate. So after an appropriate period of mourning, it's going to be time to think about getting together with another game. The problem, of course, is that nothing else can ever be City of Heroes. Like Benjamin Franklin, nothing can serve as its replacement, merely as its successor. But it's worth examining some of the more reasonable and likely destinations for the community. I'm sure there are more, but the four I've listed seem to be the games that either are or will be hoovering up a large number of the game's former players, games that are close enough to what CoH represents to serve as a reasonable successor. So let's look at our potential new homes and see what they have to offer, both good and bad.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The unseen cost of closing City of Heroes
City of Heroes is leaving a lot of victims with its closure: the employees of an excellent and underrated development team, a group of players with a lot of passion and energy, and an entire world that deserves to keep going. But there are a lot of other costs along with all of those, things what we're losing out on that you might not have even considered at the time. At least, not until some writer on the internet decided to call attention to all of those things. Guilty as charged. Those of us who are adamant fans of the game have been lamenting the loss of the game that is. But one of the reasons I tied every single anniversary post with another post looking forward is that City of Heroes has always been a game that moves in both directions. It's a game where a lot of the fun is tied into what it will be. And while there are some directions I've been critical of, there's a lot about what's coming up that's never going to be realized.
