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  • Behind the Mask: A long, slow, rumbling

    by 
    Patrick Mackey
    Patrick Mackey
    08.04.2011

    One of the things I absolutely hate about comics is waiting. When I read Detective Comics regularly, I used to patiently wait while re-reading my old issues, wondering what was going to happen to Batman next. Eventually, I got into manga a little bit and was totally spoiled by the graphic novel format. Now I only read comics (or novel series) if I can get an entire plot arc in one shot. I hate waiting. Heck, I prefer to watch an entire TV season on Netflix instead of waiting for each episode to get released. Unsurprisingly, I played through the first three issues of Aftershock, Champions Online's new comic series, before I decided I was irritated with waiting every week for the latest issue. I was sort of put off by bugs in the first issue of the series, and I decided that waiting for the final release would give the devs time to polish out the bugs. New content is new content after all, and when it's released weekly, it doesn't get a lot of time on PTS before it gets pushed to live. Issue #6, The King is Dead, was released a few weeks ago, and the devs have put the finishing touches on Aftershock. How does it match up with the rest of CO's content?

  • Behind the Mask: Resistance

    by 
    Patrick Mackey
    Patrick Mackey
    05.19.2011

    I know I promised I'd cover tanking techniques this week, but Resistance, Champions Online's newest adventure pack, just launched, so I think that it's worth postponing my writeup on tanking for a bit. Don't worry, though! We'll get to tanking soon! Resistance, being the latest pack in CO's new content offerings, is also going to be the last adventure pack before the team starts doing the Comic Series. Although it wasn't quite as hyped up as Demonflame was, it was still a highly anticipated content pack. Does it live up to the hype?

  • Behind the Mask: The Demonflame

    by 
    Patrick Mackey
    Patrick Mackey
    10.14.2010

    Champions Online's second adventure pack, Demonflame, is currently available on the Test Server, and over the last couple of weeks I've done a few playthroughs at various stages of its development. Demonflame is a new take on an old organization from the Champions lore. DEMON (which is strangely not an acronym) is a magic-themed group of devil worshipers and one of the most powerful factions in the Champions universe. Prior to the adventure pack, DEMON was pretty poorly represented in CO. The villain group starred in a small series of arcs in the level 20-25 range, and the core members of DEMON's inner circle were not even given "Super Villain" status. It has been sort of a common theme for mystic roleplayers to downplay the significance of DEMON because the group is so poorly characterized. Demonflame also represents the newest surge of content for CO superheroes, and in many ways it has excelled where Serpent Lantern was lacking.