Champions Online

Silhouette Makes an Appearance (Sorta) #ChampionsOnline

stargrace February 2, 2011 2 Comments

I haven’t logged into Champions Online since uh, well. Since release actually. I never made any secret of the fact that me and super heroes don’t typically get along. It’s hard enough for me to find common ground in a science fiction MMO, superheroes rank even further. However; that doesn’t stop me from logging in and playing with the awesome character creator, or WANTING to enjoy these types of games even if they’re not really a good ‘fit’ for me.I tend to dabble. Maybe one day I will find a game that changes my mind completely, much like EVE.

I spent some time re-visiting my first superhero, Silhouette (pictured above). I love her character name and had designed a dark costume that you can barely see unless you look close at the details (I’ll post a “clearer” picture later on). Thanks to some awesome twitter conversations (as much as 140 characters ever is a conversation at least) my interest was piqued and I wanted to see what had changed and explore a little. I finally made it out of the tutorial, although I don’t remember how to do a number of things in game. The first thing I had to re-teach myself was how to hide the UI for screen shots. That came before everything, even movement.

With the basics learned I managed to finish the tutorial, and since my character is technically over 100 days old I had a whole lot of goodies waiting for me. I also noticed I have all sorts of little action figurines that I can summon as companion pets (I don’t think they have an actual function, correct me if I’m wrong).

Before I progress too much further I’ll probably start over with a new character so that I can learn things like – how to learn skills or upgrade them or anything at all to do with skills actually because I don’t have the faintest idea how those work. Or what I need to look for when it comes to gear. A brief revision is much needed.

I will also be poking my head into STO (Star Trek Online) over the next little while. Another game I haven’t played too much since release but I’m abnormally excited about – again I blame twitter conversations. It’s amazing how much more ‘fun’ a game can be when you’re playing something that a number of your friends also talk about.

Speaking of which, today I played Magicka with two such friends, and it was a blast – literally. I’ll have more to say about that tomorrow.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

Why so Much Emphasis?

stargrace October 9, 2010 4 Comments

After reading a number of early morning blog posts left over in my RSS reader from yesterday, I found myself wondering: Why do gamers put so much emphasis in what we and others are playing. Especially others. Why do we even care? Every day I read a post from one or more authors that includes some sort of semi derogatory remark condoning a group of players simply because of how they choose to spend their time. Or, to be more precise, where they choose to spend their time.

There are those who have made up their minds that everyone who plays a free to play game must be a certain ‘class’ of gamer. How dare they actually enjoy ‘the grind’ that comes with a lot of these games. Don’t they know that in the long run they’ll pay more for their “free” game then some people will pay for their monthly subscription?! Then there are the WoW gamers. Don’t even get me started on these people. I have heard everything from how close minded they are to how stupid they must be, simply because of where they choose to spend their time. It’s as though we as gamers have moved into certain categories and stereotypes not based on who we are, but because of where we play.You ask a fellow blogger their game of choice and suddenly your opinion of them shifts slightly.

So I ask again – why does this aspect of a person even matter. Why are we so keen to judge someone based on a persons decision to spend their free time where they wish. I have even heard people go so far as to say they do not like a particular person because they play certain games that they are not fond of. Really? Are we so shallow that we are now making character judgements based on video games?

I simply don’t understand it.

In my opinion it doesn’t matter where you play, so long as you have fun. In fact voicing my opinion about any other ‘type’ of gamer is a moot point because when it comes to how others are spending their time – my opinion doesn’t matter! It’s their time, their money, and what I think of the matter is completely irrelevant. I refuse to classify a person based on whether they’re playing EQ2, EQ, VG, LotRo, WoW, WAR, DDO, Darkfall, Wizard101, Runes of Magic, EVE, Alganon, Fallen Earth, Lineage II, Allods, Champions, STO, Free Realms, Aion, FFXIV, SWG, Guild Wars, AoC, or any other game.

Go play, and enjoy. Don’t like it? Move on and find something you DO enjoy. It’s a game. They’re supposed to be fun. There are SO many games out there and despite what others would say about them all cloning one another there are always unique factors to each and every game – you may be surprised at what you end up playing and enjoying. I implore gamers to make their own decisions about what they like and don’t like, and refuse to be classified into a category of gamer simply because of where they spend their time.

Gaming

Creating a Character

stargrace September 3, 2009 3 Comments

I love character creation. In pretty much any game no matter how large or small the options are, I love the way I can (at least some what) customize my character in order to suit my mood of the day (or some other theme I have going on). Yesterday I decided to play around a little more in Champions Online – I absolutely love their character creation, but at times it can leave me feeling a little lost, because my head is not already bursting with ideas for super heroes.

To the right is Silhouette.

I haven’t finished fleshing out a background story for her quite yet, but it certainly fit my mood yesterday and I had a lot of fun creating her. Once I was done character creation I popped into game intending on setting up the UI and key bindings to my liking, but for some reason it wasn’t recognizing that I wanted to bind the number pad 8 key to walk forward (or any other number pad key for that matter) so I quickly grew frustrated. Even though I’ve played quite a selection of games over the past few years I still like to play a particular way – in fact maybe even more so now because I’ve been playing for so many years and while a lot of the keys may not be similar, I am typically able to at least bind the movement keys into a comfortable position.

I am not your typical WASD gamer, I play with the number pad for movement (I also dislike mouse clicking) and switching takes time for me to get used to. Since I couldn’t seem to re-bind the keys last night (it simply wasn’t recognizing them, for whatever reason) I decided to log out early. It took me a few hours to create the character I wanted to begin with, so I was pretty tired by the end of it.

Champions Online is not my typical MMO. I’ve never been an enormous super hero fan – but I really do enjoy trying new things and I’m always pleasantly surprised when a game that does not fall under my ‘usual’ category ends up enticing me into playing for a length of time. The depth and time it takes for me to create a character certainly players into that, I can develop a sort of ‘bond’ with my character, and relate to her (no, I don’t dress all in black and red with chains wrapped around me and my eyes peeking out from a hooded mask but wouldn’t that be awesome?!) in some odd way.

It was still a relaxing evening, and I’m looking forward to exploring more today!

Happy gaming, no matter where it finds you.

Silhouette Makes an Appearance (Sorta) #ChampionsOnline

Why so Much Emphasis?

Creating a Character

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