The MMO Schedule

It's September 1st and Champions Online just came out. 21 days from now, Aion will also go live. By that time, I'll be juggling 3 MMOs, other hobbies and some minor aspects of my life. So, in order to make my life much more easier and sane, I made a two-week period schedule (see above, click image to enlarge) that I will follow to the letter.

P.S. Until I've decided which two of three MMO's I'll keep (Aion, Champions, Warhammer), updates on this blog from here on will be scarce, really scarce.

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Games of Fall 2009

Fall is almost here, and that heralds the start of the Holiday Games Rush. So, in order to prepare my budget early on, I started checking out the release schedule for the next four months, and all I can say it's jam packed with tons of good releases. I actually got dizzy looking at the schedule. Unfortunately, I have to limit my games this year due to time and financial constraints. But here are the four games that I'll definitely save my money for:

September

Champions Online
This game melded two of the things that I really love: gaming and comics. That's why, even though I'm not that much into MMORPG, Champions has gotten me excited since the day it was announced. In truth, however, I was going to skip this game in favor of Aion. But I got sold after I participated in the open beta testing. The contemporary setting, the freedom of character creation, and the wicked travel powers in this game are just so much fun.

Aion
The first time I learned about this game, I was awed by its flight feature. Flying just changes many things in game like traveling and combat. But, other than that, this game didn't interest me at all. But since most of my guildmates (whom I love to play with) are moving to Aion, I gave this game a shot and played the closed beta. Surprisingly, I did enjoy the game. The chain attacks, especially, were a lot of fun. Plus, it's also the most graphically pleasing game I've seen in a while.

October

Alpha Protocol
This game is an upcoming action-RPG developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Most of my favorite games were developed by these guys, way before they were in Obsidian. So that alone is enough reason for me to play this game. But, beyond that, I'm also looking forward to its world and atmosphere, which an espionage setting ala The Bourne Trilogy. It will be a nice change to use contemporary arsenal in a role-playing game other than a sword and board.

November

Dragon Age: Origins
Finally, after waiting for 5 long years, this game is going to be out this coming November. Like Alpha Protocol, the developer alone is enough reason for me to play the game. I've stuck with BioWare all these years since the Infinity Engine era and not one of their role-playing games have disappointed me (not even Neverwinter Nights). So I don't think they'll start dissappoint me with Dragon Age. The game, based on the videos I've seen, is just epic.

So, there, all of my upcoming games for this Fall. I'll try to save money for all of these games, and that is doable. My biggest problem now is time. Where am I going to get all the hours to play all these games. Skip sleep, maybe? Sleeping's overrated anyways.

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First Impressions: Champions Online

So, after a really long week, I finally had the chance to sit down and test out the beta version of the upcoming superhero MMORPG, Champions Online, today. To make the long story short, this game is going to rock and will eat most of my time this Fall.

Metalhead, a sound and guitar engineer who uses his sonic gadgets to fight evil.

The first thing I love about this game is the character creation. I swear I've been stuck on the creation screen for hours, and made seven different characters, before I decided to play the game. You can just customize the look of your hero the way you want it. The possibilities are almost limitless. I've made a hero that looks like a punk rocker version of The Thing, an Iron Man look-alike, a football player, a cat-like gangster, and a ninja. I've even seen a Lara Croft in-game.

The game also uses a class-less system. So there's no archetypes here. No warrior, healer, mage kind of thing in this game. You just basically buy the powers that you want, providing you meet their requirements. Meaning, you can mix and match different powers. If you want your character to spew both fire and ice, you can. If you want your character to dabble in both magic and science, you can. You can also be a tank while still be a DPS character. The freedom is just amazing.

Lastly, traveling in this game is amazing. Other MMO let you wait at level 40 or 20 until they give you a horse, making traveling easy for you. But in Champions I already have my jet booster boots and have been flying around at level 6. Flying is awesome in this game too since there's no timer -which makes it way better than Aion. You can just hover around the air, above your target while shooting at them, as long as you want to.

This game is definitely what I expected it to be, and the kind of game that I've been waiting for since I started playing MMORPGs. It has melded both things that I love: comics and gaming. In addition, it's not fantasy based either. So that's really good. Now that I'm convinced, I think I'm gonna get that lifetime subscription.

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Champions Release Date

So I've been snooping around the net all day long and found out that Champions Online have already set its release date on July 14. That's like two months from now. As a comic book enthusiast and as a gamer, I've been looking forward to play this game since it was announced last year. So now I'm really excited. Especially after I saw videos of its gameplay. I'm so excited that I've already started some concepts for the characters that I'll be playing -their personality, costume color and skill sets. I'm not sure if I'll stick around and play this game though. I'm just going to stay for a month to see if its better than Warhammer Online.

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