To begin with I wasn't following Champions Online very closely. I didn't bother with beta, I had tried CoH/V and that didn't last too long. But since it's release I've seen a lot of reviews and screens of the game and they peeked my interest.
I have yet to get very far into the game, the character design process can really suck you in! There are so many options, if you have an idea of a character you want to make.. you can get pretty close to it. I'm very impressed, I thought COH/V was in depth. This is all of that and then some.
Game play is simple. A variety of play styles are offered, melee, caster or pets if you want. You can mix and match. It can be a bit confusing, I've remade a few characters so far. Be sure to try them out before leaving the powerhouse, travel skills included. You can try skills on the dummies too which is very handy when deciding what you want.
The combat is pretty quick, quests simple. The game doesn't have a really huge feel of direction but there are plenty of other distractions like flight, that's what I chose to use for travel. After leaving the tutorial you can pick one of many travel skills at the powerhouse. You can fly anywhere really, as far as I can tell. And it's really nice. They might have an edge over Aion on this aspect ;)
The community seems ok so far, time will tell on that. I have spoken to a few nice players so far. Mostly comments about my character, which is always flattering! Or just someone asking for help with a problem, which I always try to be helpful if I can.
The graphics are quite lovely, this isn't a game for older machines though. It is more graphic heavy than I thought it would be, I did read about that beforehand so it was no surprise. I actually got a box at Best Buy and it came with an action hero which was pretty cool.
If there are two things draw me into a game on a cosmetic level it's vanity/noncombat pets (pet classes too are a plus), and personal travel abilities.. whether it be mounts, flying, or a speed boost in general. I remember when Everquest came out with mounts, I thought I was going to have a cow. They did have speed boosts for travel back then so any type of boost has always been a big thing with me since those days.
Names, this is a neat aspect. You can pick whatever you want w/o worrying if it is taken. They use a system where all your characters are tied to the account handle. For example my character is Vixen but if you want to send me a tell you would type vixen@kaozz. Pretty neat and innovative imo.
Worried about what server your friends are on? There is only one server. Separate instances of each "zone" which you can hop over to if need be. Much like cities in Guild Wars.
The only thing I have had issues with really are would be rubber banding. But I think that's more of an issue on my side today, as I've been having some ISP issues. So I can't really say much about that yet. Also the graphics being more demanding on a machine, some people would have to run it with lower settings. It is definitely not as friendly in this aspect as WoW.
Overall I am having fun with it. There are only 40 levels, so I don't know how much of a long term factor the game has but for now it's well worth the money with all the fun you will have playing it at least the first free 30 days. It is really a great game to hop on and have some fun with w/o worrying if you need help with much, and really it's great still for playing with friends.
And that's about all I can say at a first look. I think this game holds a lot of promise as long as Cryptic keeps putting effort into it. With so many options it's rare to see any clones in this game. Worth a try just for the character creation itself! I will be sure to talk more about this one after I've spent some more time getting to know my way around.
See ya in Millennium city!
-kaozz
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