It’s never too late to do an open beta. Atari announced this morning that FilePlanet has secured the exclusive right to host the Champions Online beta client. Starting now you can head over to the Web site, member-up, and get a sneak peek at the superhero MMO. No word on when the beta will end, but logic tells us “soon.” The game is slated to hit retail on September 1st.
Also, in case you were worrying, the MMO went gold. This thing is done.
We saw Champions Online again at Gen Con ’09. It’s looking sharp. The character creation tools and combat systems move against MMO conventional grain. You can do whatever you want with your face and body. Layers and layers of sliders, including color sliders, can be used to create the unique character. As far as battle, it has a very brawler-like vibe. While number key spell hammering is available, combat is fluid and active: you can dodge attacks, break grapples and move freely around the environment while attacking a foe. Cool stuff, really. If you’re an MMO fan, give the beta a spin.
[Update: Several Destructoid readers are having issues with the client.]
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Contest:
5:20 PM on 08.17.2009
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My prediction: Champions Online will sell well to those who play City of Heroes/Villains... but ultimately will prove too shallow to provide any kind of long-term playerbase.
The patcher is fucking hideous, and nearly everyone is getting 5kbps for a 3gb file. To be honest, I'm practically at my wit's end with it. One hell of a clusterfuck to the beta opening.
I think it's gonna be great fun.
My game has been updating for 3 hours now, and it's STILL at 1.7%. I wouldn't call that fixed.
It's been closed and reopened at least 30 times, and nothing was fixed. I've given up on it and deleted it. I'll spend my time on WoW instead. Shame I can't give out my beta key here.
yeah thanks but nay I'll wait
Nice work, cryptic.
@Midgetsnowman
I was just speaking to someone about how GENIUS Cryptic's networking team is. Amazing aren't they?
I'm suddenly so very much more glad that all their good devs jumped ship to NCsoft to mane CoH.
I shoulda started the client up before going out all evening.
That's because the files went in the wrong places when you installed it. The patcher is downloading the entire game again.
It wouldn't matter because you would get disconnected at some point and being out of the house means it would just sit there anyway.
The file never was intended to be as big as it is. All the game files get put in the wrong directory by the installer, so it doesn't see them and redownloads everything.
Making matters worse, the bugfix the developers gave was actually WRONG, so you'll have to do some digging for a solution.
Well that's just assbackwards of the developers then. Not to mention having the core game hosted on Fileplanet too. If they really wanted the system testing, why didn't they just force everyone on one big installer in the first place, instead of causing a catastrophe of messed up files? Most of the potential testers I've seen, me included, have decided that the beta isn't worth the effort since it's in such a disorganised manner.
1: Servers went live both for play and patching at 10AM Pacific. Servers were almost immediately overwhelmed with people trying to patch.
2: the files sent to fileplanet were packed wrong. Unless you knew to move the .hogg files into the right directory yourself the whole game would try to reinstall from scratch by download.
3. Cryptic further compounded this problem by posting incorrect information on where to move the files to, potentially deleting 2 gigs of files from your hard drive on accident.
4. further digging realized the game was hanging on a few key files
5. A person posted the entirety of the .hogg files in a torrent, only to take it down later after a CO dev in IRC asked him to because they were using the inability to get through as testing data for their stress test of the patch server, something a lot of people on the forum argued should have been done during closed beta.
On top of that the forum has become practically a flame war between CO Fans telling people to stop whining or condescendingly telling people "this is an open beta, duh, not a preview" or people screaming misplaced hatred and vitriol.
so I'd say if anything..I'd just like to know if they have any concrete ideas on how to fix the inability for a lot of people to even get gameclient.exe or a couple other files to even successfully download in a timely manner if at all..
Here is a link for the free download without having to sign up for FP's crap subscription. Enjoy chums.
From the sound of things, it looks like the problems people were experiencing were server-side. More proof, I guess, that stress-testing is really goddamn important. Can you imagine if this had happened on launch day?
Cryptic's patch server doesnt support peer to peer. Its basically a torrent that only comes from seeds, not from leechers.
There's definately something to be said about the aesthetics of backflipping over an enemy while unloading a couple dozens rounds of burst fire from machine pistols into said enemy... pretty cool Equilibrium style move
played CoH/CoV for 4 years, and im totally impressed with what i've seen so far..
When the game works, it works well.
But theres a lot of quests that plain dont function, and their shard system seems downright like a hassle at times.