Back in early 2004 the first superhero MMO, City of Heros created by Cryptic Studios, was released and from what I can remember with decent reviews. The game has done pretty well peaking around 200,000 users at its height and as of Sept 2008 had around 125,000 subscribers. Not a huge success by any means but enough for other developers to throw their hat into the superhero MMO rink.
Marvel at one point had a deal with Cryptic Studios to create Marvel Online, but has since been canceled. Instead Cyptic is now working on Champions Online, the unofficial sequel to City of Heros/Villains. Then we have Sony (SOE) working on DC Universe Online. Considering the age of CoH it’s about time we had a new superhero MMO on the market.
DC Universe Online
From what I’ve read and heard about this MMO it’s sounding pretty good, but there’s still not enough information out there for me to get really excited. Here’s a quick list of some of the key features.
- Highly customizable characters. You can even base them off of DC characters with 1 click of a button, then modify them if you want.
- PvP Combat in a Open World.
- Quests are called Cases and Capers depending if your a Hero or Villain.
- Fighting along side or against some famous DC characters. Superman, Batman, Joker, etc.
- Environment Manipulation, stuff like throwing cars
- Fast Movement/Traveling, depending on your powers
From those features nothing really jumps out at me as ground breaking. I think the most interesting is how the Cases and Capers are going to work. Basically if you’re a hero you might get a case where you have to protect someone, but a villain might get a caper where they have to kill that same person. So now you have a quest that turns into a PvP fight, which sounds pretty cool to me although I’m not exactly sure if that’s how these quest will work. I do know that I’d much rather be fighting a real person then NPCs all day. For a peek at the actual gameplay, checkout this video out at Allakhazam.com.
Champions Online
- Cross-Platform gaming between X-box360 and PC
- Highly customizable characters
- Your own Nemesis! A villain the becomes part of your storyline
After watching the gameplay and interview with Design Director Bill Roper on G4, I was not very impressed by the game. (Videos: Part 1, Part 2) In fact it game looked pretty boring. Being a big fan of PvP I wasn’t able to find much about how Champions will handle PvP, but from my search I get a sense that this game will concentrate more of PvE sorta like LoTRO. Another thing that struck me as I watched some of the footage is that it doesn’t really feel like a Superhero game. I mean “Monster Island”, sorry but is this Godzilla? I don’t want to fight random monsters on some random island, I want to be in a big sprawling city where most comics take place. Looking through the sceenshots at Champions-online.com I don’t see one city pic, only forests, mountains and indoor locations. To be honest, nothing at all about this game made me interested in it.
Even thought both games are pretty far from release, I’m definetly in DC Universe’s corner right now.
you need to redo your search on CO and stop being a dcu fanboy because you didnt even say half the stop CO will have didnt even say you can throw stuff in CO which if you have really search you would find videos of people doing that
um, throwing stuff is not a “key feature” and both games have it, so I didn’t really think it was a bid deal that I left it out.
I have to agree with Mike at the moment, from what I can tell I feel more inclined to play DCU as I see more action and a feel of style and art that I like more than CO.
To me I look at CO being the kiddy-game and I see DCU at this moment as being the real contender to replacing the Superhero MMO, COH, as top contender.
how is “Quests are called Cases and Capers depending if your a Hero or Villain” a key feature then?
if you gonna put it for dcu may as well do it for CO
CO
Environment Manipulation, stuff like throwing cars
Fast Movement/Traveling,super speed,fly,super jump,teleport,ice slide,acrobatics and more
Fighting along side or against some famous characters in the champions realm
Real customizable characters
i think its pretty obvious to anyone who has been (actually) watching these 2 mmos develop, that we can’t judge the games yet. At the moment DCU and CO are very much the same concept wise.
if anything mike, you merely where looking at the franchise setting of each game (DC and the champions table-top game) with your mentions of the DC characters and the locations like metropolis/gotham . CO has the exact same things, popular heroes from the CO game and locations from CO.
perhaps this was just way to early to compare these games, and that is not your fault
you should probably re-research Champions and DCU, or simply scrap this article and try again in a couple of months.
WoW..you kinda need to research both games equally before you compare them. DCU looks great, and champions looks like a straight up cartoon. CO has an open field power selection choice, DCU on the other hand doesnt have a flexible power selection like CO. DCU and CO have very fast combat style
PvP in CO will be done in an arena setting, a lot of the information about PvP in Co has been kept underwraps except that tid-bit of information. I think in both games though you can LvL via PvP, so your statement about CO bieng PvE sentric was false.
You need to Research and re-do this article
A biased review, poorly researched.
Does a poor job representing CO, more a collection of the authors fanboi ramblings.
I’m surprised massively linked this.
I see a lot of whiners complaining I’m a DCU fanboy. The fact is I knew very little about either game before researching for this post . I spent the same amount of time researching both games and the fact is that CO didn’t impress me, plain and simple. The video gameplay shown on G4 which should excite gamers, was boring to watch. Maybe in a few months when they release more details about the game I’ll change my mind, but right now I stand by my article.
I agree with MIke. I have been watching the development of both of these games. I’ve seen all the screen shots and gameplay footage and “so far” I’m in DCU’s corner. I’m not a DC fanboi. I’ll will play CO if it is better, but so far it doesn’t look like it is. We’ll see.
Honestly I think you are reaching here.
It is natural to develop a bias based on your preferences as information comes forward about a given game – however in my opinion it is too early, and there is too little solid information, for one to make much of a decision at this point.
For the most part I found your article to be a bit shallow and insubstantial. Rather like you really wanted to talk about this topic but had nothing of real value to say.
I am not making a personal attack because for all i know you are a brilliant person. Your article would have been more valid and no less informative if it were reduced to one sentence – that being “I have not seen anything that excited me about Champions”
I would really like to be more excited about either of them.
Cheers.
I think what people are trying to say is that the article lists things as key features that both games have but you only list it for DCU. I agree that not a lot is known about either, but the article definitely comes across as biased towards DCU.
When is said research I ment actually going to the site, reading the Q&A’s that the developers have posted and then writing the article. So I stand by my statement on you need to research them both, Video’s only tell you so much, and the fact that you didnt list alot of features that CO has brings me to believe you wrote this article completly biased towards DCU and lacking much information about both games.
it sounds he is basing his info off the G4 interview and saying that CO is pve is just dumb cause he know well that its gonna have pvp from the get-go if he really “search” CO like he said and no one is whining they telling you the truth you a DCU fanboy
Mike, alot of us came on here and commented very politely disagreeing with you and pointing out flaws in your article. You backlash at us by calling us whinners ? really un-journalistic and pretty bad showmanship. (imo)
Look. im in Cryptics corner. so that puts me in CO’s corner.
Throwing objects: both games
Big cities: Both games
Missions assisting/fighting big names: DCUO
Customization: CO has MORE
Open power selection: CO
PVP: CO: arena style DCUO: Open world
Fast run and gun/twitch combat: BOTH GAMES
ffs this article sucks
By the looks of this article, you did not do your homework, and just went with what game you thought was better.
If you took the time to actually o to both of these games websites, you would of found out all kinds of things.
It also looks like you bassed the whole CO review off of one video preview.
Im not here to tell you what one is better, but I think you could of looked into both games a little more instead of just chosing one because you like PvP and couldnt find information (or didnt try) on the other.
Both games are in development, so chosing one based on whats released at the moment is also bad, you should of just compared the two.
Badly written article with very little background especially not even pointing out that Cryptic is no longer associated with City of Heroes. so labeling Champions online as an unofficial sequel is misleading. Champions is based on a pen and paper RPG which has a long history and many fans.
You claim to have done research but it appears all you’ve done is watch a couple of videos. You simply needed to visit the official website to get an idea of what Cryptic is bringing to the game. By painting the game with the “Sequel” brush you’re basically leading people who may not have liked COH to expect more of the same. If you had spent the time to research the official website you would have found that Cryptic is taking what they learned from COH and improving upon it but applying their experience to a property that has not been explored in the MMO realm as of yet.
You main focus here seems tp be PvP, there are many other elements to these games, however your article is biased by your own personal taste and is not objective or informative. There is a plethoria of information which with very little effort could have been obtained. The fact that you don’t even realize that there is in fact a city at the center of the game with a rich history is evidence enough that you ventured no futher then a couple of videos.
Having said all this I am a huge DC fan, and owning both a PS3 and an Xbox it’s my intention to try both games… in fact it wouldn’t suprise me if I alternate between the games as they both seem to have something I’d enjoy.
I implore anyone who has read this article to visit the Champions Online website and see for yourself. I won’t link it here as I prefer not to be labled as a spammer. If you’re interested you simply need to do a google search, which if Mike really cared about details and an informed opinion could have done as well.
Champions looks like garbage…
DCUO was taking so much verbal garbage, now its sneaking up on everyone as to how cool its gonna be
and the CO people cant accept it.
I’m sorry but any game SOE touches dies. They are the kings of killing IPs.
Add to that that DCUO is being made first for the console and 2nd for the PC…. Well as long as you plan on buying it for a console thats a good thing.
If however you are part of the 99% of all current MMO players that play on a PC, this is probably seen as a bad thing.
Anyway, like almost all the other people here, I have to say you did a really bad job on researching this.
rigggght sure it do CO for what im seeing CO is the only mmo of the two who is bring real change to MMO gaming with all the customization you can do what the rest of the stuff,dcu for what i seen not doing nothing really new besides the lil exta things they added to the travel powers and like everyone else is saying this is a crappy article by someone who think he knows what he talking about LOL!
I’ll likely play both games and both are shaping up to be very unique gaming experiences. CO does look more “sharp” and a tiny bit twitchier. It’s certainly more PVP-centric, and it’s IP makes it more “big name” based.
CO is an underdog IP so there are no “big names”, but this has little to no effect on actual IP. It wouldn’t surprise me if the high degree of attention to character creation detaila nd the sandbox aproach to powers selection and customization from everything to color, emanation point, different effects depending on a weapon based power having a different aquired/found skin making a different effect. And bought advantages can change all sorts of aspects of even 1 customized power. CO has “run and gun”, no autoattacks, item-grab-throw, movement powers with diff mangitudes of effect, and skills/owes that have no down time, and some that build energy instead of spending it. In short: the writer here is more clueless than most gamers are about his subject matter. My mother could have learned more about both games if she had to write this article and spent 2 hours researching it, and she has hardly any gaming experence with games at all.
do your homework.
-SaintKairos
I think this was really bias, you obviously didnt do your home work on this one so maybe you need to go back and do some research on the games again and really tell all the good points of CO you DCU fanboy, yea you gave all its good points but you left out that CO has far more good points as far as gamers are concerned than DCU at this point. You have no idea what your talking about and when you post stuff ill informed you sound dumb so please rethink before you post
Well….I have to say your facts are very wrong. At last count Champions Online has about 25-28 points of customization, from powers, to your heroes and nemeses’ personalties, and where your powers generate from. DCUO has 15 points.
I have been covering both games sense Feb. last year. I have seen their progressions up to this point. I enjoy some of what I have seen from both games; however, from where it stands now, Champions online is the more competent of the two.
Take a look at a Doomsday fight vid on Game trailers then take a look at a dev fight with Grond. Which makes you go “oh shit” more?
Funny thing is that your artical misses one crucial point: Who’s story are you playing in either game? In CO it’s your story, your progression. In DCUO whose story are you playing? From the recent vids it seems like you are a guest star to tag along with supes and Batman never gets mad at you when you don’t show up to help him on a mission.
Your opinion is your opinion though. I just wish it was more informed.
This unfortunate and poorly researched piece inspired a blog post of my own: http://www.tremblinghand.net/2009/01/why-bloggers-arent-journalists.html
Having had the chance to play both games, for my money DC wins hands down. Champs is WoW in tights. DC understands the genre. Champs is all about the technical side. In some ways Champs is much like the rpg that inspired it: all crunch, little flavor.
DC has overall much better world graphics, better character graphics, and a richer history. I will defintely try DC.
I am very disapointed in the cell shaded look to the CO characters. I think it looks terrible. It is amazing to see all the fanboys coming out and defending that style as more comic book-like. I do not think that looks translates well into computer gaming.
Just play what you enjoy, I for one am going to DC.
Champions will have a city in it…multiple in fact. The only one they have shown at the moment is Millenium City. Which i hear is huge and has a downtown and a Chinatown in it.
lifting things is not a “key feature”, and you can do that in champions as well.
the reason it is cartoonish is because they wanted to make you feel like you were playing in an actual comic book
also, you need to see the companies history to truly know how the game might turn out. the creators of DCU made mediocre MMO’s such as everquest, Angle love online, and star wars galaxies. although cryptic haas not made as many games, CoH was a huge success in many peoples eyes and won some awards i believe
and thats a superhero game, which means cryptic has more experience in that field.
all your “key features” you said for DCU are in champions. Except the customization in champions is much more insane to the point where you can customize the powers themselves.
Yeah, I think Mike might have shot his wad a bit prematurely here.
Looks like there are some nuances that are overlooked when he makes statements like “Being a big fan of PvP I wasn’t able to find much about how Champions will handle PvP.”
The above statement, for instance, doesn’t directly address the game, CO, merely the author’s ability to research it.
Furthermore, the use of gameplay sample videos from various sources doesn’t necessarily ensure both games are being given equal coverage. Note the elements of gameplay that are being highlighted in each sample–they’re different gameplay elements. The DCUO example is stressing visceral gameplay elements like movement and combat modes while the CO sample is addressing settings (the Canadian wilderness and Monster Island) and story archs (the nemesis system). It’s simply not fair to compare the two games based on these sample videos because they’re highlighting different game elements.
It’s apples and oranges.
The article might have had more impact had it been written after hours of playtesting both games in their current iterations. But, even if it had, it would have only reflected a user’s experiences at alpha- or beta-stages.
Personally, I think both games hold a lot of promise. If the devs are careful and handle elements like customization, player immersion and pvp well, I could see myself playing (gasp!) both game for a long time.
One note – from a personal point of view, I wasn’t crazy about Cryptic’s use of the cell shaded graphics at first, but the more I saw of the artwork, the more I came to like it. It’s a stylized aesthetic choice (as opposed to a photo-realistic look) more than anything else and, once you get used to it, you really come to appreciate it.
A recurring complaint about CoX was the lack of open world experiences. I am not at all surprised that Cryptic is making certain to showcase areas that are NOT city environments. That is all you had in CoX.
As for which game I will play? Both. I am sure they will have their good and bad points.
Sony is one of the worlds largest power houses, when it comes to gaming industry… hello ? playstation. as for MMO’s Everquest was one of the frontier MMO’s to be released with ultima online coming out first. MASSIVE Fan base only surpassed by wow after it had been out for 7 yrs, prior. You want experience who better then SoE ? Yes CoH was a heroes online game with a gaming community of 125,000….. Everquest broke into the millions, NEXT !
i agree with mike nothing in co catches my intrest. i just think you guys got mad at his article because he didnt have the same opinion as you guys.
I do think think calling him a DC Fan boy because he didn’t see much he liked in CO with extremely little research is really useful. It doesn’t sound like he looked very hard at DC’s game either.
Calling people fan boys is really cheap forum debate and it’s overuse and misuse is definitely poignant here.
I played CoH and CoV. I’m not a comic book guy naturally but I started appreciated the genre more after playing.
DC has a lot of heroes to showcase.
As I see it CO is really making it so you are the hero showcased. That’s what got me in the City games.
I do very much like that DC is going to have villains and heroes going against each other with missions. I thought that’s where Cryptic was going to be going with City of Villains but they only had some PVP zones which was something of a disappointment. Maybe they tried that in development and it didn’t test as well as they had thought it would. *shrug*
I hope both games really focus on community as that is what really brings an MMO to life.
Anyway, this article was useful for the dialog it generated.
Sorry. The above should say:
“I do think think calling him a DC Fan boy because he didn’t see much he liked in CO with extremely little research is NOT really useful”
There is no way to edit and I didn’t proofread.
There’s alot of whining fanboys from the ChampionsOnline forum on here!
way to organise a drive by guys :D
… Doesn’t make CO look any less disapointing though!
I think all you babys need to leave mike alone and let him write whatever the hell he wants, walk upstairs from your mommy’s basement, have her make you a sandwich, and then go get laid, retards
Well i’d just like to say if one isn’t pay per month that’s the one i’d definately be getting =D
This dude is totaly a DCUO fan-ny half the features of champions online are missing !
i have followed throught these game for quite i while and i can say that IMO i think CO has got the better of DCUO.
Judged.
Wow. Nobody thought to mention how choppy DCU looks in motion? A lot of the attack and movement animations had me cringing a bit. Though the game does look WAY better than CO, CO wins with fluidity as far as animation is concerned. CO’s characters will take a bit of time for me to get used to, what with their, shall we say, “meaty” appearances.
I’d like to state, however, that CO has shown some improvement over CoX. I was going to mention that I remembered reading somewhere that you might be able to team with CO’s namesakes, just like in DCU. However, I didn’t want to post such a statement without proof. But then I went and searched around and found that article within less than two minutes: http://www.champions-online.com/heroes/defender
The last paragraph reads “In Champions Online, players will have the chance to assist Defender and The Champions in the never-ending battle against the menaces threatening Earth. You may accept missions from Defender as he coordinates the protection of the planet, fight alongside Defender himself, or even be called upon to save the world when no other heroes can!”
So yeah, it’s making itself out to be more than just a rehash. Plus, the PvP element has a pretty nice offering. They have “No rules” like settings, tournaments, and even co-op team versus team objective maps. Sounds a lot more fun than “The Joker’s Child” coming up and killing you for the fifth time as you try to complete a caper.
Now I’m not trying to bash DCU in anyway with. Despite what I think the animations look like, I still think it’s a bold game for having an engaging story for an MMO. As someone posted earlier, DCU feels like you’re merely caddying along with the big leaguers, but I can easy over look that if it means that I get to have fun with super man or bat man on a regular basis.
Here is the number 1 reason to choose CO over DCU, SOE. THere is no other company that has lied and betrayed thier customers as much as they have. They have no clue about how to implement pvp in any of thier games. Just look at the the joke for pvp that SWG has. Also, you can count on SOE putting in thier trading card/gambling like what SWG has. DCU would be better servered if done by somebody else.
I agree with Iugal. as a long time player of countless mmo’s i will never allow any money to go to any SOE backed game again. SOE can die in a fire for what its done to its customers and the horrid smashing of their games.. Its a shame.. DC would probably fair better in the long run not being tied to SOE. When they took over everquest they drove a gem into the dirt, as well as star wars galaxys, vangaurd, and the other plethora of their titles. They ban any negative posts in any forums, and never listen to the fanbase. Its only about the $, and they are like the walmart of the gaming industry.
Cryptic already designed CoH, so they know what to do and not to do. SOE is simply going to copy CoH and add what they think is best… a formula for disaster.
In the end tho they are both just going to be “I have funky powers and later on I get a super power like super-speed”… warcraft light to the extreme.
The thing that appeals to me about CO over DC is that in DC you are never going to be Batman, or Superman… you are always going to be a retarded monkey version of them no matter what you do… and that is what I don’t like.
Cryptic has already shown they know what is going on, so my vote goes to them until I play CO and discover its playability for myself.
* The only other thing I don’t like about the DC game is that there will be way to many politics involved from DC about what the game will look like and what the heroes will be doing… “Superman can’t hit a guy in the face, that is not Superman like!”… all kinds of copyrights and guide lines are involved when dealing with a behemoth like that… Champions on the other hand is lucky somebody even remembers what that game ****ing was.
well i’ve played the beta of CO and i wasn’t impressed much yeah nice grafix but gameplay dude we’ve done all of this before on CoH and CoV,
some originality please,so for now i’ll go back to playing batman : Arkham Asylum on 360 and be content with that
Well i will most likely be getting both games, And give a review on youtube of which is better. But from what i have seen DCUO
Does look slightly better to me, And i have been on City Of Heroes, i have a level 50, and all that, but i just think DCUO looks better, for some reason i LOVE how you can use super speed to run up walls, ahaha.
I played CoX for years, including beta, as well as playing CO for several months. Although, the CO powerset ideas are great, the missions/quests are not very fun to do. I didn’t like all the instancing in CoX, and in CO that did a good job there avoiding all the instancing, but something is missing from CO… maybe due to the quests being so easy or spending so much time running from simple quest to simple quest. Although, I’ve only seen video’s of the alpha for DCO, it does look more appealing to me than CO.
I think CO SUCKED. It was repetitive BS. Too much time trying to figure out what to slot. CoH was the best in how to slot so far.
Hope DCU gets it right.
I haven’t had a chance to play CO or DC, but as a fan of super hero genre, and as a long time player of COH who was looking for a change, I was excited to here about both
games. Then i read reviews compareing CO and COH and was disapointed to hear that most REviews placed COH above CO.
If DC is not significatly better than CO then it sounds like both games fall short of the lasting power of COH.
I to Hope DC gets it right
By reading all these comments, the majority of you need to learn how to type out a sentence. Punctuation marks are your friend.
I’ve been reading up on reviews and comparisons. From what I hear, Champions has much better visuals and animations, as well as much greater character customization including both powers and character appearance. Regarding game play/story line interaction, I’ll paraphrase one reviewer: You can play a second rate nobody hero who’s always in the shadow of the big name established heroes, with equipment/treasure that you get along the way that’s better than your super powers … OR you can play Champions Online.
Lol where is champions now? Oh yeah facepalm to ftp. Don’t get me wrong. It will be a great ftp game but dcuo is doing pretty well while Co is omgwtffailsauce.