Confronting Nemesis

Cryptic has started to push the marketing buttons for a new lair that is being added to Champions Online next week, Nemesis Confrontation. This is a 5-man lair for max level characters (i.e. level 40) which as the name implies, includes confrontations with the Nemesis characters of all people in the team. There is also a trailer available – warning though that the speaker voice is a bit cheesy IMHO…

The new lair is available on the Public Test Server and characters less than 40 can be bumped up to that level for testing. Some feedback in the forums seems to give that it is overall a good one, although the Nemesis part does not play such a big role as the name would imply and that they Nemesis characters are a bit wimpy. The main encounter seem to more frustrating than challenging for some builds at least.

My highest is at 33, so there will still be some time before I get to try this one out – perhaps close to Christmas or something like that. The lair will be available in the regular Champions world on November 24th.

Games I pay

Instead of a games I play I wanted to do a games I pay, which are two different lists – only one game is currently overlapping those two, barely.

• Saga of Ryzom
  Paying the subscription fee for this game, although I have barely logged into to it in the past 2-3 months. I like a number of things about this game, but it has not been the right environment for me to disconnect from the real world in. Besides, it is a bit too much fantasy-like and I don’t really appreciate anything fantasy-like at the moment. But I do wish to encourage small developers like WinchGate, so I am happy to continue pay regardless of whether I play it or not.
• City of Heroes/Villains
  This has been my primary MMO since spring 2006, but lately I have been slacking in this area in terms of playing. Paragon Studios have added some neat things in updates, but seem to focus on the upcoming expansion Going Rogue, which looks promising.  Paragon Studios itself is not huge, but is still part of a somewhat large MMO company – NCSoft. So I am not paying because I want to support a small developer – instead it is to support a studio that make a good team-encouraging casual MMO with good stories. They also do seem to want to go in a bit new directions even after 5+ years with the game, as the expansion indicates. I simply like their ambitions and that they also seem to be reasonably good in execution, although not quite the top-notch that they used to be when they were a smaller group. I am happy to support them even though I do not play much at the moment.
• Champions Online
  This is definitely the MMO which I think has the most fun combat and is the MMO I mainly play if I get some spare time. I even like the PvP in the game, at least the types of PvP I have tried so far (Zombie Apocalypse, Hunters vs werewolves, Stronghold Apocalypse).
  I do not pay for a monthly subscription with this one, since I bought the lifetime subscription back in August. I have paid a little bit afterwards using the Cryptic shop to buy some costume pieces and a character rename. So I do pay here, but not at regular intervals. The reason for buying the lifetime subscription was simply a longterm investment in that I believe to be Cryptic’s ability to create MMOs that I like to play.  Champions Online has not disappointed me; but I do think Cryptic has been a bit sloppy in some areas of execution and the game still needs more good content – but which PvE-oriented MMO doesn’t?
  It is a game that works well to have in a mix of other games; but probably not something for those that want to focus on one single game for many hours per week over many months or years. For my casual approach it works fine.
• Fallen Earth
  I like the post-apocalyptic setting and the scavenging/crafting type of gameplay clicks with me here. The combat sucks IMHO, but thankfully this does not seem to be something that I have to endure too much. Again, this is a game from a somewhat small developer; I am quite ok with paying for this to support a small developer doing a non-fantasy and a bit sandbox:y game, even though I do not log in and play that often. More of those games.

I have played and play some other MMO games which do not require me to pay a regular fee; but that is for a different post.