Yearly Archives: 2009

DC Universe Online vs Champions Online

By MMOCrunch

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.

 

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. 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.

Source: MMOCrunch.

Neo Steam Europe

NeoSteam offers players an all new experience that combines a highly detailed fantasyenvironment with interesting steampunk machinery. The player can choose between four different character classes and join one of two Realms that fight for supremacy on the continent of Rope Isle. The Kingdom of Elerd, which represents a classical fantasy empire with magical spellcasters, is looking for new adventurers, while the Republic of Rogwel is preparing for battle as well. The Republic relies mainly on technical finesse, which is reflected in their advanced steam engines. NeoSteam, which is used to operate these powerful machines, is soon to become the most important resource in the epic struggle.

For players, NeoSteam is not only an exciting and extensive fantasy MMORPG, but offers them many unseen possibilities, thanks to the unique setting. Besides classical battles against monsters and other players, NeoSteam offers adventurers the chance, to build their own steam engines and create their own fighting vehicles.

Features:
– Free 3D Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)
– Innovative Fantasy-Steampunk Setting
– Five Races and Four Unique Classes
– Players Create Their Own Steam Engines and Mounts
– Many Player versus Player Arenas
– Epic Realm versus Realm Battles
– Free to Play – No Need to Buy, No Monthly Fees

Gamigo brings NeoSteam to Europe

Leading European MMOG publisher gamigo AG and HanbitSoft, a highly regarded Korean publisher, are announcing today, that the innovative steampunk online role-playing game NeoSteam will be published and operated by gamigo in several European territories. Players can go to http://neosteam.gamigo.com right now, to find out everything about the new EUversions of the game and already register for the upcoming beta test.
Master-Engineers wanted!
NeoSteam lets players experience a completely new and original fantasy world full of exciting adventures and gruesome monsters. NeoSteam’s unique attribute is the steampunk-setting, which adds never seen before elements to the game. Players are able to use advanced machinery to improve their equipment or to travel the massive continent of Rope Isle. They are even able to build their own mounts and take them to battle against other players. This way, adventurers and their powerful battle-machines can make the difference in the epic battle between the Republic of Rogwel and the Elerd Kingdom, the two main factions of NeoSteam’s deep fantasy-universe. In America, tens of thousands of players have already joined the open beta version of NeoSteam. Soon, European players are finally able to choose their side in the conflict of Rope Isle. Players can look forward to an entirely overhauled version of the game with a complete new translation, specific to European audiences. Additionally there will be a whole new German version of the game for players from Germany, Switzerland and Austria, as well as other regions, which are going to be announced later. Full Character Transfer for Existing European Players As a special service, European players who are already active in the US-version of the game will be able to transfer their characters to the EU-servers and start playing on the level they are used to, as soon as the commercial European version commences operation. This way, they can utilize the advantages of the European Version, like better latency due to closer server locations, without losing the progress they did spend many hours to achieve.
"We are very happy to introduce a real powerhouse like NeoSteam to our Portfolio", says Patrick Streppel, CMO at gamigo, "HanbitSoft is a very strong international Partner and
with NeoSteam we can offer one of their best and most innovative games to the European MMORPG-Community."
"It’s great for us to work with an experienced publisher like gamigo", adds Yoo-Ra Kim, Director of HanbitSoft’s Online Business Division, "gamigo has a proven record of successfully marketing MMORPGs in Europe and we are confident, that they are the right choice to get the players excited for a great game like NeoSteam." Additional Information about the European version of NeoSteam and the possibility to register early for an closed beta account, can be found at the official website http://neosteam.gamigo.com.