Jeni

I tested this game over a span of several months and I will not be purchasing it for many, many reasons. I will be as fair as possible, though some of the repliers to other testers that don't like the game will surely knock it down.

* No servers.
BAD: You get 8 characers (or can BUY MORE). You're herded into shards that hold between 25-200 people at a time. It's VERY hard to find groups early on because early zones only let a small amount of people into it. Zoning itself takes a long time and doesn't feel fluid.
GOOD: One server = always being able to play with your friends...you just need to log out a lot and try to get into filled shards.


* Global names.
BAD: Guess what, people have your account name now. If you piss someone off they can always find you. You also get stuck with no longer having a character you can just play in secret for stress relief.
GOOD: No more trolls. Your reputation matters! No longer adding 800 (or...em...8) alts to your list.


* Character Creator
BAD: Faces look the same. There are sliders, but it doesn't do much. There's also a lot of character costume pieces but it's hard to navigate. There are textures missing that you can find in COX (detached sleaves, robes). Some hats only allow certain hairs. You can resize or rotate anything. Most of the moods and poses are, quite honestly, silly.
GOOD: Lots of choices. It's almost certain that you will not be looking like anyone else.


* Controls/UI
BAD: If you come from Warcraft you're going to be dumbfounded. Controls are hard to get use to. It's a game made for a control paddle...NOT for a mouse and keyboard. There are also keybindings that are not quite intuitive. Tooltips are still wonky. You can't move or resize or even addon to much of the UI.
GOOD: Um... It's colorful? Yay?


* Classes
BAD: You MUST take a defensive power. If you don't, you go splat. They could have made this a lot clearer. Trying to play a support character means you have to have lightning reflexes to flee, crowd control, or heal. If you don't, prepare yourself for tragedy.
GOOD: The blaster classes are fun but the custom framework doesn't really work all that well together since some powers are designed to only work well with some powers.


* Zones
BAD: Ugh. You can pick from an early crisis zone filled with floaty white shit or floaty green shit. It was hard for me to feel heroic in these settings. I didn't even get to a city right away. Immersion was bad. My winged character had to take a helicopter to her destination. I also didn't feel invested in the quests. I WANTED to care...but I couldn't bring myself to.
GOOD: Um... I don't know. I didn't find any of them really enjoyable.


* Final Thoughts
I did have a good time for almost two months with this Beta but I grew bored quickly. I continued to play right up until Friday's wipe...but I only stayed logged in for 20 minutes. It did not hold my attention...and it doesn't feel like an MMO. It's more like an arcade game. There were still bugs on Friday, bugs I'd been posting about for months...and I think it will release with these bugs.

Sigh. Oh well.

[REMOVED]

Yes Jack. When the NDA drops we can discuss just how icky CO actually is. ^__^

I'd get email addresses from guildies I like and then stop playing. I mean, what's the point if it's getting shut down? MMOs are about progression. No point in doing dailies or heroics if it's going away.

It's half a dozen of one, six of another. Summer seems to be a good time to get kids hooked. Then again, there's a reason why people stop playing games for long stretches in the summer if they are NOT kids. People with children do sports (all year round) and have to make games and practices. There are summer vacations to think about. Every year in summer, WoW guilds have HUGE drama in the summer time because people stop coming online to play. Just the way it is.

Now, for working adults without kids, all year round is a good time to play. For those of us with kids, playtimes are seasonal around a child's activities. Weekends tend to be a bust for parents.

I don't think that the time of a release matters. It'll impact different groups differently.

Allow me to be the first gaming woman to absolutely GROAN about this. Hopefully it'll end up like it's brethern of far more beloved MMO ventures (Stargate, Firefly) which fizzled.

Give me Firefly over this crap any day!

Gotta love it when a Japanese character looks like a white guy in a game. Awesome. :/

You do know that a big part of CO IS actually doing all those things you mentioned right? XD I suggest you try open beta.

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html Looks like WoW's still king in subs.

I keep coming back to WoW. Why?

I left for DDO. I played for 4 months and then I missed Wow. I missed the people, the massive amounts of content, the replayability. I left again for LOTRO. I only played that for a month or two. It was too much like DDO and didn't really do much more for me. It was entertaining for a bit at least. I left WoW for FF... Again, after I got over the newness, I found myself missing Azeroth. My high level characters. The people there. The new content.

I very recently left for CO Beta.

And guess what? Three months in I'm back in WoW. New Argent Tournament. New pets. New Bosses. New raids.

WoW is more than just the people. It's more than just familiar. WoW CONSTANTLY pushes in new things. This is not the game I played 4 years ago. Or 3. Or 2. It's not even the game I played last summer. WoW raises the bar because it REMAINS current.

I still like it. I will continue to still like it until someone does better. And no one has yet.