I'm not sure how many people here are planning on taking a look at Champions Online, but I've spent some hours in the open beta and have been kicking it around with the guys in my face-to-face game.  For the benefit of anyone interested, here's a compilation of my posts in that forum.  It should give you an idea about the game and certainly a place to ask questions if you're curious.

Wednesday, August 19

Monday was a total loss. I came home from work a little early and spent the night tryin to get the patcher to work. I tried letting it run while I was asleep but no good. I made one last attempt and started the patcher on my way out the door Tuesday morning. When I got home from work it was finally done.

Last night I played two toons through the tutorial and starting zones, including soloing the big boss at the end. I played Hard Eight (might framework) through the desert crisis zone, and I played M.A.C.E. (power armor framework) through the Canadian crisis zone.

The game ran very smoothly on my machine at the default settings. I never touched the options - I'll probably play around to see how good I can push the graphics tonight, but the default level was just fine. The look and feel is much more Freedom Force than CoH. Christine said it looked like a moving comic book.

I spent a lot of time working with the crafting, arms for H8 and science for MACE. I like it - you can craft things you will actually use immediately. In both cases I was able to craft a primary defensive item that kicked ass over what I had slotted at the time. Collecting materials was very easy. I really didn't have to farm, but that might just mean that they seeded the starter zones with more weapons crates (arms) or downed satellites (science) than the other zones.

I didn't need to group once, not to take down Ferd, the big wandering boss in the desert zone, or to take out either instance boss. I don't think H8 ever got to less than half health the entire time, but that's his thing. MACE had a close call or two, but wasn't too bad.

I think I'm going to focus more on trying out different power sets in the start zones than levelling any one toon, given that it's all moot on Friday night. Tonight I think I'll go with a martial artist.

Oh, and sorry, James. I didn't see a feathered hat on the costume options. Plenty of pink, though.
 
 
Thursday, August 20

I got a late start so I only had time to do one new toon last night. I made a martial artist named Action Man. I gave acrobatics a try with him as a movement power and it was a lot of fun jumping and running and leaping and bouncing around like Spider Man.

Martial artists kick ass. He took mobs down a lot faster than Hard Eight did. But the tradeoff was he was semi-squishy. He was certainly squishier than the powered armor guy I tried. Still, only a few close calls and no deaths. Plus, jumping on a guy's back and opening a can of whoop-ass flying fists is a hoot.

I've got the tutorial and the starter zone down to an hour and a half, not including character creation time.
 
 
Friday, August 21

Last night I worked two toons through the tutorial, but not the starting zones. These were my first attempts at female toons, and I must say that the character creator allows you to make some scandalous costumes for the ladies.

Shadowdancer was a darkness framework toon. I liked darkness because the second starting attack (your first is always a low damage quick-firing energy charging attack) was chargeable, meaning that the longer I hld down the button the more oooompf it had when it fired. When I got the hang of how long I had to charge it to one-shot the mobs, she kicked some serious butt.

The second toon I decided on the single-blade framework. I wanted to make a giant amazon warrior and while I got the look I wanted, there's no way to change the type of sword you use. I wanted a bastard sword and I got a katana. You always get a katana. How boring is that? Musketeer with a katana? Conan with a katana? I really think I must have missed something because that didn't seem right to me. Anyway, Bridget dispatched enemies with amazing ease. I'm starting to think that the melee powers so more damage, which is a fine trade-off as the ranged folk tend to not get hit as much.

This game is fun. I think I'm going to suspend my WoW account and try to get a toon up to the level cap when it opens. Right now, if I had to choose, I'd go with single blade. Or might, if only because being able to pick up and throw just about anything on the street is so much fun. My travel power will probably be flight, simply because it's the most versatile and easiest to control. Caveat: I've only levelled these toons to 8 or 9, so who knows how these power sets play out at the higher levels. We shall see.

EDIT: a search of the CO forums reveals that you can change the type of sword that you use, but only at the tailor - the guy who lets you make costume changes later on in the game. Also, there are drops that open up special weapon types and styles in your available costume choices including different types of swords, and these drops are tradeable on the in-game auction house. Wooot!!
 
 
Monday, August 24

I had planned on playing golf yesterday but the weather didn't cooperate, so that left me with plenty of time to try out a new power set and run with it. I'd spent a lot of time levelling Bridget (single blade w/flying) up to 15, mainly because I wanted to see the Millenium City. This game is going to be awesome if all the settings are that good.

MC has buildings that are so tall it takes minutes to fly to the top, and the view is astounding for a game like this. The place is just vast, like you'd expect a real city to be. There's a logical division or areas and it's easy to get lost if you're flying above it all and lose your bearings (anti-air missile anyone?)

I think I'm going with single blade or munitions as my main toon's power set. Single blade has some nice AoE strikes for when you've got three mobs in your face, and there's even a WoW warrior's charge-type power where you lunge at your opponent from a distance to start an attack. Plus, single blade is where the Sneak power resides, CO's version of stealth, and it's been more than useful many times. Yes, you can pull powers from any power set, so anybody can get sneak, but single bladers get it much quicker.

I mention munitions because I spent all of yesterday's play time working with Two-Gun Chun. Trench coat, cowboy boots, dual cowboy-style hip holsters, big belt buckle, all worked with a dragon pattern into the leather. A face wrap under her nose for a mask, thigh-high stockings with lace tops, and one of those wide Chinese farmer triangle hats completed the ensemble. Everything was chocolate brown except the decorative patterns were in gold. I got a ton of compliments in-game on the outfit. Muh-muh-muh-made me happy like Simple Jack.

Anyway, munitions rocks. At upgrade time I'd just enhance the damage for Two-Gun Mojo (guns blazing, basically) and I would mow mobs down like it was my job. It was certainly not as sturdy and much more squishy than Bridget, but dayam. Fun.

And don't even talk to me about what happened after I got my hands on the frag grenades power. At the next upgrade point I enhanced them to incendiary grenades. There's just something incredibly satisfying about lobbing a grenade into a bunch of Foxbat's minions and watching them get knocked back across the parking lot only to run around on fire screaming as you shoot them. I know, I know, it's not very heroic. Hey, I didn't write the game.

I went with teleportation as TGC's travel power. I like it. It takes a lot of getting used to it before you're moving smoothly about. I bound the side button on my mouse to my travel power and it helped considerably with control. After flight and teleportation I can't imagine being stuck on the ground again. My main will absolutely have one or the other.

The tailor had several options for guns and I went with Colt revolvers (modern handgun #5). While questing, after killing Withcraft's sister Sinister, I got a drop called "Gatling Revolvers". The tool-tip appeared to be broken (I reported the bug), but I said what the heck and equipped the drop into my primary offensive.

Oooooooh. Remember Wonderstuff and the helicopter minigun? That. Which is why Two-Gun Chun might be my main after the release.

Incidentally I did get a quest that wasn't solo-able. There is an open-world boss in the radiation pools of the desert which you must defeat as the end of a long quest chain. I tried to solo him and got beat like a red-headed stepchild. He was a couple of levels higher than me but that hadn't been a problem before. Anyway, finding two others to group for the kill wasn't difficult. What was difficult was the game's reinforcements AI.

Normally, the mobs stand about in distinct groups of 2-4 mobs. When you engage a group, they all come and you kill them and move on. Once you've grouped, if a mob is getting beat down there's a good chance he's going to run quickly over to the next 1-2 groups in proximity and get them to come running, too. That can be bad, but it's certainly exciting and gives a place for crowd control to come in (hello, ice and force power users).

Also, the little island where that boss was roaming had three groups of trash mobs, each with 2 mobs. As we would clear them and they would respawn while we waited for positioning, the mob group size is determined by your group size and cumulative level. Respawned groups wouldn't be 2 pushover mobs, they instead would be three mini-Grond monsters or something much harder.

The actual group combat is very different than the role-based group play in WoW. There's no tank or healer, but again that migh thave been situational in my instance. We had three mainly offensive types (munitions, electricity, single-blade). It worked out to splitting the target group up, assigning targets, and staying on your assigned target and taking them down solo. For the boss we ignored the mobs and focused fire (we only had to defeat him, not loot him) and he went right down.

Oh, and I found the musketeer hat, and yes, you can give it a feather and make it pink.