MMORPG Games & MMO News – MMOCrunch

Two weeks ago I specified a few reasons why I was going to walk away from Champions Online when my subscription expired.  Normally, I try to look at the positives of a situation, but my experiences with the game, Cryptic’s handling of it and the future plans didn‘t sit well with me.  Or the rest [...]

Even though I purchased the six month package for Champions Online I haven’t actively played the game in weeks.  I’ve kept the client up-to-date just in case, but since I reviewed Champions Online in mid-November I haven’t put in anywhere near the time that I had previously.  My absence from VioletPreston has nothing to do [...]

My last post about Risk versus Reward started a couple interesting conversations both here and offline. Those conversations brought a couple of interesting points to light.
The main thing I have discovered is that most players and game devs tend to jam the concepts of challenge and risk together and call that “risk”. If an encounter is hard, [...]

If you are an MMO player and bother to follow MMOs enough, then you likely have heard the term “Risk versus Reward” thrown around. For those of you who thought you were going to the home page of an investment firm or Hasbro, Risk versus Reward is a term MMO developers use to describe the [...]

Even though I have been put off by MMOs recently, I am still plugging away at Champions Online every so often and so I figured I would post another build I am currently enjoying. Unluminous Man is a “copy” of one of my favorite City of Heroes characters. In CoH, Unluminous is a powerful Dark/Dark/Dark Defender [...]

Say what you will about Champions Online, but Cryptic has been releasing steady updates that have gone a long way toward fixing the game’s issues and improving the play experience. Players logging into CO tomorrow will be seeing these new changes, not the least of which is the closing of the dreaded Costume Gender Gap! [...]

I was recently given an opportunity to ask Cryptic’s Bill Roper some questions about Champions Online’s powers, data mining and the infamous “Launch Day Nerf”. Check out the Champions Online interview and see what he had to say.
The original design of Cryptic’s original game, City of Heroes, was supposed to have open power choices, but the [...]

Atari has just announced a new live event for Champions Online.  The Nemesis Confrontation event will kick off on November 24, and will push the title’s Nemesis System to the next level.  In a smart PR move, Cryptic will be hosting another free “weekend” during the event, from November 26-30.  In the world of Champions, [...]

Scarab
Scarab is my Gadgeteer. The goal of the build is to create a solid core out of the gadget powers and go from there. I went through a couple iterations of the gadget build before settling on this one.
Powers
Sonic Blaster (Rank 1 + Refraction of Sound) — This is a nice energy builder with decent [...]

My Champions Online review is below starting with character creation.
Character Creation: Simply put, character creation in Champions Online is one of the most verbose systems I have ever dealt with.  The closest thing to compare it to is City of Heroes, which makes perfect sense since Cryptic Studios developed that superhero title as well.  In [...]