Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Champions Online, ~17 Min Left on the DL

Protip: "Pre-Ordering" anything at GameStop only means guarantees that you'll be disappointed with GameStop on the day you desire to collect on anything from them. I move that from this moment forward, they should sell "Pre-Disappointment" slips, and just be done with it.

I preordered CO on 8/3 out in Concord, only to find that I would A) need to drive out to Concord to pick up a beta code (a good 15-20 min drive from Orinda, barring any traffic), and B) oh yeah, they didn't have any slips left.

GG

I managed to track one down at the GameShit by IKEA, and I'm pretty sure the employee was just too high to even put up any argument. I told him that I ordered it from Concord... but that the other Oakland store told me to try Bay Street... and so here I was, and... he kinda stumbled sideways, mumbling about a Slurpee, and just slid a slip across the counter at me. It slid off the far end, and fell on the ground, and a silence grew between us. Then he suddenly realized he had hands. Or something. It was all very confusing.

I took my slip home and began to create an account.

Little did I realize I would then need to wait in line at FilePlanet, and so set that shit up while I slinked off to the more back alley sections of the internet. Sure enough, PirateBay (to comply with the CapitalizedCompounds thing we have going here) had a torrent for it that launched into fullblown 900k+/sec speeds while FilePlanet still informed me I was nearing the front of the line.


And so, I wait.

Next post (gimme a day or two) will be a beta impressions, with the understanding that although I signed up for CoH/CoV more than once, I never could get the shit DLed and running from Japan, so I enter this foray as a Super Hero MMO Virgin.

More later...

9 comments:

Unknown said...

So far its been fun. Their patcher is FUBAR though so after you DL it be prepared to wait awhile unless they fixed it.

Finally got in today and got to play. Been kind of fun.Very much a COX 2.0 though. So if you didn't enjoy that you might want to pass.

Oh and they added the PQ's from WAR in to it. (Final mission from the newbie zone is a big PQ)

Unknown said...

as an side. My torrent speeds always...always suck. But at least the fileplanet subscription I have got me to the head of th elign and uncapped speeds /shrug

Kiryn said...

Maybe I'm just weird, but I expect "open beta" to mean that there isn't a limited number of keys. Isn't that what closed beta is? Especially that you can't get in without paying money for some third party site subscription.

It would have been nice of them to tell me I needed a beta key to participate BEFORE I spent all night downloading the game.

Hatch said...

I managed to sidestep a lot of the problems with my Gamestop preorder (wish I could have preordered somewhere else, but I wanted the early start and Best Buy was too busy selling TVs to bother updating their site) by having already been in the closed beta. All I had to do was open the launcher and apply a small patch. So I have no idea what's up with Fileplanet. Do you really have to get a paid subscription there to even download the client?

The first day was a disaster in exactly the same way the WoW live launch 4 years ago was a disaster: expectations were too low, so they didn't have the capacity to deal with so many eager people bombarding their servers at once. Seems like a lot of people want to play this game! Was running great for me last night.

Rich said...

for clarification: I didn't need a PAID fileplanet sub to DL it, but not having a paid one meant i was on a throttled connection that I had to wait in line to start (using their download manager).

The torrent was done by the time the fileplanet DL reached 25% done anyway.

Rich said...

p.s. the game runs pretty bad under windows 7, I may launch it in vista tonight, but my first impressions were pretty meh.

Mission #1 was kill 3 bugs. Seriously. I rolled my eyes, did the quest, then exited client for the night.

The creator is pretty whatever as well. I know everyone craps thier pants over the CoX creator, but I just am pretty indifferent. The LotRO and Aion creators are way better for me personally. There are a bunch of combinations with CO/CoX, but ultimately, you end up with the same jetpack or set of wings as someone else.

this is turning into the review, so i'll just save it all for later.

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Unknown said...

Heya Iso,

So, I see you are still trying more MMOs.
With that in mind, I remember your review of Aion... basicly the one game you actually really liked, and you said you would play that if possible.
Well, it will be, and beta's have been up for a while. Will you try it? I'd love a decent review from you about more than the first few levels, since I'm too lazy to actually Alt+F4 WoW and try it for more than a few hours... (yeah, I know, sue me!)
Well, just wondering what your thoughts were on Aion.

Cheers Hades

Rich said...

i've preordered Aion, and will be up and running on day one, most likely.

Aion made me want to play, CO just... doesn't.