Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?

And now for something completely different… I hadn’t planned on getting a mad-on yesterday morning, but thanks to everyone who stopped by and to those who made comments.

What I wanted to talk/gush about was the start of the open beta of Champions Online*, a new MMO based on the Champions (duh) role-playing game system. I don’t deny that I can easily get hooked on MMOs, but after a while they start to get a bit stale. It’s not that you don’t like them anymore, you just want something different. Some games take care of this on their own by making changes to the game world, adding new content, etc. While others can’t hide the fact that you’re pretty much doing the same thing over and over again. The same strategies apply in nearly every case and you’re just grinding to the next level. The game may be gorgeous, as World of Warcraft often is, but still repetitive like the ever present “Kill Ten Rats“** trope.

I don’t expect Champions Online to be fun forever, but it’s the new kid on the block officially coming out on Sept 1, and I hope it leads the way for Marvel and DC to get further along on their own online games. I like Wizards, warriors, dungeons and dragons… but superpowers are really where it’s at. Still one can’t deny that the fantasy genre has its appeal. As noted in this new video from The Guild***, Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?

Starring the delightful Felicia Day also of Dr. Horrible and some fun tv ads. It poses a question with a pretty obvious answer to most gamers who’ve been around games long enough to know that while the male characters may be fit, the female characters/avatars are… well, y’know.

And as someone that recognizes who their audiences are, I don’t blame the gaming companies too much. But a woefully inadequate chain mail codpiece once in a while isn’t too much to ask, is it?

As it turns out, there would be no open beta for me last night anyway as Cryptic Studios was experiencing massive problems with delivering a proper installation client and dealing with ~40,000 new users attempting to get online, patch their pre-loaded client and play. So it was a frustrating evening of watching installation apps not do what they were supposed to do and reading some serious hardcore nerdrage in forums all over the ‘net. Me, I just wanted to play the game but around bedtime it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen. The developers were addressing the issues and it looks like I had a good install this morning, so hopefully I’ll be checking it out tonight!