Thursday, April 22, 2004
Tonight, the Devs of City of Heroes held an event.
A massive UFO descended on the central city building and began bombarding the area with turrets, drones, robot monkies and giant blob men.
At least 50 player controlled heroes arrived on the scene, some flying in, some teleporting....and the rest of us doggin' it on our well-worn lowbie shoes.
For the hour that the invasion lasted, I managed only to die three times. Considering that that monsters attacking ranged from levels 14 to 40 and all of which had area of effect attacks, I am quite proud. I used a (desperate) strategy to utilize my superior speed and agility - I jumped over the mob of heroes, landed next to the giant hero-slaying monster, kicked it a couple times with my atomic-based kung fu, then leaped deftly out of the front lines, narrowly avoiding the AoE blasts each time.
After our mob was beaten down by one of the middle waves, an Arch character appeared (apparently good friends of the Devs or in-house Testers) and proceeded to kick some alien ass and turn the tide along with the massive pack.
While the event was all good and fun (nothing I haven't seen in any other MMO including NWN), the fact that I never went lower than 10fps was pretty startling. At one point, I zoomed out during a melee so that I had almost the entire area in view, including the ~50 heroes, the 10+ baddies, and was still able to play the game. It was my own hardware limiting it, as there was no true lag - the server was handling it perfectly.
Tomorrow (today, whatever) the beta ends, all the characters are wiped and I get to restart my hero: Martial Martian. If work is slow tomorrow (today....whatever), you can expect to see an origin story.
Right now he uses Martial Arts to kick villains to death, and uses Super Reflexes to avoid getting pummeled into the hospital. I'm thinking of changing his defense abilities since I always get the green-crap kicked out of my alien ass, but I have the advantage of altering my strategy with the remake.
"Behold! The power of the ATOM!"
A massive UFO descended on the central city building and began bombarding the area with turrets, drones, robot monkies and giant blob men.
At least 50 player controlled heroes arrived on the scene, some flying in, some teleporting....and the rest of us doggin' it on our well-worn lowbie shoes.
For the hour that the invasion lasted, I managed only to die three times. Considering that that monsters attacking ranged from levels 14 to 40 and all of which had area of effect attacks, I am quite proud. I used a (desperate) strategy to utilize my superior speed and agility - I jumped over the mob of heroes, landed next to the giant hero-slaying monster, kicked it a couple times with my atomic-based kung fu, then leaped deftly out of the front lines, narrowly avoiding the AoE blasts each time.
After our mob was beaten down by one of the middle waves, an Arch character appeared (apparently good friends of the Devs or in-house Testers) and proceeded to kick some alien ass and turn the tide along with the massive pack.
While the event was all good and fun (nothing I haven't seen in any other MMO including NWN), the fact that I never went lower than 10fps was pretty startling. At one point, I zoomed out during a melee so that I had almost the entire area in view, including the ~50 heroes, the 10+ baddies, and was still able to play the game. It was my own hardware limiting it, as there was no true lag - the server was handling it perfectly.
Tomorrow (today, whatever) the beta ends, all the characters are wiped and I get to restart my hero: Martial Martian. If work is slow tomorrow (today....whatever), you can expect to see an origin story.
Right now he uses Martial Arts to kick villains to death, and uses Super Reflexes to avoid getting pummeled into the hospital. I'm thinking of changing his defense abilities since I always get the green-crap kicked out of my alien ass, but I have the advantage of altering my strategy with the remake.
"Behold! The power of the ATOM!"
