Of course not, now move along.

Originally posted by Kryogenic

Originally posted by Irishoak

"Subscription fee is not socialism. But demanding everything be free is. The fact that a company wants to add an MT just means they are trying to make money a different way. If it fails then its not a good product but having it does not make them greedy.

 

Thinking companies are greedy when they try and make money is a socialistic ideal. Don't condemn them for their business model just don't pay for the service."

You are a fountain of amusement, I'll grant you that. Do you even know what socialism is, or are you spouting it because you heard it on TV once? The largest amount of our "socialist welfare" by far goes to corporations, greedy corporations. They are the main cause of our economic woes, it's common knowledge.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Adam Smith

We owe corporations nothing, they owe us if they want to fleece us, to think otherwise shows a great lack of self-interest. Capitalism has only recently become about acquiring wealth at the expense of all else, which insures it will in the end destroy itself because it has become unsustainable. Greed is not a virtue, regardless of how much it has become a religion in our nation, there was a time when it was considered a vice.

 

I whole-heartedly agree. Corporate greed and irresponsible consuming have sucked the life and vitality from this country.

When you spend money as a responsible and informed consumer and refrain from supporting questionable business practices you are showing that company and, through extrapolation, other companies that we the consumer will not be sucked in by this kind of stuff.

The problem with the video game industry is that the majority of the consumers who support it are too young to know the value of a dollar and/or are just plain ignorant insofar as how their actions as consumers affect the industry as a whole.

The greed and exploitation in the video game industry is the microcosm of the greed and exploitation that has been going on for quite some time in this country.

Look at what corporate mentality and greed did to the music industry. It's happening to the video game industry, and it's embaressingly apparent in the MMORPG genre.

Look at all of the worthless cash-in attempts that have no soul, no depth, no consideration for the consumer's wants.

I would never turn my nose up at free stuff, but I also have no problem paying for the things that I want. I have no problem paying for a quality game that would bring hours, days, weeks, and months of enjoyment.

The problem is that when people like BioNut support lackluster games it then becomes ok for other companies to flush out garbage. Why should they rethink the grinds and timesinks when there are always more suckers lined up to pay for their subpar entertainment.

It's up to us the players to hold the companies responsible for making the games we play to a higher standard and therefore raise the bar to a new level of emmersion, enjoyment, and fun. As long as we keep buying crap they'll continue to make it.

If however, we stand united against subpar games and questionable business models, we can help chnge the state of the industry.

I don't disagree with people spending money wisely but at the same time who elected you to say what is wise or not? If someone wants to support a game they love by using MTs then let them. If a lot of people support it then it will become mainstream. If nobody does it will fail.

Problem is a lot of people on these boards want to see it fail before they even know how it works. How do you know its shady? Greedy? If you see something you want and it will make you happy then it has worth to you. If the price is unreasonable then you might not buy it....wouldn't be worth it.

I bought a track IR the other day because it looked cool, not because I needed it. It has worth to me but other people would say it is a niche device and you shouldn't spend money on stuff like that.

Originally posted by Kryogenic 

I whole-heartedly agree. Corporate greed and irresponsible consuming have sucked the life and vitality from this country.

When you spend money as a responsible and informed consumer and refrain from supporting questionable business practices you are showing that company and, through extrapolation, other companies that we the consumer will not be sucked in by this kind of stuff.

The problem with the video game industry is that the majority of the consumers who support it are too young to know the value of a dollar and/or are just plain ignorant insofar as how their actions as consumers affect the industry as a whole.

The greed and exploitation in the video game industry is the microcosm of the greed and exploitation that has been going on for quite some time in this country.

Look at what corporate mentality and greed did to the music industry. It's happening to the video game industry, and it's embaressingly apparent in the MMORPG genre.

Look at all of the worthless cash-in attempts that have no soul, no depth, no consideration for the consumer's wants.

I would never turn my nose up at free stuff, but I also have no problem paying for the things that I want. I have no problem paying for a quality game that would bring hours, days, weeks, and months of enjoyment.

The problem is that when people like BioNut support lackluster games it then becomes ok for other companies to flush out garbage. Why should they rethink the grinds and timesinks when there are always more suckers lined up to pay for their subpar entertainment.

It's up to us the players to hold the companies responsible for making the games we play to a higher standard and therefore raise the bar to a new level of emmersion, enjoyment, and fun. As long as we keep buying crap they'll continue to make it.

If however, we stand united against subpar games and questionable business models, we can help chnge the state of the industry.

Indeed, companies rely on the fact most Americans are apathetic or just plain ignorant. This is nothing new and innovative it's them hammering together as many payment models as they can and hoping it will become an industry standard. It's obvious CO is a testbed for ST:O, if this even remotely works for CO they will expand upon it greatly in ST:O which many consider to be a huge IP.

Once they went open BETA and the forums started churning out massive amounts of posts, the thread a dev started asking how people felt about MTs had it's sticky status removed with zero explanation and no answers (after stating in the initial post that was the whole purpose of the thread). It was a few pages off the front before anyone noticed, it's clear they just want the whole ordeal to die with minimum fuss. As a matter of fact they started a new thread (a dev) asking what we'd like to see most in costume pieces. I wonder why they'd ask that...

Originally posted by BioNut

Originally posted by Kryogenic

Originally posted by Irishoak

"Subscription fee is not socialism. But demanding everything be free is. The fact that a company wants to add an MT just means they are trying to make money a different way. If it fails then its not a good product but having it does not make them greedy.

 

Thinking companies are greedy when they try and make money is a socialistic ideal. Don't condemn them for their business model just don't pay for the service."

You are a fountain of amusement, I'll grant you that. Do you even know what socialism is, or are you spouting it because you heard it on TV once? The largest amount of our "socialist welfare" by far goes to corporations, greedy corporations. They are the main cause of our economic woes, it's common knowledge.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Adam Smith

We owe corporations nothing, they owe us if they want to fleece us, to think otherwise shows a great lack of self-interest. Capitalism has only recently become about acquiring wealth at the expense of all else, which insures it will in the end destroy itself because it has become unsustainable. Greed is not a virtue, regardless of how much it has become a religion in our nation, there was a time when it was considered a vice.

 

I whole-heartedly agree. Corporate greed and irresponsible consuming have sucked the life and vitality from this country.

When you spend money as a responsible and informed consumer and refrain from supporting questionable business practices you are showing that company and, through extrapolation, other companies that we the consumer will not be sucked in by this kind of stuff.

The problem with the video game industry is that the majority of the consumers who support it are too young to know the value of a dollar and/or are just plain ignorant insofar as how their actions as consumers affect the industry as a whole.

The greed and exploitation in the video game industry is the microcosm of the greed and exploitation that has been going on for quite some time in this country.

Look at what corporate mentality and greed did to the music industry. It's happening to the video game industry, and it's embaressingly apparent in the MMORPG genre.

Look at all of the worthless cash-in attempts that have no soul, no depth, no consideration for the consumer's wants.

I would never turn my nose up at free stuff, but I also have no problem paying for the things that I want. I have no problem paying for a quality game that would bring hours, days, weeks, and months of enjoyment.

The problem is that when people like BioNut support lackluster games it then becomes ok for other companies to flush out garbage. Why should they rethink the grinds and timesinks when there are always more suckers lined up to pay for their subpar entertainment.

It's up to us the players to hold the companies responsible for making the games we play to a higher standard and therefore raise the bar to a new level of emmersion, enjoyment, and fun. As long as we keep buying crap they'll continue to make it.

If however, we stand united against subpar games and questionable business models, we can help chnge the state of the industry.

I don't disagree with people spending money wisely but at the same time who elected you to say what is wise or not? If someone wants to support a game they love by using MTs then let them. If a lot of people support it then it will become mainstream. If nobody does it will fail.

Problem is a lot of people on these boards want to see it fail before they even know how it works. How do you know its shady? Greedy? If you see something you want and it will make you happy then it has worth to you. If the price is unreasonable then you might not buy it....wouldn't be worth it.

I bought a track IR the other day because it looked cool, not because I needed it. It has worth to me but other people would say it is a niche device and you shouldn't spend money on stuff like that.

 

 People with money have more than most in RL, should they have more than most in a GD game too! I don't know about anyone else , but I don't pay people so they create content for "other" people! If EVERYTHING in the store is available with a little effort in game ... then fine but I'm pretty sure only some of it is. Or down the line they start puttign w/e they want in it to make more money. What is to say tanking subs won't cause them to put other things on the MT store so they bilk more money out of the loyal customers who aren't leaving.

 I don't like it at all, but of course I don't have to play and I won't. Why would anyone want this to become a standard form of payment model?

All in all, I think it is a reasonable review, but there are some points that seems to be missing and areas that I've had a different experience with:

• Interesting that there is no mention of the customization of the individual powers.  It is true that the number of powers is relatively small, but part of the leveling process involves applying bonuses or additional abilities to those individual powers.  This creates more significant customization than CoH (which also has a relatively small number of powers available to the user), and a little bit more inline with talents in WoW.
• Interesting that cooldowns figure prominently in the initial part of your review.  It is true that there are some cooldowns with some powers, but it is hardly a pervasive issue in the game.  I've played around with 3 different toons so far and haven't encountered it myself, and heard about it only through one of my friends (3 of us are playing concurrently choosing different toons) on one of her toons.
• Power imbalances in a new MMO?  I've never heard of such a thing (/sarcasm)
• I do agree that the percentages approach to powers can create a nerfing nightmare.  I'm hoping that Cryptic learned some lessons from CoH, and that they won't have to be as extreme in their balancing...I'm still a bit miffed at what they did to my regen scrapper...
• The team-play portion of your review was rather shocking to me.  The game has been more stable and solid than some of the long-running MMOs (including CoH that I also reactivated back in February).  We've not encountered anyone missing from the maps, although we did learn to play with the zoom on the mini-map pretty early.
• I've not seen any performance issues on a modern platform.  You do realize that the P4 was initially shipped in 2000, if you are running a 32-bit OS you really only have about 3 GB RAM, and the 4750 can't do but so much by itself.  I did have to turn down the graphics a bit on my son's computer (about 3 years old, don't remember the specs, but it at least had a dual-core processor) because of noticable, but it's nowhere near set to the bottom on graphics.  Minimum specs are always disappointing for any software.

My quick take on the game (mostly differences compared to other MMOs I've played):

• An enjoyable change from the other MMOs (my experience is primarily WoW, CoX, Guild Wars, LoTRO, Warhammer Online).
• Although the characters are "cartoonish" in appearance, a lot of the background is pretty sharp...and the toons themselves are actually pretty detailed, but the cell-shading gives the different look.
• Once you understand all the customization (look for buttons that unlock advanced features), the number of combinations actually start to get a bit overwhelming; this applies to character customization as well as power customization.
• Active blocking makes for an interesting dynamic.  Dodging is passive, but blocking becomes an active decision on part of the player.
• The tutorial zone is very well done which is a big plus for new players where most MMOs tutorial zones are rather minimal; but will be a negative to experienced MMO players.
• Open group mission areas are a nice touch (like Warhammer) for variety.
• Crafting system seems to be a bit clumsy at this point.  But kudos for being able to research to gain skill points in lieu of grinding out goods (like WoW).
• The travel powers are very entertaining and more interactive (e.g. super jump does require that you use the space bar for each jump).
• Nice ability to test out your power choices before locking them in.  If you aren't sure about which power or customization you want, pick one, go to the back room and test it out.  If you don't like it, you can "respec" for free (as long as you don't exit the training area) and try something else.
• Concern about leveling so quick.  You can very easily get to level 10 in a few hours...with a level 40 cap currently, it seems a bit hasty; but it does serve to minimize the time that you have only a few powers.

Overall, I'm looking at keeping the game.

Out of interest; Bionut, your in game alias is not "Joseph Mcarthy" perchance?

I shall wait and see about these micro transactions. I'm not aware of them actually releasing information on specifics that can be brought, only loose collections items. To decide you're not going to buy the game based on early ideas of micro transactions is a little hasty, no? Some people might even believe that if you do take this approach... You weren't planning on buying this game in the first place! Having played a little in the closed beta (unfortunately the severely bugged patcher and account servers prevents me from playing a lot) I have had fun. I just wonder how long Cryptic will be able sustain this fun.

Just to stick my neck out there.. The whole MT system won't be that bad. They've already stated that any gameplay-changing items will be available to players - and from what I've seen costumes will be as well. It's not like CoH/V didn't have a similar system after all.

Furthermore,  think the MT system has more to do with the Lifetime and 6-Month Subscribers rather than normal monthly subscribers. Think of it like this:

Lifetime Subscription Example

(Notice: The math isn't going to be 100% accurate given that 14 months at $15/Mo equates to $210, not $200. I'm also not taking into account the free month attained by simply buying the game. If you wish to nitpick, just read "5 Years" as "5 years and 1 Month".)

 Buy the lifetime subscription right now for $200, in 14 months you'll be playing the game for free (When being compared to the $15/Mo subscription model). That is, free for as long as the game lasts. If it lasts 5 years? You will have only paid for 1 Year and 2 Months of time. That's roughly 47 free months and $700 that Cryptic would never get... $700 from one person. Now, what if 10,000 people grabbed the lifetime subscription? That's $7,000,000 Cyptic misses out on in the span of 5 years. Add/Subtract Zeros as you wish, any amount over $700,000 is a lot of lost money no matter how you look at it.

6-Month Subscription Example

Comparatively get the 6-Month subscription package for $60/6 Months (Or $10 a month). That's a good deal, and in time that's a lot of lost money for Cryptic. Of course it's not as bad as the losses from a lifetime subscriber, but losses are losses. Lets take the 5-year example from above and adapt it. $120 a year, $600 after 5 years. Paying $15 a month would be $180 a year, $900 after 5 years. Say 10,000 people chose that payment model - Cryptic loses out on roughly $3,000,000 in 5 years time.

For those who hate looking at numbers in a forum, the point is that the Micro-Transaction system isn't Cryptic being greedy, it's them trying to recoup losses from the aforementioned deals. The MT system is geared towards adding an additional reward to players who chose a long-term subscription model while still allowing players who wish to play month-by-month to drop a little extra money on the same items if they so chose. Could it imbalance the game? Maybe. I'm not a Cryptic Developer, I wouldn't know - I have faith, though, they're not going to allow such a system to ruin the game because Player A is a rich bastard while Player B is eating Ramen in a college dorm doing odd jobs just to pay for the game alone.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As far as the game itself goes.. It's love it or hate it. Just like CoH/V the game will continue to expand and grow to be fairly massive (It already is rather Massive, and has great replay value). It fulfills the Superhero MMO Niche quite well given the vast customization for your characters. The progression in the game is excellently done and allows for a player to have a completely different experience on an alternate character.

Personally, I think it's an above-average MMO given it's genre and style. It's certainly geared towards a specific audience, but Champions Online still has enough features to be inviting to gamers who aren't huge fans of the Super Hero genre. It's not WoW, it's not Aion and I'll be surprised if it gains success even remotely close to either of those games. In it's own right, though, it is a great game and certainly worth a look. Are there inherent problems? Yes, plenty - not one of those problems is enough to make the game not enjoyable however. They're all small little issues Cryptic has been working hard to fix, and they are getting fixed - much faster than most MMOs manage to fix their problems.

Hellgate: London had a lifetime sub...

Originally posted by Irishoak

Hellgate: London had a lifetime sub...

Hellgate: London sucked balls too.

LOTRO Has a lifetime sub...

The controls in the game are horrid... clunky and badly designed. I like how they give you a few different control sets, but regardless they are bad. Attacking enemies tends to be very slow and awkward. The character customization is fun, though it wont take long for a player to recognize many of the commonly used visuals such as large wings or claws. Quests so far have been boring, though they make up for that with an active world. Really annoying enemies tend to appear out of no where, again mixed with the combat system and targeting... it can be a pain in the butt.

I would have to say the quality of the game is average. It could have spent more time in production, could have been much better designed. Will make a fun console game, but a mediocre PC title.

Overall impression is that this game ranges between a 6.5-7.5/10  give or take. CoH/CoV definately had the controls down better, the design and appeal seemed better thought out and developed. I cant help but feel champions is a mimicry of better games, but is meant mainly to be an entry into the console mmorpg market...not necessarily a very good one, just an entry none the less.

Originally posted by Rabenwolf

The controls in the game are horrid... clunky and badly designed. I like how they give you a few different control sets, but regardless they are bad. Attacking enemies tends to be very slow and awkward. The character customization is fun, though it wont take long for a player to recognize many of the commonly used visuals such as large wings or claws. Quests so far have been boring, though they make up for that with an active world. Really annoying enemies tend to appear out of no where, again mixed with the combat system and targeting... it can be a pain in the butt.

I would have to say the quality of the game is average. It could have spent more time in production, could have been much better designed. Will make a fun console game, but a mediocre PC title.

Overall impression is that this game ranges between a 6.5-7.5/10  give or take. CoH/CoV definately had the controls down better, the design and appeal seemed better thought out and developed. I cant help but feel champions is a mimicry of better games, but is meant mainly to be an entry into the console mmorpg market...not necessarily a very good one, just an entry none the less.

I can tell you right now that it won't be a successful console game. I'm not trying to be insulting or anything, but I think you and obviously the CO devs aren't really in touch with online console gaming.

Insofar as console gaming is concerned, Xbox Live is king. Xbox Live gamers won't play a game with an added subscription fee because everyone who plays on Xbox Live pays a yearly subscription all ready. Do you really think those same gamers would be willing to pony up the money for the game, the cost of the monthly sub, and be willing to purchase content from an item shop?

The gamers on Xbox Live won't support games that require more thought than kill. Even in the games that have objective based gametypes, the majority of the players play Deathmatch and Teamdeathmatch exclusively.

CO is too stat dependent and is definitely not an action RPG. It's not a console game. It's not even close.

I agree with the rest of your post, I just think that too many people blame consoles instead of blaming the developers.

Look at the game's history. Marvel and Microsoft were both on board until they started to see the game and then they both pulled out. Cryptic was left stuck with code for a super hero MMO and instead of starting from scratch like they should have, they flocked to the closest IP they could find to shoe horn into their game.

Marvel obviously didn't pull out because they changed their minds about having their IP associated with an MMORPG because a Marvel MMO is being developed by a new company.

Both Marvel and Microsoft have been in business for a very long time and have both been successful. Why would they pull out if they had faith in Cryptics design?

I seriously don't see what the hand full of people who are defending this game see in it. There are just too many sketchy things surrounding this game's history and the business model is more than enough to make me not want to support it.

Checked out the OB now that is free on Fileplanet w/o a preorder. (good sign?) Anyway, I have to agree with a lot of the posts I am readng here. While the costume customizaton is great, the combat is really clunky. This one needs more time in the oven. Also, the quests just seem tedious, I can't put my finger on it. Maybe I need to give it more time... Oh that's right, with a million other games coming out soon I likely can't be bothered.

Originally posted by monkey_butt

Checked out the OB now that is free on Fileplanet w/o a preorder. (good sign?) Anyway, I have to agree with a lot of the posts I am readng here. While the costume customizaton is great, the combat is really clunky. This one needs more time in the oven. Also, the quests just seem tedious, I can't put my finger on it. Maybe I need to give it more time... Oh that's right, with a million other games coming out soon I likely can't be bothered.

You mean the FEW posts.  Most people are saying its pretty dang good.  Excluding the haters which OP hated before it even came.

Originally posted by Dracill

Sorcery is a very hard powerset, realy hard.

So you are saying you tried on porpouse to use a powerset that you knew was broken to be able to come here and say "My power set was broken and I dont like the game"? It doesnt make very sense to me.... unles all you want is trolling.

No - as I said in the original post, I tried several powersets.

The two points main points I made regarding sorcery were that powersets and powers are poorly balanced, and that support type characters are not only not needed, but their powers are weak and so difficult to use (because of range issues) that they're not worth it.

Originally posted by ghost047

Originally posted by green13

Originally posted by ghost047

He dislike the game because of MT and Bill Roper, he already said it many times.

Oh, and he said he'd put me on ignore...

But here he is still pathetically attempting to misrepresent me.

MTs aside, the game isn't that good. If it were, they wouldn't need the MTs.

I'm not, you have done it yourself, go read your previous post about MT, Bill and even the lifetime sub.

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3007907#3007907

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/247024/page/1

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3013674#3013674

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/243801/page/1

What you do, Ghost, is resort to personal attacks when you can't argue the facts, as you did here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3007995#3007995

I don't think MTs belong in a subscription model - something which most other mmo'ers agree with.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/243937/page/1

But unlike others in these forums, I have not, however, expressed fear or concern that if CO succeeds with this model that other mmos will follow suit. SOE have already gone down this road and the results have been poor. I've argued against MTs (with a subscription) because I think they're going to be a major handicap to any game, including CO.

So I feel no need to give a biased review. In fact, having played the game I now understand why the MTs are there - even without MTs it would have relatively limited appeal.

As for Bill Roper, I've addressed that already too. My only experience of him prior to trying CO was Hellgate London and his CO interviews in which he.... doesn't distinguish himself in a good way. I enjoyed Hellgate London as a single player game. I never tried the "mmo" part of it because it looked overpriced for what it was.

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2996044#2996044

Nothing I've said in my review is untrue. I haven't described the game as "craptastic" as others have. In other posts I've skirted breaching the NDA to defend it against those sorts of unfair claims, and I gave due credit in my review to things CO does well.

But CO is far from a perfect game and it really is an average successor to CoH. It has many problems and appears to have been designed to appeal to solo console players. And it's fine to design a game for a specific market like that - but if you try to market it to people outside of that specific market, i.e. to the wider mmo community, and as something as other than what it is, you and your product will attract due criticism.

Originally posted by unbound55

All in all, I think it is a reasonable review, but there are some points that seems to be missing and areas that I've had a different experience with:

• Interesting that there is no mention of the customization of the individual powers.  It is true that the number of powers is relatively small, but part of the leveling process involves applying bonuses or additional abilities to those individual powers.  This creates more significant customization than CoH (which also has a relatively small number of powers available to the user), and a little bit more inline with talents in WoW.
• Interesting that cooldowns figure prominently in the initial part of your review.  It is true that there are some cooldowns with some powers, but it is hardly a pervasive issue in the game.  I've played around with 3 different toons so far and haven't encountered it myself, and heard about it only through one of my friends (3 of us are playing concurrently choosing different toons) on one of her toons.
• Power imbalances in a new MMO?  I've never heard of such a thing (/sarcasm)
• I do agree that the percentages approach to powers can create a nerfing nightmare.  I'm hoping that Cryptic learned some lessons from CoH, and that they won't have to be as extreme in their balancing...I'm still a bit miffed at what they did to my regen scrapper...
• The team-play portion of your review was rather shocking to me.  The game has been more stable and solid than some of the long-running MMOs (including CoH that I also reactivated back in February).  We've not encountered anyone missing from the maps, although we did learn to play with the zoom on the mini-map pretty early.
• I've not seen any performance issues on a modern platform.  You do realize that the P4 was initially shipped in 2000, if you are running a 32-bit OS you really only have about 3 GB RAM, and the 4750 can't do but so much by itself.  I did have to turn down the graphics a bit on my son's computer (about 3 years old, don't remember the specs, but it at least had a dual-core processor) because of noticable, but it's nowhere near set to the bottom on graphics.  Minimum specs are always disappointing for any software.

I didn't mention customisation of powers because it wasn't working properly when I tried it and it's possible that will be fixed by the time the game is launched. There was also an issue that with the imbalance between powers, ranking up weak powers has much less benefit than ranking up good ones.

Some powers I tried did not improve in effectiveness at all when I ranked them up - which was a bit shocking. Other bonuses I tried also did nothing - eg. there was one for summoning circles that was supposed to give you control over the summoned that didn't do anything. Some of the bonus descriptions were still blank. It was very clear to me that this aspect of the game was still undergoing active development.

So I chose not to comment on it.

CO made a very big deal of not having cooldowns from very early in its development. Many were shocked and disappointed when the TTH interview came out that revealed that the power armor set was cooldown based. I did make the point that it's nowhere near as bad as CoH, but cooldowns are there.

The bug I encountered with invisible team-members was reported by a lot of other beta players - and as I said, was fixed by my second attempt at teaming up.

Yes I'm aware that the P4 is old - I said that it was likely the problem in my original post. I'm also aware of the effective 3 gig limit that win xp applies. But I'm above the recommended system specs for everything but my processor and even that (3 GHz) is above the minum (2.5GHz). So while I wasn't surprised that I couldn't run it with all of the settings turned right up, I wasn't expecting to run into issues with all of the settings turned right down.

I made the comments I did, including all the details of my system, because they are informative. Not everyone will have a "modern platform".

I didn't mention customisation of powers because it wasn't working properly when I tried it and it's possible that will be fixed by the time the game is launched. There was also an issue that with the imbalance between powers, ranking up weak powers has much less benefit than ranking up good ones.

Some powers I tried did not improve in effectiveness at all when I ranked them up - which was a bit shocking. Other bonuses I tried also did nothing - eg. there was one for summoning circles that was supposed to give you control over the summoned that didn't do anything. Some of the bonus descriptions were still blank. It was very clear to me that this aspect of the game was still undergoing active development.

So.. When exactly did you play the game then? A lot of said issues with powers have long-since been fixed. Sorcery works properly now as do most of the power sets. The only real major problem as far as powers go right now is how overpowered Healing/Regenerative abilities are. If your review based on old data, mention that so the rest of us know. Granted, a lot of what you've said is quite accurate. Some of it, though, is indeed very dated.

The game's performance has improved a good bit on lower-quality computers, though I have to ask Green, what graphic card do you use?