# Champions Online free-to-play: anyone playing?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/champions-online-free-to-play-anyone-playing/569445>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [January 29, 2011, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/champions-online-free-to-play-anyone-playing/569445 "2011-01-29T21:59:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![B.B.Fuller](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8edcca/32.png) [@B.B.Fuller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.B.Fuller)\
**Post date:** [January 29, 2011, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/champions-online-free-to-play-anyone-playing/569445/1 "2011-01-29T21:59:28Z")

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Champions Online recently went free to play a-la LOTRO, and I was wondering if anyone else had tried it? I’ve been playing a Behemoth and enjoy it in theory, although it really, _really_ irritates me that they’ve stripped almost all of the customization options out of the game-no matter what archetype I play, I can’t help but feel stymied by the feeling that the archetypes “balance” far, far below the level of a well thought out freeform hero.

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**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2011, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/champions-online-free-to-play-anyone-playing/569445/2 "2011-01-30T03:13:07Z")

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Short version: no. They never did fix most of the problems.

Long version: the whole thing is a giant pile of crap. They actually made it worse. The free characters have very limited packages, the packages are more or less all the bad ones, and some of them are actually pay-for packages, but you won’t know that until they let you go all the way through character creation, at which point you get mysterious errors and your character is deleted. Assumign ti doesn’t crash on you halfway.

I wouldn’t even get it as a trial. Either pay or don’t play, and be prepared for a very short, silly, and annoying game.

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**Author:** ![GoodOmens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@GoodOmens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GoodOmens)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2011, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/champions-online-free-to-play-anyone-playing/569445/3 "2011-01-30T12:32:15Z")

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I’m going to give it a shot. I bought the game at release and only played for a few hours. The action felt too floaty to me, and there was a lag between activating an action and it actually happening. The powers were cool; Power Armor and Gadgeteer especially had real personality.

I don’t have high hopes, though. The pre-made archetypes are a real disappointment; it essentially takes away the main draw of a super-hero game and makes them into generic classes. Plus, no electricity or Force! How do you have proper superheroism without a “pure energy” build? Of course, hell, it’s free.

Frankly, I think it will just compel me to re-sub with City of Heroes, and rejoin the adventures of Isotope X, Mind Riot, The Undisputed Champion, Overunity, The Ninth Dragon, and Doctor Lobotomy.