Champions Online - Costume Contests

So, I posted one of my characters from the MMO, Champions Online, about a week ago. I talked about my character, but not the game much. Champions Online is one of a rare genre of MMO's in that it uses the superhero genre for its world and the characters. It's not as rare as it once was, but compared to all of the fantasy world MMOs that have come and gone, it's still a rare genre. There are 3 of them right now: City of Heroes/Villains (CoH/V or CoX) (the first), Champions Online (CO) (the first based off of a previous PnP game), and DC Universe Online (DCUO) (the latest and the worst). I've played all three of them and so far other than a few minor details that DCUO capitalized on as the latest game, Champions Online is the best in my opinion.

One of the things I like about CO (and I liked it in CoX too) is that you can customize your character's looks as they give you many pieces of "clothing" to choose from to outfit your character and make your personal superhero (I have 18 right now) look like what you want. This led to the rise in CoX before it and the continuation in CO of costume contests (CCs) where people compete for in-game prizes to see who has the most awesome costume based on the judges' opinions. The CCs are generally held by supergroups (the superhero genre's version of guilds if you play WoW) who give away things like costume unlocks (more cool clothing for your hero's look), items that can give your characters bonuses for their combat abilities, or just in-game money (globals in CO instead of gold).

One of the three supergroups I have heroes in is called the Krewe de Champions. It's my wife's supergroup and I guess mine too technically, since I gave her the idea for the name. I'm from Louisiana originally, and a supergroup with Mardi Gras motifs just seemed appropriate. We held our supergroup's first CC tonight. There are different types of CCs you can hold, usually based on a theme like tech heroes, monstrous heroes, cutest heroes, etc. One of the more rare ones due to the time they take are bio CCs. These use the biography or background stories of your characters as a judging point as well as the costume. Biographies are typed by the players for their characters and can be read by anyone by selecting an option called info for a character. I like these types of CCs because I get to see not just how fashionly creative other players are but also how creative they are with their writing skills. I always wanted to be a writer, but never really pursued it, so it interests me.

Anyway, without further ado, I thought I would give you a peek into the great costumes some other people come up with. There was no way to cut and paste all of the character bios for these great characters without using up a lot of their valuable game time, but I wanted to share this creativity.

These first two pictures are our honorable mentions. We chose 5 characters for this, and I really wish you could see some of the details in all of these costumes. Names of the characters, but not their handles are below the pictures. The names for all pictures are from left to right for ease of reference.

Dark Mistress, Sari the Reaper, Savage Surgeon 

Autumn, Toy Soldier

(the smaller figure is an action figure, like a pet, you can collect in game) 

We had honorable mentions and then we had an inbetween level after honorable mentions, but before our top 3 picks for the CC. We call them judges' favorites, but really all 10 of these were our favorites.

 Captain Whiteout, Lamia Minora

This next picture was our third place winner for the evening. The fact that his name stands for something should give you an idea of the creativity in use by him and many of the players involved in this game.

 Z.E.I.R.O.

Next is our second place winner. Her picture is not great, but her character is only about half the size of the other characters (pretty much the smallest sized character you can make).

Pixie 

And finally, this was our first place winner. Her semi-transparent look just added to the name and the bio that she had in a very cool way. I had never even seen the item she used to do this with before, but my mind is already reeling over what I could do with a new character if I ever find the item myself.

Looking Glass

Like I said, I love the CCs, but the game is fun in and of itself even without the CCs. If you don't believe me, you should check it out for yourself. The game is actually free to play - yes, free, not for 20 levels, but for every level that everyone who pays has as well. What? How can that be? Well, you don't get everything quite the way those who pay do. As a free to play player, you have to play what's called an archetype (it's a set architecture of powers in your character that you gain as you level; there's a couple points where you get to choose between more than one, but not much), where as players who pay for the game can create free from characters using powers from any of the trees that make up the power sets. Also, pay players get a lot more costume pieces options for free and free players have to find or buy these pieces, and all of them are not even available for them, but there's still plenty to choose from when designing your hero's look.

I don't advertise full immersion in the game and starving yourself to death like some MMO players have ended up in the news for, but with reasonable borders for yourself, spending a couple hours in an MMO, especially a good one like this can be fun. If you have any interest, you can always check out the free to play version of this and see some of the creativity I'm talking about by signing up for an account and downloading the client at Champions-online.com