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[Tanegar]

I am loving this game. The character system beats City of Heroes/Villains by a mile, largely by allowing you to mix and match powers from different sets. Want to make a blatant Ryu-ripoff martial artist who also throws fireballs? You can. Want a pistol-packing gunslinger who also raises the dead? You can do that, too, and also create a thematically appropriate costume quite easily. Champions Online also curbstomps CoX by giving you your travel power right away, rather than making you wait until level 20. There's lots of content: three colossal megazones available as soon as you leave your newbie area, full of contacts and missions, plus the mission journal includes a handy-dandy "crime computer" that lists all the NPCs who have missions appropriate to your level. You won't lack for things to do. Performance is generally quite good, with the important caveat that on a major content-release day and for a few days thereafter, Millennium City is a hell of rubberbanding.

Finally, two points really sell this game for me: the lack of focus on gear, and the sidekick system. You simply don't grind for gear in Champions Online. Rather than the yawnworthy head, torso, arms, legs, etc., slots we all got tired of years ago, you have nine abstract slots: a primary Offense, two secondary Offenses, primary Defense and two secondaries, and primary Utility and two secondaries. These generally only contribute stat boosts, although occasionally will change the way one or more powers behaves. As you play, you will find items appropriate to your powers and level, and that's the end of it. There are no gear checks, nobody lording their Holy Divine Celestial Full Plate Armor of Wankery +10 over you.

The other thing is sidekicking. In every team, there is the team leader and the team champion (not necessarily the same person). If you right-click on your own portrait and select "Start sidekicking," your level is temporarily adjusted to match the level of the team champion. That's right: you don't have to worry about outleveling your friends or being outleveled. Any character of any level can contribute to any mission of any level. You don't get any new powers if your level goes up while sidekicking, but you gain level-appropriate hit points and your powers function as if they would at the new level. You can also sidekick down to a lower level in order to avoid killing your teammates' XP gain. Why every MMO in existence doesn't do this, I cannot fathom.

The player base is generally mature and helpful; I have yet to encounter any aggressive dickwads in the three weeks or so I've been playing. Not sure if I'll hold true to form and get bored with it before my free 30 days are up, but I'm still looking forward to the things I haven't seen or done.