Just as the ugly spectre of relentless grinding for xp begins to raise it's head in earnest in City of Villains, a Winter Event! Huzzah! I must admit I wasn't expecting the levels to slow down quite as suddenly as they appear to have done in the Rogue Isles, despite anecdotal evidence to support it all. I'm now level 27, and am perhaps playing two sessions a week, and things really do seem to be Getting Serious now, and CoX seems, to me at least, to be very much an MMO of The Old School.
Perhaps it is just me with my massively altered expectations of what constitutes a good session in an MMO, post-WoW, but it does get a bit dispiriting putting in a good few hours and not really seeing much in the way of tangible progress. Has the XP bar moved? I can't tell! Perhaps I'm just a lightweight these days.
Mind you, when I signed up for Supervillainy, I didn't quite realise that taking over the world would entail physically overpowering everyone on it, one at a time, with my fists! I thought there'd be Evil Plans and Doomsday Devices!
Just as the prospect of punching another warehouse full of Longbow Agents into vague but insincere submission had me on the verge of beating my own face a bit, for variety, suddenly, there's a Father Time that needs help, and Presents spawning everywhere. I poked at one a bit and got jumped by three snow monsters for my trouble. Kick 'em in da snowballs!
Father Time is waiting for help, in the typically abandoned 'Pocket D' Super-Nightclub zone. A strictly social space, this club allows both Heroes and Villains to visit, and seems largely ignored by both. Not so today, and a new alpine looking door whisks you across to one of the more surreal places I've seen in an MMO, a floating, er, ski slope, suspended in the pinkish infinite space of the 'Pocket D' pocket dimension. It has a chalet, ski instructors, log fires, and a number of bars.
It also has a complete ski course, marked out with stripey poles, and the whole thing is on quite steep snow and ice, which causes your character to skid quite severely, and adopt a kind of surfing/snowboarding pose. Right back during the free trial I particularly enjoyed one specific mission, to kill 'Frostfire', a thug boss of some sort in The Hollows, and in there, was a room with an icy half-pipe, which had similar properties, and had various team members standing around impatiently while I went berserk in a most childish manner on the small scrap of ice.
Well, this ski slope is much bigger, and has badges for doing the route in fast times, badges which I failed miserably to qualify for the most part of the night. There's a definite skill to be learned there, getting used to the sudden and different way you move as you hurtle down the slopes, and eventually, I managed a Bronze Medal. Yay me! Silver and gold are going to be a lot more difficult, and take a bit of practice, I think, but there's a few weeks left yet.
I've yet to formulate an Evil Plan to Take Over the World using skis, but the Ear Muffs do look rather fetching.
Father Time himself needs help. Apparently, his son, Baby New Year, has been kidnapped by evil elves, and unless Father Time can hand on his, er, mojo to Baby New Year, time will stop, in defiance of everything ever taught to me by school Physics teachers, Donnie Darko, and Dr Who. I'm in no position to criticise, I suppose - I just got a bronze medal for skiing down a floating piste in a pocket dimension, found via a sidedoor door in a nightclub!
The mission was fairly straightforward, although did have an Elite Boss at the end, which needed a bit of help to swat. The reward was on of four badges, along with costume part unlocks (v. important!) and Temporary Powers. If I do the thing three more times, I can have the other three too!
Out in world, looting spawning present boxes can give you Candy Cane salvage parts, which can be take to the Chalet to be crafted into all sorts of other interesting bits and pieces, including seasonal rewards from previous years, which is a nice touch.
All in all, a nice change of pace and scene, in a game that is starting to show ominous signs of settling into a very routine experience indeed...