An introduction of Champions Online by FTWGuides. This is just an overview. If you want the complete actual guide ensuring you are the top champion on your server, download here.
Introduction
Champions Online is a new super hero (and possibly soon to be super villian) themed MMORPG created by Cryptic Studios, who also brought us City of Heroes & Villians . The game is being developed for Windows and Xbox 360.
PvE
Gameplay
Players who've played any of the common MMORPGs will notice right away the PvE in Champions Online is an extremely fast paced experience. From level 1 to 40 the pace maintains a very upbeat speed which leads to some intense gameplay.
Another thing you'll notice is that every hero has nearly infinite energy (mana) or at least can regen it near instantly, which means there are no down times in this game 
You're able to go from group to group without stopping, and speaking of groups, another great thing about this game is there are hardly any times where you're fighting one mob at a time.
Every normal mob comes in packs of 2-3 or more depending on the area, so you really get the feel of being a super hero stopping petty criminals and the like, overall the gameplay is spot on for the theme of the game and does a fantastic job if you're into the hero genre.
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Quests
Questing in Champions Online is by far the fastest I've seen due to the fact that every quest is marked on your world map and mini map as soon as you accept it, and to make it even faster with your travel powers you're able to go from quest to quest almost instantly, even if it's across the map it will only take about 10 seconds to get there.
However, as of now there's just barely enough quests to get to about 36-37 then you're pretty much forced to grind Open Missions or do instances, which isn't as bad as it sounds, the Open Missions reward you based on how much you participated and once one is finished, it will re-appear as soon as the timer ends (the timer varies on each Open Mission).
One thing I've noticed however is that a person with more AoE will end up gaining levels a lot quicker, it seems to be a pretty heavy AoE game, I've played a 40 Dex/Ego - Power Armor/Gadgeteer and a 40 Con/Str - Single Blade/Power Armor and the difference in extremely huge (and a bit unfair as of current), with my Dex/Ego character I was able to use Mini Mines to do about 3,500 (over 5,000 with crits) AoE damage every few seconds, however my Str/Con character was barely pushing about 2,500 on single targets every few seconds! The upside to Str/Con is that you're pretty much unkillable, so it evens out, regardless the pace of the game never slowed down for either char.
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Traveling the World
In Champions Online you have the ability to train 2 traveling abilities (one at 5, the other at 35) which include Acrobatics, Earth Flight, Fire Flight, Regular Flight, Hover Disk, Ice Slide,Jet Boots, Rocket Jump, Super Jump, Super Speed, Swinging, Teleport and Tunneling, each has their ups and downs, and some are a bit gimmicky, while others are almost a must, such as teleporting. Teleporting lets you bypass any nearly any mob (except Psis) without them seeing you, almost everyone I talked to started with Teleport for questing and then chose their last Traveling Power based on their heroes story or based on the fun value (swinging is probably the most fun in my opinion)
The downside to travel powers is once you start the game, at least from levels 1-5 you'll have to run everywhere which makes the world seem nice and huge, but in reality as soon as you get your first travel power, you realize that it's actually pretty small, although they will be expanding the game pretty soon, as of now you're able to literally go from corner to corner of every zone in the game in about 10 minutes with teleport.
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Economy
Money is Champions Online currency is called Resources, the actual names are Global, National and Local (most people just call it G/N/L), the need for Resources in Champions Online isn't very high at this point, the only real need for Resources is to re-train (Retcon is what they call it) your skills if you decide you want to use different abilities later, on top of that the only other real thing you would use it for would be to buy equipment off the auction house, which is actually used extremely well by almost the entire server.
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Crafting
Crafting in Champions Online is actually pretty decent, there are 3 main crafts which are Arms, Science and Mysticism.These 3 crafts they break down into 3 subsets which are mostly the same in each craft, but they have different items and different looks to suit your heroes look and story.
The items you make are actually really great and often are better than anything at the equal level that you would get from questing so no fear of wasting time on newbie garbage, and you're able to make even better items if you find or train rare recipes that allow you to control the quality of the item (from poor to major). As you increase the quality the requirement goes up as well.
From 1-200 crafting is a breeze, you're able to experiment (breaking the item) to gain crafting levels which also gives you materials based off the items quality, you're able to break down quest items as you go which makes it very simple.
From 201-300 it gets a bit more difficult, as you break down about 20 items a time you get about 2 points, so the best way to level it is to go out and hunt crafting nodes which give 1 level each.
Over all crafting is a great and profitable thing to do in Champions Online, if you put a lot of decent things on the Auction House, you will make lots of Resources.
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Instances and Raids
This is where Champions Online starts to lack for people who enjoy long drawn out instances and raids, as of now there's only a handful of instances such as Dr. Destroyer's Robot Factory in MC and Telios Tower in Canada, they're both around the same level (30ish) and are pretty fun if you can get a good group to do them (healer!).
If you do get a group for either of the two, you'll find that they are actually really fun and well scripted and require a lot of group effort to succeed.
For raids however, there aren't any yet sadly, aside from Grond who just jumps around the Desert smashing people, he requires about 20-25 level 25ish people to take down. Thing is, you can't form a raid yet, so you just have 5 groups of 5-6 people together, and only one of them gets exp/loot, it really makes things difficult when only the group you're in can see your chat.
I'm sure as the game progresses raids will be added, right now the only thing to really do at 40 is some of the UNITY missions which vary from solo to insanely hard 5-6 man groups.
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PvP
Hero Games
Ah, this is where the game gets interesting, Hero Games are a type of arena where you enter solo or in a group and you're put on either a red team or a blue team, and the two different teams fight in a sort of deathmatch area until the requirement is met, usually which ever team gets 15 kills of the other team or such.
The fun thing about it though, is that everyones characters are so different you never know what to expect. you might see a tiny character that's actually a tank, or a massive character that takes up your whole screen who's actually a squishy caster, the diversity in characters really makes you think about what you're doing instead of just jumping in and screaming at everyone to get the healer, because honestly, you don't really know who the healer is!
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Combat
The combat in PvP is probably faster than any other MMORPGs I've played, with people jumping around with super jump, disappearing with teleport or even running laps around the arena with super speed, it really adds a whole new dimension to the PvP gameplay. Currently however it's a bit unbalanced, a fully Str/Con character with Invincibility slotted can hold block forever and take 1 damage from just about anyone, where as the casters who were dominating PvE with their AoEs, are pretty much one shotting either each, like most things I'm sure future patches will fix these problems, but lots of people are re-training to go pure Str/Con until it's fixed.
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Others
Graphics
The graphics in Champions Online are meant to give you a comic book feel with dark heavy outlines and bright colours, the look of Champions Online is very pleasant and actually fun to look at for hours a day, the various powers in the game add a lot to the bright colourful graphics and add a whole level of detail on their own.
You have a huge say in how your details look, at the lowest it's almost an unreconizable game, but almost any computer can play it. On the highest details, it can slow down even the mightiest of computers, but it looks absolutely amazing... sort of a cell-shaded look.
When fighting some villians or worse they'll often have an image over their head when using their special skills like the old comic books had such as POW ZAP CRRRRRRK ERK! (note: these particular ones aren't in the game, but other funny ones are!).
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Community
Another thing that Champions Online could use some improvement on is the community, as of now you can solo from 1-40 without meeting or grouping with anyone else, in most MMORPGs you see people running around towns, or grouped together in certain areas, but in Champions Online, they added the 3rd dimension of Travel Powers, so often people are in the sky or underground even, and are sometimes hard to notice.
However because of that, I have to say that the chat is extremely nice, unlike mostly MMORPGs, the global/region chat in Champions Online is used maturely and is actually used the way it's suppose to, it really gives the game a nice community feel.
Even though you can change instances to any of the different ones per area, the chats are always linked, so if you're in instance 1 and your friend is in instance 90, you will both see the same chat, so it really is handy for looking for groups and what not.
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Pros
Amazing character creation
Awesome story
Intense high speed combat
Fantastic community
Cool nemesis feature
Every champion is different
Cons
Lack of instances/raids (soon to be fixed)
Some powers need a bit of tweaking
Respeccing needs to be cheaper
Needs some more zones
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Final Notes
Overall, I'd certainly rate Champions Online to be one of the fastest paced, fun MMORPGs that have come out this year or even last year (Sorry AoC/War!), the depth of the game could use some work, which they are already working on btw, but the over all game itself really rates high as has been becoming more and more popular each day that passes. It's not the kind of game you'll slave over for hours and months, rather its a fun and fast paced break from the grind games that are out there.
If you'd like to really experience the game on another level, Get yourself the complete Champions online guide from FTW Guides.
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