Champions Online/YMMV


 * Alt-Itis: A common complaint at the start of the game was that Cryptic haven't set up the option to buy more character slots yet - accounts were limited to 8 or 16 slots, depending on subscription. This has since been dealt with; even free-to-play players can get more character slots.
 * Anticlimax Boss: Warlord Zarn. Most named villains in CO that are the targets of missions are usually a master villain at the very least. Warlord Zarn is a mere villain type mob in a high level instance. It doesn't help that he isn't that much different from other Lemurian villain mooks.
 * Demonic Spiders - Demonlings, Inchoates, Fleshrippers; all have tiny postures, the tendency to spawn in droves, and disproportionately high damage output.
 * Fandom Rivalry - with City of Heroes; not only is Champions Online a newer and shinier Superhero MMORPG, it was created by the company that originally developed CoX. Expect a case of Dueling Games as they compete.
 * So far, City seems to be having the steadier fanbase, while Champions and their microtransaction system means that even non-subscribed accounts are still letting the money trickle in.
 * Good Bad Bugs - One forum member found a way to call NPC contacts remotely.
 * Holy Shit Quotient - Vibora Bay Crisis has a rather high one. Also Stronghold Prison, though to a significantly lesser degree.
 * Memetic Badass - Grond Smash Puny Internet Meme!
 * Memetic Mutation - "We have to shut down ALL of those Beacons! They're driving the Qualaar CRAZY!"
 * Most Annoying Sound - See Memetic Mutation, above.
 * Player Punch - The in Vibora Bay Apocalypse.
 * Scapegoat Creator - Not one, but two! City of Heroes ' Jack Emmert and Hellgate:London's Bill Roper.
 * Scrappy Level - Lemuria. Perpetually laggy, with unbalancedly powerful mooks, mission objectives that are impossible to find, instnace entrances that are even harder to find, terrible quests, perpetually broken open events and the rubberbanding from hell, there is very little to like about this Zone. Oh, and it wasn't beta tested.
 * Largely averted with Lemuria at present (2010) after it suffered a particularly horrific bout of lag and had some real attention poured on it. It's still got a poor reputation though.
 * Scrappy Mechanic - Poor Power Armor have to suffer three of these. First of, there's the lockout system that imposes a cooldown on all but some Power Armor powers (Including non-damaging powers. So no healing until you stop attacking and wait for a second before you can heal). Second, the same lockout system makes it irritatingly difficult to make a Power Armor build with powers from any other powersets. Finally, the powers eats up so much energy that you are practically forced to make Intelligence one of your superstats to be able to hold three PA powers up for longer than even three seconds, and even then you might have to heavily invest in energy stats. These combined makes Power Armor a very unpopular powerset in the community. Needless to say, players have been begging for the devs to fix these problems for the next Power Armor review.
 * That One Boss - the finale of the Lemuria Crisis. For some builds, it's an easy boss in an environment that actually favours you. For others, it's impossible without help.
 * To be exact: The remaining 99% of the game follows a simple goal - replenish Mana as fast as possible, and convert it to damage as efficiently as possible. But in this 1%, the damage you take scales rapidly with the amount of Mana you have stored, and the arena will quickly recharge it. If you don't have an attack that burns energy quickly enough, you will take horrendous damage.
 * Draconis in Serpent Lantern and Jack Fool and Left Hand in Demonflame. Most average players can solo most of the 'Adventure Packs'... but not them!
 * There's also Freon and Spirit Serpent, from the new Serpent's Lantern update. Freon has an AoE hold power as well as a stealth power. The Hold occurs if you get enough stacks of a debuff he has that is constantly ticking. The only way to remove it is to get too close to a set of generators on either side, damaging you but removing the debuff. Spirit Serpent, meanwhile, is stationary with a damaging fire around his base, and a MASSIVE damaging breath attack, and two Master Villains to help him out that also do quite a bit of damage. Oh, and the alcoves in his room do massive damage if you go too far inside them. Good luck!
 * Freon was patched to acceptable levels. However, the Spirit Serpent himself can now be a very big problem, especially on large teams.
 * This seems to be dependent on difficulty level. On normal difficulty, at least, solo runs--even using archetypes--can bring down the Spirit Serpent without a scratch if they have an extreme-long-rang attack (such as Sniper Rifle), as the serpent is, well, stationary and does not have an attack that goes to that range.
 * Now that he got darkness powers, Kevin Poe can be this to newbies thanks to Life Drain. The NPC version of Life Drain is infamous in the community for not only inflicting heavy damage on players, but also for healing the user up fast. Veterans doesn't have much trouble with it as they can tell when to block it. Newbies, however, doesn't necessarily know the tricks to fighting a Darkness Villain beforehand. It doesn't help that Kevin Poe also got a hold power that makes the target vulnerable to Life Drain.
 * For that matter, old force based Kevin Poe used to be murder on newbies as well since his huge AOE knockback didn't have a tell beyond the fraction of a second it took him to wind up.
 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Naturally, one of the reactions to the change to the crafting system with the On Alert update.