Side Quests - Marvel Heroes Civil War Extravaganza

I won't typically do back to back posts on computer games but we have some overlapping events this week - it's a good problem to have!

Before we get into the event details let me say something about the game: It is truly free to play. You can play any of the heroes in the game (55 of them right now)  up to level 10 then choose one to uncap (playable to level 60).  The second day you log in you will be awarded 400 eternity splinters (the in-game means by which you buy heroes) which is enough to unlock another hero for free. With the event below you can also pick a free Iron Man or Captain America as well. So there's potentially 3 free heroes as of the second day you log in to the game. Eternity splinters both drop regularly during play and are awarded as part of the log-in rewards. There are heroes that unlock at 200, 400, and 600 splinters. June is the anniversary month for the game and there are typically a ton of giveaways during that as well, including a free hero at some point. With May full of Civil War and June full of anniversary it's a great time to join in and find out if you like it.

Midtown Madness can get pretty crazy

The Civil War tie-in is MH's biggest event yet. I'm just going to cut and paste the info below:

Starting this Friday, May 6th, we will be kicking off our first event of the month and will continue through the coming weeks.

5/6 - 5/12 - MARVEL HEROES: CIVIL WAR PART 1!

• Crossbones in Patrol Modes - Crossbones and his band of mercenaries have begun terrorizing civilians in Hightown Patrol, Industry City Patrol and Midtown Manhattan Patrol. It is up to our heroes to go in there and stop him before more innocents are caught in the crossfire!
• Madripoor Bazaar Chase - Maria Hill and S.H.I.E.L.D have been busy tracking Crossbones and have located him in a heavily populated Bazaar located in Madripoor. Many innocent civilians are trapped and only our heroes can go in and help them! The chase ends with a confrontation with Crossbones that will have a very polarizing effect on the world and their opinions on super heroes.
• Bonus Experience - All of the playable heroes in Captain America: Civil War will get 50% bonus experience! This includes Captain America, Iron Man, Winter Soldier, Black Panther, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Black Widow, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Vision and Spider-Man!
• Edit: Due to player requests, we will also be doing 50% base bonus experience for all playables.
• Giveaways - We will be sending out 2 codes later this week, one for each side in the Civil War. You will be able to redeem only one of the codes in order to declare your allegiance! The codes will give you either a FREE Iron Man and Team Iron Man Mystery Box, or a FREE Captain America and Captain America Mystery Box! These codes will only be available for a VERY short time, so be sure to claim them quickly once we send them out!

5/12 - 5/19 - MARVEL HEROES: CIVIL WAR PART 2!

• Civil War! - After the events of Madripoor, lines are drawn between Super Heroes and you must choose a side! Raise you influence with your team by doing daily missions and hunting down Super Villains. Will you do what it takes to ensure your side is the winning side, even if it means fighting other Super Heroes?
• Tournament - Prove your allegiance by working with other players in a Civil War tournament, where the rewards are not based on individual placement, but team performance!
• Bonus Experience - All of the playable heroes in Captain America: Civil War will get 100% bonus experience!

5/19 - 5/26 - MARVEL HEROES: CIVIL WAR CONTINUED!

• All the new Civil War related game content from the previous 2 weeks!
• All the new Civil War related event content from the previous 2 weeks!
• Bonus Experience - All of the playable heroes in Captain America: Civil War will get 150% bonus experience!
• 5/26 - 6/3 - THE CALM BEFORE THE ANNIVERSARY!
• Civil War Game Modes, patrol bosses, event components will be going away!
• Odin's Bounty Returns!

It's a pretty slick game. It's not one I play for six hours in one sitting but you can jump in for an hour here and an hour there and have a good time. There are a lot of resources online about missions, characters, builds, etc if you do get into it. It's family-friendly as there's not a bunch of blood etc so it can be fun to jump on with the kids and run around as a team. It's also life-friendly as I mentioned above - you can jump in for short runs and the game works just fine. It's not a complete City of Heroes replacement but it does let you team up with a group of fellow heroes and run the streets fighting bad guys and that's a great thing to have again.

Edit: And of course later on the day I post this it turns out there's a new "new player experience" coming as well. Take a look here.

Side Quests - The Old Republic's May 4th Celebration

I try not to shill too hard for these kinds of things but I've been getting back into SWTOR and they do have a nice set of bonuses going on right now:

• Free droid pet - you'll have a collection of these fairly quick if you play regularly but one more isn't a bad thing
• Double XP:  May 3rd through May 10th, then again from May 27th through May 30th.
• Free level 60 character: Apparently if you start a free trial by May 30th you get an insta-60 to run through the current (and expanding) Knights of the Fallen Empire story. That's pretty nice.

Based on those perks, if you're at all interested in some Star Wars computer RPG action it's a great game with a great story for each of the 8 classes and it is completely playable as a free player. 

Meme-tastic Monday