Cryptic Studios, the former development company of City of Heroes (which has since been bought outright by NCSoft, who also hired most of the CoH dev team), and formerly working on Marvel Universe Online, have announced they are working on a new superhero MMO.

Speculation is that this will incorporate the technology they were developing for MUO.

I don't see this working. The major thing MUO had going for it was the licensing, without that it's the same basic thing as CoH/V.

You'd be surprised how big a following Champions has. I personally would love to take part in the Champions universe fighting alongside Defender, Witchfire, or something. It's a while since I looked through my sourcebook. Sure it doesn't have the same pull as Marvel but it could be good nonetheless. Of course if they just released City of Heroes or something encorporating that and it's sequel onto the console market I'd be happy enough.

Yeah, I only learned today that it was based on the Champions RPG.

Anyway, they have the site up. The game features sounds pretty interesting; sounds like in many ways it'll be a big superset of what CoH can do.

Not sure about the Defender redesign there. But Doctor Destroyer's pretty cool looking.

Ya this is huge news in my house. Considering that i've been playing Champions for decades and Champions was my brother and my entry into RPGs this is big, BIG news for me. My brother thinks that this is a bigger license than Marvel (I don't really agree but it's still rather big).

The other big, big news regarding this is this isn't a case of Cryptic has gained the Champions license. Cryptic has BOUGHT the rights to Champions and Dark Champions and now Hero Games are licensed to do PnP RPG supplements for it. So the online game and the RPG are the same thing. What's done in one is done for the other.

This is great for the online game. I'm not entirely sure it's great for the RPG. I really liked what Steven Long has been doing for the Champions Universe in 5th edition. I've been pretty much happy with everything he's done. I'm not entirely sure if Cryptic will do as good of a job. But it does mean that Cryptic has control over their game's universe so they will be able to make changes however they want. Which could result in a more changing world background than CoH has had. I'm just hoping that Crpyic actually has a good feel for super hero comics and the world won't suddenly start feeling like a combo of a fantasy world with modern stuff and super heroes grafted onto it like CoH has sort of felt like.


As for my initial reaction to the new look... Ya i'm not entirely happy with Defender's look (it doesn't really look that power armour like more like a costume with some pieces attached) but it's ok. Doctor Destroyer looks cool but I don't think it's quite right. It's a lot more mystical and boney for Dr. Destroyer seeing how Destroyer is a power armour tech based character. But then perhaps Cryptic wants to move Destroyer away from Dr. Doom (and Defender from Iron Man) a bit more to avoid lawsuits. I'm hoping that the new look Destroyer means that this is a different Dr. Destroyer who dabbles in magic or something. Since that look doesn't really feel right for Zerstoiten. I prefer the 5th edition costume design they had for him in whichever supplement he was in..

Teaser trailer is up

Doesn't really show a whole lot as far as gameplay goes, but then, it is the first teaser. What little is shown looks interesting. I like the graphics style as well.

As big a fan as I am of CoH, I don't see how this couldn't be a blast.....especially given that the Champions universe has been around for so long and they have an exstensive rules system already in place


I'm pretty excited about how this could turn out.


And, I agree, CO.....the graphics style really clicks with the premise of the game

wow, I didn't think i was going to be thrilled but it actually looks pretty cool!

The official site has a bunch of Q & A columns (which I forgot to check on for a while). I have to say I'm getting pretty jazzed about this... it sounds like they're making a conscious effort to address all the complaints and issues people have had with previous MMOs. Whether their reach exceeds their grasp, I don't know, but it sounds promising.

But which to choose Champions or DC Universe....choice too difficult. Though I do like how this one is going to be console based as well as PC. For a console I actually own which is only a good thing.

It'll also be out sooner than DC Universe, I'm guessing. It's slated for Spring of 2009, while DCU is just expected "sometime" in 2009.

Hi guys just in case you weren't aware I'm currently playtesting the beta of this. It's good so far to be honest though from the demo I've played there's not a great deal different from City of Heroes. Just the settings and character changes. But if you liked that then signs are looking good.

Eric Burns of Websnark was in the beta for Champions Online, and he has some words to say about both City of Heroes and Champions Online. As well as Sims 3.

Champions Online is sounding pretty good to me so far. There are still some things which give me pause (at least, from what I'm hearing; I've had no opportunity to see firsthand, and likely won't for some time), but on the whole it's sounding promising.

It does sound very promising. I especially like that the game is more solo-friendly. Yes, I understand that MMOs are meant for multiple players, but I think the forced grouping at high levels to see meaningful content that not only provides the best gear/power-ups/whatever, but also the most important and dramatic parts of a game's storyline is one of the worst design choices made by MMOs. It turns guilds/supergroups into companies, and the game into a job.

Biased as I may be considering my quasi-anti-social nature, I still think getting and keeping a large enough group of regular decent human beings together to actually accomplish something in high-level raids is a Herculean task suited only for the most diplomatic or the most masochistic.

And in the genre of superheroes...grouping is especially problematic. Yeah, the trend of recent mega-crossovers would make the casual observer think otherwise, but these are not generally people that work together except in times of extreme "Crisis."


All that said, and as promising as it does look, I'm probably done with MMOs. As engaging as character creation and various systems may be, there always comes a time when all it becomes is a grind.

*Chaomancer Omega nods

Not to mention, as understandable, justifiable, and necessary as it is to have a monthly fee, it's still hard for the individual player to justify paying $15-20 a month.

If MMOs could guarantee a fresh experience that wouldn't eventually become repetitive, then $15 a month would be a small price to pay.

I'm looking down the next few weeks where I'll likely be paying $180 for three games, Arkham Asylum, Mini Ninjas, and Wet. Combined, I doubt I'll get as many hours of play out of them as I did even the original WoW or City of Heroes, but they offer something new and different.

GameSpot has their review up, and it doesn't really sound all that encouraging.

Honestly, I'm not reading much in that review other than "It's new". It sounds like it could use more missions and storylines, and yeah, that could conceivably discourage me from being an early adopter (not that I would be right now anyway), but it's also the sort of thing that will be improved upon as time goes on. I admit there's some concern in that this is Cryptic, and adding new content always seemed a little light in City of Heroes, but it's still something I'd say is a relatively small concern at this stage.

The only other notable complaint I saw was that some custom power builds weren't fun to play. Well, that's on the player. Builder beware, and all that. If you can customize your power choices, you can cripple yourself in any video game.

Ya that wasn't that good of a review. It seems like it's coming from a person who has only played the game a bit and read a few things about the areas he didn't get to. Or rushed through the game to get to level 40. Some of his complaints are right (the game does feel a bit unpolished, and it doesn't feel as content heavy as CoH is especially for the first 12 levels or so). But I think a lot of his comments feel like he just hasn't delved into the game enough to understand it fully. And most of his complaints are pretty much standard for any MMORG (I heard a lot of the complaints about lack of content, it's just combat, etc. for the launch of COH).

And he hit my personal pet peeve calling missions quests and mission maps dungeons. It's not a fricken fantasy game please stop using fantasy terms. I'm pretty sure the readers will be able to understand what he means when he talks about missions, maps and powers instead of quests, dungeons and skills.

I'm surprised to see you endorse the "it doesn't have to be great right out of the box" mindset, CO.

But honestly, this is a crew that was largely responsible for CoH and shouldn't be succumbing to the same mistakes that game made. A combat-heavy game with little else to do, a lack of overall content, only five areas, and a level cap of merely 40 would barely hold my interest for the free month, let alone however long it will take for content updates to be added.

Not to mention the obvious appeal of creating multiple characters with the robust editor has been hamstrung by a repetitive and unskippable tutorial...yet another leftover fault of CoH.

On a lot of things, I wouldn't. And sure, I'd want there to be more content and things to do off the bat. But really, I'm not hearing any complaints that didn't apply to every other MMO at launch, even World of Warcraft. Heck, they all still really boil down to "combat heavy with little else to do". I know several games have crafting, but honestly, that always comes across to me as "engage in another point and click activity for the sake of improving combat".

It's not that I don't think things can or should be better. I'm just not sure why there's a complaint about these factors here, but not with the genre as a whole.

Ya Champions has crafting. I'm not sure if it's s robust as WOW's (never played it) but there's probably more to it than COH's crafting.

The five areas are much larger than COH's areas. It's not like COH's Atlas park which was good for 5 levels, King's Row which was good for 3 levels, and so on. In Champions the Tutorial is 6 levels or so (which is about 2 hours once you know where to go, you can probably rush through it much faster once you have done it a bunch of times). The first crisis map (which is the Canadian wilderness or the Desert blocked off into a smaller area to deal with a crisis that has devastated the area) takes you to level 9. After that the Canadian Wilderness or the Desert for real maps are good for up to level 20 or so (with parts that can take you farther). Millennium city is huge (about the size of 3 large COH maps) and I believe it is good for 20 to level 40, plus the 40+ content. Monster Island is probably levels 30 to 40 (I only played it in alpha when it was being tested before it was clear where the maps were going to fall in place).

I'm not going to say Champions isn't repetitive. It is also a bit shorter than COH at launch (it doesn't take as long to level up, although i'm not sure how quickly one progresses 20+ ). But it's no more repetitive than COH or any other MMORG.

I hear pretty much the same complaints about CO as I did COH when it launched (particularly about how it's nothing but combat and how that's going to get old fast). Will some people blow through it within a couple of months? Yes. Will everyone do that? Probably not. Did people blow through COH in 2 or 3 months and complain about how short it was? yes.

To be fair to COH the tutorial is skip-able and has been for 4 years now. CO's tutorial is not skip-able, at least not yet.

But to say it's succumbing to the same mistakes that COH made. COH has lasted over 5 years and is arguably the most successful MMORPG that isn't named WOW to come out in the past 5 years. It's not surprising that they are not going to deviate too far from the COH model, it worked well for COH (how many MMORPG's have failed since COH hit?). Besides from what I gather Champions is closer to WOW than COH in terms of the way it's maps and missions are set up. A lot of the complaints I heard in beta was that it was too much like WOW in the way it was set up. So I wonder how many of these complains about CO could be applied to WOW at launch?

I just want to see how the console version works. See I've played the Beta and that's pretty much how you'd expect to play a MMO through a pc. It's the console version that's going to be different mainly in that if it works it could possibly be the first successful MMO for that medium.

In theory it should work the same way. The PC game only accepted XBox Controllers and the interface was set up with the X-Box controller in mind. I just don't know how they will handle communicating. I guess either voice like most X-Box games or force them to buy a keyboard for their X-Box. As long as the X-Box runs on a server separate from the PC game I won't care too much. I'm already annoyed that a certain amount of the design was limited because it needs to be able play on an X-box (only one text window, the number of usable powers, not being able to use my gamepad that's a hybrid between an x-box and playstation controller etc.). The last thing I want to have to deal with is listening to/seeing the standard idiots that frequent Xbox live games.

...If you don't want to deal with idiots, perhaps an MMO isn't for you.

The Final Fantasy MMO is what has me interested now that I've bought my PS3. This sounds fairly typical, but not bad persay. It's the subscription fee that drives me away.