It’s once again time for Ask Cryptic, the feature in which Cryptic Studios answers player questions regarding the future of its games, in this Champions Online Q&A. Despite the fact that it opens with the disappointing, though understandable, news that there won’t be any four-armed player characters appearing in the game, there are bright spots. This is particularly true if you’re into Champions Online’s character and costume creation system, and frankly if you play that game, chances are that you ..read the full article

Champions Online, developed by Cryptic Studios and Atari, recently released a new in-depth video to help hype its Serpent Lantern Expansion Pack out now.

The Serpent Lantern Expansion Pack features new weapons and armor, new dungeons and bosses to tackle and many more upgrades to the game. The expansion moves the story of battling the villainous Vipers ahead with the unleashing of the evil Serpent Lantern, asking players, will you be able to stop the Great Spirit Serpent?

To check out the ..read the full article

Cryptic Studios has released their Champions Online State of the Game report for June 2010. In it, Executive Producer Shannon Posniewksi lays out what the team has learned from the first Champions Online adventure pack, the Serpent Lantern. Also discussed is the big summer update to the game, scheduled for August, and a reminder that today is the latest “Play with the Devs” event.

New additions to the game include the difficulty slider for instances, which allows players to make instanced ..read the full article

Atari has released a brand new trailer for Champions Online: Serpent Lantern Adventure Pack. The Serpent Lantern Adventure pack will take Champions Online players on an epic adventure for the magical artifact, capable of granting unimaginable powers to its possessor through the skyscrapers of Millennium City to the jungles of Africa. You just need a character who’s level is above 11 and some free time on your hands. The trailer is available for watching here.

Champions Online has announced details concerning the Serpent Lantern Adventure Pack set to arrive next month.

The expansion offers many new updates to Champions Online. The “adventure pack” features new enemies, locations and items centered around battling the games VIPER nemesis as you search for a powerful and mysterious object – the Serpent Lantern. There will also be new NPC’s to interact with, new costumes to unlock, three new perks, action figures to collect and a slue of other add-ons that ..read the full article

Cryptic Studios recently answered questions posed to them by gamers on their forums surrounding Champions Online. The general Q and A centered around the latest developments the design team have in store for the game.

Questions for the team had a wide variety from whether the team will be implementing a new power pack to questions about expansions for the Nemesis system and much more.

Read the full interview here.

Both Star Trek Online and Champions Online were originally developed with the goal of eventually releasing versions of the games to console platforms. If you’ve played Champions Online, you may have noticed that it has had strong Xbox 360 controller support since the beta phases, a side-effect of this long-term production focus. Now Cryptic Studios, home of the developers behind both games, has officially confirmed that neither game will be coming to consoles any time soon.

The first announcement came in the ..read the full article

In short order after releasing the first round of previews, Blizzard has released the second and third, each chock full of information on the expected Cataclysm class changes. Represented now are nine of the ten classes – all but the lonely Paladins now have small smoulderings of information to keep them warm through the cold nights of anticipation. What have the holy knights done to earn such disdain from the gods of World of Warcraft? A mystery indeed, but for ..read the full article

My friends Ivan and Shamrokk over at The Big Freaking Podcast had a chance to sit down with Jack Emmert, Chief Operating Officer of Cryptic Studios. Cryptic has released two big AAA titles within 6 months of each other: Champions Online and Star Trek Online. He is proud to say that Cryptic is the only developer to release four MMORPG’s in its game developing lifetime. Counting City of Heroes, City of Villains’, Champions Online and most recently Star Trek Online, not ..read the full article

Cryptic, they say:

Free access to Champions Online begins Friday March 26, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. PDT and ends Monday March 29, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

This latest round of free time can be made use of by signing up on their site, from where you can also preload the client for the free event, should you be so inclined.

Related stories: Need A Hero: Champions Free Weekend The Complete They Are The Champions Online Breakfast Of Champions For Two Please Cryptic Champion Atari

Writer: Jim Rossignol. ..read the full article

Two weeks ago I specified a few reasons why I was going to walk away from Champions Online when my subscription expired.  Normally, I try to look at the positives of a situation, but my experiences with the game, Cryptic’s handling of it and the future plans didn‘t sit well with me.  Or the rest of the playerbase, as a few readers explained their issues with the game in the comments section.

Last week, Cryptic backpedaled on its decision to offer ..read the full article

Even though I purchased the six month package for Champions Online I haven’t actively played the game in weeks.  I’ve kept the client up-to-date just in case, but since publishing the game’s review in mid-November I haven’t put in anywhere near the time that I had previously.  My absence from VioletPreston has nothing to do with being busy.  The holidays didn’t stop me from logging in, neither did other video games, or even other MMOG that I play.  I didn’t ..read the full article

I’m not convinced many, if any, of our regular readers are still playing superheroic MMO Champions Online – general interest seemed to dry up pretty soon after release. Would love to hear some earnest talk about what it’s like these days, though – are the servers busy, is there plenty to do at the high-end, has it managed to diversify its quests yet? CO was probably the biggest disappointment of last year’s games for me – not a critical failure, ..read the full article

My last post about Risk versus Reward started a couple interesting conversations both here and offline. Those conversations brought a couple of interesting points to light.

The main thing I have discovered is that most players and game devs tend to jam the concepts of challenge and risk together and call that “risk”. If an encounter is hard, a player is likely to die and they want to avoid dying and so that constitutes a high degree of risk. I think challenge and risk ..read the full article

If you are an MMO player and bother to follow MMOs enough to even know that I write a blog, then you likely have heard the term “Risk versus Reward” thrown around. For those of you who thought you were going to the home page of an investment firm or Hasbro, Risk versus Reward is a term MMO developers use to describe the concept that as you deal with more dangerous situations in the game (usually that means fighting more ..read the full article

Say what you will about Champions Online, but Cryptic has been releasing steady updates that have gone a long way toward fixing the game’s issues and improving the play experience. Players logging into CO tomorrow will be seeing these new changes, not the least of which is the closing of the dreaded Costume Gender Gap!

User Interface and Chat The confirmation window that appears when changing crafting schools now makes it more clear that changing specializations within a school will reset your ..read the full article

I was recently given an opportunity to ask Cryptic’s Bill Roper some questions about Champions Online’s powers, data mining and the infamous “Launch Day Nerf”. Here is what he had to say.

The original design of Cryptic’s original game, City of Heroes, was supposed to have open power choices, but the design fell through and we ended up with the archetype and power set system. What do you think was learned from that first outing that allowed Champion’s character system to be ..read the full article

Atari has just announced a new live event for Champions Online.  The Nemesis Confrontation event will kick of on November 24, and will push the title’s Nemesis System to the next level.  In a smart PR move, Cryptic will be hosting another free “weekend” during the event, from November 26-30.  In the world of Champions, a weekend is five days.

“We wanted to take our unique Nemesis System to the next level and do something really awesome with it,” said Bill ..read the full article