“Champions Online” Free To Play Relaunch Goes Off Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

Yesterday, January 25th, Cryptic Studio’s superhero MMO ” Champions Online” went Live with it’s new Free To Play model, and the game’s population has octupled.

Yesterday, January 25th, Cryptic Studio’s superhero MMO ” Champions Online” went Live with it’s new Free To Play model.

Twenty four hours since launch, the game’s population has octupled.  You hearing me, “City of Heroes” and “DCUO”?! OCTUPLED!

There’s no official word from Cryptic yet on just how successful this has all been on their end, but I predict some pretty happy faces on some pretty tired developers.

In related news, “Champions Online” executive director also revealed the name of their next Adventure Pack, which is a 2-3 hour story arc that scales with the players level and offers plenty of new titles and costume pieces. It’s called “Resistance”, and we don’t know anything about it right now other than it takes place in Multifaria, an Earth with an alternate timeline where many of Millenium City’s heroes are in face evil tyrants that rule the planet with an iron fist.

And a big ‘congratulations’ to me for winning Cryptic’s “Character Contest“! My character will soon be featured in the game as a quest-giving NPC! More details on that as it arrives!

[Update]

This just in: A new powerset has been revealed called “Heavy Weapons”. The set has you use massive, powerful, but slow melee weapons for incredible crushing damage.

MMO “Champions Online” Goes Free To Play

“Champions Online” goes Free To Play, adding a multitude of new features, as well as the option to play without subscribing.

On the January 25, Cryptic’s latest superhero MMO “Champions Online” will be going Free To Play.  This change is going to involve a great deal more than just having the option to not pay, however.  There’s a ton of changes coming at the end of this month, and Millenium City is never going to be the same again.

Now I know what you’re all thinking, “’Champions Online’, isn’t that the crappy superhero MMO that launched last year? It was supposed to be the ‘City of Heroes’ killer but it bombed!” The answer to this is yes and no.  When “Champions Online” was released, it was essentially still in beta, and as such was filled with hundreds of bugs.  Cryptic tried to delay the release date so they could iron everything out, but Atari, in its infinite wisdom, decided to push it to live, and boy were people pissed.

But all that’s changed. They’ve spent the past year squishing all of those pesky bugs, adding tons of new costumes and impressive new powers, and putting in some really impressive new Zones and Adventure Packs.

“Champions Online” has a great community to boot.  The remaining players are very keen on keeping the game afloat, and the developers listen intently to player feedback.  There’s plenty of powers and costume pieces that were added at the recommendation of the players.

Now you can get to the maximum level and go anywhere you please if you are going the Free To Play route, but you’re going to get much more bang for your buck if you pay the monthly fee.  You’ll have access to the a completely freeform power system, where you can choose powers from any number of powersets, and you’ll gets hundreds more costumes to choose from for your caped crusader.  You’ll get a monthly stipend of Atari Points, which you can spend on items in their store to get new costumes, powers, and items, like the giant growth device, or the summonable sidekick.

And to any of you naysayers to the Free To Play model, “Dungeons and Dragons Online” and “Lord of the Rings Online” have both been thriving now that they switched, with the latter tripling it’s revenue since last year.  And with “Champions Online” being the first Free To Play MMO on the market, and DC Universe Online getting poor reviews for the PC, we’re looking at a bright, hero-filled future.

For more information, go to http://champions-online.com/f2p

If you want to contact me in-game, shoot me a message @Loganius

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe!

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe

While competing franchise Soul Calibur roped in Yoda and Darth Vader and roster, Mortal Kombat has decided to go extreme by tying in with none other than the DC Universe itself. While this was supposedly rumoured to be in the past, fansite Mortal Kombat Online has hard facts on this, as well as the poster you see above.

Amusingly, the site mentioned on the poster appears to be dead as of this writing.

Hit the jump for some extra info.

Continue reading “Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe!”

Justice League movie stalled!

Justice League, from the Animated Series
Superhero movie fans mourn, because the highly-awaited Justice League movie from Warner Bros. has hit a rock, stumbled and fallen down an inescapable ravine with no Lassie to help. The movie, which was slated for a 2009 release, with production to start Spring has been put on hold. Production will now most likely start in late summer or fall (if at all)!

Why, you ask? The studio wants tax breaks for shooting in Australia, and got no response to their proposal. They also weren’t fully satisfied with the script, and wanted some more help with it, but the current writers’ strike leaves their options to drooling Justice League fanfic writers, which is not a good idea. Plus, the film is in a sorry state with the writer’s strike already, but their SAG deal expires in June, and the movie needs to be completed by then!

As far as the cast goes, most of the cast should still be available for the planned late summer-fall production. The cast itself, for those not in the know, will feature Arnie Hammer as Batman, Megan Gale as Wonder Woman, Adam Brody as The Flash, and (rumors follow) Scott Porter as Superman, Common as Green Lantern and Teresa Palmer as Talia al Ghul.

The repercussions here are that we are in a shortage of superhero flicks. The Dark Knight, the show-stealer is coming out this very year, while a Superman sequel’s fate is currently unknown. The inevitable Spider-Man 4 will take a while. That leaves us with the new upcoming Hulk movie and the planned Captain America movie. Okay, maybe not even that less, but hell.