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New artwork from Champions Online reveals character origins
Cryptic Studios continues to reveal more of the world of Champions Online and tease us all with intriguing story elements for its more prominent superbeings. Included in this new series of images are comic book-style, wordless origin stories of Defender, Doctor Destroyer, Ironclad, Justiciar, and Menton. The sheer amount of information Cryptic is willing to share with its fans is heartening, especially since it's likely that we won't even see the launch until next year. Expect more content to come, including video of Jack Emmert discussing the Champions IP and how it differs from City of Heroes.%Gallery-17946%
Lead artist-ing with Champions Online's Christopher Chamberlain
Would you believe that this week's edition of Cryptic's meet the team is all about Christopher "Absinthe" Chamberlain, the lead artist in charge of characters, animation and FX for Champions Online? Yeah? Good. We were sure you'd believe, but we still had to check. It's not that Mr. Chamberlain is some kind of famous developer, he's just a very cool individual -- which also makes him an interesting interviewee. That is unless he used is crazy backwards-talking skills whenever you asked him a question. Then he'd just be a startlingly confusing interviewee.As far as his workday goes for creating characters and animations, we're once again forced to feel a little jealous. Most grown-up men don't get to play with form swords all day anymore, but Christopher does just that. Then after getting to play around for who knows how long, the man gets to sit down and decide how villains in the game will look. It doesn't stop there, but we'll let you discover what other madness this man is involved with on a daily basis.
2K Games bringing Champions Online to PC, 360
When 2K released this morning that they had bagged the publishing rights to Champions Online, Cryptic's other superhero-based MMO, we almost wrote it off as another pre-E3 grab for coverage. But then, as we combed the release, we noticed a couple of odd things. First, though they're bringing the game to the PC and 360 in the spring of next year, there's no mention of a PS3 version, which isn't so much weird as it is sad.Also, and this is the really odd bit, the end of the release says "Champions Online for Xbox 360 is not yet concept approved by Microsoft." We have to say, we don't really get the hold-up. A superhero MMO on the 360? Yes. Rubber-stamped. Done. You see that Microsoft? That ish just got concept approved by Joystiq. That. Just. Happened.
2K Games to publish Champions Online
Look, up in the sky! It's a bird- no wait, it's a plane! No! It's 2K Games (the publishing label of Take-Two) announcing that they'll be publishing Cryptic Studio's upcoming Champions Online for both the Xbox 360 and PC in North America. Sorry, the opportunity presented itself and we couldn't resist. As you may or may not know, we here at Massively follow both Cryptic and their MMOs very closely -- you could call us fans. So it's great that the game officially has a publisher, because that only further solidifies Champions Online as a very real MMO. It's also worth noting that this makes Champions Online the very first MMO published by 2K games.This revelation -- while wonderful for everyone involved -- is also a change of tune from Cryptic's original plans to publish in-house. We're honestly happy to know that more money and manpower can now be spent on creating their next MMO (and subsequently other MMOs) rather than publishing them in tandem. No firm release date has yet to be announced but all good things will come in time, cousin.
Champions creator confirms tabletop and MMO will develop simultaneously
In an interview with SuperheroFlix, Hero Games creator Steve Long talks about how the tabletop version of Champions will develop in tandem with Champions Online. Long says that while Cryptic Studios is free to do whatever they want with the IP for the MMO, future sourcebooks will expand upon what Cryptic does. In fact, two of the upcoming books will feature content exclusively created by the MMO studio. What's more, there will be crossover content between the two games going forward into the future. One wonders if this sort of -- forgive us -- synergy will influence other projects. Like, just as an example ... Star Trek Online. Let's hope so, because if there's one franchise that could use a reboot, it's that one!
The Digital Continuum: Player abuse, redemption and revolution
Lets go back about ten years or so to the original EverQuest. Now it isn't my intention to pick on any one game, I just happen to be more familiar with it than Ultima Online or Meridian 59. For the sake of immersion let me assume the role of a 1999 copy of EverQuest that you happen to be playing on your gaming machine back in the last year of the last century.You just died in EverQuest. How dare you die! Since you had the nerve to be defeated in combat, you'll now be required to run from your binding point -- which could potentially be very far away -- to your dead body, which contains all of your equipment and bags that just happen to hold all of your inventory. If you fail to do this, then you lose all of these items. Oh but you've already lost some experience and possibly de-leveled if you happened to have recently leveled up.Hey! Why are you logging out? So what if you think you'd rather play Half-Life right now, this is the game you're paying for monthly. Don't you think you'd better get the most out of it? Hah! See? I knew you were only bluffing. All right, now get to running, noob.
The changes happening at Cryptic
Cryptic Studios was the developer to bring us a superhero MMO with City of Heroes. Since that time thousands of people have spent a lot of time both creating and playing their fantasized superheroes over the past years, including us here at Massively. Essentially, we've always felt like Cryptic games were pretty damn good. Recently, Jack Emmert made a post sharing with the community how the Champions Online team stopped development of new content for two weeks in order to thoroughly play and polish a single zone. Is this a sign of things to come from Cryptic? We certainly hope so, because with three titles in development -- Star Trek Online being a strongly-rumored guess for one of them -- there's already quite a lot that's different about the guys that brought us City of Heroes back in 2004 these days.
Ask Massively: Be careful what you ask for...
Most of the time, when writing Ask Massively, it is fairly simple to keep my personal and professional life separated from my life as an MMO gamer and columnist. Today, I'm going to break down that barrier for just a little while. Today's question actually comes from Age of Conan's in-game chat. While the sane among you may marvel at the fact that my brain cells did not immediately shrivel and die upon coming into contact with your average chat channel ranter, I'll describe the discussion using enough creative editing to shield you, our loyal readers, from some of the more mind-numbing motes of mental malfeasance on display that night. "This game sucks, they only designed one class to be a main tank!" "No game should ever be released with bugs. Look at how Blizzard did with WoW!" "My class sucks. They should make it more powerful and nerf everyone else. There is no balance in this game." I think you get the idea. To the valiant souls who tried to answer these criticisms intelligently and thoughtfully, I salute you. When faced with intelligent responses to their rants, one of our misguided miscreants fired back with a very good question.What do you know about designing an MMO? If you know so much, how come you don't write games?As a former game developer myself, and as someone with several years of experience in the commercial software development industry, allow me a chance to use my bully pulpit in order to answer their points.
Champions Online content is king for Brian Gilmore
You'd be right to think that Brian Gilmore -- a content designer for Champions Online -- is an interesting fellow. In fact, you'd probably be right in wanting to play some Champions tabletop with him, too. All in all, we have to wonder what sort of contacts, missions and spawns Brian has been concocting for our most anticipated superhero MMO. Will there be Victorian era zombies wearing Frock coats and Top Hats. What? We can dream!While there isn't any new game information in the article you can find a very cool story about one of Brian's GM (Game Master) experiences with the tabletop Champions game. We're kind of jealous that we'll never get to do battle with "The Demon's Hand" supervillain group. Anyhow, the fact of the matter is that with each of these Meet the Team articles we find out that the group of people working on Champions Online are a pretty unique lot.
The Digital Continuum: Kaiju MMO
I know there's been a The Daily Grind about this subject already, but I felt like talking about my own personal kaiju (giant monster) MMO and this is just the place for that. Growing up there were certain things I could count on. For instance, there would always be some sort of Anime marathon in the summertime on the Sci-Fi Channel and that very same channel was also usually good for giant monster movies. Oh yeah and you could always count on a new Megaman game coming out that year.It's strange how this never occurred to me but giant monsters are almost perfect as a theme for an MMO. Purely because the theme itself provides a gigantic, epic sort of combat gameplay that is central to the thrill of massively multiplayer online games. Whether it's a game where the players create and control their own giant monsters or fight against the monsters is the choice I've been struggling to answer -- but then something dawned on me. The two game types, when combined, make for a very interesting type of MMO experience.
The Daily Grind: Would you play a giant monster MMO?
One of the things we really like here at Massively are giant monsters. Hence our love for Champions Online's Monster Island zone. As we thought about the coolness of giant monsters battling it out across cityscapes and countrysides, we suddenly realized that making an MMO-style giant monster game would be a very cool thing to do. Who wouldn't want to design, name and play their very own giant multi-headed monster? In fact, we could see there being two factions in the game: giant monsters and giant robots. That way you've got a PvP element and even more classic film campyness to draw from. Oh, how we would swoon for such a thing!So would you be interested in playing something like that and if so, what would your giant monster and the game it's in be like?
Take a peek at Champions Online's Monster Island
Over at the official Champions Online website you can find an excerpt from the upcoming Monster Island sourcebook for the Champions tabletop game. The cool thing of course is that this relates entirely to the digital world of Champions Online, which makes it a lore piece as well. The island itself is very much an homage to the Godzilla movies as it's located just off the coast of Japan. It's not all text, however, as Cryptic has seen fit to release three new screens featuring the Monster Island locale and we've gotta say the zone looks pretty awesome. There's plenty of lush jungle-scape and you just know that a giant dinosaur or an 800lb flaming gorilla is just around the corner.We've added all three of the screens to our Champions Online gallery, so feel free to check them out at your leisure.%Gallery-17946%
Meet Champions Online's Q&A lead
Say hello to Alan Salmassian. He's the man in charge of ridding Champions Online of those pesky code bugs everyone hates encountering. Sure, it may not be the most glamorous job on the team, but it's definitely got some benefits. We're not sure what those benefits are -- presumably you get to laugh at crazy bugs that make inanimate objects flee in terror -- but we're sure that they're great. Also, it sounds like being a Q&A lead requires you to have tons of management skills, which means we could never do the job. All right, we're removing our tongue from its resting place in our cheek now. Like all the other people developing Champions Online Alan is equally important. If it wasn't for him and his team we'd all end up playing a game that crashed whenever we tried to open a door in-game or press the 'G' key. Also, we think that Alan's got a killer smile.
Jack Emmert named as GenCon industry guest of honor
Jack 'Statesman Jackalope' Emmert is to be one of the Industry Guests of Honor at GenCon, to be held Aug. 14-17 in Indianapolis. Best known for his work on City of Heroes, in which he took over from original lead designer Rick Dakan, Jack is now the chief creative officer in the Cryptic team working on Champions Online.Jack Emmert is definitely qualified to speak about iterative game design, as the City of Heroes design process featured no small number of clinkers that were identified as such by the player base, despite looking good at the design stage. Jack's self-deprecatingly frank about his early mistakes, and explains how he's learned from them: 'We assumed a player would get the mission, go into the instance, realize that he was facing a "boss," leave the mission, find a friend, and then tackle the "boss" together. I was pretty darn naïve back then.' Jack's willingness to engage with the player base had the unfortunate secondary effect of giving dissatisfied players an articulate target for their frustration. Even now, Jack is still remembered in some quarters as a sort of uber-bogeyman armed with a colossal nerf bat.
Champions Online writer nominated for award
We knew this guy was awesome, so it's nice to see him in the running for an award. What award is John Layman -- writer for Cryptic Studio's upcoming Champions Online -- being nominated for, you ask? None other than the Harvey award for his work on Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen No. 1 -- that's right, he's the series' co-author. The comic issue in question is being nominated for best single issue or story. It's also worth noting that the second issue is coming out on July 2nd, so if you weren't sure about getting it before you've got yourself a new excuse.This is a really great sign for anyone looking forward to Champions Online, since a lot of how interesting the game characters and Champions world will be relies on Layman's ability to write well. We really can't wait to see his take on Foxbat, which should prove to be especially awesome. We're looking forward to the mission where we get to stop Foxbat from flooding the city with Jell-O or forcing everyone to do the macarena repeatedly for hours on end -- or maybe he'll try to carry off the Empire State Building again.
Ask Cryptic gets specific
The questions for this week's Ask Cryptic come in incredibly specific flavors, making their answers all the more interesting. We get some information on how user-friendly the combat system will be for non-twitchy types, a bit of insight into how modular the new game engine will be, some talk about making sure solo players fight villains that aren't simply re-skins of old mobs and a whole lot more. Overall we'd say this is a good week to be interested in Champions Online.The last question is one that we were really happy to see answered. It asked simply, "Is eye color going to be a costume option?" The answer that Cryptic gave was more than we were expecting, however. Not only will players be able to change the pupils and whites of their character's eyes, but they'll also get to make their eyes glow any color they want. We can only hope this is something that's offered at the beginning of character creation, since glowing eyes are a priority for alien-, magical- and robot-powered superheroes.
Meet Avery Wong, Environment Artist for Champions Online
The Meet the Team blogposts put out by the Champions Online developers is a great series. Far from being faceless, nameless, shadowy entities remaining behind the scenes, we find that these front-line troops are just as interesting and clever as we'd want them to be.Case in point: Avery Wong, CO's Environment Artist. He answers the tough questions with straight-shootin' answers. We now know the best way to curry favor with him is to bring him slices of melon heated in a microwave. For these and other important tidbits, check out the full post![Thanks, Christine!]
Recognizing Champions Online's tabletop roots
One of the unexpected benefits (at least from our perspective) of Cryptic's shift from Marvel Universe Online to Champions Online is the professional relationship it fostered with the guys who managed the Champions pen and paper IP. While the crossover from paper RPG to MMO is far from straight-forward, there is a considerable brain trust from which Cryptic can draw in the creation of their game. The Escapist recently posted a terrific article which went into some depth with one such mastermind -- 16-year veteran of the franchise, Steve Long.While Long maintains some unadulterated affection for the HERO character creation system of the pen and paper game, he seems to be of the belief that the current arrangement (with Cryptic buying the Champions IP outright and licensing it back to Hero) is going to be beneficial for both parties. While MMOs seem to be driving the overall simplification of pen and paper RPGs, Long thinks that MMOs have a lot to learn as well, especially in the areas of customization and interactivity with environments.
Mind Slayer, the sexy psionic
In the latest of Cryptic's Champions Online villain profiles, we get a look at the sexy psyker Mind Slayer. Born of an abusive and broken home life, Mind Slayer's powers only manifested themselves under the extraordinary stress of a mugging by a group of thugs in a dark alley of Chicago's mean streets. She slaughtered her attackers with a hail of deadly telekinetic knives, transforming herself from a naive country girl into a deadly and darkly gifted young woman.As with the previous profiles that Cryptic's artists have put up on their site, they've included an origin comic that gives a slightly better feel for the tone of the character, which in the case of Mind Slayer is dead sexy. We've always loved what we've gotten from the Cryptic team, but the way that they've tied their artists directly into the promotional aspect Champions Online has been an utter delight for all the comic fans on the Massively staff (which is just about everybody). It's definitely worth checking out.
Meet Danny Southard and an 800lb flaming gorilla
Danny Southard is an animator for Champions Online who gets to help make all the cool superpower animations players are expecting to see -- when they eventually get their hands on the game. He works on both player powers and specifically NPC powers for characters with all types of limb combinations. From the sounds of it Danny just recently wrapped up some work on super strength and is now working on some martial arts powers. You gotta have the basics covered, y'know.As far as new Champions Online information goes, Danny does give us a nice hint when asked about his favorite character from the game world. He says, "I can't reveal his name, but he's the biggest flaming gorilla in the history of videogames." Images of the Human Torch combined with Gorrila Grod burst into our minds when thinking about this mystery character. You can never go wrong with pyrokinetic primates.
