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Bill Roper made Cryptic's CCO, Jack Emmert switches to COO
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/Bill_Roper_made_Cryptic_s_CCO_Jack_Emmert_switches_to_COO'; We here at Massively have recently discovered that Cryptic Studios' -- the developer behind Champions Online and Star Trek Online -- new Chief Creative Officer (CCO) moving forward will be Bill Roper, who was previously Executive Producer on Champions Online, a position now held by Shannon Posniewski. As for the previous CCO Jack Emmert, Cryptic informed us that he's moved into a new position as Chief Operations Officer for the developer. What all this means and what you can expect in the future from Cryptic will hopefully be answered in our forthcoming interview with the two men. You should expect to see that interview in the next day or two, right here on Massively.
Behind the Mask: A community guide to Champions Online
Behind the Mask is the new Massively column devoted to everything you might want to know about Champions Online. Fortunately for Massively readers, the guys at UNITY have given me the go-ahead to declassify my stories as a super-powered operative. As a result, we'll be giving you the down and dirty facts that you'll need to make it in the superhero world, as well as bits of news you won't hear anywhere else. Behind the Mask will cover issues related to life in Millennium City as well as detailed info about criminal hotspots around the globe. Our first column will be a community resource for Champions Online. While there were a fair number of community sites at launch, most of them have suffered from a lack of new content in recent months. The ones that continue to be updated are the best of the best -- ranging from community hubs for roleplayers to detailed info on the game's many missions. If there's one thing to be said about the fans of Champions, it's that they are devoted to their game and eager to put out new content for it.
Revelation out now for Champions Online
The super-big free update for Champions Online, Revelation, is officially out today. While the announcement seems to have come out of nowhere, this is about mid-March which has been the scheduled release date for Revelation. Bringing a significant amount of completely free content to the game, Revelation adds a new zone in the form of the dark voodoo inspired Vibora Bay. It also brings new perks, five new enemy groups, six new meta-powers, a new raid in the form of Therakiel's Temple and even more costume pieces. All-in-all, it's a good day to be a Champions Online subscriber. We hope everyone enjoys all the new content, and we'll surely see you somewhere in Vibora Bay, battling werewolves and half-demon, half-angel supervillains.
Champions Online talks about their new executive producer
The change of leadership on Champions Online produced some pretty strong reactions, nearly all of them aimed at Bill Roper. Fair or not, there was a general sense that many of the game's problems were linked to him being in charge, and in the midst of everything it was a bit easy to lose sight of the new executive producer. Shannon Posniewski, known to forum regulars as "Poz" and former Lead Programmer, has inherited the job and all that goes along with it, good and bad. That means it's a fine time to learn a little more about the person in charge of the game's direction. Posniewski has been with Cryptic for some time, having worked on City of Heroes before the studio left the game behind and moved on to Champions Online. He discusses a fair bit about his experience working on the games, as well as some of his own tips for working in the game industry and what sort of challenges are faced. What he doesn't mention are his plans for the game's near future -- but those facts are fairly public knowledge at this point. Considering how much impressions of the game were based upon Bill Roper's personality, it seems more than fair to give the new guy his own turn at the helm.
The Daily Grind: What do you think of Cryptic?
There are few companies these days that generate emotions as strong as those generated by Cryptic Studios. They weren't particularly controversial when they produced City of Heroes, but their subsequent efforts in both Champions Online and Star Trek Online have produced a great deal of contention. Between the launch day issues of Champions Online, the controversy of Cryptic's microtransaction stores, and concerns regarding the amount of content in the game... well, they're contentious. Of course, they also have their fans, have produced two games within a remarkably short timeframe, and are clearly dedicated to both communication and player-targeted development. Considering that today is the first big content release for Star Trek Online and the recent information regarding Bill Roper's departure from Champions Online (although he's remaining with Cryptic), it seems an appropriate time to ask about opinions. So, what are your thoughts on the company? Do you like the work that they're doing, or do you think they're on the wrong track? Are you currently playing one or both of their games, are you a former player, or have you refused to play them for whatever reason?
Bill Roper no longer executive producer of Champions Online, game improvements promised
Most of the news coming out of Cryptic Studios of late has centered around Star Trek Online, which has garnered quite a following and looks to expand with the upcoming Season 1 patch. But Champions Online hasn't gone anywhere, and the game is gearing up for its mini-expansion and for the future. A state of the game letter has just been released, announcing both what's coming for the game as well as some management shakeups. The latter comes last in the letter but is worth noting early -- Shannon Posniewski, known as Poz on the forums, will be assuming the Executive Producer role for the game, taking over from Bill Roper. In terms of actual in-game changes, the letter reiterates many things we heard at the GDC: the team knows there are level bands that are a bit thinner in terms of content than the players (or the developers) would like. While they're not prepared to reveal details, they are looking to expand those areas with more content and more to do. There's also the promise of new Adventure Packs, which sound similar in concept to the packs of Dungeons and Dragons Online. The full letter also mentioned updates to powersets and melee damage that should be welcome news for all Champions Online players, a clear sign the game is moving forward and not forgotten.
Champions lifetime subscribers given extra thanks, perks
Good news for Champions Online lifetime subscription owners today, as Cryptic is giving them some additional free perks simply for supporting the game. According to the developer, some of the upcoming lifetime-only features include an exclusive in-game chat channel, front-of-queue support any time a server is queued, a unique in-game title, an in-game VIP lounge for lifetime subscribers only and a special costume piece. Curiously, the official forum post by StormShade says, "Here's some of what we're working on, exclusive to Lifetime Subscribers." which to us sounds like there could be something else for lifetime subscribers in the future. But even if there isn't any mysterious new feature, these new perks are a nice little surprise that came out of the blue -- which is always the best kind of surprise. [Update: It appears that this offer stands for Star Trek Online lifetime players, also.]
GDC10: The future of Champions Online
We had the opportunity to sit down with Bill Roper at GDC 2010 and discuss the general future of Champions Online. There are two themes to Bill's answers during our talk: just about everything is free and listening to community feedback. First of all, melee powers like Might are getting reworked based directly from player feedback. The goal is to make players feel as though they're on par with ranged powersets in PvP situations. Generally, people have been saying they felt "gimped" and the goal is to fix that. There's a complete reworking of the supernatural set coming as well, which will separate the previously single powerset into two new ones.
Ask Cryptic fields Champions Online Revelation questions
Champions Online's upcoming Revelation update is coming very soon and Cryptic's answered a bunch of (somewhat random) community questions regarding the substantial free content add-on. We're not sure if there was any kind of theme to this Q&A other than, "Hey, what would you like to know about Revelation?" Perhaps there were a couple people dressed up a vampires, in spirit of the new zone Vibora Bay, but that's a somewhat commonplace thing nowadays -- vampires, we mean. Before we spin-out into a crazy off-topic rant about kids and their vampire tendencies, we'd like to point out that it sounds as if Cryptic is moving towards a more staggered update approach. Instead of spending six months creating one big update, they're looking to push out smaller chunks of content on a more frequent basis. They haven't specified whether that means every month or every few months, but we do know some new missions with longer storylines are coming -- as is some low-level experience curve smoothing. It sounds good to us, but we'll let you be the judge of that.
Champions Online gearing up for Revelation playtest
There was quite a stir when Champions Online first announced their new region of Vibora Bay, with a lot of negative feelings getting voiced. That was mollified when it transformed into its current form as Champions Online: Revelation, a mini-expansion free to all players of the game promising a new area, new enemies, and new plots to uncover. The wait is nearly over, and that means all the joy of testing out the new features before they go live, as the game has just announced a special playtest event with the development team on Thursday, March 11th. Running from 4-7 PM PST (that's 1-4 PM EST for those on the opposite coast), the event will (understandably) be taking place on the public test server. It's a chance both to hang out with the dev team and get an idea of what the new area will play like, with the added bonus of knowing that the people who know the area inside and out will be right there for any questions. Keep your eyes open for the event, as Champions Online will no doubt have quite a bit to reveal during the test.
Champions Online's Revelation update gets official info hub
The hub page for Champions Online's upcoming Revelation update is live, detailing quite a bit of both the crunchy and fluffy information regarding the game. Players should be happy to finally have some new level 37-40 content in the new Vibora Bay zone, which has fallen under the control of the demon/angel Therakiel. And even if you don't have a hero that high, the new costume parts will bring some fresh content for all. We think the new zone looks pretty good, especially since it's a much darker color palette than the rest of Champions Online. The addition of five new enemy groups should also help inject some more variety into the game. Lastly, the new cast of NPC heroes and villains look quite promising -- especially Juryrig, an almost "Junkpunk" looking cyborg dude. If you're looking for more on Revelation, don't miss our recent interview with the game's executive producer Bill Roper.%Gallery-85070%
Massively interviews Bill Roper on Champions Online's Revelation update
Recently we had the chance to speak with Champions Online's executive producer Bill Roper about the forthcoming Revelation update. More specifically, we asked him about the new zone Vibora Bay, its quest structure and Cryptic's plans moving beyond the Revelation update, as well. Of course, we couldn't discuss this first major content update without asking about the decision to make it free... but you'll just have to check out our interview after the break for that part.
Champions Online gives a mini-state of the game
It's been a bit of a rough ride lately for Champions Online. Their initial plan for a paid mini-expansion met with a reception that could best be described as "frothing rage," and even their later reversal didn't exactly calm the waters. To make matters worse, their large "Kitchen Sink" patch met with equally mixed reviews at the same time. In hopes of stepping up their community relations, Cryptic has been pushing out a great deal more news to the players, including both their new GM Blog feature and a recent pint-sized State of the Game letter. A re-examination of the "Kitchen Sink" patch, affectionately dubbed the "Kitchen Sink Scrub," is being pushed out in the near future, with a week or so to go before it hits the live servers. The mini-expansion, dubbed Champions Online -- Revelation, should also be going live sometime in the middle of March. Players hoping to get a bit of an early start on it will be happy to note it's also going to be hitting the test servers some time within the next week, letting the new zone get a thorough examination. With the promise of an upcoming site devoted specifically to the expansion, it seems like Champions Online is really trying to wash out the bad taste of their missteps.
The Daily Grind: Still interested in console MMOs?
The headline says it all. After all this time and so many promised (and never-delivered) console versions of games like Age of Conan and Champions Online, are you still interested in playing console MMOs? With Square Enix's track record, we can feel safe in assuming Final Fantasy XIV is coming to the PlayStation 3 -- and probably the Xbox 360, eventually -- but beyond that nobody else has managed to pull it off. Some developers have claimed all the red tape from Sony and Microsoft makes patching far too problematic, which makes sense except that Free Realms is a Sony Online Entertainment product that still hasn't seen its promised console version, either. So maybe there's more to the problem than patching hurdles. So, we wouldn't blame any of you for feeling a huge sense of disinterest when you hear a developer speak about a console version of their upcoming PC MMO. But is that how any of you actually feel?
Champions Online expansion is now free
A lot of upset has been swirling around the Champions Online community lately. Much of it has been due to the announcement of a paid zone expansion and implementation of a "Kitchen Sink" patch that was pushed out too soon. In an effort to heal wounds and correct mistakes, Cryptic has released a new State of the Game targeted at addressing player concerns. There are a couple big things to take away from this news. For one, the expansion is now completely free. It's also now known as Champions Online - Revelation and is due out in mid-March 2010. New play areas, new powers, new rewards, and greater challenges are all promised by Cryptic. Expect a tidal wave of screenshots, videos, interviews and sweet juicy information in the coming weeks. The other big change is the way in which the Champions Online team is interacting with the community. They're adding a bevy of new features and community events -- like a Cryptic Studios Supergroup in-game -- that should help open up the lines of communication and hopefully add some much needed transparency to the game.%Gallery-85070%
PvP with the Champions Online Cryptic Corps
It stands to reason that the people who make their living creating MMOs love to play them, and the Champions Online team is ready to do just that by logging some PvP time in their game. The Cryptic Corps will be taking a break to queue up for PvP this Friday from 3-5 PM PST. What they're planning on doing is still a mystery, but they'll announce it in game in plenty of time for you to get prepared. Break out your best level 40 characters and see if you can successfully take on the Cryptic Corps. They're going to make it worth your while, too. If you beat Cryptic's team, of course you'll get bragging rights, but they'll award you a special forum title as well. No word yet on what the title is, so feel free to pass the time making guesses or suggestions. Good luck, and have fun!
The return of 'Ask Cryptic' for Champions Online
Ask Cryptic is finally back for the Champions Online community. In the past. the feature regularly allowed a Q&A style of communication between curious or concerned players and the developers at Cryptic working on the game. Unfortunately, once Champions Online launched the feature fell by the wayside, at least until now. If you would like to submit some questions (be they about Vibora Bay or other topics) there's only two simple rules given by Cryptic: Any topic is fair game. Questions must be written in a respectful tone. Seems pretty reasonable, no? Head over to this thread on the official forums to post your questions -- just remember you'll need an official forum account to gain access. We look forward to seeing the results of your questions, which you can be sure to find right here on Massively.
Star Trek Online's State of the Game: The first patch
According to the latest State of the Game from Cryptic, Star Trek Online's first update will be surprisingly hefty. "The first update is going to have more PvP, Klingon exploration content, more ground fleet actions, more ship costume pieces, more playable species, and then some," says the executive producer Craig Zinkievich. Of course, that's only a small piece of the rather titillating article outlining the current plan for the first few months of updates. The future holds new Federation episodes, deep space encounters, Borg exploration clusters, quality-of-life updates, daily missions and an encounter with the Borg Queen. Cryptic teases at what they're calling "Raid-i-sodes" or high-end episodes requiring a five-person party to pull out all the stops for a win. The first of these will see players heading off against the Borg Queen, and we're quite excited to learn more in the coming months.
