I have to say I'm wary of giving my personal info, including credit card information, to a company that's headquartered in a country with a totalitarian government. Of course, with Perfect World's acquisition of Cryptic the horse has already bolted, but somehow merging my Cryptic account with PWEs makes it seem more final. It doesn't help that I have personal experience with PRC business ethics, as a friend's business fell victim to industrial espionage by a Chinese company, and a second one has had their products cloned.

I guess it makes me a racist of some sort, but I have zero trust in PWE, and will be discontinuing my subscription at the moment we're forced to transition to only using PWE accounts.

How out of place do the cryptic games look on that webpage.

Many of PWE's games seems to take place in a fantasy setting. With the exception of Neverwinter, I'd say that Champions Online and Star Trek Online seems very out of place in comparison.

Regardless, I hope that we will see more players now!

Yeah, they weren't there yesterday.
Glad they're finally linked.

Always wondered what you Devs were paid in :P

I'm going to give merging a go over my weekend. Post here for how it turns out. Looking forward to checking out some other PW games.

Hey gang,

So a couple of quick things:

1) The following Regions will not be able to access Champions once the account merger is fully completed:

• China
• Hong Kong
• The Republic of Korea
• Macao
• Russia
• Taiwan
• Vietnam

So, I'm sorry Aunel, but that region block is permanent. These regions are blocked by PWE due to a large amount of fraud attempts that we see from these areas. That said, we're going to be looking into this a little more, so don't give up all hope.

2) XMPP access is not supported by Cryptic Studios as it remains in its Beta state.

That said, I've been assured that access to this service will be restored to individuals who have merged their accounts sometime very soon. The guys in charge of it tell me we should see an update within the next couple of weeks. I've asked them to keep me updated, so I'll let you know once functionality has been restored for you.

Thanks,

Stormshade

Wait...what? Are we going to be forced to merge accounts???

My question on this though.

Will XMPP ever come out of beta? It is a vital tool for a lot of folks as most can connect from work. I know I don't have to justify, you guys know more than we do how much it is used. Would just like to see it out of beta is all.

When I logged into my cryptic account today, I couldn't access any of my characters. I didn't even see an option. When I went to the cryptic store from the home page, while logged in, I had a message saying that I have no active characters. I logged into the actual game, and my characters are all there. I don't know if this issue was caused by the PWE change, but I just wanted to state that I can't see any of my characters when I log in through the CO website.

Also, when I am logged in through the site, and I go to the cryptic store, all of the things I've purchased in the past are purchasable for me again. Example, I bought the geo armor costume set a very long time ago, but it is purchasable for me again on the CO website. So, I could easily duplicate a purchase.

just thought I would mention these two things.

Thanks.