Greetings, Champions!

Welcome to the 2010 reboot of the State of the Game! We’ve been keeping our shoulders to the wheel, our noses to the grindstone, and our foot on the pedal to bring you some great updates for Champions Online. There’s a lot to talk about, so now that the preamble has ambled, let’s dig into the meat of it!

The “Kitchen Sink” patch is slated to hit the live servers tonight, and this bad boy has a slew of changes that are based a great deal on your input over the past couple of months. We’ve touched just about every area of the game, from items to characteristics to powers to costumes to sound to graphics to zones and missions to UI to... well, you get the idea. I won’t delve into every last detail here (that’s what the patch notes of incredibly large size are for) but I did want to call out some highlights.

Powers
The Archery, Celestial, Darkness, Fire, Force, Ice, Might, Munitions, Power Armor, Single Blade, Sorcery, and Supernatural power sets have all seen improvements. The long-discussed (and cried out for by the community) changes to both Swallowtail Cut and Force Cascade have been made.

Items Get More Offensive
Items which previously were described as granting an Offensive Combat Value bonus for certain kinds of attacks had not been actually giving that bonus. These items have been rebuilt and redesigned, and now have a chance to grant a short duration (20 second), very high intensity boost to OCV on attacks of the designated type.

Lemuria Rises!
The performance issues in Lemuria have been greatly improved. We’ve had extremely positive response from our players on the Public Test Shard as to how well the zone plays now, so we’re hoping that this is the end of “Lagmuria.”

Nemesis
The appearances and powers of your Nemesis can now be edited for a modest resource cost at the MCPD crime database. Defeated Nemeses can also now be reactivated from the MCPD crime database if you don't already have an active Nemesis.

Crafting
There are changes and addressed issues with various blueprints and components, but most exciting is that bind-on-Equip Crafted Travel Device blueprints may now be dropped by White Rhino, Dr. Demogaard, The Bronze King, Vikorin the Blind, and Shadow Destroyer. Get out there, fight some bad guys, and gain the knowledge required to make some of the wildest travel powers in the game.

Team Looting
There are a lot of upgrades to the looting system that grants better distribution amongst team members, address issues with players thinking they took an item when another player already claimed it, and changed both round-robin and need-or-greed team looting to be on a per-item basis as opposed to a per-bag basis. There are also changes to the Master looting system, and the overall team looting threshold is now met on a per-item basis rather than the highest quality item in the bag.

And Oh, So Much More...
Many more topics are discussed in much more detail in the patch notes, so make sure to give them a read. We’re constantly working to improve Champions Online, so keep playing and let us know how about your experiences!


What’s Next for Champions Online?
We have a lot in the pipeline and this is a good a time as any to break some news! The development team has been working on not only improvements, but also on some amazing new content and game systems for your enjoyment. We don’t have exact dates set for all of these features, but they are coming in the short term as opposed to being long range plans. As we get closer to release on these, we’ll let you know! And away we go...

I See a Blood Moon a Risin’
By popular demand, we’re going to be bringing back the Blood Moon event with a few twists and upgrades based on your feedback. The concept is that the event will trigger the day before, of, and after every real-world full moon. We’re using the same technology we debuted with Clarence in our Misfit Toys event to make battling Takofanes and his minions more interesting and challenging for heroes of all ranges of experience. Look for announcements in the upcoming few weeks as to when the Blood Moon will rise again!

This One Goes to Eleven
We’ll be introducing difficulty levels that players can set both for individual heroes and for their team. With 1 lower and 2 higher levels of difficulty to select from, players can create a challenge that fits their play style and ability.

Flashing Back
Cutting-edge temporal technology invented by the genius tinkerer Juryrig allows heroes to travel back to moments in their own history. Have a moment of personal glory that you want to relive, a mission that didn’t quite go the way you wanted, or missing an elusive perk? Here’s your chance!

Vibora Bay Watch
We’ve had a big secret here at Cryptic, and we can’t hold it in any longer. Over the past few months we’ve been working like mad on our first (untitled) expansion for Champions Online! The setting is Vibora Bay, one of the Gulf Coast’s largest and most exciting cities. It’s a center of commerce, culture, tourism, and some incredibly strange goings-on. It maintains unusual traditions of mysticism and religion along with an eclectic group of inhabitants and frequent paranormal activities. Heroes constantly face threats of global proportions, but this time the crisis is greater than ever. The apocalypse has come, and it rides upon the half angelic / half demonic wings of Therakiel.

A web page is currently in the works that will feature screen shots, a video trailer, and detailed information on this level 37 – 40 mega-adventure pack, so stay tuned for more information!


That’s all for now, heroes - see you online!

fabulous. I couldn't be excited. I hope the expansion is free, but I will be the first to preorder it even if it isn't. (now, forum minions, please proceed with the traditional cries of "FANBOY!!!!!")

I've been playing these types of games for a while now. I have a level head and, for a game that launched in the state that it was, nice job for 5-6 months into the game. New content and the rolling Blood Moon event will fill things out nicely. I know many will gripe about only 1 new zone but I know these things take time to do right. The difficulty modifier is sweet but you have to eventually roll that out to each and every mission in the game. I would also be interested if a higher difficulty means better drops. I was never going anywhere but I have even more to look forward to since CB...once I break level 25.:D

Don't worry, it's free. By expansions they mean major add ons to the game of which MMOs usually do. They'd specifically tell us it was paid otherwise.

I'll cut off this speculation before it even begins. Vibora will be our first paid content expansion. I can't talk pricing yet, but it will not be something on the scale of a full boxed game. It is a new zone, and will be priced accordingly.

That's pretty awesome about Blood Moon coming with every real-world full moon.

It's just awesomeness.

How will flashbacking work? Will it set you to a specific level? or work more like reverse SKing atm, cos a lot of folk have retcon specs with stuff taken in different orders. I think a lot of my toons would struggle if they suddenly ended up with no passive cos it was taken at lvl 30+ wit ha retcon instead of lvl 8 when they were levelling.

EDIT: Guess I should also add, WOOT! Regular Bloodmoon sounds coolio, difficulty sliders is teh awesomesauce, and the new zone sounds ... intrigueing atm, needs more detail before I can get fully excited!

Thank you. Too much happy pills but I know it's your job to take them. Having a limited window recurring BloodMoon is a great idea. Thanks for the info on what's coming. Please continue to keep us informed and feel free to ask us to help test or comment on issues you are working on.

Well, I suppose the moment is opportune to say it: "Great job you guys! It's nice to know that you still care and are working diligently to improve the game, while also listening to our inputs."

Now, with this out of the way, this patch and state of the State of the Game post looks terrific; and I do hope that it will go a long way to keep players active within the game. HOWEVER, because there has to be one *sigh*. It concerns me that there doesn't seems to be any sort of bone in there, for those of us who are still experiences problems at logon.

True, a great many of us have managed to minimize it through selling ourselves to the highest bidding proxy; but I have yet to be able to spend two days through which I could consistently log in whenever I wanted to. The None proxy doesn't work at all for me, and when the US and EU ones won't let me in; I'm gone playing something else, which is the last thing a gaming company would want me to do...

What I'm trying to say here, alright, Lemuria is fixed, but is there some hopes for us who are still experiencing problems?

In before **** storm.