Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m not convinced many, if any, of our regular readers are still playing superheroic MMO Champions Online – general interest seemed to dry up pretty soon after release. Would love to hear some earnest talk about what it’s like these days, though – are the servers busy, is there plenty to do at the high-end, has it managed to diversify its quests yet? CO was probably the biggest disappointment of last year’s games for me – not a critical failure, but meatless enough that it killed my plans to spend a couple of merry months in an online world stone dead. At least Cryptic aren’t throwing in the supertowel yet – they’re continuing to tinker under the hood (although earlier attempts at that pissed fans off royally), plus they’ve just revealed the first expansion’s in the works… If they had any sense, they’d call it CHAMPIONS ONLINE VS SIR BIFF BIFFINGTON III OF THE MEGA-BIFFINGTONS. They haven’t announced the name yet, so it’s not too late – CAMPAIGN! CAMPAIGN! CAMPAIGN!
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Update: And STOP! All 1000 have just gone. You’ll know if you were successful very soon.

We like to think we take care of you. For instance, if you were ever in trouble, we’d maybe look up from what we were doing. We also like to give you magical presents. So today we’ve got 1000 keys for the Star Trek Online open beta to give away. (All gone.)

We’re going to give them to the first 1000 people to email us at compo@rockpapershotgun.com (making sure to use the subject line “I would like to be a Star Trek Online Beta-zoid” or you definitely won’t get a key), nothing more complicated than that. So be quick, or be sad. Then so soon as the fine folk at Cryptic send them out, you’ll find out if you have free access to the open beta for the game until the 26th January. RPS subscribers have already had their chance to reserve a key, by the way. If you’d like to be a part of that exclusive crowd, you can click here.

Star Trek Online is out on the 29th of Jan, and you can find out more about it here.

Hello! How are you? Uh-huh, yep, right, right. Me too! Yeah! Anyway, enough about that. Here’s a few missed trailers for Star Trek Online, which is as much to remind myself that I’ve got a beta key lurking somewhere in my inbox as anything else. My PC’s been dead – a case of motherboard lupus – since just before Christmas, see, and it’s only been back on its unreliable feet as of today. Which leaves me with a dilemma. Where to start? What to catch up on? That unfinished campaign in Dragon Age, the TF2 updates, the first L4D2 mods, finally getting around to learning Solium Infernum, the raft of tantalising indie games that have clogged up the RPS inbox over Christmas, or just staring at my email program for six hours with blinking? All good options. But I really would like to try STO.
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Another peek at Cryptic’s upcoming Star Trek Online, this time focusing on the Klingons and their motives for wanting to smack the Federation’s ships up. They sound angry. Was it because they were left out of the new movie? I’d be sad about that, if I was a Klingon. Doesn’t seem fair, really.

Not quite sure why the guy in this trailer sounds like a disgruntled Yoda, however. And I’m presuming it’s CGI rather than in-game, but I can’t tell anymore. I’ve been tricked so many times before! I can’t trust anyone!
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Just a hyper-quick post on this, as it had somehow slipped my mind. The recently-released Superhero MMO Champions Online is free to play this weekend. All the details are here, including their Blood Moon Halloween event. And if you want a taste of what it’s like, here’s our What I Think. Who’s still playing Champions? How’s it changed since then?

Cryptic must really be feeling the pressure with their upcoming Star Trek MMO – it now has to both live up to the success of JJ Abram’s Pretty People In Space reboot and shrug off the so-so reviews which their last game, Champions Online, is tarred with. Their most recent response, oddly, is to really play up to the Star Trek hardcore…
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The Maker Of Supermen Returns! Cryptic have had their Champions Online out in the wild for a couple of weeks now. It’s time to pull on the Spandex and see Wot I Think…

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This broke yesterday, but I thought was worth giving a nod towards. Showing some kind of developmental superspeed, Cryptic have announced the first update for Champions, which is due for late October. And being that period… well, Halloween. It’s actually thematically right on in terms of the superhero zeitgeist, with both Marvel and DC having stories around zombie superheroes. Some people call this Superhero Decadence, and – oh – I’m going to have words with them sooner or later. Anyway – there’s lots of battling fallen heroes, becoming infected as a zombie in PvP, Werewolves and a new powerset based around Celestial power. More details here. At the least, already giving players something to look forward to strikes me as good marketing.

Something is rotten in the state of pretend online roleplaying universes. Atari, or at least what’s left of it these days, remains license holder for most videogamilial adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons properties, most notably Forgotten Realms titles including Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights. They also publish the Turbine-developed Dungeons & Dragons Online, which is shortly to be relaunched as the free-to-play DDO Unlimited. Only Turbine reckon Atari’s gearing up for betrayal…
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In the realm of rumour right now, but Variety are reporting that sources have told them that the now Atari-owned Crytic are working on a Neverwinter Nights MMO for a 2011 release. In fact – I quote – “this reportedly was the primary reason Atari was interested in acquiring Cryptic late last year”. This would make three MMOs currently in development at Cryptic, which is quite the workload. This doesn’t actually surprise me that much, as last year when interviewing Jack Emmert about Champions, he talked about how it’s totally possible to make an MMO in 2 years – just not from scratch. He talks about lessons learned and knowledge, but here’s an interesting quote: “Here’s a business tip. Don’t keep building new engines. Take an engine, and improve it. Make three, four, five games out of it before you need to reboot. That’s a business thing”. More as it emerges, but it’s an interesting one to speculate on. NWN was never just a D&D RPG – level creation and virtual DMing was very much part of it. If they’re developing it, surely Cryptic will have to push this angle?

Following on from this morning’s demonstration of Star Trek Online’s character creator, there’s finally more footage of Champions Online. Since Kieron brought you the definitive coverage of the game so far last July, it’s been pretty quiet. However, a very brief glimpse appeared at New York Comic Con, and it’s below.

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