As of today, Cryptic and Atari are revealing the fact that Champions Online, one of their more famous MMO titles, will be having a free trial period lasting until September 7th.

This trial period is in celebration of the first anniversary of the moderately popular superhero-based game and has swept up the disenfranchised population falling out of City of Heroes and City of Villains. Both older games were made by the same company, coincidentally, as Champions Online.

Continued…

After two years of developing games such as Champions Online and Star Trek Online; the MMO giant Bill Roper has decided that he is going to depart Cryptic.  Nobody’s really quite sure why, other then Bill has grown tired and wants to branch out to find new opportunities.  Well that’s all fine an dandy I suppose, and if Bill feels as though he’s needed else where, then we should all support him in his decision.  What does this mean for Champions and Star Trek you ask?  Nothing at all.  Both of your beloved MMOs will continue as normal and life will go on as it should.  Who knows, maybe Bill left because he’s hard at work with Hanbitsoft on the Hellgate London sequel *hahaha*.

Anyways, here is a link to Bill’s final dying breaths from Cryptic Studios.  Oh, and for those of you that are interested in making friends with this man; he has stated that he will continue to play every Cryptic game ever!  So you guys might be able to spot him beating up/ beaming up online.  Good luck Bill, we salute you!

It’s once again time for Ask Cryptic, the feature in which Cryptic Studios answers player questions regarding the future of its games, in this Champions Online Q&A. Despite the fact that it opens with the disappointing, though understandable, news that there won’t be any four-armed player characters appearing in the game, there are bright spots. This is particularly true if you’re into Champions Online’s character and costume creation system, and frankly if you play that game, chances are that you love that stuff. The focus of the community on costume pieces and effects comes through in how many questions are asked about them, but there are also answers on subjects such as event vs persistent content creation and future powersets.

Overall, there’s nothing in this Q&A that’s going to light anyone’s hair on fire with excitement, but it implies a great deal of careful planning within Cryptic. The tone is that of an experienced developer focusing on the long-term success of its game, and that’s never a bad thing. To check it out for yourself, head to the official site.

Champions Online, developed by Cryptic Studios and Atari, recently released a new in-depth video to help hype its Serpent Lantern Expansion Pack out now.

The Serpent Lantern Expansion Pack features new weapons and armor, new dungeons and bosses to tackle and many more upgrades to the game. The expansion moves the story of battling the villainous Vipers ahead with the unleashing of the evil Serpent Lantern, asking players, will you be able to stop the Great Spirit Serpent?

To check out the video and sign up for a free trial, head on over to the Champions Online official website.

Cryptic Studios has released their Champions Online State of the Game report for June 2010. In it, Executive Producer Shannon Posniewksi lays out what the team has learned from the first Champions Online adventure pack, the Serpent Lantern. Also discussed is the big summer update to the game, scheduled for August, and a reminder that today is the latest “Play with the Devs” event.

New additions to the game include the difficulty slider for instances, which allows players to make instanced missions and even general maps harder in order to secure better rewards and items, and a Veteran Rewards system for long-term subscribers. Some of these veteran rewards are actually quite substantial, such as low-level experience boosts and a health and energy recharging item. For the future, “Poz” mentioned the creation of an interactive event calendar for Supergroups, as well as streamlining for pet powers and many new emotes for the summer update.

To read the full state of the game, visit the official site.

Atari has released a brand new trailer for Champions Online: Serpent Lantern Adventure Pack. The Serpent Lantern Adventure pack will take Champions Online players on an epic adventure for the magical artifact, capable of granting unimaginable powers to its possessor through the skyscrapers of Millennium City to the jungles of Africa. You just need a character who’s level is above 11 and some free time on your hands. The trailer is available for watching here.

Champions Online has announced details concerning the Serpent Lantern Adventure Pack set to arrive next month.

The expansion offers many new updates to Champions Online. The “adventure pack” features new enemies, locations and items centered around battling the games VIPER nemesis as you search for a powerful and mysterious object – the Serpent Lantern. There will also be new NPC’s to interact with, new costumes to unlock, three new perks, action figures to collect and a slue of other add-ons that will flesh out the new expansion.

For the fully detailed article and trailer from Champions Online on the Serpent Lantern adventure pack, click here.

Cryptic Studios recently answered questions posted to them by gamers on their forums surrounding Champions Online. The general Q&A centered around the latest developments the design team have in store for the game.

Questions for the team ranged from whether the team will be implementing a new power pack to questions about expansions for the Nemesis system and much more.

Read the full Champions Online Q/A interview here.

Both Star Trek Online and Champions Online were originally developed with the goal of eventually releasing versions of the games to console platforms. If you’ve played Champions Online, you may have noticed that it has had strong Xbox 360 controller support since the beta phases, a side-effect of this long-term production focus. Now Cryptic Studios, home of the developers behind both games, has officially confirmed that neither game will be coming to consoles any time soon.

The first announcement came in the form of a forum post for Champions Online by Cryptic co-founder Jack Emmert, stating that “100% of our focus is on making the current PC product the best it can be. There are no current plans for a console version of Champions.” More recently, Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich was interviewed by VideoGamer.com and had sad news for Star Trek Online as well, saying, “It’s pretty much in the same boat as the Champions console version right now.” Stating that the technology was there, but that it was “a little difficult to make that final leap on the business side of things,” Zinkievich confirmed that the console projects for Champions Online and Star Trek Online are now on the back burner.

It really seems like this market is going under-utilised at the moment, but as MMOs are an expensive gamble to begin with, I can understand why companies, especially publishers, are likely balking at the idea of pushing into mostly unexplored territory.

In short order after releasing the first round of previews, Blizzard has released the second and third, each chock full of information on the expected Cataclysm class changes. Represented now are nine of the ten classes – all but the lonely Paladins now have small smoulderings of information to keep them warm through the cold nights of anticipation. What have the holy knights done to earn such disdain from the gods of World of Warcraft? A mystery indeed, but for now let’s content ourselves with the rest – as before I have only plucked the new abilities from the previews and included links for the full articles due to their length.

New Warrior Abilities:

Inner Rage (Level 81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a passive ability so it won’t need to be activated by the player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we also don’t want warriors to feel like they’re supposed to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we’ll be closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and making adjustments as needed.

Gushing Wound (Level 83): This ability will apply a bleed effect to the target. If the target moves, the bleed gains an extra stack and refreshes its duration, up to a maximum of three stacks. The ability is currently planned to have no cooldown, cost 10 Rage, and have a 9-second duration. Gushing Wound is designed to be weaker than Rend with one stack, but better with three stacks, which will be reached when fighting a moving target.

Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.

New Death Knight Abilities:

Outbreak (level 81): Outbreak infects the target with both Frost Fever and Blood Plague at no rune cost. This ability allows death knights to apply diseases quickly when they are switching targets or when their diseases have been dispelled.

Necrotic Strike (level 83): Necrotic Strike is a new attack that deals weapon damage and applies a debuff that absorbs an amount of healing based on the damage done. For context, imagine that the death knight can choose between doing 8,000 damage outright with a certain ability, or dealing 6,000 damage and absorbing 4,000 points in incoming heals with Necrotic Strike — the burst is smaller, but a larger overall amount of healing would be required to bring the target back to full health.

This ability is meant to bring back some of the old flavor from when death knights could dispel heal-over-time (HoT) effects. It also gives the class a bit more PvP utility without simply replicating a Mortal Strike-style effect.

Dark Simulacrum (level 85): The death knight strikes a target, applying a debuff that allows the death knight to copy the opponent’s next spell cast and unleash it. Unlike Spell Reflection, Dark Simulacrum does not cancel the incoming spell. In general, if you can’t reflect an ability, you won’t be able to copy it either.

New Rogue Abilities:

Redirect (available at level 81): Rogues will be getting a new ability to help them deal with changing targets. Redirect will transfer any active combo points to the rogue’s current target, helping to ensure combo points aren’t wasted when swapping targets or when targets die. In addition, self-buff abilities like Slice and Dice will no longer require a target, so rogues can spend extra combo points on those types of abilities (more on this below). Redirect will have a 1-minute cooldown and no other costs.

Combat Readiness (level 83): Combat Readiness is a new ability that we intend rogues to trigger defensively. While this ability is active, whenever the rogue is struck by a melee or ranged attack, he or she will gain a stacking buff called Combat Insight that results in a 10% reduction in damage taken. Combat Insight will stack up to 5 times and the timer will be refreshed whenever a new stack is applied. Our goal is to make rogues better equipped to go toe-to-toe with other melee classes when Evasion or stuns are not in play. This ability lasts 6 seconds and has a 2-minute cooldown.

Smoke Bomb (level 85): The rogue drops a Smoke Bomb, creating a cloud that interferes with enemy targeting. Enemies who are outside the cloud will find themselves unable to target units inside the cloud with single-target abilities. Enemies can move inside the cloud to attack, or they can use area-of-effect (AoE) abilities at any time to attack opponents in a cloud. In PvP, this will open up new dimensions of tactical positional gameplay, as the ability offers a variety of offensive and defensive uses. In PvE, Smoke Cloud can serve to shield your group from hostile ranged attacks, while also drawing enemies closer without the need to rely on conventional line-of-sight obstructions. Smoke Cloud lasts 10 seconds and has a 3-minute cooldown.

New Hunter Abilities:

Cobra Shot (level 81): A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.

Trap Launcher (level 83): When used, the next trap can be shot to a location within 40 yards. This provides the current Freezing Arrow treatment to all traps and, as a result, we will be removing the current ability Freezing Arrow. 1-minute cooldown. No global cooldown.

Camouflage (level 85): The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).

New Druid Abilities:

Thrash (Level 81): Thrash deals damage and causes all targets within 10 yards to bleed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The intent here is to give bears another button to hit while tanking. Talents will affect the bleed, such as causing Swipe to deal more damage to bleeding targets. 5-second cooldown. 25 Rage.

Stampeding Roar (Level 83): The druid roars, increasing the movement of all allies within 10 yards by 40% for 8 seconds. Stampeding Roar can be used in cat or bear form, but bears might have a talent to drop the cooldown. The goal of this ability is to give both bears and cats a little more situational group utility. 3-minute cooldown. No cost.

Wild Mushroom (Level 85): Grows a magical mushroom at the target location. After 4 seconds the mushroom becomes invisible. Enemies who cross the mushroom detonate it, causing it to deal area-of-effect damage, though its damage component will remain very effective against single targets. The druid can also choose to detonate the mushroom ahead of time. This is primarily a tool for the Balance druid, and there will be talents that play off of it. No cooldown. 40-yard range. Instant cast.

New Mage Abilites:

Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn’kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.

Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage’s own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.

Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown.