Champions On-Line

Champions On-Line Game Features

I'm really looking forward to this one, something I can't say about any other MMO in the works. Jack Emmert, the brain child behind Cryptic and CoH, is looking to bring many excellent ideas that died stillborn in CoH into this title. Essentially it's the Champions pencil-and-paper superhero RPG brought to virtual life using Cryptic's CoH engine. You'll be able to customize powers and power special effects without rigid classes and class roles, just as you were intended to be able to do in CoH. In addition, arch-nemesis are back; super villains you construct to bedevil your own character throughout the course of their career.

The art looks almost cell shaded. IMO, the graphics we've seen so far are not a big step up from CoH, but they're more than sufficient. What I really want to know about is instancing and group power range limits, but information on that is really scarce.

It looks like this may be much further along than I'd guessed. They've been working on it for something like three years, and I couldn't say how long until they release, but they're certainly playing a functional version of the game in-house already, so I'm hoping for a beta in the not too distant future. I may even break my moratorium on betas to try this title.