I mentioned yesterday that there was a new Ask Cryptic column where they started the process of fixing the mess caused by the Vibora Bay announcement. Well today Cryptic release a new State of the Game from Chronomancer as well as small news post from Rekhan with a bullet points summary of the coming expansion and two screen shots.

Here’s the highlights from the SotG message.

Kitchen Sink Patch

Roper starts off with a mea culpa regarding the all of the problems cause by the Kitchen Sink patch. Basically Cryptic admits to not having done sufficient testing, and has attempted to correct this by increasing the size of their QA team and instituting better internal controls to keep changes from STO and other projects from providing nasty surprises.

Communication Improvements

He also expands on what they stated in the previous day’s Ask Cryptic about how they’re intending to improve communication:

  • bi-weekly columns for Ask Cryptic and State of the Game
  • GM blog for a community channel to the support staff
  • monthly chat via IRC with the devs
  • an “all-company supergroup” to provide a more visible company presence in the game and additional PvP events
  • website overhaul and additional web content: monthly fiction releases, screenshots, fan art, wallpaper, and developer special features (intended to provide the dev’s point of view on the game)

There is a lot of good stuff here. Most of this is specific enough that the community will be able to easily grade Cryptic’s follow through in the coming months, and I can guarantee that there are some heavy forum users keeping a keen eye on how well Cryptic does fulfilling these promises.

Vibora Bay Revelation Expansion

They’ve changed the name of the upcoming expansion from Vibora Bay to Revelation, supposedly this reflects the change from working name to release name. There’s a short mention of a new arch-villain Therakiel (half-angel/demon) who is the focus of the expansion. Then Chronomancer gets into the part most of the Champions player community was waiting for: the expansion will be free. There’s not much additional details beyond general promises of new powers, new play areas, etc. He repeated that the content is designed for the 37-40 range with a new level 40 repeatable lair. Roper was also very careful to emphasize that the change from paid to free doesn’t reflect the quality or size of the expansion in anyway, and closes out the post by promising additional details “very soon.”

Rekhan’s News

Most of the information here is a summary of what Bill already posted in the SotG message, with one new and important detail. Champions Online – Revelation will be released in mid-March of 2010.

Forum Followup

There’s a Chronomancer followup post in the SotG forum thread where he addresses a couple of additional player concerns.

First, they are looking at some technical issues to tie the PTS and Live server accounts together to provide testers with in-game rewards for helping out.

Second, he provides a clarification of his mention about the quality level of the expansion having nothing to do with the pricing change:

What I am saying is that we didn’t consider the expansion to be sub-par and so we’re just giving it to you, or that in some way you’re getting less than we always intended because we’re not charging for it. I am ecstatic that we can provide this level of content to you for the low, low price of nothing! We’re having an internal play test right now and it’s been great to see people that haven’t been through the zone before be blown away at how it looks and plays.

Third, Roper tries to address the whole “STO stole our developers” idea that a lot of players have used as a reason why the game are languished the last few months in regards to patches and communication, saying they’ve been focused solely on the upcoming Revelation expansion and not losing resources to STO.

For me, the best part is the last sentence of his post:

We don’t expect one post to fix everything, but it’s our first step of many in the right direction!

I’m happy to see that they’ve reconsidered the idea of a paid expansion six months after launch, and I like what they’re promising regarding increased communication with the community from all levels of the Cryptic Champions team. Two days of announcements are a good start, but they are only a start.

So like I said yesterday, now we just need to see if  the Cryptic Champions team can deliver on their promises.

Champions Expansion: New Name and Free Price
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8 thoughts on “Champions Expansion: New Name and Free Price

  • February 9, 2010 at 11:09 pm
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    Well I have to say that this is very good news for Champions fans.

  • February 9, 2010 at 11:29 pm
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    Meh the game is still a heavily unbalanced ranged PEW PEW game. I cannot even make the character I want and do well, which is a melee toon that is not forced to use some cookie cutter build. Same issue in beta. Until that is fixed its DEAD TO ME JIM

    A lot of talk here, lets see if the expansion is a buggy mess or not

    • February 10, 2010 at 12:13 pm
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      You might be interested in the last question from the Ask Cryptic on 2/8, then. I didn’t include it in my summary from yesterday, so here it is:

      DawningDestiny: When is the melee rebalancing coming? You’ve talked a lot about it, but I’ve seen nothing that wasn’t a nerfy baseball bat to the face when it comes to melee. It’s by far the most underwhelming, underpowered set in the game. So yeah, what’s your timetable for that fix?

      Akinos: Our melee review is currently underway. It is a massive review that involves 5 full framework reviews as well as an overall look at melee as a whole. It’s too early to give an ETA but rest assured is it being worked on.

      This one seems to be a “soon(tm)” and not a “soon”, but it does seem to be something they’re aware of. Maybe this fall it’ll be in and they’ll do an anniversary welcome back weekend. 🙂

  • February 10, 2010 at 5:13 pm
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    I don’t play CO anymore, but I did do a /facepalm when I found out they were going to charge for their expansion. Well, I suppose the fans have spoken. Anyone else see the irony behind the new name? Anyway, glad Cryptic finally came around.

    • February 10, 2010 at 8:25 pm
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      Yes, I did find the expansion name funny, but given their sense of humor about mission names I’m not too surprised.

  • February 10, 2010 at 5:29 pm
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    This direction does bode well. Hopefully they can deliver and start building back up some of the goodwill they’ve lost.

    • February 10, 2010 at 8:26 pm
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      That’s the big thing, and so far Roper’s comments indicate that they understand that this is a start, not a finish. Actions speak louder than words though.

  • February 11, 2010 at 12:07 am
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    I’m happy to hear them saying the right words at least. I will give them that much credit. Of course, Revelation sounds to me like it should be the final expansion, not the first one. 🙂

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