Champions Online Delayed Until September

Erik J writes "Cryptic Studios has announced that their upcoming superhero MMORPG, Champions Online, has suffered a delay. The title, originally slated to arrive for PC and Xbox 360 on July 14th, has been pushed back to September 1st of this year. The studio claims the postponement stems from the need to make the game as polished as possible. 'It is critically important for an MMO to be as good as it possibly can be at launch,' said executive producer Bill Roper. 'Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time.'" Roper also spoke recently about the lessons he's taken from his years in the MMO industry, commenting on why big-budget games are such a gamble, and why it's ridiculous to measure success by comparing a new game to World of Warcraft.

Comments

who thunk it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Full text below:

NextMMO delayed for gamedelayreason#4.

Thanks for the update.

Postponing an MMO's release to iron out bugs?

[VGPowerlord]

Seems like several companies could learn from this guy's example. The most notable games that needed to learn from this example being Star Wars Galaxies and... World of Warcraft, neither of which were even remotely playable during the first several days they were up. Both were also missing documented "features" for at least a good six months.

Re:Postponing an MMO's release to iron out bugs?

[BondGamer]

The most notable games that needed to learn from this example being Star Wars Galaxies and... World of Warcraft, neither of which were even remotely playable during the first several days they were up.

There is a huge difference between a few days of issues at launch and a game which is struggling to fix/add things for months/years due to a premature release. During which time players quit because they don't want to put up with bugs and lack of content. It is understandable that an event you have no chance to prepare for, the launch, might suffer some issues. Also keep in mind that World of Warcraft's main problem was too many people wanted to play the game. Not that terrible an issue as long as you can ramp up capacity quickly, which is what Blizzard did.

Re:Postponing an MMO's release to iron out bugs?

[VGPowerlord]

Star Wars Galaxies was missing its entire player city system at launch.

Granted, the only thing I can think of that WoW was missing was its Battleground system. It's mentioned on page 133 of the manual shipped with the original shipment of the game, but wasn't added to the game until Patch 1.5 on 7 June 2005... 6 and a half months after WoW's 23 November 2004 launch.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes would have been a better example. I've never played it, but I've been told it was very... incomplete at launch.

Re:Postponing an MMO's release to iron out bugs?

[Joeyspecial]

WoW was missing the documented feature of the "Hero Class" until the most recent expansion.

Re:Postponing an MMO's release to iron out bugs?

[Caraig]

Well, there was also the 'honor system' mentioned in the manual, which originally was supposed to deter high-level characters from ganking low-level characters, but that wasn't added until well after Battlegrounds. There was also the 'Hero Class' which was missing until the recent second expansion.

Also, WoW had a lot of bugs and glitches, in addition to missing several minor features, which hindered it's release. As I recall, it became so bad that Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade withdrew their support for the game because of all the problems.

WoW might not have had the worst launch ever, but it was certainly 'up there' for a major title from a major developer.

DNF all over again

[Anonymous Coward]

let's just hope they don't decide to switch game engines...

And the reason?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey, lets redo our first hit, City of Heroes but make it so that animations, playability and combat is worse than City of Heroes. Profit!"

Not a bad idea...

[Fneb]

You just need to look at recently released MMORPGs such as Age of Conan and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning to see that a strong start is very important to anything competing in the same space as WoW. Most players only want to play one such game, after all.

Can't trust Roper

[AgentOJ]

I'm sorry, but after the abomination that was Hellgate: London, it will take a very, very long time for Bill Roper to earn my trust again. That game was a prime example of what NOT to do in an MMORPG. I just feel bad for all the people who blew their money on a "lifetime" subscription which ended basically being an extended beta masquerading as a finished game, full of broken promises, missed release dates, glitchy content, and eventually a slow death. I hope he's learned his lesson, but I'll let other people test the water before I'd be willing to jump in; I'm not ready to get burned by Roper again.

Re:Can't trust Roper

[Dr.Horrible Protoge]

Ah... But Bill isn't holding all of the cards with this game. The real player at this table is Jack Emmert. Bill was handed the stering wheel of a car that was well on it's way down the road in November (only 6 months people) so Jack could turn his focus to Cryptic's other MMO, Star Trek.

Bob

[Anonymous Coward]

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