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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.
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.
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.