As most of you probably know, Champions has been delayed to September 1st of this year:
Why? Here’s what our own Bill Roper, Design Director and Executive Producer on Champions Online, had to say about it:
“It is critically important for an MMO to be as good as it possibly can be at launch. 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. So that’s what we’re going to give it. Cryptic has a proven track record of releasing solid games and we want to maintain that with Champions Online.”
I’ll read between the lines in a second, but I’d like to correct the above statement to read: “It is critically important for Champions to be as good as it possibly can be at launch because the Super Hero MMO space is about to be flooded and we don’t want to get our asses kicked with a bad first impression”. Champions cannot have a bad launch…period. With City of Heroes upping the ante with every update and the familiar embrace of DC Universe Online game, they absolutely have to nail, 1) the new player intro and 2) the midgame. If Champions was the only super hero game in town, then I wouldn’t be as worried because I think fans would be patient…but not the case with other options coming online.
The fact that he mentions the beta testers in this statement at all, points to a game who’s launch quality is questionable right now. This isn’t some internal “quality” thing that is delaying the release….this is player input. Of course, we’ll never know the real issue behind the delay, but we do know for sure that beta testers are being “vocal” about what it is they are seeing. On the other hand, it’s only a two month delay, which tells me it can’t be that bad.
D out.
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May 20th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
disappointed with the delay but also glad they are taking time to work on it hard. It seems though that nobody in developer land is very good at guessing when they should set launch dates.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Usually when we see a delay with an MMO it’s never a bad thing. I know people get disappointed with push backs, but better later then crappier.
May 21st, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Delaying a MMO can never be a bad thing IMO because they need as much development time as they can get. I’d rather wait and get a solid MMO than get it sooner and find it’s utterly unplayable. Fans (including myself) want everything immediately and don’t like to wait but the long term success rating of MMOs tells us it’s better if they wait.