Interview: Champions Online's Bill Roper

Eurogamer: As you can read in our previews, Champions Online offers all the familiar MMO trappings as well as unprecedented freedom in character-creation - not just of your own hero, but of the Nemesis you'll ulitamtely have to face. It's also been designed with console versions in mind - Cryptic said at last year's E3 that it had an Xbox 360 version up and running, and concept approval from Microsoft. Champions Online is currently in the early stages of beta testing.

[TheColbertinator]

Of course they chose PC first.MMOs on consoles suck

[EvilCackle]

Yeah, the PC is still really the ideal system for MMO's and RTS. It's just an issue of interface and controls for me.

[kwicksandz]

FPS as well.

[PLAYSTATIONGENRATION]

name anyone who ever tried to put a decent mmo on a console...i can only think of one....phantasy star.......

[GWAVE]

If you're a console gamer and you want to be prepared for the upcoming console MMO storm, the PS3 is the obvious choice. The Agency, DC Universe, and MAG (it's SORT of an MMO) all look excellent, and lets not forget that the PS3 is being backed by one of the best MMO developers out there: SOE.

[Gambit07]

There's also Free Realms.

[TheIneffableBob]

When was the last good SOE MMO?

You're the first person I've ever heard to say that SOE was one of the best MMO developers.

[UltimateIdiot911]

I think PS3 will be their last choice unless they want to throw it in to fight with all these MMO.

[N4PS3G]

get a ps3 because of the agency and DC universe? No thanks .. neither of those look great..both look weak

plus the MMO and Developer to beat is All Points Bulletin and Real Time Worlds and as far as i know..its not available for the ps3

[silvacrest]

lets not forget that the ps3 is supposed to get some exclusive love from NCsoft

[- Ghost of Sparta -]

"get a ps3 because of the agency and DC universe? No thanks .. neither of those look great..both look weak

plus the MMO and Developer to beat is All Points Bulletin and Real Time Worlds and as far as i know..its not available for the ps3"

Are you even being serious? Realtime Worlds has never made an MMO. APB will be their first and it sounds terrible. So awful in fact, that no one's heard anything about it in well over a year now. You, for some reason, want people to believe that Realtime Worlds has this nonexistent "track record" of making good games when they don't. Crackdown is their only game and it sucks. The only reason most people even purchased it was to play in the Halo 3 beta. They have NO EXPERIENCE in the MMO department. None whatsoever.

The Agency and DC Universe are being developed by KNOWN MMO developers. You're just pissed that Sony owns both IP's. Does everything 360 related give you a boner? Some fanboys are smart, some are hilariously sad. Once again, another Xbox fanboy shows us how much he enjoys being a part of that second group.

[creeping judas]

you do know that free realms is aimed at 10 to 14yr olds. So if that's your bag of tea then enjoy it!!!

[rhood022]

Sony needs to tell any studio thinking of releasing a MMO or RTS on it's console that Keyboard and Mouse support is an option.

[TreborRversed]

I'm pretty sure developers know that

Lets give them some credit lol

[EvilCackle]

I'd still imagine most console owners would prefer to use a gamepad with their console, though.

[Raoh]

sigh.. this isn't really news or new news.

Cryptic said a long time ago that they were making the pc and 360 versions first and working on the ps3 possibly later. there was an ad for a job posted on gamasutra where cryptic is looking for a ps3 developer.

pc and xbox 360 first makes sense due to their similarities in development. its one thing to have a game paid for to be timed and for a developer to be a fanboy but i dont believe cryptic is a fanboy. they just wont start a new platform until their first development is done right.

as for mmorpg's on consoles they do not suck. and the interfaces work well.

i've played everquest online advnetures on the ps2 and loved that game. the servers are still up and i would love a sequel. the interface worked fine and had keyboard support. the game also ran off the disc. the only thing on the memory card was your login info.

final fantasy xi also ran just as well on the ps2 as it did on the pc and i tried the 360 version as well that also had no issues. again the interface worked well.

there is no reason to say that mmorpg's dont play well on the consoles. its another to say you cant expect the same sales success as the pc side but then again console adoption is much higher now.

i also cant wait to see what SOE has planned since now the company will have the playstation console in mind for all future mmo's..

speaking of.. where the f@ck is NCSOFT at?

[EvilCackle]

"Cryptic said a long time ago that they were making the pc and 360 versions first and working on the ps3 possibly later."

The point of the article is that they're making the PC first.

[Bazookajoe_83]

I must say that it was a very good and unbiased comment, very rare to see here on N4G.

[Godmars290]

If DC Universe comes out first on the PS3, what's point of putting out another superhero MMO out later?

[Tony P]

You're being far too general.

It's a pretty wide genre even if you're using the same premise. Look at all the fantasy MMOs out there right now. Pretty much all have orcs and elves and dwarfs. Yet they all try to differentiate themselves from each other in some way be it through lore or gameplay or both.

[Godmars290]

What happened to all that talk about the casual gamer? You think they're going to be keeping several paid MMOs alive? Forget that there's going to be several "free" title like The Agency and Free Realms.

And if Cryptic follows the basic formula of 360 to PS3 ports, gives 2nd hand hand to no support, that's just one more reason for them not to bother.

[Zenkure]

Because DC Universe won't out for months maybe even a year. While it is said that CO will come out on June and as you can see from this article, it will be on PC first. Besides, DCUO might not appeal to some people and they might want to try something else.

[ASSASSYN 36o]

Give me star trek online.

[Avenged Sevenfold]

And another one bites the dust...

[torreyjs]

interesting news

too bad its not a blog post causing more fanboy/flamewar posts pretending to be news and being touted by idiot fanboys as news