The big day has arrived! Following an early start weekend, Champions Online is now available for PCs online and in North American stores. European players will be getting the game on Friday. In honor of the occasion, Executive Producer Bill Roper has written a special launch day edition of his weekly State of the Game address on the game's official site.

In his letter, Roper says the team is already making some adjustments to the superhero MMO based on player feedback. As he said, "We’re reading and listening, and addressing things as quickly as we can." They're working on changes that make the game a little more challenging at higher levels, fixing bugs and lowering retcon costs. They have even activated all of the special edition action figures in the online store.

In addition, Roper briefly announced the team's plans for Blood Moon, the first free update to the game. He said to keep watching the official site for the actual announcement page. You can read Roper's full letter after the jump.

So do you plan on playing Champions Online? If you're still on the fence, check out our in-depth preview to see if it's the right comic MMO for you.

It’s been an amazing early start weekend, and we’ve been burning the midnight neutronium responding to issues you’ve found and following your suggestions to make the game feel and play better. It’s never too early to start that communication between players and developers, so we’ve carried that essential interaction from beta right into the game launching. We’re reading and listening, and addressing things as quickly as we can.

Based on your play experiences and feedback, we’re making some adjustments in anticipation of the rest of the gaming universe joining us! Here’s the skinny on what we’re up to.

BRING IT ON!
A good number of players have noted that the game isn’t challenging enough, especially at higher levels. We’re usually going to initially err on the side of it being too easy, and then trial and dial in on just the right balance as best we can. We’ve made a couple of broader course corrections over the past weeks, and we’re very close to the experience we all want. To further that direction, we’re doing some fine tuning in the following areas:

We reduced the effectiveness of Slotted Passive Defense powers, Active Defense powers, and Defense from upgrades. The total bonus of all combined defenses was reduced from a 75% net defense bonus to a 66% net bonus. The biggest change was made within the Passive Defense powers which our players noted were far too effective and trivialized the threat form Henchmen level enemies.

We increased “non-shtick” enemy damage to compensate for AI / animation delays. This particularly affects Henchmen who did not attack at the expected rate on which other areas of combat effectiveness are balanced. The change represents a 25% increase in this type of damage.

We also increased “shtick-based” damage for Super Villain class enemies and above. They were incorrectly using the Master Villain class damage tables, making our most difficult enemies much weaker than intended.

Finally, we have removed the consumable items that were giving a straight 33% increase to Health and Energy from vendors. These were artifacts of the beta test that were accidently not removed from the live version of the game.

ADDRESSING THE ZOOM EFFECT
We’ve fixing a data bug where players incorrectly received 75% of an enemy’s experience amount no matter the disparity in level. More than a difference of 4 levels now gains the player no experience.

We’ve added a timer to the Scared Straight mission so that while it remains repeatable, it will not be exploitable. We have also reduced the amount of experience for repeated versions of the mission.

The top speed of travel power speeds has been reduced by 15% as part of how we’re addressing reported frame-rate issues because heroes are simply traveling faster than the server can update their position.

WE WANT MORE UPGRADES, AND WE WANT THEM NOW!
We found and fixed an error in the overall drop-rate tables that drastically reduced the number of upgrades coming from defeated enemies. This change increases the number of upgrades that drop from enemies in the approximately four-fold.

CHANGING YOUR MIND IS EASIER
Retcon cost has been lowered across the board, making alterations in your character's powers and advantages much simpler to accomplish.

THE STORE IS OPEN!
We’ve activated all of the special edition action figures in the C Store. So if you got Cryptic Points to spend as part of a promotional purchase of the game, you start your collection now! Cryptic Points will go on sale soon.

THE MAGIC IS BACK IN SORCERY
Sorcery powers are now being properly counted towards unlocking other powers in their power set.

SNAKE BUCKS AND UNITY MERITS
We’re aware of a data bug that causes Snake Bucks and Unity Merits to not display in your character sheet. They *are* there, you just can’t see them until we get the fix checked in.

WHAT’S TO COME
Today we’re announcing our plans for Blood Moon – our first FREE update to the game. We’re diving right in to making more content for you, but I don’t want to spoil the awesome job the crew did on the announcement page, so keep your eyes on the website!

See you online, heroes!