Executive Director Bill Roper revealed in his first State of the Game address of 2010 that the first Champions Online expansion will focus on the city of Vibora Bay. "The apocalypse has come, and it rides upon the half angelic / half demonic wings of Therakiel," Roper said. The mega-adventure pack will feature content for levels 37-40, and a Web page full of details is currently in the works.

As far as other Champions Online updates are concerned, the Blood Moon Halloween event will be making a return appearance every month around the real-world full moon. Cryptic is introducing new difficulty levels for both individual heroes and teams, and players will get the ability to travel back in time to moments in their characters' history.

The rest of the letter focuses on the "kitchen sink" patch that went live today and features over two months worth of fixes and changes to the game. You can read the full State of the Game address after the jump.

Welcome to the 2010 reboot of the State of the Game! We’ve been keeping our shoulders to the wheel, our noses to the grindstone, and our foot on the pedal to bring you some great updates for Champions Online. There’s a lot to talk about, so now that the preamble has ambled, let’s dig into the meat of it!

The “Kitchen Sink” patch is slated to hit the live servers tonight, and this bad boy has a slew of changes that are based a great deal on your input over the past couple of months. We’ve touched just about every area of the game, from items to characteristics to powers to costumes to sound to graphics to zones and missions to UI to... well, you get the idea. I won’t delve into every last detail here (that’s what the patch notes of incredibly large size are for) but I did want to call out some highlights.

Powers

The Archery, Celestial, Darkness, Fire, Force, Ice, Might, Munitions, Power Armor, Single Blade, Sorcery, and Supernatural power sets have all seen improvements. The long-discussed (and cried out for by the community) changes to both Swallowtail Cut and Force Cascade have been made.

Items Get More Offensive

Items which previously were described as granting an Offensive Combat Value bonus for certain kinds of attacks had not been actually giving that bonus. These items have been rebuilt and redesigned, and now have a chance to grant a short duration (20 second), very high intensity boost to OCV on attacks of the designated type.

Lemuria Rises!

The performance issues in Lemuria have been greatly improved. We’ve had extremely positive response from our players on the Public Test Shard as to how well the zone plays now, so we’re hoping that this is the end of “Lagmuria.”

Nemesis

The appearances and powers of your Nemesis can now be edited for a modest resource cost at the MCPD crime database. Defeated Nemeses can also now be reactivated from the MCPD crime database if you don't already have an active Nemesis.

Crafting

There are changes and addressed issues with various blueprints and components, but most exciting is that bind-on-Equip Crafted Travel Device blueprints may now be dropped by White Rhino, Dr. Demogaard, The Bronze King, Vikorin the Blind, and Shadow Destroyer. Get out there, fight some bad guys, and gain the knowledge required to make some of the wildest travel powers in the game.

Team Looting

There are a lot of upgrades to the looting system that grants better distribution amongst team members, address issues with players thinking they took an item when another player already claimed it, and changed both round-robin and need-or-greed team looting to be on a per-item basis as opposed to a per-bag basis. There are also changes to the Master looting system, and the overall team looting threshold is now met on a per-item basis rather than the highest quality item in the bag.

And Oh, So Much More...

Many more topics are discussed in much more detail in the patch notes, so make sure to give them a read. We’re constantly working to improve Champions Online, so keep playing and let us know how about your experiences!

 

What’s Next for Champions Online?

We have a lot in the pipeline and this is a good a time as any to break some news! The development team has been working on not only improvements, but also on some amazing new content and game systems for your enjoyment. We don’t have exact dates set for all of these features, but they are coming in the short term as opposed to being long range plans. As we get closer to release on these, we’ll let you know! And away we go...

New Costume Sets in the C-Store

We’ll be rolling out a new costume set every week for the next three weeks, starting with Steampunk Cyborg!

I See a Blood Moon a Risin’

By popular demand, we’re going to be bringing back the Blood Moon event with a few twists and upgrades based on your feedback. The concept is that the event will trigger the day before, of, and after every real-world full moon. We’re using the same technology we debuted with Clarence in our Misfit Toys event to make battling Takofanes and his minions more interesting and challenging for heroes of all ranges of experience. Look for announcements in the upcoming few weeks as to when the Blood Moon will rise again!

This One Goes to Eleven

We’ll be introducing difficulty levels that players can set both for individual heroes and for their team. With 1 lower and 2 higher levels of difficulty to select from, players can create a challenge that fits their play style and ability.

Flashing Back

Cutting-edge temporal technology invented by the genius tinkerer Juryrig allows heroes to travel back to moments in their own history. Have a moment of personal glory that you want to relive, a mission that didn’t quite go the way you wanted, or missing an elusive perk? Here’s your chance!

Vibora Bay Watch

We’ve had a big secret here at Cryptic, and we can’t hold it in any longer. Over the past few months we’ve been working like mad on our first expansion for Champions Online! Vibora Bay is one of the Gulf Coast’s largest and most exciting cities. It’s a center of commerce, culture, tourism, and some incredibly strange goings-on. It maintains unusual traditions of mysticism and religion along with an eclectic group of inhabitants and frequent paranormal activities. Heroes constantly face threats of global proportions, but this time the crisis is greater than ever. The apocalypse has come, and it rides upon the half angelic / half demonic wings of Therakiel.

A web page is currently in the works that will feature screen shots, a video trailer, and detailed information on this level 37 – 40 mega-adventure pack, so stay tuned for more information!

That’s all for now, heroes - see you online!