Champions Online Interview and Preview

Ten Ton Hammer has posted two separate articles that delve into the superhero MMORPG that is Champions Online.

The first is an interview with Bill Roper on Cryptic’s plans for microtransactions:

Ten Ton Hammer: There’s been a lot of speculation about what the Cryptic Store will offer which seems to be sparking quite a bit of controversy recently. Do you think the concept of micro-transactions is something that the western market simply hasn’t completely warmed up to yet?

Bill Roper: Actually I think it really has. I think a great example of that is Rock Band. That game is based wholly on micro-transactions and has a really high cost of entry, you know? With Rock Band you’re not just buying the game, you’re buying all of the peripherals and equipment, so you’re plopping down 150 to 200 bucks on the game, and then people really get into the fact that they can go and download constant content for the game. It’s become so popular that they’re moving into user-generated content now.

So I don’t think it’s something that is beyond the western market. Arguably iTunes does that, besides the fact that people will go online and buy stuff from Amazon. It’s all the fact that they’re OK with saying, (I want to get stuff when I want to get it.) Certainly the idea of micro-transactions has been around a lot longer than that too, where people have paid, for example, even memberships into clubs that would let them get things at a reduced rate. People just have an idea that they’re going to pay for what they want to get.

For us micro-transactions definitely are not the thrust of the business. I’ve seen a lot of people where. everybody in their head when they hear a term they don’t like automatically overlays the absolute worst case scenario on top of it, right? So I think that was something that we really tried to get across to people – and will continue to do so – that the game is not (based) on micro-transactions.

The idea is wanting to be able to have things there that players can get if they want to, but they don’t negatively impact the balance of the game. It’s not like we’re expecting players to go and purchase things through micro-transactions that then give them some huge leg up. All those things I think people get worried about, but really the focus is on having things that are fun, cosmetic or are things that are more account-wide and maintenance based.

World of Warcraft has micro-transactions and people don’t even think about it. Their micro-transactions are fairly steep at times – like $25 to move your character to another realm and that’s account-wide micro-transactions. WoW also, if you think about it, does micro-transactions through their card games as well, right? It’s an interesting cross-over where it’s a physical product and you’re buying this other game, but that game has cards that can give you effects in-game. And people have gone out and spent a ton of money on that. Granted, they do get a secondary game out of it, but they’re also paying a pretty steep price for that. So they are paying for another game but they kind of have the perks of having in-game items.

While the other covers the game’s setting and villains:

Project Greenskin is a PRIMUS (the Paranormal Research and Investigation Mission of the United States) installation located near the village of Bentonville, New Mexico. It was originally built as a base of operations for a scientific expedition of the same name to deal with the radioactive threat of Grond, a supervillain created by an atomic accident during testing in the area and known to go on deadly rampages that can wipe out entire city blocks.

In Champions Online this base will serve somewhat as a gateway to the greater southwestern desert region. Here you’ll find various scientists and researchers collecting data on the area immediately to the north, known as Burning Sands, and the Irradiates and Grondlings that continually assail the base’s perimeter.

Perhaps the most notable structure of this region is the supervillain prison known as Stronghold. Located far to the north of Project Greenskin, this maximum-security prison has been the final destination for many of the world’s greatest (or worst, depending on perspective) villains ever since construction was completed in 1978. Each cell within the prison incorporates the use of modular systems created specifically to counter certain types of super power, with a special cell known as the Hot Sleep chamber reserved for those villains so powerful that standard cells are unable to contain them.