href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/co">Champions
Online
subscribers will soon be
getting another massive zone
to explore with the Revelation digital expansion, due out later this
month. Centered around the half human, half angel Therakiel’s
attempts to bring the apocalypse to the mystic city of Vibora Bay,
players will be gaining new powers, new costumes and an all new
repeatable lair to get their capes dirty in.

Ten Ton Hammer recently had the
opportunity to discuss the upcoming
expansion with executive producer Bill Roper. If you’re
interested in learning more about Revelation’s theme,
content, and some of the cool things that await players venturing into
Vibora Bay, we’ve got you covered in this exclusive
interview.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/81555"> style="width: 400px;" alt="Revelation 4"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/81555">

Ten
Ton Hammer: How have things been
at Cryptic Studios in the six
months since Champions Online launched?

Bill
Roper: It’s been good.
We’ve had a very vocal
community which is good. I’d rather have people that talk
about the game and what they want to see in it than nothing getting
said. I think that one thing we’ve really started noticing
over the past couple weeks is people recognizing that we’ve
really made a big refocusing on the community. We’re also
putting the Revelation expansion up on the Public Test Shard this week.

So it’s been good.
Our player base has definitely settled
out. It’s really strong and excited about what
we’ve got coming and I think we’ve got a much
better plan of attack moving forward. The first six months has
definitely been doing a lot of catch up in trying to get stuff working
right and making sure that we’re in a very responsive mode in
terms of trying to get things done that the player base wanted. Now we
can kind of shift gears and be a little more forward thinking and be
working on things from a more proactive stance rather than a reactive
stance.

Ten
Ton Hammer: When you announced
that Revelation was going to be a
free expansion you also mentioned that that decision was partly to
address concerns within the community and player feedback. Could you
maybe expand a bit on what went into the decision to make Revelation a
free expansion vs. more of a traditional boxed release?

Bill
Roper: Sure. First off, we never
intended for it to be a boxed
release. I think that one, digital is just the way to go and two,
it’s not ever been designed as an expansion set that I think
players in their heads are used to seeing. The first time I talked
about it I even think I called it a “mega-adventure
pack”. It’s got probably about 20 to 25 hours of
gameplay in it, and it also has a repeatable endgame lair built in
which is massive and awesome. Here at the office over the last couple
of weeks we’ve had people who haven’t really seen
much of it that got to go through Therakiel’s lair and were
blown away, so I think it’s going to be pretty exciting for
our top end players.

I think really the biggest deal
was that we looked at the amount of
content that was in there and it was something that I tried to address,
but we definitely feel that it’s of the quality that you
would expect from downloadable content. You could look at a lot of
games that are out there that say here’s a new adventure
pack, or here’s a new scenario such as Dragon Age or games
like that and sell it as downloadable content or different DLC
programs. We definitely feel Revelation is of that quality level, but
we didn’t want to charge for it. We wanted to be able to give
it to our subscribers for free. They’ve been there through
the first six months with us and really working with us in helping make
the game better and I think a lot of their comments and interest is
reflected in what we’re doing in Revelation, so that was
pretty important.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/81552"> style="width: 400px;" alt="Revelation 1"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/81552">

Ten
Ton Hammer: In terms of the
content then, how expansive would you
say Revelation is if you were to compare it to the current game world
in terms of size and scope?

Bill
Roper: It’s level 37
to 40 in terms of content. There
are five new enemy groups, and a new endgame lair which is easily the
biggest and most challenging one that we’ve done which is of
course geared towards a group of five heroes. There are six new
“metapowers” which are new Tier 4 powers so
they’re the highest level powers in the game, and
they’re designed to fit over multiple groups. For example
Martial Arts shares a metapower. We also designed them to be really
high end and really powerful.

There are over 30 new perks,
and then beyond the new perks we also
designed ways for you to be able to achieve old perks in the new area.
There are a ton of new costume parts and not only an entirely new
costume set, which is a post-apocalyptic costume set, but then there
are just tons of new pieces and textures and body paints that are
unlockable through finishing missions or doing perks.

If I was looking at the overall
scope, it’s hard to say in
terms of overall size since we do a little more instancing than
we’ve done before. But in terms of the size of the city
you’re going through, it’s maybe half the size of
Millennium City. That’s just the overland areas, and then
there’s a lot more instancing that you do which was again in
response to what players wanted to see more of. They’ve
wanted more instanced play and I think that helps in terms of feeling
heroic.

I think that gives you a high
level overview of what you can expect to
find in Revelation.

Ten
Ton Hammer: Could you give our
readers a brief overview of
what’s been going on in Vibora Bay and why heroes are being
called to action there?

Bill
Roper: The overarching theme in
Revelation is that
there’s this massive half human, half angel named Therakiel
who has been drawn to Vibora Bay which is the setting of Revelation. He
ends up using that as his base to then bring about the apocalypse. That
is his goal, to bring about the cataclysmic war between good and evil,
and then out of the ashes of that to command humanity and the world. So
that’s the big, overarching big bad that’s in the
area.

All the different characters
and all the different enemy groups you
find are all either directly spawned out of that or as a result of the
energies that are here, whether they’re working directly for
Therakiel or whether they’re fighting Therakiel. Also the
city of Vibora Bay has some of its own heroes there who
you’ll see, and some of which have come to fight the
apocalypse. It’s actually really fun for us to bring in some
more characters out of the Champions IP that were specifically in this
setting to help set the tone for the new area of the game.

Vibora Bay is a very mystic
setting, so the heroes tend to be a bit
more geared in that direction as opposed to Millennium City which, with
the exception of Witchcraft, is much more technology or skills based.

Ten
Ton Hammer: In the Champions
universe, Vibora Bay definitely has a
few notable themes along those lines such as voodoo or even a martial
arts style that’s unique to that area. Will the new powers
being introduced follow along those types of themes at all, or more so
reflective of the post-apocalyptic setting of Revelation?

Bill
Roper: The new powers are almost
more geared towards a power set
theme. The six new Tier 4 powers have groupings like energy, gadgets,
martial arts, mentalist, bricks and mystic. As an example, the energy
metapower unleashes a storm of elements. So it causes fires to start,
ice to form, and lightning strikes. So that one will be the metapower
for all of the different energy projector power sets in the game. The
idea is that all the metapowers are geared towards that kind of thing.
They’re all built with really big, cool special effects and
do top end damage and that kind of stuff. We really wanted those to
have almost that Final Fantasy feel where you’re bringing in
this big huge badass power.

With everything that happens in
the Revelation storyline,
they’re not tied directly to the apocalypse but they
definitely have that big, over the top feel that overall the
apocalyptic Vibora Bay does.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/81553"> style="width: 400px;" alt="Revelation 2"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/81553">

Ten
Ton Hammer: You also mentioned
that there will be some new costumes
in Revelation. Will some of those be unlocked via playing through
Therakiel’s lair similar to what you did with Nemesis
Confrontation?

Bill
Roper: There’s one
that will just become available with
Revelation, but there are some unlockable costume pieces and I think a
couple of them might be in the lair. But usually we put them at the end
of mission chains or they’ll be attached to perks. But I
think we did put a couple of things in the lair as well.

Ten
Ton Hammer: Could you give us a
brief overview of the lair itself
and what type of challenges players can expect to find there?

Bill
Roper: The lair is actually
Therakiel’s temple which is
kind of the final element you go through. It’s the
culmination of the storyline and is designed not only from a gameplay
mechanic standpoint but also even the storyline, of being a repeatable
lair.

Basically you’re
going into Therakiel’s temple and
trying to prevent him from unleashing this unstoppable apocalypse.
There are some really cool puzzle elements, there are a lot of
sub-bosses, and there’s the huge boss fight with Therakiel
himself. It’s a very big lair to go through that has
cutscenes in it – we really went over and above anything
we’ve been able to pull off with a lair before just because
of the amount of time we’ve put into it. I’m really
hoping that people go through and play this and realize what
we’re able to achieve and I’m expecting that our
top end guys will love going through the five player content, and have
another great reason to be grouping.

Ten
Ton Hammer: Will we be seeing
any new gameplay mechanics or
elements introduced with the expansion?

Bill
Roper: There are a lot of really
different ways that we approach
missions. Every few missions I did when we were going through getting
everything in front to back and started doing more progression
playthroughs, I’d stick my head out of the office and say
“Who made this mission? That mission is
awesome!”  I think that with every area
you’re going to have missions that fall more into the norm of
what you’re expecting in an MMO, but there are some missions
that are just really unique and the things you’re doing are
really interesting. We have some missions where you’re
helping construct things and you see them actually get built up over
time which is pretty cool. We’ve got some missions where
you’re actually doing some investigating, and I think
that’s a really unique step for us to bring in that idea of a
mission not just being where you go and collect things or beating up
guys, but going and actually having to track somebody and find out
information.

So I think that peppered
through Revelation people are going to see
some different things, again in terms of what we can accomplish with
the game, that we’re really anxious to see feedback on in
terms of which ones people like and then use that as a way to progress
moving forward with any new content that we build.

Ten
Ton Hammer: Will Vibora Bay have
any kind of social hub or more
centralized area for players to gather similar to the current zones in
the game?

Bill
Roper: There definitely is.
It’s actually right down by
the docks when you first come into Vibora Bay proper. There is a
dockside area that’s got a riverboat, and there’s
actually a carnival or amusement park type area set up there which is
where the Powerhouse is. There’s a totally different look for
the Powerhouse. We wanted Vibora Bay to have its own unique feel, so
it’s kind of a mix between maybe New Orleans and Florida,
which I know sounds a little weird. But it’s very New Orleans
inspired just in terms of the feel, but then there’s also
some steampunk elements that are thrown in there. It definitely has its
own palette, its own architecture and is very, very distinct. It has
that kind of old school, turn of the century mystic feel to it.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/81554"> style="width: 400px;" alt="Revelation 3"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/81554">

Ten
Ton Hammer: Does Vibora Bay have
a crisis mission for players to go
through before arriving at the full zone similar to what
you’ve done with the previous zones in the game?

Bill
Roper: It definitely starts with
a crisis. I want players to
experience it, so I don’t want to give it away because
it’s got a pretty weird twist to it. But yes, you definitely
start in a crisis situation. We get a lot of great feedback on that,
and we think it’s a great way to introduce an area where we
have you being very heroic and have it so that there feels like a very
real reason that you’ve gone there. And then you’re
helping, hopefully to resolve that major issue.  I think
that’s one of the things that we did that was different in
Champions than a lot of MMOs we’ve played, so we definitely
have maintained that when you enter Vibora.

Ten
Ton Hammer: Is there anything
else you’d like to share
about Revelation with our readers?

Bill
Roper: We’re really
excited for people to check it out.
We spent a long time on it. I think in retrospect we might have been a
little better served putting out more, smaller content updates, but we
really put a lot of firepower on getting Revelation done. So
I’m really excited for people to get in, play it, and have a
major alternate track for players to advance their characters at the
high end. That’s been one thing that our player base has
really been calling out for, is they’ve wanted to have
multiple paths from levels 1 to 40. They want to have that feeling of
there being more than one way to get there, and this is a big step in
that direction.

It’s been a lot of
work, it’s been a big investment
of time and effort on the team to get it done, but I think
it’s something that really gives us a great footing for
hopefully meeting those interests and desires of our players.
That’s pretty much what we’re very focused on right
now, which is continuing to make the game more of what we all want it
to be.

Ten
Ton Hammer: Sounds great. Thanks
for taking the time to talk and I
can’t wait to check out the new content.

Bill
Roper: And thank you!