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Bill Roper: I do not believe we have anything like that in right now. I think the challenge of that is we have some areas that could give you really big advantages. Like an entire underwater zone, so for a big chunk of the game we don’t want everybody taking lightning power because ‘oh hey, I get a bonus with electricity down there.’ We might put in some specific places that do that, but right now I don’t think that we have any environments that provide any benefit or detriment based on your power sets. Yea, fire powers would suck underwater, absolutely!

Reuben Waters: Placeman’s been asking: can we occasionally pull a villain from the PnP lore and use it as the arch-nemesis, and would the arch-nemesis be subject to a generic rename due to the IP?

Bill Roper: You’re designing and creating your nemesis. If you had someone that you saw in the Champions paper and pencil game that you actually didn’t see in the game (because we have a lot of them in the world)... you could probably make a guy that looks similar, we more thank likely will IP protect all of those names, so you may not be able to make Black Talon, but you might able to make Obsidian Talon, or something like that.

The thing that we’ve actually seen in the beta is that players are amazingly creative, not only in what they make for their heroes but in what they make for their nemeses as well. So I think for the most part people like making their own cool stuff and ideas has a huge attraction and appeal in the City of... games. You have so many more options and abilities to do that in Champions, we really see players having a great time just going wild and making the coolest stuff they can think of.

Cody Bye: The last question comes from TheWeber, and he asks will there be web aps that tie into Champions Online so that we can view things like Rate My Champion, statistics, accomplishments, leaderboards, social networking type stuff, things like the Armory in World of Warcraft, things like that. How much of that is going to be available with Champions at release?

Bill Roper: I don’t have the complete list at release, but the plans are: a lot. As much as we can get by release, I think we need to do that. Already right now we have ways you can view your hero in the beta. You’ve seen some of that tech get pushed out there publicly. We want to do a lot of things through the web, be able to look at heros, what their powers are, what they have as far as equipment like an Armory type thing,

We want to include social networking abilities through the website, like being able to chat with other people in your guild from the web if you’re at work and can’t fire the game up but you want to talk with your buddies in your supergroup to plan a raid against Dr. Destroyer that night or something. So, we want to make sure we have plenty of stuff on the web to make sure we support community and social aspects and make sure you can show off your hero and things like that.

Jeff Woleslagle: We have a couple European players in the room. Could you talk a little bit about how things are going to work over on the other side of the Atlantic and what kinds of events you have planned?

Victoria Voss, Cryptic Studios Marketing: At this point we’ve just opened up our European boards so we have forums localized in French and German. Please hop on over there and check it out - sign up! And we will be doing a beta for Europe. Plans are to be determined, very hush-hush, and I can’t really share more than that.

Bill Roper: We actually have I think 50 European players in right now that were drawn from different countries from a secret private Euro list that someone put together. So we’ve had play from Europe, we know that it works, and we’re excited to get those players in as we gear up. Victoria Voss:’s right - we don’t know all those plans and those we do know we can’t tell you yet, but Europe we are coming!

Jeff Woleslagle: Very last question - GameStop recently announced that the release date for Champions Online would be 6/2/09. We won’t ask you to commit to any timetables, but are you on track for that kind of release, or do you want to kind of pop our balloon here? (laughter)

Bill Roper: We are currently working with Atari in putting an announcement together for when our release will be. I am sticking to Spring 2009 as Eagleon pointed out, I try to say it just like he or she typed it. One of the challenges we’ve had over the storied course of development of what has become Champions Online is that we’ve worked with a lot of different publishing partners and people. We’re extremely excited to be a large part of the Atari family now, I’ve been working with them very closely to try and get the word out about the game and trying to get stuff coordinated so if people can hopefully bear with us for just another week or two as we finish getting everything together and getting that marketing and PR groove going, we’ll have a lot more succinct details stuff out. Videos we’re working on right now - Lemuria. All those awesome things are coming; we’re really appreciative of our really strong community and fan base that’s been following the game. We’re going to get more stuff for you guys to check out, especially those of you that aren’t in the beta. That will include having a real release date sooner rather than later.

Jeff Woleslagle: Can you tell us if the PC version of the game will be out at the same time as the Xbox 360 version?

Bill Roper: Nope, I can’t tell you that. That’s secret. Neener neener. (laughter)

Jeff Woleslagle: For Victoria Voss, how can players get into the beta?

Victoria Voss: The best way to get into the beta is to apply. So we’ve got on the Champions website - http://www.champions-online.com - we have any an “Apply for Beta” link, it’s real big on the right hand side. Click on it, fill in the form, participate on the forums, and we will pick from that list.

A big thank you to Bill Roper and Victoria Voss of Cryptic Studios and our live audience for some great questions and answers. Be part of our Loading... Live dev chats! See the Vooncast schedule for upcoming shows and times, and be sure to grab the audio files as well.