It's tough to launch a MMO these days. After all, World of Warcraft, Blizzard's project, has now more than 11 million subscribers and the second expansion for the game, Wrath of the Lich King, which has just been released, has the potential to draw even more players. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and The Lord of the Rings Online are the two MMOs currently competing for the second spot, while Hellgate London has gone out of business and Tabula Rasa, launched by NCsoft, is having some trouble.

Bill Roper, one of the veterans of Flagship, who is now working with Cryptic, says that he intends to use the lessons learned from Hellgate in order to make sure that Champions Online, the MMO which he is working on, remains in gamers’ minds for a long period of time. He reveals that “I'm looking forward not only to bringing what I've learned from the numerous successes I've worked on to Cryptic and Champions Online, but also what I learned from the failures”.

Champions Online is a superhero powered MMO that will allow the player an unprecedented level of customization of the character he will use in the game. Not only the way the superhero appears will be entirely under the player’s control but there will be myriads of options related to how the hero will use his superpowers and how he will interact with others in the game world.

Roper believes that players need to connect with their characters in order to make sure they stay in the game longer. He says that “I'm particularly interested in coming up with some ideas on how to make the game experience really last; things that players will want to do both with heroes they've built up over time as well as with new characters they're creating”.

Champions Online will be available for the PC and for the Xbox 360 in 2009.