Champions Online open beta dated, preorder bonuses detailed

Does no one check for articles about the Micro-Transactions before they post. The Cryptic bucks are usable for any games Cryptic puts out (Champions, Star Trek, etc.) and can be used to apply to a monthly subscription, purchase real retail items (hats, shirt, etc.)

For in-game purchases, they are for cosmetic additions:
> Costume pieces
> Character animations
> Vanity pets
> Equipable items

Cryptic Studios has said most of these can be earned in-game through normal casual play. There will be no advantage to MT spending customers.

I think you're onto something.

Honestly? I'm very extremely surprised they're even allowing an open beta before the game launches.

Hrm, it is sort of weird they are not showing it off at comicon. The truth is, most of the people talking about Champions say that the gameplay is not fun. Creating characters is a blast, playing them is dull.

But then, City of Heroes is pretty dull too... so I dunno...

Strange? Before WoW came along it was standard practice.

The game's original release date was for July 14th, it only got pushed back last month. They're probably not at comiccon because they were expecting it to be out by now.

"However, no open beta yet, an offer to be in open beta for the price of pre-ordering the game, no game demo presence at San Diego comicon..."

There is no open beta yet, because the game was set to be out mid-July and when the game got pushed back to the start of September they decided to add in a bunch of stuff that was going to be put off til the first big Issue update or whatever they are gonna call them. They don't want to put out something that may not reflect the retail release. BTW the push back release date is due to the heavy negotiations with MS on the X-Box version.

"no subscription price announcement yet, a hybrid pricing model drama..."

There is no article interviews about this, but I can make an educated guess that it has to do with the fact the X-Box pricing has not been nailed down and Cryptic wants to release all the pricing info together so it makes sense and people can make an informed decision on which format to get the game. As for the hybrid model that is not entirely correct. It is a standard sub-based model, the micro-transactions are purely cosmetic, see my post above.

"Is it me or Cryptic seem to be not very confident in their game to show it even now, I am not sure why, but this entire closed lipped policy stinks of fail."

I doubt any lack of confidence, simply from how excited us beta testers (like myself), staff and devs are about this game. In all honesty, I have never had as much fun in an MMO as I have had with this game. For reference, I have played EQ1, CoX, AoC, Eve, Anarchy Online and WoW. I still play EQ2.

They are shooting for 100,000 subscribers. They aren't trying to be the next WoW or even Warhammer. I am pretty confident they should get near 100,000 pretty quickly provided they keep new updates coming along like they did with CoH.

source on 100,000 comment: http://championsonlinedailynews.com/nemesis-online-on-the-table/

They are being very realistic -- which is also why they need some MTs. As has been stated with Free Realms -- if just 1% takes part in the MTs they can get a lot more money. So they will charge the sub with the hopes of 100,000 users (not a lot compared to others) and then if 1% of the base buys a MT here and there -- they will make enough cash to keep the game up and running and provide updates.

I can see them with 100k subs, they might even get around 150k, I think their problem is going to be keeping their subs 3-4 months post launch. A lot of people have been comparing this game to WAR in that it's fun the first month you play it, but it loses all of it's shine really really quickly.

Hopefully that isn't true, because if they're only expecting over 100k, they can't afford to have a mass exodus like WAR had losing 65% of it's subs in 4 months.