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Champions Online goes free to play next year

by Justin McElroy on Oct 26th 2010 12:40PM

If you've been considering checking out Cryptic's superhero MMO Champions Online, you ... well, you may want to wait. Publisher Atari has just announced that the game will transition to a free-to-play model in the first quarter of next year. The revamped Champions will feature premium content in the form of items, powers, costume pieces and Adventure Packs, though most of the content (as well as a few undisclosed perks) will be available to those who pony up the cash to be "Gold subscribers."

It may seem like a move of desperation, but that's not necessarily the case. Turbine set Dungeons and Dragons Online up with a similar structure last year and watched as revenues increased by a whopping 500 percent, which, as you math majors know, is almost five times better. The free-to-play conversion of Lord of the Rings Online met with similar success.

Tags: atari, champions-online, cryptic-studios, free-to-play, mmo, pc

Reader Comments (20)

I expect the Star Trek mmo to go f2p next year too.

I've played the Champions Online trial so many times but never got beyond LV10. I hated the customization in COH because it felt limited.

Will be playing this more than I did in the previous trials.

I support this move, and it means I'll give the game another chance. I was in the Beta and.. well, I'm told many of the issues I had with the game were eventually fixed, but they weren't fixed on launch day so I ended up taking a pass on this game and forgetting about it.

It's a shame all these MMOs have to become free-to-play just to even begin competing with Wow.

BTW everyone, following me on Twitter (thisredengine). I'm on everyday. Also, vote for me to become a mod at BE.

@thisredengine

I'm not sure I see competition as sad. Besides, a lot of my WoW friends I've turned on the Lord of the Rings Online prefer it.

So yay!

@thisredengine

No I wont follow you, and NO I wont vote for you.

@Faenix

I like you Faenix, I'd like to follow you on Twitter and have you moderate 'some random two letter abbreviation I don't recognize'.

Hmm, I may play this again when it is free to play. I had a pretty good time with it for that first month.

@KillaPat
I had a good time playing it for the first two months, It was much better that CoH in my opinion. Definitely give it another go when it's F2P

When LOTRO went free to play, I introduced my spouse to it. She liked it enough that she actually subscribed... and so did I, because she needs her tank. So, really, I do think this hybrid model has some advantages.

(Lowering the subscription cost to $10 a month didn't hurt, either.)

Good thing I bought it on Steam for $6 recently!..... and haven't installed it 'cause Lord of the Rings Online keeps sucking me in!

I'm SO glad I paid $200 for a lifetime subscription to this! YAY!

:(

It's a good game though, not great, but it's loads better than CoX regardless. I login about once a month, fly around, kick some ass; log back out and forget about it for another month.

What's Doctor Fate doing in Champions Online?
What kind of sorcery is this?

@BlackedOut For trademark reasons, he's actually Mr. Destiny, Ph.D. :)

At least Bill "the cancer" Roper isn't there anymore. Everything he's touched since he left Blizzard has been poop and shut down. I am still bitter over a wasted lifetim sub to hellgate london.

@sammo21
I am more bitter that Mythos had to shut down. At least we have torchlight now, but Mythos was so good.

I will say this when this happens I will definitely give this game a go and get my girl to hop on with me.

Might try it if they had a mac version.

Ehh... best thing Champions did for me was make me want to play CoH again.

I'm surprised that people mourn how a game as unfun to play as Champions Online goes free to play. I had subscribed for it's first three months, in addition to spending almost as long in Beta and the game was a total mess. Bugs and balance issues that dwarfed any of the issues CoH had at release. (and in case you wondered why I played so long if i hated it, I was giving it a solid chance).

City of Heroes is miles better, even without being able to move and attack at the same time (which I might add looks stupid as hell in game, and causes everyone in PvP to constantly be running in a circle).

Oh boy Champions is going from Subscription with Premium micro-transaction double dipping to even more micro-transactions!

Ah well, at least you don't need to shell out cash per month anymore. It's a decent enough game but for a cell shaded engine it had an enormous amount of trouble running on any hardware, core i7's and crossfires be damned.

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