Champions Online: Free For All goes live

By Fred Dutton Published 25 January, 2011

Atari wants £10.34 a month for full access.

Atari's Champions Online MMO relaunches as free-to-play today, the publisher has announced.

The basic game is now available free of charge, but you'll have to open your wallets if you want to try out special Adventure Packs or pick up new items, costumes and power-ups from the in-game C-Store.

Existing players can continue subscribing as Gold Members, while newcomers have the option to upgrade to Gold Status for £10.34 a month. That will give you access to "most" of the game's content as well as "extra features", explained Atari.

Developed by Cryptic Studios, the superhero MMO initially launched as a subscription title back in 2009. Eurogamer's Oli Welsh awarded it 6/10, complaining, "It's a mess, frankly. But it is a likeable one."

Champions Online is the latest in a long line of MMOs to jump on the free-to-play bandwagon. EverQuest II, Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online all recently announced they were making the jump, while Cryptic has been hinting that Star Trek Online may soon follow Champions' lead.

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About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Emmit_Assassin #1 1 year ago

    About time as well. Been wanting to sample this for a while.

  • ThePissartist #2 1 year ago

    Might try it, I hate fantasy; so this Is the best of a bad bunch.

  • mingster #3 1 year ago

    F2P @ £10.34 a month. Hmm contradiction much?

  • HisDudness #4 1 year ago

    hehe free for all...

  • Scimarad #5 1 year ago

    Can't go wrong for free. It's worth a go for the character creator if nothing else.

  • Ferral #6 1 year ago

    Pulling it down now but it looks like its using P2P for the download, its pretty slow. Will give it a shot in the morning after the wife drags me out to do the weekly shop. If it aint great going to try EQ2 also. Currently playing Lord of the Rings again so something else to pass the time will be cool.

  • iokthemonkey #7 1 year ago

    EQ2 is hideous - don't even bother, as - like all SOE games - it doesn't have a proper uninstaller and it's a right piss-on to get rid of (and it's shite.)

    CO is fun in small doses - it's ideally-suited for the fremium model, although be warned that the prices Atari are charging for the ''micro'' transactions will leave you stunned. I think it's about 6 quid for an additional TWO character slots. But on the plus-side, you get the entire base game for free and you can level right up to maximum without spending a penny.

    As for the patching, I did it early this morning (US time) and it was done within an hour or so.

  • levitate #8 1 year ago

    Finally I might check in on my old characters from last year. The Adventure Packs are brilliant so it might be worth paying a few quid to get into them.


    @mingster: The £10.34/month is for the VIP access but you don't have to pay anything to play.

  • uknortherner2000 #9 1 year ago

    The servers must be jammed at the moment. I set the downloader to download the game overnight and it's only 50% complete.