Champions Online turns F2P this month
What's stopping you?
Champions Online - the other superhero MMO that didn't launch yesterday - will turn free-to-play worldwide on 25th January, Cryptic Studios has announced.
From that day onwards, anyone can download the game, create a character and develop them from zero to superhero for nothing, nadda, zilch.
You incur costs when/if you decide to buy Adventure Packs, extra items, new powers or fancy costumes from the a la carte, in-game C Store. You can even subscribe as a Gold member of the game for $14.99 a month - a fee that unlocks most of the game's content and provides some special bonuses.
There are FAQs galore about the F2P relaunch on the Champions Online website.
Champions Online arrived with a disappointing flourish of its let-down cape in September 2009. And Cryptic will openly admit things could have been better. The point is, they now are - Champions Online today is very different. Too much too late? That's what this F2P switch hopes to answer because, as it stands, there's nothing stopping anyone now trying out the game.
If the gamble pays off, Cryptic will probably make Star Trek Online a free-to-play game. There are still discussions to be had there, Cryptic boss Jack Emmert explained to Eurogamer - but that's more or less the plan.