Cryptic Studios announced in late April that their newest MMO Champions Online would be shipping on July 14th. However, Cryptic has made the concious decision to delay the game until September 1st, but why?

Well, executive producer for the game, Bill Roper, gave the following reason:

Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time

And, according to Joystiq, these features will include things like “more instanced and scripted missions” along with “core powers, travel powers and upgrades”.

Well OK Mr. Roper, let’s just hope you and Cryptic Studios deliver a great game.

Roper, speaking to VideoGamer, stated that he prefers a “grittier” look to the series rather than Blizzard’s current colorful approach.

"You know, I liked the darker, grittier [style]," he said. "It makes complete sense to me where they went because they basically took the Diablo universe and then approached it from the Blizzard Irvine stance for the visuals.”

"That’s the way they approach things. It wasn’t that I looked at it and went, ‘Oh my god that looks terrible.’ I was like, that looks like Blizzard. The guys in Irvine. That’s what it looks like to me. Their interpretation of it."

Many fans of the series have been pissed off at the artistic changes, going so far as to provide Photoshop-altered screenshots showing a darker, grittier Diablo 3. Lead designer Jay Wilson recently joined the debate, going so far as to pointedly respond to the complaints while refusing to make changes.

He will serve as design director on Champions Online, the studio’s new MMO superhero title based on the Champions role-playing game.

Roper had previously founded the ill-fated Flagship Studios, which produced only one notable game – Hellgate: London – which wasn’t well-received by critics and consumers alike.

Champions Online is in development for release next year.

Hellgate

“It’s barely open,” he said. “It’s just open enough to take care of the final affairs, but for all intents and purposes it’s closed down.”

Former Mythos executive producer Travis Baldree added that Flagship is trying to “take care of debts and the employees in an orderly fashion, so Bill Roper and one or two other people have stuck around and are doing their best to get that done.” Schaefer, Baldree and the rest of the Mythos development team have since then reformed to create games under the banner of Runic Games.

The duo added that Flagship’s founders were working hard to prevent closure and that there were “very advanced” negotiations with a couple of people that would have kept the studio running.