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.

Online multiplayer for the action-RPG will continue to be free as a “further gesture of support”, noted the publisher, who saved the game’s servers back in July after the collapse of Flagship.

Flagship Studios was composed of mostly Blizzard veterans who had worked on the Diablo series. Thus, Hellgate: London was billed as a “spiritual successor to Diablo”, though it failed to live up to expectations.

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.

According to their press release, the team “intends to continue to use their expertise in the action-RPG MMO genre to create the best games in the market.” While no games were mentioned, more details are expected soon.

The Runic Games team features numerous industry veterans, including Travis Baldree, the creator of Fate and project director for Mythos, and Max Schaefer, co-founder of Blizzard North and Mythos executive producer.