September 2009 saw the release of Champions Online, Dungeons & Dragons: Eberron Unlimited (an older MMO going F2P), Fallen Earth, and Aion. This was easily the busiest month for MMOs in recent memory and we're sure many of you at least picked up one of them to try out. We're curious to know if you're still playing a September MMO just over a month later. If so or if not, why?

No MMO in the history of MMOs has experienced a perfectly smooth launch and these September titles were no exception. Did the action-packed combat of CO pull you in or did the lack of content push you away? Were you awed by DDO-EU's polished suite of tools or annoyed by the limitations put on free accounts? Was Fallen Earth's post-apocalyptic setting a breath of fresh air or did you choke on a mouthful of radioactive bugs? Did the beauty and smoothness of Aion make your heart beat faster or did its grind and bot infestation crush your soul? Just how impressed were you with September's crop of new MMOs?

According to Eurogamer, Cryptic has confirmed that Star Trek Online is set for a February 2nd, 2010 release date in the U.S., and a February 5th, 2010 release in Europe. This comes about a month after Cryptic previously confirmed that STO was set for a first quarter 2010 release.

STO is currently in closed beta, allowing those lucky select fans a chance to the game out. If you previously had purchased the Champions Online lifetime or six month subscription package, you will also be getting a chance to try the game out during the closed beta stage.

We'll be sitting down with the STO development team soon, and are looking to take all the questions you have about the ships of STO; so hurry up and get them in before 12 p.m. PST tomorrow!

[Edit: We contacted Cryptic to confirm Eurogamer's story, and they say that this is not the official release date, but they will be announcing it very soon.]

Bill Roper is the Executive Producer and Design Director for Champions Online, and he sat down with Techulous this week for a talk about how things are going for the game so far and what he sees in its future.

He talked about about the players, their feedback, and what's been happening in Champions Online so far, then Techulous got down to the big question: what's next?

Champions Online has big plans for the next few months, including some new content for all levels of players. He mentioned the two brand new mission chains for levels 18-21, and promised different development paths for new heroes as well as more endgame content for higher level players in the future.

Roper wrapped up the interview with some interesting information on what to watch for in the future: "We have a lot of things in the pipeline, including a new Nemesis-centric lair in November, a Winter Event in December, and something really big in the first part of 2010."

It sounds like Cryptic isn't finished adding to Champions Online by a long shot - you can read the full interview here.

Do you have burning questions for the Star Trek Online development team? We certainly hope so, because over the next several weeks we'll be issuing posts like this looking for your questions on a specific topic concerning the upcoming Trek MMO. This week? Ships! We want all your ship-related inquiries, whether they're about customization or weapon points; Federation of Klingon Empire.

We'll give you until 12pm Pacific time Friday, November 6th to submit your questions in the comments section below. Following that, we'll round up a cross-section of the most popular and most poignant questions and by next week we'll have your answers straight from the folks at Cryptic. We're also open to suggestions on next week's Q&A topic, so feel free to throw your hat into that ring while you're typing 'em up.

Update: We'll be extending the time limit on questions until the end of Friday, November 6th, so keep 'em coming guys!

If you're good with numbers or would like to obtain some understanding of Champions Online's various systems, then this new systems dev blog is right up your alley. There's plenty of math happening here, so when you start to feel confused don't worry so much -- you're not alone.

Actually, the basics of what systems designer Brian Urbanek discusses aren't too convoluted. At least, the part where he explains the percentages of what influences a character's power isn't too bad. As it turns out, equipment makes up for 42.5% of your overall power, while talents take up 15%, "base" is 2.5% and super stats fill the rest at 40%. What that essentially means, is that your leveling choices in super stats and talents (which effect stats as well) make up a large part of where your character excels. This is all shortly followed by equipment, but creates a slightly bigger focus on how you design your superhero.

Soon Brian will be discussing combat, which is sure to be a hot topic within the Champions Online community. Until then, we're going to re-read this first entry in the hope that someday we can grok it.

There's a new Star Trek Online trailer out from Cryptic, originally released through GameSpot. The trailer features some impressive gameplay footage that illustrates nicely a few aspects of STO we've been hearing about for a while.

There's both ground combat and space combat featured, with Klingon, Federation, and Borg ships taking part in the overall action. In one scene we see a fleet of ships attacking a single Borg cube in quite a nice display of firepower, including several (of what appear to be) quantum torpedoes.

One of the more impressive aspects of this gameplay footage that we picked up on right way was the tactical maneuvering of what appears to be a mid-range ship of Romulan design. A captured still of the scene is pictured above, and you can clearly see in the video that the ship is moving to direct hits against its "bottom side" after the port shields were taking a significant beating. Note that the two ships attacking the main ship with green phasers are Klingon Vor'Cha class, so we're assuming the ship demonstrating the tactical moves is of Romulan origin.

We also noticed that the ship pictured above bares some resemblance to the unidentified "classified" ship listed in the Ships of the Line articles at the official STO website. The above ship can be viewed more clearly in the HD trailer, however the unidentified ship on the STO website doesn't have a clear image -- only a blurry reconnaissance image. The warp nacelles both look similar (espeically if you take the image angles into consideration), both have the same general outline, and both have guns protruding from each wing. An interesting coincidence we wanted to point out.

The video after the break.

It's always disquieting when you smack up against a giant boss who is ready to tear your face off and feed it to you at their earliest opportunity. Thankfully for Ranter, who captured this super-sized pair in Champions Online, these weren't bosses but instead other players. We can only be glad for him, as this now means he's got some enormous help for missions - assuming they can get to the mission without destroying everything, anyway. Ranter writes: When they said Champions Online was growing, they weren't kidding! Players have discovered an ability to grow in size...

All MMOs from big to small to ones with big characters are welcome. Just email your screenshots in to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the name of the game, and a quick description. We'll post them here and give you the credit.

We recently mentioned that Star Trek Online fans would get a chance to play through a demo of the game at Eurogamer Expo last week. One of the first reports we've read about the Star Trek Online demo comes from Oli Welsh at Eurogamer who was uniquely positioned to check out the game (it was their Expo after all.) Welsh begins by writing, "Trekkies can put one fear to rest right now: Star Trek Online feels just like Star Trek." Although this might assuage a bit of the apprehension some gamers have about trying yet another Star Trek game, Welsh is up front about the fact that the demo he played through was a contained single player experience. It's too soon to say what gameplay will feel like when hundreds of other players are thrown into the mix.

He writes about the demo's transitions between locations via warp jumps, keyboard navigation of star ships (standard WASD, with additional throttle control), and the pacing of ship combat. Welsh also walks the reader from the bridge of a Federation vessel down to the surface of a planet where Klingon opponents await. Fans of the game should read Eurogamer's hands on with Star Trek Online and may also be interested in the video footage of STO gameplay from Limited Edition, shot at this year's Eurogamer Expo (starting at 02:40. They've also captured gameplay of Global Agenda as well.) We've got a video embed of that for you after the jump.

Romulan and Klingon love anyone? That's what you'll find in our five exclusive Star Trek Online screens, one of which you can see above in all its sleek sexy glory.

If space isn't your thing -- although if that's the case, you may want to reconsider your interest in space MMOs -- Cryptic is showing off this view of a tropical environment that's making us long for warmer weather. Although, we're much more interested in shots that feature the glory of the Klingon Empire. Well, okay maybe that last one wasn't exactly glorious insomuch that nobody was being blown up. Let's just pretend that all the rubble was the remains of a powerful enemy brought to its knees... yeah.

Check out all the new images in the gallery below. You'll find all new images at the end.

With beta now beginning, we shot some relevant questions at Cryptic's Craig Zinkievich, executive producer on Star Trek Online. He gave us his insight on what the team's goals are during beta and what some of their toughest challenges were from their point of view. Plus, we even got him to spill the beans on when Klingons would be entering the fray for beta testers -- hopefully the rest of us get to see and hear more about the warrior race soon thereafter.

It's a short interview, mostly because we kept our questions on topic and well, also because we didn't want to distract Craig from working on his game for very long. Someone's got to work on fulfilling our childhood fantasies!

Yes everyone, it's one of those articles. I promised you guys way back before the launch of Champions Online that I would talk about the C-Store when it finally came out. Well, it finally came out last week, and you guys certainly had a lot to say on the matter.

To many, this is just another bad move on the part of Cryptic. However, according to the general MMO population, every move that Cryptic has made has been a bad move. (Yes Kdolo, Sakura Park, we heard you the last 50 times.) If I took every comment people told me about Champions Online as truth, then I'd think it was a buggy, unplayable mess that's powered by unsympathetic robots who want to do nothing more than suck all of the cash out of your wallet.

Unfortunately for the naysayers, I actually play Champions Online. And, like I did before, I'm going to give my honest opinions on this next move from Cryptic.

It would seem that spandex hasn't gone out of style in the MMO world. Kotaku is reporting that Cryptic Studios told them that one million superheroes have been created in Champions Online to date. That's a lot of different heroic concepts, costumes, and back-stories! What's even more fun when you think about it? That means there are a million nemeses running around in there too. Cryptic has created a veritable cornucopia of comic-book evil.

In a quick survey of the team here at Massively, the average seems to be hovering at 4 characters per Champions Online account. If our completely unscientific average is anywhere near accurate, that would put Champions Online in the neighborhood of approximately 250,000 accounts, which certainly isn't bad for having launched recently. With all the crime still out there on Millennium City streets, though, we hope those heroes will get to work -- there are still a lot more bad guys to beat down!

Sometimes you get a phaser blast to the face, and other times you get 12 new Star Trek Online screenshots courtesy of Cryptic Studios. Guess which one is today? Oh, we left our phasers at home so you'll have to make due with these 12 new screens. Good thing we had those on standby for just this occasion.

Violent threats involving energy weapons capable of vaporizing you in mere seconds aside, these are some substantially great screens. Whether it's some Cardassian love seen here (SFW, it's not literally alien love making) or various gratuitous space shots elsewhere, there's a whole heck of a lot to soak in visually. And with beta now just beginning, we're sure to have plenty more where this came as the weeks slip on by at sub-space speeds.

Blood Moon is out and Cryptic is ensuring everyone knows all about what's being offered in the first free content update / seasonal event in their newest State of the Game address. First and foremost is the news that Cryptic will be keeping their promise of people being able to earn things like retcons and additional characters slots simply by playing the game. You can still buy this for cold hard- er, Cryptic Points, but it's not the only path to acquiring said bonuses.

Also, remember those new costume pieces we told you about? They're real, and really free, too -- along with a handful of other new pieces that came with the update. In addition to the pieces everyone gets from patching, there are new unlocks earned by playing Blood Moon content.