Bill Roper, former Blizzard director who was founder and CEO of the now failed development house Flagship Studios, will be moving to Cryptic Studios to become the design director for their upcoming PC and console Superhero MMO Champions Online. This comes on the heels of Flagship closing their doors and laying-off their entire staff in the face of Hellgate: London's less than stellar performance.

Roper said that his first responsibility is to dig deeply into Champions Online. "There's a lot of fantastic stuff here," said Roper, "and we'll focus on figuring out what's working, what needs some polish and rethinking other things." Riding the cape-tails of Cryptic's already successful Superhero MMO City of Heroes, Champions hopes to optimize the controls for a more action-based playstyle more condusive to console and entry level gameplay. We hope there will be a promising future, both for the game and for Roper himself.

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