A couple of contrasting stories for you today, in hero and villain flavors. Cryptic’s MMO, Champions Online is now live, available on store shelves in North America and ready to go. Notorious patent troll, Tim Langdell, has stepped down from his fairly ironic position on the board at IGDA. But don’t worry, he provides plenty of laughable insanity in the letter explaining his departure.

Check it all out, after the jump.

What’s that, on the shelf? WoW, EQ 2, CoH? No, it’s Champions Online!

Cryptic’s new spandex clad, arm flexing, laser shooting MMO, Champions Online has officially launched as of today. If you’re over in Europe you’re going to have to keep your cape on until Sept 4^th, when it’ll be hitting your fancy European shelves. From my time with the beta, the game is definitely worth a shot if you aren’t helm deep into any other MMO, as it felt a wee bit lacking in the depth department. But, if you’ve always wanted to see what all the not showering was about, this is a perfect way to get into it.

The base game is going to run you $49.99, which can be had from just about anywhere at this point, and you will be looking at dropping around $15 a month after you use up that first 30 days that come with the game. In addition to the box price, and monthly fee, there are also micro-transactions in the game. Although anything purchased through micro-transactions can be obtained through normal play, it just adds the option to save you some time.

Check out the official site right here.

Tim Langdell Detonates Ego Bomb, Flees Premises

One of the most colossal wastes of space in the gaming industry has finally stepped down from his position at the IGDA, possibly taking up the role of villains in upcoming films. Tim Langdell, a patent troll and former board member of the IGDA has a long standing history of proudly defending the use of the word “Edge” in relation to PC Games. Most recently and popularly, a dispute with MobiGame over their iPhone game, Edge, the dispute is actually still continuing in that particular case. At any rate, due to a massive amount of outrage bubbling up from the membership of the IGDA for them allowing such a destructive force in the industry a seat on the board, he claims he has stepped down.

“My great fear, then, is that this vocal minority — most of whom are not IGDA members — will continue their negative attacks on the IGDA beyond October 3, refusing to accept the outcome of my remaining on the board. It seems nearly certain they will continue to generate even more negative press for the IGDA for weeks or even months to come and persist in causing substantial drain on IGDA board volunteer and staff resources and time, which is not in the interests of either the IGDA or its membership. Especially not at this time when all key IGDA resources should be focused on the Leadership Forum, not on dealing with this issue.”

Clearly visible in this small fragment of his self serving letter explaining his most noble departure from the IGDA is the inability to process reality in any capacity. Now that he has stepped down (or been run out) from the IGDA, the only thing that needs to happen is for him to lose the ability to hold a patent on such a common term as “Edge”.

If you haven’t hit your quota for sociopathic rambling for the week, check out the letter in its entirety right here.

       

Tags: ALT+F4, Champions Online, Cryptic, Patent Troll, Tim Langdell

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 9:55 pm and is filed under News, PC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.