Champions Online Forum Tidbits

Another collection of forum questions are answered in format on the official Champions Online website.
Were any of the "locations" that the player will be experiencing brought out of the Champions RPG world, or were all of the "zones" created from scratch? How and why did you approach making these different "locations" in game, to ensure that not only would they be eye candy for the player, but what interactions will players have on the zones or the zones on players? (I.E.-if it rains, will electricity based heroes have more or less effect, or will flame or fire based players have more or less effect in a cold environment?) (Apostle)

Continuum (Lead Content Designer): We've pulled all of our locations from the Champions IP where possible. Most of the areas in the game will be easily recognizable by longtime Champions players. Sometimes we've had to move things around a bit to make them work well in an MMOG environment real world layouts and distances don't always translate to fun in games or so we get as many cool IP characters and locations as possible in our Zones. When heading to the cold of the Canadian wilderness, players should be prepared to face everything from Hunter Patriots tangling with the Steelhead Division to Tilingkoot and his demonic minions.

We've also tried to provide players with a collection of settings with distinct looks and feels. Fortunately it's a large and rich IP, so it wasn't too hard for us to find really interesting environments to play in. Even in the few areas that aren't specific to the IP we have used the Champions factions and organizations to create new stories that bring the locations straight into the world players have come to love.

One of the goals in selecting the locations of Champions Online was to create areas that were both visually distinct and had varied gameplay. Things like hazards, random events and triggered events change from map to map and players will have a different experience on each of them. We are including things like volcanic explosions and icy whirlwinds to keep things interesting.