He looks like a giant bear of a man, and sometimes he even acts like one: grumpy, snarly, and intimidating. In reality, he’s more like a teddy bear. A teddy bear dedicated to crime fighting, with incredible strength, and the ability to break you in two if he thinks you deserve it. He is also a great man to have at your side during a fight.

  

We have almost three weeks’ worth of bug fixes to get out to you ASAP, but we want to make sure the fixes are good enough to go Live! Therefore, we’ll be holding playtests this week on the Public Test Server for you to jump in and ensure our fixes are in fact fixed. All participants will receive a “Crash test dummy head” costume piece as a reward for logging in and giving us your feedback on the new build. Here’s the important information:

  

We are pleased to announce Champedia, a central database for all Champions Online in-game data. You can use Champedia to search for Characters, Super Groups, Missions and Powers. Click here to check it out!

This update also includes guild pages with integrated web-based guild management. Guild leaders and officers will find extra options on the guild page that will enable them to update the Message of the Day, add / remove members or promote / demote users.

Please note that Champedia is in beta right now and will only improve with time. Enjoy!

  

Community member Mr. Funsocks is kicking off an awesome scavenger this coming Sunday! Entitled "Where in the World is Carmel Santiago?", the object is to be the first to find Carmel somewhere in the Champions Online world and offer a trade with her. There's a 50N entrance fee, but the prize is much bigger! Check out the forum thread for the official rules, then join the hunt this Sunday. Good luck!

  

Alltern8 had a chance to sit down with Bill Roper to discuss post-launch Champions. You'll find the interview on their site.

Also, a number of game designers (including Bill) were recently asked some questions by 1UP about single-player RPG's. You'll find that article here. Enjoy!

  

The battles have been fierce, but we will have prevailed. Tomorrow morning at 3AM PST, Takofanes will take his growing army and retreat from the battlefield that is Millennium City. Where will he go? What plans does he make for the future? These questions will have to be answered some other time.

Today is your last chance to experience the Halloween content before it goes away for a whole year! After tomorrow, the Celestial power set will become available for everyone who hasn't unlocked it yet, and Zombie Apocalypse will stick around as a permanent new PvP map. In addition, the C-Store prices for Halloween-themed C-Store costume sets be increasing to their standard price at 10AM PST tomorrow. If you've been on the fence about picking them up, do it now while they're cheap!

Remember, today is your last chance to grab any Blood Moon perks and rewards, so make sure you jump in tonight one last time! Thanks for participating in Blood Moon!

  

Ten Ton Hammer's posted the second part of Systems Designer Brian "Balseraph" Urbanek's developer diary on their site today. In it, he discusses the mechanics of combat and how to balance the various systems in the game around it. It's definitely an enlightening read, full of difficult maths and crazy stories of love and loss. Enjoy!