It looks like Thursday is going to be a busy day for Cryptic. The Star Trek Online dev chat is scheduled to be held at 11:30 a.m. PDT, followed by the Champions Online dev chat a few hours later at 4 p.m. If you're a fan of both games, get ready to load up your IRC clients and ask some questions.

The Star Trek Online chat is going to focus on player progression and ship tiers. You can submit questions on either of those topics in those threads on the official forums. The Champions Online chat will focus on Hero Games, so head on over to this thread if you have any questions to ask.

To participate in either chat, simply join #STO or #championsonline by using Coldfront's Java chat client or connect to irc.coldfront.net with your own IRC client.

The new Celestial power set will be introduced in Champions Online when the Blood Moon Halloween event kicks off on Oct. 27, and the creator of the set has written a developer's dairy entry to provide some details on the powers.

According to Vurt, "Celestial is primarily a healing and support power set. Until now Champions suffered from a distinct lack of variety and potency in its healing powers and the primary goal of this set was to resolve that." The set features powers that affect friends and enemies differently, as well as powers that are more potent when used together.

For more information on the Celestial set, check out the powers that have been released so far and read the full dev diary after the jump.

Champions Online has officially been out for a full month, so Cryptic has decided to look back at the past month while also giving players a glimpse at what's to come. It looks like the Blood Moon Halloween event will begin on Oct. 27. The holiday update will introduce the Celestial Powerset to the game, and two new powers were recently added to the list: Rebuke and Imbue.

As far as the letter to the community is concerned, it addresses the infamous Launch Day Patch that angered many players, but reminds them that the team now has the ability to grant free Retcons when necessary. It also mentions the changes that were made to the game's economy and the new missions that were added to Monster Island to fill in content gaps.

Looking ahead, players can expect some mission tracking updates to be added to Champions Online over the next couple weeks. More missions will be implemented throughout the month and a new room will be added to the Power House that will let you test out your powers against actual enemies. The full letter can be found after the jump.

The upcoming Blood Moon Halloween event will introduce the Celestial powerset to Champions Online, and Cryptic recently released the first power of the set as a preview of things to come. Radiance is an energy builder that "fires bolts of dimensional energy at your target, healing your friends and destroying your foes." More powers will be added to the list as as the release of the set gets closer.

Speaking of Blood Moon, which is scheduled to launch sometime this month, Cryptic has posted an article that sheds light on the lore surrounding the event. Thirteen heroes who died during Battle of Detroit are back as zombies to serve Takeofanes, the Turakian Lord of the Undying. Players will need to take on Vanguard, Fadion, Eclipse, Firefight, Tiger, Nimbus, Vigil, Johnny Hercules, Amazing Grace, Crusher, Flechette, Shadowboxer and the Goblin during the event. More details can be found after the jump.

About 450 players showed up for yesterday's Champions Online developer's chat, and Cryptic has already posted a transcript in the new interactive archive. The new archive is quite useful and allows you to skip directly to the answers of various members of the Cryptic team. It's certainly a step up from posting transcripts in the official forums.

The developers answered 32 questions during the hour-long chat, and they cover topics ranging from power sets to character slots. You can read the full transcript after the jump.

If you've been on the fence about whether you'd like to purchase Champions Online, you may be interested to know the game is a "Deal of the Day" on Amazon. For today only, you can buy the superhero MMO for 40% off, which means you'll save $20.01. That brings the total down to $29.98!

You really can't beat that kind of discount. If you take advantage of the sale, let us know. In case you were curious, the game currently has a three-star rating on Amazon based on 23 reviews. You can also read WaxPaper's review right here on ZAM.

In the course of evolution that MMORPGs have gone through, a number of significant features have been implemented and have proven to be so popular that they became inextricably tied to the MMO genre. Of course, these features don't need to be in an MMO in order for it to be a success, but the popularity of the feature itself can be tempting to copy or develop upon. Take, for example, when Mythic introduced "Realm versus Realm" combat in Dark Age of Camelot, and then followed up on this with more RvR goodness in Warhammer Online. Now we see games like EVE Online, Final Fantasy XI, Ragnarok Online, Planetside and even World of Warcraft employing various forms of RvR, where pre-set player factions fight against each other for territorial supremacy.

These days, however, RvR doesn't appear to be the great feature that's sweeping the MMO development world - it seems as though customization is where our latest games are heading. For example, EVE Online is all about customization, Final Fantasy XI has merit points, where players can choose three or four bonuses they want from a pool of ten choices and World of Warcraft's introduction of gems and runes allow players the opportunity to further customize their characters' abilities and capitalize upon their strengths and weaknesses. During this year in particular, character customization was ramped up even more with the launch of Champions Online and Aion, which feature two different 'styles' of customization; CO with its absolutely mind-boggling full character customization and freestyle power choices, and Aion with its incredibly deep aesthetic character creation system. On paper, it would seem that full range customization options like these are fantastic ways to let users feel 'unique' with their character, but is it all sunshine and happiness?

Cryptic implemented a patch today in Champions Online that includes the major economic changes that Executive Producer Bill Roper outlined in a letter to the community last week. Resources gained from missions and defeating critters has significantly increased, the sale value of items has changed, drop rates have been adjusted for various classes of enemies, and Retconning is "much, much more affordable."

Speaking of Retcons, all players will get a free Retcon on Wednesday morning due to the amount of power changes in the patch. The free Retcons don't stack, so make sure you use any others you have before tomorrow morning. You can read the full patch notes here.

Also, the next Champions Online developer's chat will be held on Sept. 24 at 4:30 p.m. PDT. All the information you need to participate in the IRC chat can be found here. (UPDATE: The chat's been moved to 2 p.m.)

Executive Producer Bill Roper has written a letter to the Champions Online community outlining a new in-game economy model that may make it onto the Public Test Shard this weekend. Roper wrote the letter to explain that retcon costs haven't been reduced because the team was in the process of analyzing the overall economy of the game and didn't want retcon prices to drop and then shoot back up, which would have angered players.

As for the changes, Roper said the team is "increasing the number of white upgrade drops in the world by a substantial amount – close to double of what you're seeing now. We're also flattening out the curve on resources gained for selling upgrades to stores, meaning that you'll get a lot more for white primaries, a little less at the highest end (blues and purples)." They're also increasing the amount of resources you get for defeating enemies and for completing missions.

As for retcons, the "pricing curve is going to be much gentler so that players can undo more decisions at any time. It’s important to note that although we’re tuning the overall costing model of retcon during this phase, a substantial retcon will still have a high price." Players will be getting a free retcon when these economy changes go live. Roper's full letter can be found after the jump.

Champions Online Executive Director Bill Roper has published a new State of the Game address that covers numerous topics, from new repeatable mission chains on Monster Island to new additions to the teaming system. Graphics performance should be better overall for players and a big mail fix should be hitting the live servers soon. The team is looking into how to make powers black and white and will adding information on the upcoming Celestial power set to the official site in the near future.

Roper also addressed the issue of balance in the game, which has been a touchy subject for players. "Our top concerns are what are concerning you as players. We're working as fast as we can to address issues, work on the overall balance of the game, and be as responsive to possible," Roper said. You can read his full letter below.