Later this year, Champions Online will become the latest MMO to further saturate the market.  While World of Warcraft still holds a huge chunk of the online gaming market share, there's no shortage of persistent worlds out there for you to ignore your friends and family in.  But with so many choices comes a hefty monthly bill for those of us who'd like to play more than one subscription-based game.  Free-to-play, microtransaction-supported MMOs like the massively successful Free Realms seemed to be the wave of the future.  But Champions Online isn't interested in the future.

Start budgeting those pennies, because flying, running, or swinging around in your ridiculous costume is going to cost money.  The standard monthly subscription fee will be about $15.  But a six month subscription will only cost $59.99 up front.  That's a 33% savings!  Plus, you'll receive access to exclusive "art deco" costumes and the Star Trek Online closed beta later this year.  So, you'll be able to preview something that will likely add another $15 to your monthly bill.

High rollers might want to pay for a lifetime subscription in one fell swoop.  That runs for $199.99 and gives you all the benefits of the six month subscription, plus exclusive "retro future" costumes, eight additional character slots, an in-game action figure(!), and an exclusive Mirror Universe outfit for Star Trek Online, should you choose to fork over the cash for that one as well.

Here's hoping a better pricing plan can be worked out for the promised Xbox 360 version of Champions Online.  It's easy for me to avoid the costs of PC MMOs when I'm operating on a machine that's just a little better than a Tandy 386, but I would love to run around in tights on the old 360 without paying much more on top of the cost of Xbox Live.

Source: Cryptic