According to the game's official website, Champions Online has been delayed until September, falling from its July 14th release date. The game's Design Director and Executive Producer, Bill Roper, gives the following explanation:

“It is critically important for an MMO to be as good as it possibly can be at launch. Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time. So that's what we're going to give it. Cryptic has a proven track record of releasing solid games and we want to maintain that with Champions Online.”

After playing the game's beta for a few weeks I can say that this is, in actuality, fantastic news. While the mechanics are mostly in place and the game is, on the whole, fun, it's very unfinished. Certain aspects are simply not implemented well, and while the tutorial does an admirable job of teaching players how to fight and complete quests there's nothing in place to teach other aspects of the game. It feels like the beginning aspects are finished (such as the character creation, which is incredibly robust and even more in-depth than City of Heroes'), while the deeper mechanics will benefit greatly from the delay.

It's only going to be in the oven for about two more months, so this shouldn't be the end of the world, and there are still other games to play this summer. That said, if Jumpgate Evolution doesn't see a summer release expect to find my feet dangling above a broken stool by August.