With the new patch launched today Cryptic added Vivox-powered voice chat to Champions Online. Players will now be able to talk to other members of their SuperGroup or of the group they're superheroing with without the support of external programs like Teamspeak or Ventrilo.

The addition of voice chat also comes with the introduction of voice advertisement. Silver players that enable the voice chat option will receive audible commercial messages every fifteen minutes of play time and while displaying loading screens. Luckily the potentially annoying "feature" will be disabled at least while in combat. Gold members (that pay a monthly fee to play the game) will not hear any commercial message.

In addition to the implementation of voice chat and ads the new patch introduces Issue 5 of the well received Aftershock quest line, a new method of patching that downloads some files during loading screens instead of doing that before launching the game, a whole slew of adjustments to the absolutely lovely costume system (that's still one of my favourite features of the game) and the new Force archetype, for those that don't want to wait for Knights of the Old Republic to play a Jedi.

The inclusion of Champions Online to the Steam free to play program brought a whole lot of new players to the game and Cryptic is definitely trying to step up it's game in order to keep them on board. Despite the inclusion of voice ads, it may be a good time to try and be a superhero, if you still didn't.