It is a sad day for wannabe superheroes everywhere because Atari and Cryptic Studios has announced on their official website that their online superhero MMORPG Champions Online will not be making an appearance at this year�s E3 and its release date has been pushed back from July 14 to September 1.

Via Gamespot Cryptic Studios updated their website to let their fans know the sad news. As a result of the delay, however, the developers have explained that the beta testing phase of Champions Online has been extended to fine tune and optimize the game before its release.

"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," said executive producer Bill Roper. "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."

Launches for MMORPGs have historically been turbulent and rife with glitches and errors that even the most extensive beta testing fails to iron out before launch. Even the current MMORPG behemoth, World of Warcraft, is infamous for having an incredibly rocky start. Gamers would often face unexpected lag, bugged quests, periodic disconnects, and on more than one occasion, their server crashing for days at a time. It was so bad that the hit webcomic Penny-Arcade went so far as to rescind their Game of the Year award they had previously given World of Warcraft in 2004.