There's a lot going on in the world of Champions Online. Halloween may be over, but you still have plenty of time to participate in the costume contest for a chance to win a closed beta key and a unique forum title. The contest ends at 11:59 p.m. PDT on Friday, Nov. 7.

The categories in the contest are scariest, funniest, most original, best superhero, best supervillain and best overall. Read the official rules before submitting a picture of your costume in this thread.

Also, the Champions team has introduced the monstrous Grond, a new mutated villain who must be taken down in the U.S. Army's recently initiated "Project Greenskin." Read Grond's profile here or below, and listen to this podcast for an interview with the monster himself.

Cryptic Studios has announced that the closed beta for Champions Online will begin in mid-November. To register, all you have to do is fill out an application, which can be found here.

The closed beta is available for PC users only, so you're out of luck for now if you were wondering how the game will play on your Xbox 360.

Much like Cryptic's highly aticipated Star Trek Online MMORPG, Champions boasts complete character customization. From the press release : "Gamers create their hero’s name, back story, costume, powers and abilities as well as design their own personal nemesis and his or her back story."

While you wait to see if you made it into the closed beta, check out the pen-and-paper Champions RPG. The sixth edition, set to release in 2009, will help you transfer your online characters and scenarios to your game table.

Cryptic Studios has posted a new "Ask Cryptic " article today with a focus on fighting styles and animations, power advantages, and missions.

Perhaps the most exciting news from the question-and-answer session is that the developers are "trying to make you feel like your character is part of a larger world" during the missions.

When you go into the Stronghold super-villain prison you'll have a team of SPARC guards waiting on you to show up so they can head in with your hero to take on the rioting prisoners and mind-controlled guards inside.

They also confirmed that most powers will allow players to move while attacking, which will make these epic missions even more energetic, just like a page out of a comic book. These powers can also by modified by the application of Advantages to further customize your character.

The full Q&A can be found here or below.

Cryptic has posted a "Meet the Team" interview with Daniel Stahl, a producer for Champions Online. In addition to acting as GM during Alpha play tests, he helps keep track of the big picture for the game, which will tentatively be launched in Spring 2009.

The interview focuses mainly on Stahl's interests, but he does briefly mention how the game will perform on the XBox 360 with a controller rather than a keyboard. "I remember many hallway conversations with co-workers at Xbox wondering how would the controller work and would it be fun to play on one? Now that I've see the game in action and played it with the controller, I'm stoked! I can't wait for all the console players out there to experience a new type of gameplay on their big HDTVs," he said.

The full interview is located on the Champions Online Web site , and it is also posted below.

Champions Online has again posted a new edition of their Meet the Team series, in which the players get to learn a bit about a member of the team that helps bring their favorite game to life. This episode interviews John Hopler, one of the lead content designers of Champions Online.

Q: What do you do on Champions Online?
A: I'm the content implementation lead for the Champions Online content team. Zeke (Sparkes) and John Layman come up with the who, what and where of our content; I concentrate more on the HOW. My time is split between implementing cool new mission content and events, answering implementation questions and talking with our programmers and producers about any new technology or tool features the team needs for the areas we are working on.

Want to know more about him? Click here to read the whole interview .