Bill Roper, co-founder and former CEO of defunct dev house Flagship Studios, has joined Los Gatos, Calif.-based Cryptic Studios as design director, working on the upcoming MMORPG Champions Online.

The announcement of Roper's hiring comes months after Flagship officially closed its doors after the troubled release of Hellgate: London.

Prior to co-founding Flagship and Ping0, Roper was VP of Blizzard North and director of Blizzard Entertainment, working on franchises including Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo.

Cryptic Studios is the creator of the NCsoft-published City of Heroes MMO franchise, which NCsoft purchased fully in 2007. Aside from the current project Champions Online, published by 2K Games, the studio is working on Star Trek Online.