Nothing Cryptic About It, NCSoft Owns City of Heroes
News
Posted November 7th, 2007 at 10:32am
by Kit Pierce
In a move that should surprise nobody, NCSoft announced that they have purchased full rights and ownership to the City of Heroes property from Cryptic Studios, the original developer of the City of Heroes/Villains game. it only makes sense. City of Heroes has a loyal following, a large fan base, and is one of the few mainstream (read: populated) MMOs out there that actually offers a considerably different experience world than World of Warcraft.
Not to mention that Cryptic has been playing kissy-face with Marvel and Microsoft Game Studios to create the oft announced, never released Marvel Universe Online. If you check out the Cryptic website, they have a FAQ about the transition. They’re pursuing other things, sad to let it go, classic divorce sort of stuff. What it boils down to is that Cryptic is packing it in and taking the lessons they learned from CoH with them. Whether they manage to produce a compelling game with Marvel’s IP remains to be seen, but Cryptic is definitely the studio for the job, and it was a genius stroke from Marvel to tap them for it.
On the other hand, it’s just not good business for NCSoft to let City of Heroes die. CoH is out now, not some TBA 2008 nonsense. It has a decent following right now. Over the years it’s become an expansive and well-developed story line. And as long as they throw the players some new content every now and then and keep the servers running, having a stable MMO is like printing your own money. Those subscriptions don’t pay themselves, after all.
To this end, NCSoft is opening up a new Northern California studio with the sole mission of continuing development on City of Heroes. More power to ‘em. I wish them all the best.
City of Heroes was the first MMO I was ever really in to, and remains among the few that I would consider playing again, if I were inclined to hop off the digital crack wagon back into the wooly and wild world of MMOs. But Marvel is riding high these days. Their movies are not sucking for the most part, and there are going to be plenty of people who want to throw themselves into the Marvel Universe with all its various realities and timelines. About the only thing that could impact the initial success of Marvel Universe Online is if they never ship.
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November 7th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
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