NCsoft has big plans for the City of Heroes and Villians franchise and Cryptic studioes wants to persue other projects, so why not sell it to the publisher? That is exactly what developer Cryptic did today.
NCsoft said that they plan on now developing expansions and sequels in house for the game. Are they going to try and compete with the upcoming Marvel MMO? Looks like a strong possibility, they already have a strong loyal community built up.
NCsoft is so dedicated to this project that they will form a new studio in Mountian View, CA and employ as many key members of the City of Heroes development team as they can.
Brian Clayton, Executive Producer and Manager of the new NCsoft studio says that the plans for the game are clear. They plan on making a major reinvestment while including the current team as the core of the development. First on the agenda, making it duel core processor friendly maybe? Lets cross our fingers!
He goes on to say that they will be able to run the game in its current service level without any interruption to players while they expand the studio and deliver more AAA content.
The president and co-founder of Cryptic says that the sale will allow the developers to now go back to making original games and focus on unannounced projects.
I dunno, but I don't like the "now developing expansions" idea. The whole point of CoH was that it was standalone and that the 'issues' meant there were no expansions.
...COV was an "expandalone". It worked by itself, you didn't need it to continue playing the existing game, but if you had both, Good Things happened.
A similar thing would be to add a new playable City to the existing City - where you could be either Hero or Villain, which would be accessible to existing characters.
I would have to agree with Dreamtwister. Haveing a new city that you are able to play in and choose your own destiny would be awsome. And depending on how far your moral bar was to the bad or good, would allow you access to Paragon City or the Rouge Isles. And then depending on the missions, you would be able o float back and forth between the two. As you level up, you will have a penchant for good or evil, and then the game experiance would lead you to your final destination. Also, would be cool to have a "masking" ability that would alolow you to be percieved as good or evil, depending on which city you wanted to enter. It could be a toggle power, and if you run out of endurance, that is the first to go. Then . . . everyone is alerted to your presence . . . two choices . . beat tail back to your own side, or run and hiode till the endurance is high enough to toggle on again. it would take a little work . . .but that would be fun to be able to see how long you could last as eith a hero or villian when everyone is alerted to you.
