City Of Heroes Talk Reveals Plans, Subscription Success

Thanks to MMORPGDot for a report on the recent City Of Heroes MMO seminar at the Origins gaming convention in Ohio. The piece, arriving just after a useful overview-styled review, also on MMORPGDot, includes comments from lead designer Jack Emmert on the game's success (he was "surprised about the popularity of the game. He sees the popularity as a result of the accessibility of the game design and not necessarily the genre of the game"), and subscription numbers ("They're almost at 200,000 players. There will be an announcement when they make it"), as well as general info on the City Of Villains expansion: "Bases will play a big role for both Heroes and Villains. Supergroups will be able to fortify secret lairs with many cool and interesting toys. These include automated defenses and NPC assistants. Villains and Heroes will have henchmen, and these goons will be fully customizable. PvP will have a lot to do with bases and base invasions (think keep sieges). Groups and individuals that don't want to engage in PvP will never have to."

Comments

Re:Very well done

[Dachannien]

2- they install patches on Tuesdays.. rather than on Friday and hose it for the weekend.

Notice how those contrast with EQ...

EQ usually patches late late on Tuesday nights.

Re:Plans should include d/l'able trial version

[mZam]

I'd have to agree with you there.. Shadowbane now does the same thing, and they got a ton of new subscribers.. as well as returning old players, by offering them a month to come try out some of the new features added. I played COH on a friend's account, and all i could think about was for 50$, and a monthly fee, what exactly am i getting besides a really cool character creation menu? I've also played the WoW beta, and I can proudly say that its more polished, fun, beautiful and exciting then ANY MMO out there right now.. and Mind you, I've played nearly all of them.. EQ/SB/UO/DAOC/SWG/COH/MO/and a bunch of other ones too... Just my 2cp.

Re:CoH gets old fast.

[slaker]

One thing to point out, is that an NcSoft MMO subscription is good for both CoH and Lineage 2. I'm not interested in any other MMO, but the fact that you're given a choice of games for your $15 might well be part of the reason for the slightly higher pricing.

WRT to getting old, if you play straight through for many hours at a time, you're going to see things over and over. For a slightly more casual player, who doesn't do the same mission three times in one night because your two friends have the same contact you do, I'd say there's more than enough going on to keep the game fresh. People talk about hunting like it's the only way to play the game, the rewards for missions are small, etc. But for someone who plays an hour or so a night, those missions are bite-sized chunks of CoH with a defined end-point and a goal other than levelling which IMO is just want someone who plays casually would want.

People talk about grinding like that's all there is to do. I don't think that's true. I spend my non-group time (my toon isn't solo-friendly) making life a little easier for newbies - healing them, showing them around, teleporting them out of the Perez Park maze and teaching group tactics. None of those things is part of the "official" game, but all of them are really quite enjoyable.