The Business of Paragon City

Forbes Magazine is running an interesting article discussing the business side of the MMOG City of Heroes. It has some interesting background on the backer and some surprisingly detailed technical info about the game. "In the 18 months before the Heroes debut, Cryptic's staff of 35 made the art and story come alive in 480,000 lines of code. The code is separated into 740 computer instruction files that handle everything from dressing up a character in an almost infinite selection of outfits (a total 10 to the 27th power, in fact) to flying through the city, as well as 25,000 graphics files. At peak hours 30,000 automated villains roam each of ten versions of the city. "

Comments

Plain old MMO

[l1nuxpunk]

City of Heroes is really fun, but it's nothing special. It's just an MMO.

I played it for a while, a few months back; and once the initial thrill of being a superhero (ie- I get to use fire beams!) wears off (ie- Why am I in tights?), it's just a boring MMO. If you can prove that treadmilling is some how better when you're a superhero, feel free to enlighten me.

Re:Plain old MMO

[kannibal_klown]

Yeh.

I actually stoppled playing after 2 months. It was just "arrest bad guys, lvl up, buy enhancements, arrest bad guys, lvl up, etc." It grew tiring quickly, plus my character sucked. It looked like adult Trunks from Dragon Ball GT and had poor powers.

But then release 2 came out, so I figured I'd try one more month. After all, what's $15 USD. Anyway, I started a new character, and before long I had a cape (ooooh, cape).

However, I'm currently going to continue my subscription, not so much because of the level grind, but because I've hooked up with a friendly super group. It's kind of like a "clan" in FPS game. You're part of the group, and you guys go off and do missions together when you're online (if you feel like it).

Now, while it might sound lame, consider this. My biggest pet-peeve about online games is the sheer number of jerks out there: be it FPS games, MMORPG games, or RTS games. Normally you have inconsiderate b@stards or complete idiots ruining your day. But now, I I'm pretty much gauranteed to be able to play with a set of people that:
a) are not jerks
b) are decent players
c) are willing to lend a hand if I'm in a tight spot or give advice.
d) did I mention they're not jerks

This alone makes the game a lot more fun and bearable.

I'll probably stop playing again in a few weeks; but for now I'm having some fun.

Re:Plain old MMO

[Rhys]

You're playing to level. No kidding it's going to be boring, that's likely playing FFT to get all your crew to level 99. (Or worse as friend's I've known, use degenerator traps to level up as a high gain class, level down as a low gain, lather, rinse, repeat.)

Go out to do missions. Go to get badges. Go do task forces. Read the clues you get in story arcs. Find a roleplaying supergroup and actually role-play rather than blast the enemy to smithereens. Teach newbies the ropes.

One of the other great things about paragon city is even if you've quit and are now returning 6 months later, your equipment hasn't been outdated by the new stuff most other games use to keep people on the treadmill. There was a level cap boost providing a small additional treadmill, but if you're doing missions and such I doubt you'll notice the levels going by -- heck, last mission set I had I intentionally got a whole level of debt to retard my progress -- I was levelling TOO FAST to see the content (20-25 range).

That can be annoying itself, but hey at least I di dn't have to street sweep!