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The Business of Paragon City

Posted by Zonk on from the i-hate-circle-of-thorns dept.

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. "

2 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. 30000 Villans!? by glowimperial · · Score: 5, Funny

    No wonder Paragon City needs so many heroes. Property values there must be terrible, with crime levels like that. I bet the homeowner's organisations are pissed as hell and not taking it anymore.

  2. Re:Plain old MMO by kannibal_klown · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.