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City of Villains and Heroes Combine Monthly Fee
JamesO writes "Massive game players will have lots of options. NCSoft has announced that City of Heroes and City of Villains will only require one fee to play both games." From the article: "We know that many City of Villains players will be existing City of Heroes players who are essentially playing in order to access another aspect of the universe they have grown to love ... We wanted to find a solution that would look after existing players, offer tremendous value for money and also encourage new players to investigate the world of City of Heroes. This is that solution."
But are they intending to port it to new platforms? Nope. NCSoft has definitively said that they're not porting its current games to mac, even though the mac population of Lineage 1 was greater than proportional to (all mac users out of all computer users); Blizzard has gone the other way and actively ports all its titles to mac, and has done hugely well from it. Yes, they would have done hugely well anyway - but out of that 3 million, I bet there's a horde of mac users.
I realise that as the number of major players increases, their individual share would go down - but NCSoft have some good content, and so would be able to draw in a fair market share. Now would be a good time, with the WoW demand finally slowing and people looking around for What's New. Don't let this turn into a mac vs PC thread. You know more players makes a better game, no matter what they're playing from!
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
I may not be a big fan of mmorpgs, but I've seen ncsofts work, I like a lot of it. And now creating new content and 'giving it away' to people who already pay. Its so refreshing compared to the companies that release expansion packs you have to buy for mmorpgs.
You can tell I'm an aries because of my ram.
This is stupid.... Nobody that I can think of off the top of my head has ever charged another subscription for their expansion as well as their old version of the game.
If you actually RTFA, or even the slashdot version, you'll see that it's not. NC are combining the subscription for the two parts into the same one for the same price as the original subscription. The only cost is buying the expansion pack from the store.
What this actually means that if you don't want to play CoH any more and try out CoV instead, your CoH chars are still active for the entire duraction of your CoV play. Your payment scheme doesn't change; you can play both sides at once.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
of course, the only caveat being that this expansion doesn't require the original game in order to play ... really a moot point being that the developers of the game are really marketing this product to the current players. I view this as an expansion on steroids and when its price drops to the sub-thirty dollar level, then I will purchase it. I think we can all agree that selling a "expansion" - whether it be on steroids or not - for $50+ is a nasty precedent and it should not be supported.
Indeed, RTFA, who on earth modded this as Interesting?
NC are doing a great thing for MMO billing here.
"Frag the weak, hurdle the dead, and assassinate those cursed snipers."
... sane, as COV may be a different game, but in reality it's a significant expansion to COH. They interact.
Shadus
The point being that unlike "expansions" a new player can purchase City of Villians and play JUST that side of the game without ever buying City of Heroes. Back when Ruins of Kunark was released, new players still had to buy the original EQ to play...
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
If they are completely seperate games (where you interact on the servers) kudos.
When everquest did this they started charging 150% (I think) rather than the same price. It was kinda crap but also understandable, but here there's two things to realize,
A. The only change is storage space.
b. If the world is always the same for both games and you only log on one game at a time, there's no extra load by doing this.
Overall I'm happy they did this, but it's not going to change anything for me. (The plague in WoW got me into that though so we'll see)
Or perhaps if you read the article or knew something of the games, they are seperate. Its not an actual expansion like their "Issues" they release every few months. New engine, new playability, new game. Mighty white of them not to charge for each of them.
Home of the midwest loser - www.say-10.net
As MMORPGs become more mainstream, and there are more and more games competing for the same players, I think you're going to see the big guys doing more of this. After all, it's kind of a no-brainer if one company charges $20/month for their game, and another charges $20/month for their stable of 10 games.
I'm kind of surprised SOE hasn't gone this route. If they undercut all the competition (I believe right now they charge more than the average monthly fee for a group of games), they could likely force smaller operators out of business. If their business model just counted subscribers (rather than subscribers to a particular game) they could just figure out what they needed to support an individual (server load, lines, etc.) and just skip the rest of the equation. The same servers can support a variety of games. It's just a matter of balancing out the load.
Who wouldn't see this as a better deal?
What this actually means that if you don't want to play CoH any more and try out CoV instead, your CoH chars are still active for the entire duraction of your CoV play. Your payment scheme doesn't change; you can play both sides at once.
The OP is correct. CoV is really just an expansion in every sense (NC Soft have even explicitly referred to it an expansion), other than apparently it doesn't require the original title if you only want to play the CoV elements. I'm sure the two will be bundled for the original RRP or less within 12 months.
It's not 'news' as they were clearly going to do this all along, it's not like your average user would actually be willing to pay for a separate monthly subscription for both. Did you really expect that they would ask for a separate additional monthly fee for CoV?
I've been looking forward to this expansion, and I don't begrudge them the money. I appreciate they are a relatively small developer, and it's a solid and well built title to which CoV will add some much needed value. Beyond the initial fun of creating and being your own super-hero, while is awesomely done, CoH is underneath is pretty dull in single player (depending on how much you like being a super-hero, if your really keen and play with a bunch of RL friends all the time I'm sure it's a lot more entertaining).
However, it's not like other RPG's like WoW or EQ2 charge extra to allow people to play 'evil' Horde or Freeport citizens. Though EQ2 does have the cheek to charge people to PvP via the expansion, the monthly cost of course remains the same. The main reason why I'm not playing EQ2 any more as it's not even a very good implementation of PvP and more a sort of throwaway implimentation. Though I really like the game itself and think EQ2 is a solid title that is great for grouping (more so that WoW), there are not that many players on the Europe servers there is no PvP server as there was with the original EQ.
Once it's been out a bit (so I can see what people think of it) I'll probably get it and try out CoV, hopefully there will be some new contested zones and battling won't be restricted to some lame arena areas.
PS: WoW RPPVP servers rock! Maximum PvP taste, Minimum jerk content!
I don't see him as claiming he thinks that, necessarily. That NC-Soft seemed to be toying with considering it a separate game rather than just a giant expansion pack, is what is "stupid".
If anything, payment consolidation seems to be the wave of the future, with the giants slowly emerging: Sony, which now has EQ, EQ2, Star Wars: Galaxies, and now Matrix Online, all on one monthly fee, and NC-Soft, which is CoH, CoV, and partnered with Lineage and Lineage II (tho I don't know if you can get a general account to cover both City and Lineage). WoW is a newcomer that is hugely successful (tho why I don't know) but is still just one title, we'll see in a few years if this spawns any successful remakes or brothers.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It is a separate game. You don't need CoH in order to play CoV. Calling it an expansion would imply that in order to even think about purchasing and playing CoV, you must first purchase CoH.
I have a CoH account that I haven't played in a very long time, probably since WoW came out. I don't have it installed anymore, and I probably won't play it again.
For me, and my friends that have never played CoH, getting CoV isn't really an expansion. If it's a full stand-alone game, why aren't they entitled to charge the full $50 for it?
I think they could give a discount to existing CoH players, but if buying CoV activates my old CoH account, that's a pretty good deal, IMO.
/sig
so you can't get a raid party of villians gathered up and have a huge super-battle against a bunch of hero characters ala Horde vs Alliance?
that's lame, what's the point of the game then?
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
CoV is not an expansion. It is a stand alone game with an equal amount of content that can be played without owning CoH. It is more like a sequel than an expansion.
Lots of games do the expansion-on-steroids-as-standalone approach. It's better to think of them as a new game with backwards compatibility.
Look at UT2k4. The game was basically a massive content upgrade for UT2k3 - same game, same models, but new modes, new maps, and the game added vehicles. Nobody complained about UT2k4 being an expensive standalone because it was an e-freain'-normous game.
Imho, the best approach is to offer a small rebate for people who already own the old title... but that's only if the new game is a superset of the old. Since I don't think CoV players have full acces to CoH content and vice versa, they might have a good trick there to get people to pay full price for both, but still want one only if the feel like it.
Just got my email from Cryptic stating those facts for the American release too, no price increase. Awesome company.
Home of the midwest loser - www.say-10.net
The are separate games in the sense that if you're only interested in playing a villain, you don't have to purchase CoH as well.
CoV has all new ATs (character classes), mostly new powersets, all new art, storyline, setting, and mission types. In addition, it introduces real PvP into the game. Also, once CoV is launched the code for crafting will be integrated into CoH. Though, the developers have said that the final touches to the crafting system are 3-6 months off - so I'm not holding my breath.
Cryptic/NCsoft has always said the fee for playing both would little to nothing extra, but that you'd have to buy the second boxset. Guess they learned something from Guild Wars.
Anyways, I've been an avid fan since 18 months before the release of City of Heroes and I've been playing close attention ever since. CoV is not just an expansion - it's a second game that upgrades the original if you it to.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Yes, you can fight hero vs villain. They have an arena and a frontier area where heroes and villains can fight. Check out:
s .html?sid=6133023&page=1
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/cityofvillains/new
"Of course, Bloody Bay has a secondary hospital area (the area in which fallen characters are revived) that's reserved for superheroes, because City of Villains will let players that own each game square off against one another in hero-versus-villain battles, which can be entered into for bragging rights (for now, anyway). Interestingly, the Bay also contains its own built-in monsters to fight, as well as missions to undertake, such as one that requires you to capture samples from scattered meteorites (while evading radioactive ghouls at the same time). However, in this mission, you'll be vulnerable to attack from ghouls and from other players, too."
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
I'm not an MMORPG player, but would someone explain to me what alternatives NCSoft had? Everyone's made it pretty clear that noone has time to play two MMOs simultaneously. So CoH players would have stopped playing CoH to play CoV? That would either cut into CoV sales, or limit the CoH population, neither of which is good for NCSoft.
I see how this is a good thing for those people who want to play both games, but given that they both take place in the same universe, this seems like a no-brainer decision to me. Announcing it like it's a brilliant new idea seems more like a marketing ploy to get attention for their games than anything else.
VFX is more influential than you think.
NCSoft didn't make the game, they distribute the little boxes. Give credit where credit is due. (Cryptic Software)
[i]o you can't get a raid party of villians gathered up and have a huge super-battle against a bunch of hero characters ala Horde vs Alliance? that's lame, what's the point of the game then?[/i] The point is not having to be forced to do PvP
if you can't get a raid party of villians gathered up and have a huge super-battle against a bunch of hero characters ala Horde vs Alliance? that's lame, what's the point of the game then?
Actually, you can. You can build bases, and do base raids. You just have to agree to it. Or you can get your team together and go into the no-man's land, which is going to be a hot zone full of untimely death I bet.
I like the way they are doing it because not only do you have the option of doing PvP, but you don't have to go to a seperate server for it. By having different zones all on the same server, you can do what you want, when you want it.
Got Apathy?
Actually, I'm pretty sure Ruins of Kunark contained the entire game, because this is what I purchased when I started playing.
This isn't current news, this isn't really even news at all.