City of Heroes Purchased By NCsoft

Rock, Paper, Shotgun comments on the big news from late last night: NCsoft has announced that it has purchased City of Heroes/Villains from Cryptic Studios, the Massive game's original developer. Everyone on the team has been offered a new position with the newly formed NCsoft NorCal studio, and many of them have accepted. As far as the players are concerned, NCsoft only intends for them to see freebies as a result of this deal: "Now back to you, the players. You are the lifeblood of our game. In celebration of our new studio and our exciting plans, and in order to thank you for the fantastic community that you have built, we are pleased to announce the following: All players with City of Heroes retail accounts will now have access to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail accounts will now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now. Just log in to check it out! After the launch of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time this Fall, we are removing Debt from all characters and giving you a fresh start ... Also after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive an additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member."

Comments

Re:No Free Lunch

[Bud Dickman]

"Forgiving debts, giving away points, etc not so much. Smart players will exploit this and just run up debts."

Why would these "smart players" purposefully let themselves be defeated over and over again? What benefit do you see in running up debt? Please answer - I'm curious as to whether you will admit you didn't know what you were talking about regarding this game or if you'll make up some rationalization. I CAN'T WAIT!