Big Changes to City Of Heros.

 

I received this e-mail today regard the MMORPG City of Heroes:

 

To all current and former City of Heroes players,   

Today we announced the acquisition of City of Heroes from Cryptic Studios™ and the formation of our new Northern California studio which we are informally calling NCsoft® NorCal (click here to read the press release). Nearly the entire City of Heroes team from Cryptic Studios has joined the NCsoft team and together we have formed the core of our new studio. The City of Heroes franchise has been a tremendous success for both NCsoft and Cryptic. More than three years after the City of Heroes launch, our community is strong and thriving. There are so many great ideas and plans, both from our development team and from the players, and we can’t wait to make them a reality. Our team is 100% dedicated to City of Heroes and we are extremely excited about the present and the future!

Click here to read the Dev Corner chat with General Manager Brian Clayton and learn more details.

 

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.

Full Access to City of Heroes and City of Villains®

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!

 

Debt Wipe

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. Actual date will be announced shortly. Have fun in the mean time.

 

20,000 Prestige

Also after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive an additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member, meaning SGs could acquire up to 3 million Prestige based upon their Supergroup membership roster! Actual date will be announced shortly.

In the near future we will begin to share more information about our development plans. With this major reinvestment and effort ahead of us, we will take City of Heroes to new heights!

Sincerely,

The City of Heroes Team

 

 

Several interesting changes that someone who hasn’t played in a while wouldn’t understand but the most interesting of these is that owners of City of Heroes or City of Villains exclusively will now have access to both games. So if you went out and dropped the extra 30 on City of Villains you should be happy about wasting your money. For those of you cheap, smart, and fiscally conservative (hah) types who didn’t buy the game because you either expected this to happen, or just had too much of a life to care about getting both games, its your day for you now have FREE access to both worlds.

  Now what this radical change to game says about the state of its success is quite obvious. Things must be grim. Personally this sounds like a last ditch effort to revitalize the series, much like we say Star Wars Galaxies do a couple of years ago ( and we all know how that turned out.)

 So its a great day for the casual CoH gamer, but its a clear sign of impending failure for the series. But who knows, maybe a radical change late in the game will actually work (it won’t).

 

– Jacob