Hang up the cape

[Menelvir]

For anyone who follows gaming or the industry, and didn't already know - after eight years, City of Heroes (abbrev. CoH), an MMO game which I enjoyed for several faithful years, is closing its doors on Nov. 30.

The publisher and parent company, NCSoft (which recently released Guild Wars 2), is terminating 80 employees at the subsidiary company, Paragon Studios, which formed to take over development and maintenance duties after the original developer, Cryptic Studios (Star Trek Online) parted ways with NCSoft several years ago.

CoH had recently (within the last year or so) gone to an F2P model, but their subscriber base dwindled over time, as did revenues, which can be seen from the NCSoft quarterly revenue sheets for their North American market.

Personally, I think it was a fun game, it certainly had a few innovative concepts at release and over its life, definitely a must-have (or at least a must-try) for any fan of the superheroic genre. But after you played through the number of alts on whom you wanted to try different powersets, the game got stale pretty quick -- few if any changes to maps, enemies, and combat mechanics did not help keep the game fresh. Much of the new content was story-based, so a disinterest in story would likely mean you got bored that much more quickly.

Also, they aggravated portions of their subscribers repeatedly - first hardcore players that resented the implementation of Enhancement Diversification, which weakened powers in order to make way for the invention system, and later also with restrictions imposed on PvP (travel power supression, etc.).

Unrelated to their closing, I just wonder how much longer the MMO model generally, to say nothing of particular strategies like F2P, will persist. Will future generations of gamers even want to play MMOs as we knew MMOs? Or will they prefer instead to play games on their mobile devices/share experiences on social media?

Original EQ is still around, and it's 13 years old, right?

[brinstar]

i don't think MMOs are going anywhere. there are just more options now, so no one game will become mega-huge again like EQ1 or WoW were during their heydays

the game theory is just too strong

[Tikker]

.

[Tossica]

I had fun with it for a week or two. Meh.

[Ganzo]

Champions Online is a much better superhero MMO and is going strong.

[Tossica]

I'm not sure why it's even called "Champions". It's nothing like the RPG.

[Menelvir]

I'm not sure why it's even called "Champions". It's nothing like the RPG.

I think it captures a little of the flavor of the RPG, while at the same time goes in a very different direction in some areas.

The naming conventions and descriptions in some areas are the same (e.g. characteristics, INT, EGO, Recovery, etc.).

The world is very much a Champions world (same heroes, villains, organizations, locations, etc.).

The crafting system is not part of the PnP RPG, but inventions can be a part of the RPG.

The character building mechanic is different, although both RPG and MMO use points to buy powers, enhancers, talents, etc. Both also use Power Frameworks as a design tool, but generally the PnP is far more versatile and open.

The combat mechanics are markedly different, although this is not surprising, since turn-based PnP combat would not translate well to a real-time MMO.