The Business of Paragon City 31
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. "
Re:Plain old MMO (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't say I an MMO person. I never felt even a moment's interest in Everquest or DAoC. But I played CoH for my introductory month and I found it on the whole to be a lot of fun. The settings might be repetitive but I've had great fun pursuing the various story arcs and discovering the hows and whys of Paragon City.
Now I have a high-level character (I'll ding 45 this weekend), and to be honest I haven't really noticed the "grinding" aspect. I've mostly had a very good time with the people I play with (very small asshole factor) and I'm finally to the point of learning the "big picture" of the game; interdimensional wars among incarnations of the Prussian Prince of Automatons (by the way, I LOVE the conception of Nemesis... he has a great classic villain feel), Rikti suborning peaceful Hydra-men for war against Earth, the origins of the Freakshow and Devouring Earth, all these things have unfolded from reading the mission notes and paying attention to villain comments while I adventured.
In City of Heroes I really feel like I'm unique. I've met other people with roughly my combination of powers, but in playing I really DO feel powerful and heroic. It's a small thing that someone comes up to thank you when you defeat a villain on the streets of Peregrine Island, but I have to say it's a damn sight more than I remember getting in all those Fantasy games I played growing up. Because everything is instanced, I really am the person who gets to end the menace of Dr. Vahzilok... no two-day-long camps for the ultra rare Dr. Vahz spawn! And when my missions and contacts send me out of zones populated by Vahzilok's minions, I come away with the sense that, yes, I really DID stop the zombies from destroying the city. Even now, months after I did it, if I happen to click on a citizen wandering through town, she might remind me: "I heard that Angry-Frenchman gave Dr. Vahzilok the thrashing of a lifetime!".
I know it's all artificial, but it's a lot closer than I might ever have hoped to a fully-realized super hero world. I'm more than happy to take part in it.