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Role Playing (Games)

The Business of Paragon City 31

Posted by Zonk from the i-hate-circle-of-thorns dept.
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. "
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The Business of Paragon City More

The Business of Paragon City

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  • 30,000? (Score:5, Funny)

    by chris_mahan ( 256577 ) <chris.mahan@gmail.com> on Thursday October 07, 2004 @02:10PM (#10461883) Homepage
    >At peak hours 30,000 automated villains roam each of ten versions of the city

    That's nuthin.

    At peak hours 500,000 slashdotters roam the only version of the slashdot city.

  • 30000 Villans!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by glowimperial ( 705397 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @02:17PM (#10461959)
    No wonder Paragon City needs so many heroes. Property values there must be terrible, with crime levels like that. I bet the homeowner's organisations are pissed as hell and not taking it anymore.

  • Execellent!!! (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Romeozulu ( 248240 )
    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.

    If I ever need meaningless techno-babble for my next sci-fi novel, I can use this!

  • Plain old MMO (Score:2, Insightful)

    by l1nuxpunk ( 738263 )
    City of Heroes is really fun, but it's nothing special. It's just an MMO.

    I played it for a while, a few months back; and once the initial thrill of being a superhero (ie- I get to use fire beams!) wears off (ie- Why am I in tights?), it's just a boring MMO. If you can prove that treadmilling is some how better when you're a superhero, feel free to enlighten me.

    • Re:Plain old MMO (Score:5, Informative)

      by NiceGeek ( 126629 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @02:33PM (#10462192)
      If you've got a good team of people to play with it really changes things. Last night I had the best time ever in the game with a group of folks I'd never met before. Had so much fun we're going to form a Supergroup.

    • Re:Plain old MMO (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kannibal_klown ( 531544 ) on Thursday October 07, 2004 @03:27PM (#10462810)
      Yeh.

      I actually stoppled playing after 2 months. It was just "arrest bad guys, lvl up, buy enhancements, arrest bad guys, lvl up, etc." It grew tiring quickly, plus my character sucked. It looked like adult Trunks from Dragon Ball GT and had poor powers.

      But then release 2 came out, so I figured I'd try one more month. After all, what's $15 USD. Anyway, I started a new character, and before long I had a cape (ooooh, cape).

      However, I'm currently going to continue my subscription, not so much because of the level grind, but because I've hooked up with a friendly super group. It's kind of like a "clan" in FPS game. You're part of the group, and you guys go off and do missions together when you're online (if you feel like it).

      Now, while it might sound lame, consider this. My biggest pet-peeve about online games is the sheer number of jerks out there: be it FPS games, MMORPG games, or RTS games. Normally you have inconsiderate b@stards or complete idiots ruining your day. But now, I I'm pretty much gauranteed to be able to play with a set of people that:
      a) are not jerks
      b) are decent players
      c) are willing to lend a hand if I'm in a tight spot or give advice.
      d) did I mention they're not jerks

      This alone makes the game a lot more fun and bearable.

      I'll probably stop playing again in a few weeks; but for now I'm having some fun.

    • Re:Plain old MMO (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rhys ( 96510 )
      You're playing to level. No kidding it's going to be boring, that's likely playing FFT to get all your crew to level 99. (Or worse as friend's I've known, use degenerator traps to level up as a high gain class, level down as a low gain, lather, rinse, repeat.)

      Go out to do missions. Go to get badges. Go do task forces. Read the clues you get in story arcs. Find a roleplaying supergroup and actually role-play rather than blast the enemy to smithereens. Teach newbies the ropes.

      One of the other great things a
      • I agree.. Plain old MMO, just a different setting.

        I played the game for .. about 3 months when it first came out.. was in a SG with my friends, did nothing BUT Missions to level up (except the times when I RAN OUT of missions and had to "gring" to level and get more missions).

        It is a good game, but it's definately NOT worth $15/mo. If it had City of Villians already built in (as it should have), then I could see paying $15/Mo. Like Star Wars Galaxies without STARS = NOT WORTH $15/Mo. CoH had a shortage

    • Re:Plain old MMO (Score:3, Interesting)

      by slaker ( 53818 )
      I can't prove it, all opinion being subjective, after all, but I've wanted to have a decent super-hero game for a long, long time. I bought "Freedom Force" and "Superhero League of Hoboken" to support the genre, and that's originally why I bought CoH.

      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

  • 10o000o00o0000o000o000 (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That many combination of clothes, and my wife will still have nothing to wear :)

    Darn lameness filter.
    • A common lament. In fact, judging from the female heroes' outfits it seems that the cloth company ran out of material after delivering the male hero clothing.

      Seriously, there are tons of female heroes who have designed their costumes to reveal as much as possible. Forum threads on the topic suggests most of those are played by guys, though.
  • Four teraflops? I thought the Earth Simulator was capable of 35-45 Gigaflops. http://www.top500.org/list/2004/06/ [top500.org]
  • No thanks... I have a life already. Now if you could be one of the 30,000 villians, that might change it.

    • Just you wait (Score:3, Informative)

      by MacroRex ( 548024 )
      So you want something like this [cityofvillains.com]? It's been announced etc. already, just no ETA yet.

      Should take care of the n+1 punks whining at the lack of PvP. Also, should make the PvE side cleaner, as I've noticed that many of the inconsiderate and immature people I've met in the game seem to be waiting for CoV. It doesn't interest me much as my playstyle is very casual, but it'll be nice to get rid of the most obnoxious individuals who only make the game worse for the others.

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