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CoH will be Pay to Play, and not playable offline, and no single-player version will be available. MMORPG’s are very unlike most network-play games in a number of ways. Blizzard, for example, provides a group of servers free of charge for people to connect too and play on. However, most of Blizzard’s games send a great deal of their traffic peer-to-peer (between player’s computers) instead of to-and-from the server, so their network bandwidth requirements are quite low. Additionally, Blizzard provides no additional content on their network servers. You buy the game and you play the game online, but the game does not change from day to day. MMORPG’s, on the other hand, are server centric, which means all traffic is to-and-from the server, with the clients not speaking to each other at all, which makes for significant bandwidth requirements. They also add content regularly, making the game grow and change as you play it, which means the content development staff needs to be paid. Most people play network games for a few months before growing bored and buying the next new game, but people play MMORPG’s for years. Lastly, because MMORPG’s are central places for 10,000’s of people to meet, it requires in-game supervisors, or Game Masters, to keep things going and deal with discipline problems, and these people need to be paid too. In short, MMORPG’s have a great deal more cost involved to them on an ongoing basis than your “fire and forget” network games that the developer releases then starts working on the next product to sell. Cryptic is the developer of the game, and NCSoft is the publisher. This means that the actual writing of the game will be handled by Cryptic, but running, supporting servers, and customer support will all be provided by NCSoft. CoH is set in the Modern Age of Comics, based in the 21st century. Not Silver Age, not Golden Age, but Platinum Age. The target genre is the 80’s and 90’s Marvel and DC titles but set in the modern day. Some real life current events will manifest themselves in Paragon, some will not. However, tools will be available for players to create characters from many genres of comics, including Manga, Silver Age, Golden Age, or even the darker modern comics. City of Heroes is currently targeted for an "early" 2003 release. Provided by MacAllen |
