2nd Anniversary Address
28 Apr, 2006
Statesman and Positron look to the future of City of Heroes and City of Villains.
As City of Heroes celebrates it second anniversary since the original US launch, Cryptic Studios’ Creative Director Jack ‘Statesman’ Emmert and Lead Designer Matt ‘Positron’ Miller consider what lies ahead for the dedicated heroes and scheming villains of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles…
Hello “City of” Players,
Amazing! Today we are celebrating the 2nd anniversary of City of Heroes. I want to thank you, our players, for your support and enthusiasm over the last two years. We look forward to growing our community for years to come.
I mentioned earlier that Matt Miller, Positron, has been promoted to the role of Lead Designer. He’s been with us for several years now and brings a lot of new ideas to the table. If you’ve got a question, let him know! Send a PM, post it – because Positron is more than willing to hear what the fans say. And Positron has his own vision for the game that he’d like to share…So, without further ado – take it away, Matt!
Jack Emmert
Statesman
To the “City of” Community,
I’d like to start off by saying that I’m very excited for the opportunity to continue leading the heroes and villains of the “City of” franchise into the future. One of the best things about MMOs is the ability to continue to develop and improve them, adding new content and features to the games we love; and one of the most important parts of that is the feedback from you, the players. Everyone here at Cryptic values your comments, both the positive and the constructive. Please continue to share your opinions with us, and we can act on them as we build our future updates.Speaking of just that, we have the results from the world-wide poll we did recently, which are strongly influencing the flavor of the storyline throughout the next year and beyond. Your opinions do matter, and we want to make the “City of” games something you continue to enjoy. We were looking for a direction for the story, and we wanted it to be something that the players themselves would find the most interesting.
With Issue 7 mostly “in the can” as it were (bugs aside), the leads here have been focusing on the future of the franchise. There is a major effort underway on “end-game” content for max-level characters, the first part of which you will see in Issue 8, which is due out later this year.
Issue 8 will also bring with it the Veterans’ Reward system. This will allow us to give out special thank-you gifts to our players based on the number of months they have been subscribed. These gifts will range from costume pieces to powers to base items and beyond. You don’t even have to do anything to get them, other than keeping an active account.
Beyond that, we are looking to release another Issue building up the story towards our next retail box, due in 2007. This will include going back and revamping some of the zones from City of Heroes, using everything we’ve learned from making City of Villains and Issue 7, plus a bunch of other cool stuff including new powersets and an epic archetype. Of course for the retail box we will be creating all-new zones and content based on the results of the forum poll we posted last month. The retail box will be an expansion to both City of Heroes and City of Villains.
I look forward to the challenges that lie ahead. I love this game, and I couldn’t ask for a better community of players to interact with. I am proud to take this franchise we all hold so dear into the future.
Matthew Miller
Positron
0Posted by The Eneral on 17 May at 13:51