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City Sprawl
NCSoft's PR Head Mike Crouch on an ever-expanding urban landscape
Mike Crouch, head of PR at NC Soft, sat down with us last week at GDC for an in-depth interview about one of his company's flagship titles and to discuss the industry and the global reach of MMOs.:
LQGaming Services:: Can you outline for us what is in the immediate development plans for City of Heroes / City of Villains?
Mike Crouch: We're launching the Issue 7 expansion and it will have the level 40-50 content that we didn't have at launch. That includes the new headquarter zone for Lord Recluse called Grandville. We also include a new PVP zone called Recluse's Victory - which is really a one of a kind zone because it's a dynamic PVP zone where the environment actually takes on the traits of which side is winning - whether you're a hero or a villain.
Beyond that we're continuing to [develop] new free expansions. What those will be, we can't say yet. We have to get through this expansion first.
LQGaming Services:: The expansions for City of Heroes / City of Villains are free. Why did you choose to go with a free business model compared to the retail expansions such as those published in Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest series?
Mike Crouch: Well it's a proven business model for NCSoft. NCSoft in Korea had this business model and over 4 million subscribers the games in NCSoft Asia so we feel its a pretty good model for City of Heroes / City of Villains.
"Philosophically speaking NCSoft does not believe in doing the usual thing. This was one of our first games launched commercially and successfully in the United States. "
People pay their $15 [a month] subscription and we want to make them feel that they've really gotten something for their dollar by providing large content free expansions. So if you're subscribing you get this free content and if you're not playing we hope [it's a way that] you come back and subscribe again.
LQGaming Services:: A philosophical question for you -- City of Heroes / City of Villains is one of the more contemporary MMROPGs on the market. It's not a traditional fantasy game with elves and trolls. While the game has been successful, do you think it might have been a larger hit had you gone with more traditional themes?
Mike Crouch: Well philosophically speaking NCSoft does not believe in doing the usual thing. This was one of our first games launched commercially and successfully in the United States. It had all those things going against it - a comic book game and an MMO that's subscription based. So it was not an easy sell for anyone.
What we're trying to do at NCSoft is expand the market for the MMO industry by bringing in more people and that means by creating different genres for games. City of Heroes has a comic book theme, as you say no trolls and no dwarves. But we also have those games with trolls and dwarves in Guild Wars for instance and Lineage 2.
In Guild Wars, it's a free subscription so that's different from what's out there. We've got Auto Assault coming out soon, which is going to be totally different too. What we're trying to do is break new ground and bring more people into the market.
For more information, forums and more check out our
City of Heroes Community.
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