Friday 28 May 2004

Pic of the day: Isn't that typical? The cute young girl runs off to embrace someone else, while Itland the were-porcupine is left with the silver-haired one. Oh well. It's been a fun month even so.

CoH: The first month

City of Heroes has been out for a month. According to one article, it got 100 000 customers during the first two weeks. That's pretty respectable, although it does not rise to the heights of EverQuest or the possibly largest of them all, the Korean game Lineage. The reviews are fairly good and very cheerful. It is obvious that the reviewers have enjoyed the game immensely, as most people do who try it. They are however not giving it full marks, because the longevity of the game is in doubt. It is much less complex than its medieval-themed competitors: No crafting and indeed no items as such, barely any player economy at all. (You can buy abstract "items" called enhancements that will improve aspects of your power. The currency is called "influence", and normally you will have enough influence to get a more than decent set of enhancements. You can already buy CoH influence on Ebay and on mmorpgmoney.com, but it is not a life-or-death thing in this game.)

(Warning: I assume no responsibility if these online traders rob you blind and steal your identity in the process. I haven't used them myself, and I get the impression that the gaming companies don't like them at all.)

The first major upgrade (or would that be "Captain Upgrade" in this game?) will be rolled out next month. It features lots of high-level content, just in time for the dedicated players who are now beginning to reach the highest level, 40. The level cap will be raised to 50 within half a year or so, but it is unclear to me whether that starts at the first upgrade or not. There will also be more variation in missions (quests), by popular demand. The ability to change your uniform after you have entered the game will be in, but at a cost. It won't be something you do to suit your mood of the day or week, but rather reflect a fundamental change in your character's life.

New content will be added every two months or so. The first external expansion pack will be sold in a year's time, City of Villains. As the name implies, it will allow players to be villains. They will have lairs where they hoard artifacts of power, but these can be raided by competing criminal syndicates or by heroes. The reverse is not the case: Heroes can not be raided by villains, and of course they can not attack one another. (Except possibly in a training room/arena mock fight.) But they can volunteer to fight against player-controlled villains in a fair fight. This will be entirely optional, and the original gameplay concept will remain an option indefinitely. Why anyone would choose to reign in Hell when they can serve in Heaven is quite beyond me, but to each their own!

***

The 11 servers turned out to be just about the right capacity. On weekends there is some load, but not enough to make the game hard to play. There are only two pervasive technical problems. One is that some ATI video cards need to have their drivers upgraded every time ATI releases a new version, as the game incorporates this within a week or two with no regards to backward compatibility. The same does not seem to hold true with nvidia cards, but then again the game is unabashedly optimized for nvidia – you will find a banner to that effect on their homepage.

The main technical problem however is not entirely in the hands of neither Cryptic, NCSoft nor the customers. There are bouts of bad lag and "map server disconnect". These seem to hit users of certain ISPs at the same time, while most players on the same server notice nothing. Which ISP it is may change from day to day, but some are more exposed to this problem than others. We who live in northern Europe are only rarely assailed by this problem. It seems that the servers also use different outbound lines, so starting again on a new server may solve your problem unless you are directly using the ISP with the bottleneck.

The future of the game is still up in the air. Some will probably leave due to the recurring disconnects. Some will get bored of the less complex and more streamlined world compared to the medieval net games. Some will fall in love with another game (or a player of it...). Marvel Comics is supposed to release its own superhero MMOG soon. But new CoH players will probably show up as they incidentally hear about it (the advertising has been very moderate by the standards of the genre) or when ticked off by another game. I think there will remain a market for this game for quite some while. And unless some disaster befalls, they will at least have me. ^_^