CBR: "City of Heroes" Soon to be Free-to-Play

[CBR News]

NCSoft has announced plans to convert its popular comic book-style MMORPG "City of Heroes" from a pay to a free-to-play model in late 2011.


Full article here.

[Byzantine]

Looks a lot like the "free" model for Champions Online, which basically has one ask, "why bother?", because the free play isn't fun, it's entirely restrictive, and completely pointless. If you're going to play, you might as well keep paying and continue business as normal.

[StoneGold]

Looks a lot like the "free" model for Champions Online, which basically has one ask, "why bother?", because the free play isn't fun, it's entirely restrictive, and completely pointless. If you're going to play, you might as well keep paying and continue business as normal.

My guess, because subscriptions are down, and it's a way to try and pump more monetization into the game.

For that matter, there are a tone of other freemium models to follow. Although that said, never got into the game.

[Jake Challenger]

Looks a lot like the "free" model for Champions Online, which basically has one ask, "why bother?", because the free play isn't fun, it's entirely restrictive, and completely pointless. If you're going to play, you might as well keep paying and continue business as normal.

For no cost you get access to two character slots. You have eight archetypes to choose from. You can take your two characters to the game's max level.

I pay to play City of Heroes and I think this is a pretty good deal. I will keep paying my subscription, but this is a great way for someone to play for free.

[The Black Guardian]

I know that she is made of smoke
But I've lost my way
She knows that I am broke
So that I must play...
Temptation, temptation, temptation

[Cyke]

Looks a lot like the "free" model for Champions Online, which basically has one ask, "why bother?", because the free play isn't fun, it's entirely restrictive, and completely pointless. If you're going to play, you might as well keep paying and continue business as normal.

As someone who's played both, I can honestly tell you that COH is the superior product. The morality choice model goes a long way towards the roleplaying aspect of the game, and I suppose due to its age, the game definitely has a lot more variety of powers than Champions Online. The devs also took a cue from WoW and vastly increased their endgame content, so now there's a whole bunch of veterans returning to their old characters for a nice mix of new and old players.

[Wjowski]

It seems most MMOs want it both ways nowadays.

[116ekg]

Everything about free-to-play CoH sounds amazing (I used to play a few years ago)...except for the fact that free players do not have access to the whisper or broadcast chat channels. Good luck getting on a solid team if you can't use the broadcast channel...

[Alex]

As someone who's played both, I can honestly tell you that COH is the superior product. The morality choice model goes a long way towards the roleplaying aspect of the game, and I suppose due to its age, the game definitely has a lot more variety of powers than Champions Online. The devs also took a cue from WoW and vastly increased their endgame content, so now there's a whole bunch of veterans returning to their old characters for a nice mix of new and old players.

The funny thing about that is, Cryptic made CoH, sold it, then they made Champions.
That company is ass though, CoH has been out long enough that they had time to move away from it, but everything else that company has done is just copy and paste quests, beyond generic stuff.

[Cyke]

The funny thing about that is, Cryptic made CoH, sold it, then they made Champions.
That company is ass though, CoH has been out long enough that they had time to move away from it, but everything else that company has done is just copy and paste quests, beyond generic stuff.

Right-o, I think COH just recently spent more time under NCSoft than they did under Cryptic -- that is, Cryptic gave COH about 10 issues, but now NCSoft is about to release its 11th issue (aka Issue 21, the free-to-play changeover).

[Alex]

Right-o, I think COH just recently spent more time under NCSoft than they did under Cryptic -- that is, Cryptic gave COH about 10 issues, but now NCSoft is about to release its 11th issue (aka Issue 21, the free-to-play changeover).

And oddly, NCSoft put that big push into Aion, which is an utterly terrible mmo in almost every aspect.
Lag during the big fights, with 1/10th the population, is worse then it was in DAOC a decade ago.
That and it seriously follows the Everquest model of mmo design, yknow, the model that died ages ago.