City of Heroes/Villains Interview

RPG Vault brings us up to speed on the current status of City of Heroes and City of Villains by posting an interview with lead designer Matt Miller.

Jonric: How did the recent complete merger of the hero and villain portions come about? Were there any considerations against taking this step?

Matt Miller: We’ve wanted to do this for a while now, especially after NCsoft acquired the full rights to the property. At that point, we enabled all existing accounts with the other side as a gift. From there, the next logical step was making sure that everyone who purchases the game also gets everything.

Of course, one consideration against merging them was the value that people had put into the separate products they had purchased. We made sure that enough time had elapsed since they were both being sold at $49.99 to ensure that players who paid that much had gotten their money’s worth.

Jonric: To what extent were the two titles already the same, and what are the main things those who only played one are likely to notice?

Matt Miller: There was a lot that the games had shared, except some things were added in City of Villains, like PvP zones and supergroup bases. A lot of CoH players bought it specifically for the latter, so they could work with their friend for a kick-ass one, even if they had no intention of ever rolling up a villain.

Heroes players will find that the gameplay of Villains is a little bit more streamlined… we learned a lot when making it. In addition, the archetypes on the latter side can play very differently than their good counterparts since we had all the experience with City of Heroes to draw upon while designing them.