PAX Prime 2014: Marvel Heroes is the industry's surprise success story
Meeting with Marvel Heroes' David Brevik at PAX Prime confirmed what I have been observing over the past year or so: This game has quietly and steadily become one of the bigger success stories in the online gaming industry. Brevik told me that the Marvel Heroes playerbase continues to grow, boasting four times as many players as it had nine months ago.
What did Brevik attribute to the game's meteoric rise? The promotions and sheer mountain of new content that the team's been adding certainly helped, but he said that it really came down to terrific community relations. Brevik streams the game four nights a week and talks to the community members as though they were part of his family.
The Marvel Heroes team has been hard at work with weekly patches and events, having recently added one of the industry's first action-RPG 10-man raids. Guardians of the Galaxy's popularity over the summer gave the game a big boost as well. Marvel works closely with Gazillion to give the studio a heads-up on upcoming movies and TV shows. In fact, later this year Marvel Heroes will be featuring a tie-in with a new Marvel comic event called Axis, a first-ever for the game.
Also coming for Marvel Heroes is Rogue, a superheroine who can steal over a hundred permanent powers from foes and then mix-and-match them to make her own build. Will this be the most overpowered character in the game? Will she become the most popular character on the roster? Brevik isn't sweating the first question and wouldn't doubt the second, but he says for him it's the thrill of doing something unexpected and different to keep the game from going stale.
With achievements, new team-ups, a zoo-themed side story, and even more caped crusaders on the way, Marvel Heroes is determined to keep the pressure up for quality content delivery.
Massively's on the ground in Seattle during the weekend of August 29th to September 1st, bringing you all the best news from PAX Prime 2014. Whether you're dying to know more about Warlords of Draenor, The Elder Scrolls Online, Landmark, or any MMO in between, you can bet we'll have it covered!
