Update: a "new age" for City of Heroes franchise

The CoX news just keeps on coming. As we previously reported, NCsoft has acquired the full rights to the City of Heroes franchise from developer Cryptic Studios, and in addition, will be opening up a new studio named (dubbed NCsoft NorCal) to continue development of the game. We've been sifting through the deluge of press releases, developer responses, and forum posts on the topics, and we've found some bits and pieces. According to board rep Ex Libris, the entire CoX team has signed on with NCsoft, with the exception of Jack "Statesman" Emmert, the former Creative Director, and will be continuing their three issue per year schedule at the new NorCal studio.

As a special thank you to players, NCsoft has given all players with retail City of Heroes accounts a full Good versus Evil upgrade, effective immediately; and free of charge. So if for some reason you haven't jumped on the City of Villains funwagon yet, the decision has been made for you! In addition, sometime after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive a bonus 20,000 prestige for each member of their SG, up to a total of 3 million prestige. And finally, the devs will be instituting a debt wipe sometime in the near future - so if you want to rack up some debt gathering those badges, now would be the time to do it.

This appears like part of a larger push by NCsoft to expand the CoX playerbase in anticipation of MUO's eventual arrival. Spirits are high though on the CoX boards, as most people expect that the developers can finally devote the time and attention to the game that it needs moving forward, where in the past Cryptic's focus at the executive level on their new properties was seen to be hampering development. Under NCsoft's full stewardship, that problem seems to be resolved. A "new age" indeed...