Additional notes on the NCsoft Q&A

Earlier this week we gave you a glimpse of what went on during NCsoft's City of Heroes/City of Villains Meet & Greet held in Milpitas California on November 30th. Before going into detail about the event, however, we'd like to make one correction to our earlier article. When we said that "some in the audience seemed unhappy that all their enhancements and abilities would be viewable by their PvP opponents," we made it sound as though all of your build information would always be visible on the City Vault, and this is not the case. As noted back on the 20th of November, "you will have the option of hiding your Statistics, Powers, Badges, and Friends list from inclusion on the public web page." You'll have to live with knowing your character's name, image, level, server, archetype, and origin are searchable via the Vault, but -- based on what the developers have told us in the past, and what they reiterated at the Meet & Greet -- you'll have control of everything else. They also advised us that a Leader Board listing will be part of the City Vault: if you're a PvP fanatic, you'll always know where you stand.

Gallery: CoX Meet and greet - general

Gallery: CoX Meet and greet - Q and A session

As you may have noticed, we're unveiling two new galleries for you: one is focused on the general milling about before the developers took the stage, and one is focused on the Q&A session itself. And here's some big news straight from the studios: Brian Clayton, NCsoft's studio director, noted that they will be doubling the size of the development team, and that "you guys will see things that you've never seen before in City of Heroes over the next couple of years."

Moving forward, they were cautious about what they said, as their CoX marketing representative was staring intently at each speaker as they answered questions in order to ensure that they didn't give away too much information. Marcian Tobay asked when we could expect to see moon zones, and we were told that moon zones are a possibility in the future, but that they weren't committing to a set timeline or guarantee of anything at this point. And to expand a bit on the answer regarding villanous epics noted in our earlier article, the direct quote from Matt "Positron" Miller regarding epic archetypes for villains is that they are "something that is on the plate, and it is something that is different than anything we have done so far, or even hinted at."

There were a lot of laughs -- especially at the glare Castle received from the marketing rep when he answered a question he shouldn't have -- and there was a lot of applause over the answers. One of the statements that garnered quite a bit of approval was Brian Clayton's insistence that they're working on moving forward, becoming more responsive to player concerns, and processing development needs in a more timely manner now that there's a single channel for product work and approval. One other potential improvement: they're investigating changes in the forum software currently used. Speaking of the forums, we were reminded by Ex Libris that Sexy Jay has his own thread on the forums for costume requests, and the Back Alley Brawler now has a thread for weapon customization requests. And don't worry: their plans for the web site don't end with the City Vault and Leader Board.

Now that we've given the love to the development team and NCsoft, though, we wanted to give a mention to you, the players. Without your support, without your interest in the game, it would not be what and where it is today. We're not going to suggest you give yourselves a pat on the back -- unless, of course, your power set includes elasticity -- but we think you should recognize that the dynamic output from the development team is driven by the equally dynamic input from their fans. Happy missioning, y'all.