MMO Roundup: Guild Wars 2 launches, City of Heroes closes, and more

City of Heroes to sunset before the end of the year
NCsoft is closing Paragon Studios due to a "realignment of company focus and publishing support," according to a blurb just posted on the City of Heroes website. Community manager Andy Belford says that the superhero MMO will shut down before the end of the year, and recurring billing will be discontinued immediately.

Up close and personal with Torchlight II
Torchlight II is marching toward its September 20th launch date and Massively was given an opportunity to take the game hands-on at PAX Prime this past weekend. Hop over to Massively to see their impressions of the latest clickfest to come your way.

A critical look at Guild Wars 2
ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 launched recently and the game hit 400,000 concurrent users before the game even officially launched -- all 400,000 of those players coming from the pre-order head start event. Just about everyone agrees that it's a good game, but it isn't without its problems. Massively's Matt Daniel takes a look at the game with a critical eye.

BioWare's Matt Bromberg discusses converting Star Wars: The Old Republic to free-to-play
If you missed some of the analyst predictions flying around after Star Wars: The Old Republic announced it was converting to a free-to-play model, they were... zealous, to say the least. But general manager Matt Bromberg doesn't seem to share those opinions. When asked in a recent interview whether the conversion will make the game more money in the long run, Bromberg replied in extremely uncertain terms: "I don't know."

Massively's week in review
Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively's best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup.