Massively

In a fairly startling bit of news, NCsoft has announced that they have acquired the complete intellectual property rights to the City of Heroes franchise from developer Cryptic Studios, and will be forming a new studio in Northern California dedicated solely to the on-going development of the franchise. As part of the agreement, they'll be licensing Cryptic's proprietary engine for use with future games. The team currently responsible for managing CoH (including Matt "Positron" Miller, Aaron Brady, and Ken Morse) will be coming along for the ride, and Cryptic Studios will be aiding in the transition to make sure that the handover of all assets and responsibilities goes smoothly. In their statement, they say they don't expect that the transition will be visible to players, and the free issue updates will likely continue as planned.

Cryptic Studios has published an FAQ on their website explaining the details on their end. To the question of what they'll be doing now that they are free of their duties involving the upkeep of City of Heroes, their response is: "Cryptic is developing new titles and new IPs, as well as expanding its business interests." It seems pretty clear though that the real reason Cryptic and CoH had to part ways was because of the inevitable conflict that is going to arise when Marvel Universe Online hits the MMO scene.

The real question for CoH players is this: do you expect this new team to keep up the same standards for quality as Cryptic has held in the past? Is bringing along Positron and the rest of the management team enough to keep the spirit of the game alive, or is this the beginning of the end?