City of Heroes Interview

City of Heroes lead designer Matt Miller fields several questions about the original superhero MMORPG in a new interview on Boomtown.
Boomtown: A rival superhero MMO is just around the corner while City of Heroes has been online for five years. How do you view the arrival of competition and how will you respond to a new engine that is obviously going to raise the bar in the genre?

Matt Miller: I think if you are talking about raising the graphics bar in MMOs you should be looking at games like Aion. If you are talking about the comic-book inspired genre, I can tell you that that we are working on something we think will keep City of Heroes on par or better than our competition.

As for content, these new games need to remember that they are not competing against what City of Heroes was at launch, but the five years of content and systems that we have added to the game since. Everything from playable Villains to the Invention System to Badges to Pact Leveling and the innovtive Mission Architect system are examples of features that we've added over the past five years that have enhanced and grown an already solid game. Moreover, we've got an amazing community that only comes with time and experience which is key to the player experience, especially in a MMO.