City of Heroes Retrospective

Next Generation has a short retrospective looking back on City of Heroes, or to be more exact looking back on why it failed.
Cryptic fell into that trap, says Emmert. "I thought we could add [features] later." When City of Heroes launched, it suffered from several weaknesses: there was no point to it beyond leveling or an end-game, there were no guilds, there was no loot, and it was repetitive. When Cryptic added player bases to City of Heroes, it suddenly had this content it had to create a purpose for. Cryptic hadn't thought out how to incorporate guilds into the game before development, so there was no existing framework to attach them to. They were pointless.

Emmert emphasized that City of Heroes wasn't a failure. He believes it's inherently more fun than World of Warcraft, but players left because it gets boring. "Every game you put out is going to be flawed in some way," says Emmert. "Understand it and accept it."