I’d also like to point out that the Gama Sutra article appears to be badly written and is all over the shop – the Massively article on the same topic is better put together:

http://www.massively.com/2008/02/22/gdc08-jack-emmert-on-cryptics-success-and-failure/

Which one is more accurate to the talk I don’t know.

Had CoH whacked off the last 10 levels, making max level 40 instead of 50, and sped up the levelling and had max power acquisition by 40, I bet more people would have played longer – at least the altaholics like me would have. I couldn’t seem to get a character much past 30 (and without an endgame, pointless anyway). But my alts didn’t make it much past 20. Too much stick, not enough carrot.

I also like that he seemed honest about what he thought about RMT and Microtransactions during the Future of MMOs panel. It seems like a lot of MMO developers are trying to push that payment format because it works so well with crappy and cheap to develop games.

Seriously, the guy’s whole talk was an honest and humble self-examination of the mistakes he’d made in CoH (which, despite it being his first MMOG, has been one of top five the most successful subscription-based MMOGs launched since 2005, and like one of the top 15 ever), and all you people can do is rag on him for not being honest and humble enough.

I do have to question Cryptic’s judgment for getting into bed with Marvel after all that ensued with them legally, but specifically with Microsoft, whose death touch in the MMO segment is well documented.

Now that Marvel Universe Online has been recycled into Champions, I still don’t think there are that many people just waiting for a “better” Generic Superhero MMO. A quick read of the Champions site seems to be “find and replace” retreads of CoH stuff anyway – Millennium City instead of Paragon City, yada, yada, yada…

I have a feeling this one never gets launched either.