City of Heroes has made the switchover to free-to-play with the newly christened City of Heroes Freedom. For Ross Borden, Senior VP of Brand & Business Strategy at NCsoft, the reason for going with F2P has always been driven and supported by their loyal fans.
“For City of Heroes, our primary focus has been and always will be, our fans,” says Borden. “Our passionate fans have been with us through thick and thin, and this new business model provides them with options on how they choose to experience the best super hero game on the market. And for new players, the more than seven years of content we’re making available to them for free through Freedom is just a taste of the content that’s to come. The new content and our dedication to our fans are just two of the reasons we feel players will continue to enjoy City of Heroes content for years to come and consider upgrading to VIP subscribers!”
“The new model allows us to focus on content and customer experience, delivering more content that’s specific to player interests while providing even more value to our existing VIP Players,” he added. “It’s even easier to create your own Hero and Villain now. We have introduced a new character creator and a new tutorial that teaches players how to play more organically. With our new Quick Downloader, you can start creating your character within the first 5 minutes of installing the game (as you may know, due to their client-size, it can often take hours to jump into a new MMO). And now that we offer both a free and subscription option, cost is no longer a barrier in playing the game with all of your friends.”
The name City of Heroes Freedom not only signifies the switchover to F2P, but also the freedom to make choices on what the player wants in the game. “You have the freedom to choose the features you want,” detailed Borden. “Our Paragon Market is quite robust with several hundred individual items ranging from costumes, to powers, to services, and consumables. Previously, when we introduced new costume sets, you had to get every piece in the set. It was a tough choice for some of our players because if they wanted just the cape or the gloves, they had to pay more than they wanted to. Now they can get exactly what they want.”
“We could not have launched Freedom without our community’s support,” he continued. “The entire model was based on the concept of 'how can we make the game better for existing customer’s first.' From the very first day of announcement, we were in constant communications with our players on our forums, Facebook, Ustream and Producer’s Letters. In fact, a few months before the announcement, we held a focus group at the studio with some of our players. We shared our plans with them, and received great feedback and suggestions which were directly incorporated into our launch and ongoing plans.”
Check out the full interview at [a]list.
