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Recent Headlines for Champions Online

Words on Going Solo

By Keith Cross on Jun 09, 2008

Cryptic Studios has published a dev diary which details the level of solo content in Champions Online, revealing that the game will not only be solo friendly, but will also feature end game content specifically designed for the solo player.

Just a few years ago, Everquest was held up as the paragon of MMORPGs. Though several games had come out subsequent to it, none had ever reached its level of subscribers. As a result, many of the Everquest game mechanics became almost canonical. Central to this near holy set of testaments was that players must be forced to team. The philosophy is simple and effective. People play longer if they are playing with friends. If a player is forced to team up with other players, he or she will at some point make friends. I think Anarchy Online and Dark Age of Camelot chipped away at this foundational truth by introducing some levels of soloing, but large swathes of each game focused on teaming.

To be honest, I thought the same when working on City of Heroes. We actually created missions that we intended a player to get help with before finishing. Some foes were intended to be too tough for a single player to defeat. We assumed a player would get the mission, go into the instance, realize that he was facing a "boss," leave the mission, find a friend, and then tackle the "boss" together. I was pretty darn naïve back then.