Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Ten Ton Hammer: The release of the Mission Architect has certainly been hailed as one of the more ambitious projects to ever be constructed and completed by a post-launch MMO development team. Why did you decide to undertake such a massive project and how long – really – did it take your team to complete?

MM: The “why” really was a “why not?” We answered the “why not” about halfway through development and realized that this was going to be a BIG system, bigger than just another feature for our game, but something that had the potential to influence the MMO genre as a whole and being so far down the rabbit hole at that point there was no turning back.

As for the “how long”, pinpointing the actual start date is trickier. Joe “Hero 1” Morrissey came up with the genesis of the idea a couple months after he was hired, but that barely resembles the final system we ended up with. All told there was about eight months of devoted production time to the system, with roughly 10 months of pre-production design work to get us to a point where we thought we could implement it and it would be fun. This feature was the most massive undertaking since the Launch of City of Heroes in 2004.

Ten Ton Hammer: What's next for the team and the game? Are there any larger, overarching plans going on in the background that players don't know about yet? When are you going to be revealing those plans?

MM: All I can really comment on at this time is that NCsoft is providing us with more resources than ever before and we have some great stuff planned for our players over the coming months and years. I’m sure you’ll be one of the first to hear what we’ve got up our sleeves, so stay tuned!

Ten Ton Hammer: A five year anniversary seems like the perfect time to try to attract some retired players back into the game. Besides the Mission Architect, do you have any major initiatives that you're working on? Should current players expect a major influx of faces soon?

MM: We’ve released the Architect Edition, a new boxed version including both City of Heroes and City of Villains, and it’s on the shelves right now. We’re also doing a free re-activation period from Tuesday April 28th, through Sunday, May 3rd, so retired players will be able to log in using their old accounts and try out all the cool new stuff we have to offer, including Mission Architect.