The Big Story. -- Paragon City's New Mayor
The word from the official NCsoft site makes no bones about it: NCsoft acquires City of Heroes Franchise. The mega-MMOG publisher has purchased the intellectual property from Cryptic Studios, and will be setting up a new studio in the Northern California area to support it. Most of the development crew currently working on the 'City of' titles has made the jump to NCsoft NorCal, and players hopefully shouldn't see much in the way of a hiccup during the changeover. In fact, they'll be getting new toys:
"Now back to you, the players. You are the lifeblood of our game. In celebration of our new studio and our exciting plans, and in order to thank you for the fantastic community that you have built, we are pleased to announce the following: Full Access to City of Heroes and City of Villains. All players with City of Heroes retail accounts will now have access to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail* accounts will now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now. Just log in to check it out! Debt Wipe. After the launch of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time this Fall, we are removing Debt from all characters and giving you a fresh start. Actual date will be announced shortly. Have fun in the mean time. 20,000 Prestige. Also after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive an additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member, meaning SGs could acquire up to 3 million Prestige based upon their Supergroup membership roster! Actual date will be announced shortly."
The official Cryptic site lends a few words to the proceedings from their blog:

"What's next for Cryptic Studios? Cryptic is developing new titles and new IPs, as well as expanding its business interests. We have a talented team of game developers and technicians, and a large part of our motivation for this move was to free up resources for our future projects. With these new projects we will challenge ourselves to make even better and more immersive MMO games. Stay tuned!"
The next future project is, of course, Marvel Universe Online. With this development cutting the last string between Cryptic and NCsoft, the development company is now free to fully pursue MUO and future projects. Brian Clayton is now the new manager of NCsoft NorCal, and sat down with the WarCry folks for an interview on the project's future:
"Over the next few months, the redubbed team will continue work on Issue 11 and have immediately jumped into a few initiatives to reassure their community. They've opened up the clients so that players who owned only one of City of Heroes or City of Villains can now have both free of charge. They also intend to do a debt wipe, a prestige grant and are hard at work on the Winter Festival, due in the middle of December. Clayton also alluded to a big announcement coming before the end of November that he promised will make the fans quite happy."
That big announcement, theorizes GamesIndustry.biz, might be a new expansion to the game. Comments from NCsoft Europe refer to the possibility of new game elements sometime soon.

"'We'll be bringing out more City of products, some more chapters in the current series, and we're obviously looking at how we can expand the City of franchise generally,' he said. And responding to the question as to whether or not that would specifically mean a new game, he said: 'I think you'll get a bit of both, yes.'"
Not only is this notable business news in general, it may be a benchmark for MMO games. There have been titles that switched developer hands in the past (Vanguard, Asheron's Call), but they were always transferred under duress and financial hardship. As far as everyone knows, City of Heroes is doing -- perhaps not amazingly -- well enough. Cryptic seems to have genuinely sold the IP so it could concentrate on new projects. NCsoft has every reason to keep the project going and players happy. Perhaps, we'll see an MMO move off to new environments without frustrating anyone. For many gamers, City of Heroes is still one of the benchmark titles in the genre, no matter its size. Let's hope the capes of Paragon City keep to the skies for a good while to come..