"I have a tremendous amount of respect for Jack and he did a great job," Clayton said. He acknowledged that for many, Emmert would be in their "hall of fame", but pointed out that he really left the project 18 months ago and this just makes it official. "This year shows that we have the right team in place," he said, as he pointed out the success of the last three issues under the guidance of the current development team.
The absolutely strange part of this story is that many of these sentiments about how this is good for the game are echoed by people at Cryptic Studios as well. This really does appear to be the best things for both companies and brings a wonderful resolution that could have been a messy situation if not handled in the way the two companies did.
As they move forward, NCsoft is very excited about their now wholly-owned property, which they believe can stand up to both Cryptic's Marvel MMO and SOE's DC Comics entry.
"We're really excited to take City of Heroes to the next few levels," Clayton said, "and we absolutely believe that the subscriber base is going to grow and grow massively."
It's going to be a tough challenge for them to stand up to the coming onslaught, but so far, they're saying all the right things.
