About six months ago I wrote an article detailing how to make a good Free To Play MMO. One of the games I singled out as what not to do was the recently released Marvel Heroes. Calling its launch a disaster would almost have been an understatement. However, rather than pack up my things and go to some other imaginary online universe, I stuck it out. I saw a huge amount of potential, and I’m pleased to report that my faith has been rewarded. There have been some growing pains, but I finally feel comfortable recommending Marvel Heroes, and here’s why.
When Marvel Heroes launched six months ago, it was in what could charitably be called an unfinished state. The core gameplay mechanics were there, but the content and heroes themselves weren’t really up to snuff. If it had been any other MMO, it probably would have been long since buried. However, having the license to the entire Marvel universe is a hell of a selling point, and the game’s developers, Gazillion Entertainment, have done as much with it as you can expect for a still fairly new game.
MMO’s are different from most other types of games. A first person shooter with extensive multiplayer, like the Call Of Duty or Battlefield games, has to be an A+ product right out of the box. If they’re not, then they’ll never really crack the cultural zeitgeist and end up shelf warming until they hit the bargain bin. Games more focused on telling a story, like the Mass Effect or BioShock series, are held to a different standard; some bugs are acceptable, as long as they aren’t game breaking. MMOs, meanwhile, require a developer to build a cohesive universe where tens of thousands of people can play together, and have a decent narrative that keeps them at least nominally engaged while they kill monsters for more and better loot. Consequently, MMOs usually take a few months to find their feet, and don’t really hit their stride until two or three years after they’re launched. With so many publishers moving to the Free To Play model, it’s important to demonstrate a consistent revenue stream early in the game’s lifecycle, otherwise the game won’t ever turn a profit which kind of defeats the whole purpose of making it and keeping it alive in the first place. Marvel Heroes has, in my opinion, successfully navigated a rough launch and turned into something that looks like it’ll be around for the long haul.
Let’s start by mentioning the game’s biggest selling point: it’s an MMO where you can play multiple heroes (and villains) from the Marvel Universe. Considering the vast array of characters in the Marvel Universe, that’s a HUGE base to work from, which ensures a virtually endless pipeline of content.
When you first create your account, you’re given a choice of one of nine Starter Heroes: Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain America, Colossus, Hawkeye, Human Torch, Luke Cage, Punisher, and Storm. After that, you’ll be dropped into the main story campaign. If you choose to play your way through, you’ll be rewarded with a Rarity Boost, which will help you find better items, an Experience Boost, which will help you level faster, and a Retcon Device, which will let you reset your hero’s powers, along with a variety of other rewards such as increased health and spirit (the MH equivalent to mana, used for a hero’s special moves). However, you’re under no obligation to play through the story campaign if you don’t want to. In fact, when I’m levelling a new hero, I usually skip it and come back for the rewards later. If you choose to skip it, you can hop right in to Midtown Manhattan, a persistent battlezone filled with constantly respawning enemies, punctuated by taking on teams of supervillains, which give better loot and experience than standard enemies. As you level up, the enemies you face will become more difficult and varied, until literally every enemy in the game can pop up at any time.
As a new player, it’s probably a good idea to complete the campaign your first time through, as once you do you’re awarded a total of 400 Eternity Splinters; you’ll receive 200 after completing the tutorial, and another 200 after beating the final boss, Doctor Doom. Eternity Splinters, or ES, are Marvel Heroes’ special currency, used to purchase other heroes and epic loot. They can drop randomly from every enemy in the game, either as a single splinter, two splinters, or ten splinters. The hero roster is currently divided into three cost tiers: 200 ES heroes (Black Widow, Daredevil, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Storm, and Thing), 400 ES heroes (Hulk, Cable, Thor, Rocket Raccoon, Cyclops, Captain America, Jean Grey, Punisher, Ms. Marvel, Black Panther, Colossus, Gambit, Emma Frost, Loki, Squirrel Girl, Luke Cage, Wolverine, and Human Torch) and 600 ES heroes (Spider-Man, Deadpool, Iron Man, and Ghost Rider). Along with being able to buy each hero outright, there’s also a Random Box, costing 175 ES, which has the potential of being any hero in the game. I personally have gotten Spider-Man, Deadpool, and Ghost Rider from Random Boxes; each of those heroes costs about $12 through the in-game store, or 600 ES each, which is a tremendous amount of value. Of course, there’s the possibility that you get a hero you already have; in that case, the duplicate hero token is used to upgrade that hero’s Ultimate Power, which is a ridiculously powerful power with a very long cooldown.
When I first talked about Marvel Heroes in my previous article, two of my big gripes were nickel-and-diming the player base to death and the in-game economy. The introduction of the Eternity Splinter system did a fantastic job of solving the first issue; by allowing players to earn new heroes just by playing, and potentially realize huge savings in the process, Gazillion has done a decent job ensuring that it’s hard to get bored. The in-game economy is still lacking by MMO standards, but the truth is that it lends itself to a more egalitarian experience. Credits, which drop off defeated enemies, are less a currency and more a crafting resource, as items in the game can’t be traded or bought with them except from player-specific vendors. Players frequently just give away good items, simply because they don’t need them, they don’t need the credits, and they’ve already maxed out their vendors. It’s essentially the complete opposite of Diablo 3, which turned into a never ending credit grind so players could buy the best items on the market. While a more robust trading interface is certainly on everyone’s wish list, there are precious few items that are valuable enough to warrant any kind of enhanced security beyond dropping the items simultaneously.
Another area I dinged Marvel Heroes on was their pricing model. Shortly after I wrote my original article, Gazillion basically upended their entire pricing model, ditching the “Heroes as random drops” in favor of the Eternity Splinter system, and have reduced prices across the board. Moreover, with each character capable of getting up to three free Retcon Devices, and heroes that have had their powers extensively changed being reset after the patches, the only services still available for real money are more in line with other MMOs, which is to say more oriented toward convenience rather than necessity.
One area I praised Marvel Heroes for was the attention paid to itemization. They’ve managed to improve upon this greatly, having expanded the gear list to include Legendary items, which can only be earned by completing numerous Legendary quests; Unique items, which are often the most powerful item for a particular item slot; Cosmic items, which are enhanced versions of normal items with additional powers; and Relics, which individually are worthless but stack to provide big boosts to various stats.
The big concern at launch was that too many of the titular Heroes seemed too similar, or felt underpowered. Since then, Gazillion has expanded the roster with seven new heroes (Human Torch, Emma Frost, Luke Cage, Squirrel Girl, Loki, Gambit, and Ghost Rider) as well as revamped many of the launch heroes. Most notable have been the reworks of Iron Man and Spider-Man, which turned them from also-rans into absolute monsters. Each new hero is better than the last, and with part of 2014’s slate already announced (Doctor Strange, Juggernaut, Magneto, Moon Knight, Nightcrawler, Psylocke, Silver Surfer, Sue Storm, Star-Lord, and Venom, with two more still to be revealed), it looks like there will be much, much more to come.
With a lot of MMOs, there’s an emphasis on playing a single character, or at most a small number of characters. In Marvel Heroes, it’s expected that people will play multiple characters. Some will go to 30, others to 60, and some might never make it past level 1. The sheer number and variety makes it almost impossible to find a character that’s not fun to play. Moreover, because of the flexibility in how their skill trees are designed, a single character can have multiple builds with radically different playstyles.
If you’ve got an hour or two to kill and you’re looking for something new and interesting to play, I highly recommend you give Gazillion’s Marvel Heroes a shot. It’s a ton of fun, and I’m happy to recommend it.
