Now, on the one hand, this is not unexpected news, since it was known that Marvel was wanting to develop a MMORPG of the Marvel Universe (MU). On the other hand, Cryptic is the developer of what is aguably the most successful superhero computer game in history (City of Heroes {CoH}). On the gripping hand, I did predict something similar to this back in 2004, when the story of the Marvel lawsuit broke (look where it says "Conspiracy theory time").

This is good news, but I still see the same problem with a Marvel MMO that I saw then. Namely, that there is no way that Marvel is going to allow gamers to play their Big Name Heroes (BNHs -- like Spiderman, X-Men, etc.) in an MMO. What this means is that the players will, at best, be relegated to fighting alongside a BNH NPC on a mission (can you say "sidekick?"), or interacting with the BNH as a contact (which is how City of Heroes does it).

According to the press release:

...players will be able to interact simultaneously in a truly unique atmosphere featuring all their favorite Marvel characters, creatures and villains.

Now, this does not really say anything concrete about the gameplay (which is probably too early in the planning phase to know what it will be, really), but we can infer from this that the players will not be playing any of the "favorite Marvel characters, creatures and villains."

And this is why the Marvel Universe MMO will fail -- without being able to play your favorite Marvel character, it is going to be difficult for Cryptic to make this game significantly different from City of Heroes (without making it just suck). And if it is not significantly different from CoH, why would I want to switch? Most of the people who are interested in playing in the superhero genre are already playing CoH. It will take a great game to dislodge them, and I don't think that is what the MU MMO will be.