Quite an interesting Press Release today from NCSoft - it seems that they have bought out Cryptic to become whole-owners of the City of Heroes/Villains franchise.

On the whole it may be a positive thing - there has been some speculation as to the commitment to the City of Heroes franchise with the development of new titles (Tabula Rasa etc)... the formation of a new studio (NCSoft NorCal) may have the effect of ring-fencing the continued development of CoH perhaps?

In the short and dirty term though, the announcement bundles in some good news for some of the players...  There's now no need to purchase CoV if you have CoH (and vice-versa), there'll be a game-wide debt wipe (not so spectacular!), but the biggy is 20,000 prestige for each supergroup member (meaning up to 3 million if the SG is full!).

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/archives/2007/11/ncsoft_acquires.html