After all COH was designed based on the creator's Champions Pen and Paper campaign.
So what you're saying is, Champions is its own grandpa?
More seriously, I've never played CoH. I tried to get into it shortly after I first tried Champions last year (last year was my "year of the MMO"--I also tried the $100 million/month elephant in the room for the first time), but the relative lack of costume options compared to Champions and a slightly less intuitive UI cut me off before I even got past the character creator.
However, I think City of Heroes sparked my imagination when I first heard about it years ago. I had heard, of course, of the last gasp of Origin, and Always-Seek, and other games with this idea of a persistent world. The idea was interesting, but I didn't really understand how it could work
Then I heard about City of Heroes and it all clicked: everyone's their own superhero. Neat!
Other games were my first real foray in the genre, but City of Heroes helped me get my head around the concept, which is pretty cool, when you think about it. It's like they were my Carl Sagan.
Seriously. I'm actually kinda angry now; there's no reason for this - I was *just there* two weeks ago, the game was alive and kicking, new stuff was coming in at a regular rate... the only reason I left again this most recent time is because I've put more hours into COH than any other game I've played, ever.
So many characters soon to be lost too... cripes. I had at least a hundred.
I admit, this is... disheartening.
Yeah, there were people over there playing.
It's no secret that while NCSoft owned the City of Heroes I.P., Cryptic still owned the engine and licensed it to them. There is a rumor floating around (but no official word on any of it), that the license had a 5 year term and then renewal. The 5 years is just about now. The rumor states that PW wanted a much, much higher licensing fee this time around, and it was much more than NCSoft felt the dated engine and graphics were worth. So, c'ya CoH.
Well, CoX downfall is certainly a sad thing, but it could be beneficial as well for CO. Even with its shortcomings, CO is the closest thing to CoX. Really, Cryptic and PWE should use this opportunity.
It's no secret that while NCSoft owned the City of Heroes I.P., Cryptic still owned the engine and licensed it to them. There is a rumor floating around (but no official word on any of it), that the license had a 5 year term and then renewal. The 5 years is just about now. The rumor states that PW wanted a much, much higher licensing fee this time around, and it was much more than NCSoft felt the dated engine and graphics were worth. So, c'ya CoH.
Like I said, just a rumor currently.
This rumor is full of more hear say than anything. If, and that's a big if, the rumor were true, they would be entering their 4th year, not coming up on 5. This is what I've heard,a nd how I understand it. NCsoft is only working on titles that are profitable in both America and Asian markets. CoH was not even successful in Asia. In fact their attempt to take it overseas flopped hard.
In the end, NCsoft is reportedly $6 million in the hole, and City of was the low hanging fruit to be snipped since it's only profitable, and just barely, in America.
I hope it benefits it by making teaming fun like it was in coh. That was my main reason for playing it.. even over this game. I hope they get some of the devs and they bring in ideas from coh because this game still has a long way to go and to be honest as much as I love coh the graphics was starting to age.
It's no secret that while NCSoft owned the City of Heroes I.P., Cryptic still owned the engine and licensed it to them. There is a rumor floating around (but no official word on any of it), that the license had a 5 year term and then renewal. The 5 years is just about now. The rumor states that PW wanted a much, much higher licensing fee this time around, and it was much more than NCSoft felt the dated engine and graphics were worth. So, c'ya CoH.
Like I said, just a rumor currently.
BaBs has already stated on the COX forum that he wasn't aware of any 5-year term on the engine license. It's effectively just a rumor thrown onto the forum by those looking for someone to blame.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
BaBs has already stated on the COX forum that he wasn't aware of any 5-year term on the engine license. It's effectively just a rumor thrown onto the forum by those looking for someone to blame.
Eh? As far as I know BaBs doesn't work at Paragon, hasn't for a while, unless he was posting as a normal player. But yea, I've been seeing a few people trying to blame Cryptic and Champs for what happened to CoH. Sorry to those people, I know searching for reasons, but this is all on NCsoft.
It's no secret that while NCSoft owned the City of Heroes I.P., Cryptic still owned the engine and licensed it to them. There is a rumor floating around (but no official word on any of it), that the license had a 5 year term and then renewal. The 5 years is just about now. The rumor states that PW wanted a much, much higher licensing fee this time around, and it was much more than NCSoft felt the dated engine and graphics were worth. So, c'ya CoH.
Like I said, just a rumor currently.
There are a LOT of reasons this is unlikely and I'm getting tired of explaining it. Most important reason: CoH was not the only game being actively developed by Paragon. They had a second game in development there for over a year I believe. I sincerely doubt it was using the Cryptic engine, but the entire studio got canned, not just CoH. No, this was the shut down of an entire branch of a company, I really doubt it has to do with PWE (as ruthless and crazy as they can be). This is NC cutting costs, and while it was profitable, it was barely a blip on the radar next to their eastern market.
[center][i]♪ I'm going around not in circles but in spirographs. It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪[/i][/center]
Eh? As far as I know BaBs doesn't work at Paragon, hasn't for a while, unless he was posting as a normal player. But yea, I've been seeing a few people trying to blame Cryptic and Champs for what happened to CoH. Sorry to those people, I know searching for reasons, but this is all on NCsoft.
BaBs has posted on the CoH forum as Tic-Toc ever since he left Paragon. He refers to it as the worst-kept secret ever.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Man thats grim ....i have no good words to say to NC Soft the game wasnt empty it still had plenty of players.
They close CoH but leave an non event like Lineage one and two running
You know that Lineage was the game with the most subscriptions before WoW ? Even
if they had only 60.000 players in the West, they had over 2 millions in Asia.
You know that Lineage was the game with the most subscriptions before WoW ? Even if they had only 60.000 players in the West, they had over 2 millions in Asia.
Based on NCSoft's 2nd Quarter financials, Lineage still accounts for 45% of their sales. CoH accounts for 2%.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
It's no secret that while NCSoft owned the City of Heroes I.P., Cryptic still owned the engine and licensed it to them. There is a rumor floating around (but no official word on any of it), that the license had a 5 year term and then renewal. The 5 years is just about now. The rumor states that PW wanted a much, much higher licensing fee this time around, and it was much more than NCSoft felt the dated engine and graphics were worth. So, c'ya CoH.
Like I said, just a rumor currently.
I would say that if the rumor was true NCSoft wouldn't have hesitated to blame anyone else but themselves for shutting down COH/Paragon.
The more likely rumor I've seen is that in Q1/Q2 NCSoft hemorrhaged 11 Million and Nexon who owns them told them to do something about it. Given that they appear to have taken sudden, swift, decisive action against one of their lower producing products that might be true. It would indicate that they decided to take the appearance of action rather than actually addressing the source of their loss but never let it be said that they couldn't take swift decisive action of cutting something.
Eh? As far as I know BaBs doesn't work at Paragon, hasn't for a while, unless he was posting as a normal player. But yea, I've been seeing a few people trying to blame Cryptic and Champs for what happened to CoH. Sorry to those people, I know searching for reasons, but this is all on NCsoft.
I believe BaB's works for Cryptic on Nevewinter nights now.
I would say that if the rumor was true NCSoft wouldn't have hesitated to blame anyone else but themselves for shutting down COH/Paragon.
The more likely rumor I've seen is that in Q1/Q2 NCSoft hemorrhaged 11 Million and Nexon who owns them told them to do something about it. Given that they appear to have taken sudden, swift, decisive action against one of their lower producing products that might be true. It would indicate that they decided to take the appearance of action rather than actually addressing the source of their loss but never let it be said that they couldn't take swift decisive action of cutting something.
While Nexon is the single biggest outside shareholder, they only own 14.7% of NCSoft. Aside from that, you're probably on the money: Paragon Studios only represented something like 2% of NCSoft's revenue, and CoH wasn't able to catch on in South Korea -- NCSoft's obvious primary customer base. On paper, shutting the studio down makes sense as a cost-cutting maneuver in light of company-wide losses. Shutting everything down immediately and without warning, however, just plain sucks.
Why the long faces for COH? This is just the prelude to COH 2, which I believe NCSoft trademarked last year, so it is coming sooner than later. Me, I'm sticking with CO!
Why the long faces for COH? This is just the prelude to COH 2, which I believe NCSoft trademarked last year, so it is coming sooner than later. Me, I'm sticking with CO!
Companies do that all the time. That isn't going to happen.
[center][i]♪ I'm going around not in circles but in spirographs. It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪[/i][/center]
I would like to say thank you for all of the support I see here from CO players for us now homeless CoH players. I imagine you'll probably see seeing a lot of us coming here to continue the fight for truth and justice.
Why the long faces for COH? This is just the prelude to COH 2, which I believe NCSoft trademarked last year, so it is coming sooner than later. Me, I'm sticking with CO!
This CoH2 thing has been in the wishlist for a long time. It's not unusual for a company to buy out the names of domains to keep competitors from potentially infringing on their trademarks, and NCSoft had just acquired City of Heroes IP fully when they did this.
Why the long faces for COH? This is just the prelude to COH 2, which I believe NCSoft trademarked last year, so it is coming sooner than later. Me, I'm sticking with CO!
That'd be hard, considering that they just fully eliminated the team behind COH. Companies copyright and trademark sequel names as a matter of course, just to make sure they have em if they need em.
That said, everything I've read about this closing basically boils down to one thing: They went free to play to try to make more money. They made about the same amount they were making before free to play. That would never bode well, considering that it was in bad enough shape to require giving the game away for free in the hopes that people would buy more stuff. But, imo, it was time anyway. At least, for maintenance mode. Closing the servers down 100% seems drastic, especially with the wicked-short notice. One more reason why I'll never play GW2. That's a pretty messed up thing to do to your customer base, which had kept the game running for *years*.
Honestly, though, I hated CoH. The gameplay was repetitive and boring, the sprites were ugly (even for the time, ffs they look like the sprites from dungeon siege), the player base didn't impress me, and the writing was overrated. On the bright side, I expect we'll pick up quite a few more of their player base than dcuo will, considering the customization and leaner system specs we've got.
In game, I am @EvilTaco. Happily killing purple gang members since May 2008. RIP Caine
Why the long faces for COH? This is just the prelude to COH 2, which I believe NCSoft trademarked last year, so it is coming sooner than later. Me, I'm sticking with CO!
I rather doubt that since according to the link in the OP, they are not just shutting down the game, but closing the studio as well. That being said, it's not unheard of for a publisher to farm out a sequel to a totally different studio, but imo, that just doesn't look likely.
and yes, after several years of CoH and almost 2 years of CO, I'm very very happy to stick with CO. we may have our own problems and issues here, but it's still so much more fun, looks so much better, and is infinitely more flexible in damn near every way.
I'll miss CoH for the memories and friends, but I'm not heartbroken.
Based on NCSoft's 2nd Quarter financials, Lineage still accounts for 45% of their sales. CoH accounts for 2%.
Except that when a company is doing badly and sales suck...they are more likely to have layoffs because compensation and comp related costs are any companies largest expense. I believe I saw someone say there were roughly 80 people at Paragon, that's a huge cost saver. Lineages margins were probably much better than CoH's.
What worries me about CoH shutting down is that competition is good.
Now there's nobody to race against, to exchange cool ideas and developments with. And we're at a point where PWI really needs to be encouraged to keep some momentum with CO.
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
What worries me about CoH shutting down is that competition is good.
Now there's nobody to race against, to exchange cool ideas and developments with. And we're at a point where PWI really needs to be encouraged to keep some momentum with CO.
They're busy with Neverwinter.
If there had never been a COH there would never have been a CO. :cool:
This is true for any game. Hopefully you aren't implying that Co isn't repetitive. Though one thing that did stand out for CoH, each group of villain had its own attack patterns. (this didn't help make CoH less repetitive, but it was one thing it had over CO)
This is true for any game. Hopefully you aren't implying that Co isn't repetitive. Though one thing that did stand out for CoH, each group of villain had its own attack patterns. (this didn't help make CoH less repetitive, but it was one thing it had over CO)
I'm not talking about the mobs, I'm talking about your character. Every class I played there felt like old school Wow "I'm dialing a telephone" gameplay. Plus, trinity. Ew. Co I can play a tanking dps healer if I want, and do decently at all 3. It's really not a fair comparison.
In game, I am @EvilTaco. Happily killing purple gang members since May 2008. RIP Caine
I'm not talking about the mobs, I'm talking about your character. Every class I played there felt like old school Wow "I'm dialing a telephone" gameplay. Plus, trinity. Ew. Co I can play a tanking dps healer if I want, and do decently at all 3. It's really not a fair comparison.
CO's gameplay is as repetitive as it comes. Every time you start a new character, you go through the exact same missions, with the exact same mission text. Each time you make a new nemesis, they go through the exact same missions.
Each nemesis ends up making a mind control device and working for Dr. D. There is little in the way of variety or depth when it comes to CO. That is not to say the game isn't fun, but it doesn't make it any less repetitive then any other mmo out.
CO's gameplay is as repetitive as it comes. Every time you start a new character, you go through the exact same missions, with the exact same mission text. Each time you make a new nemesis, they go through the exact same missions.
Each nemesis ends up making a mind control device and working for Dr. D. There is little in the way of variety or depth when it comes to CO. That is not to say the game isn't fun, but it doesn't make it any less repetitive then any other mmo out.
That's not the general gameplay being repetitive, that's the content being repetitive. And I don't think anyone disputes that.
COx? A lot more repetitive on the gameplay front, but way more varied on the content part. Just by rolling an alt with a different origin (Or even just starting in Galaxy City), you'd be finding yourself fighting completely different enemies and doing (slightly) different missions. CO? Your character can do whatever but they'll always invariably start out by helping bear-man in ghetto-land fight the omnipresent prune-gang.
CO's got a great combat system running, and enemies offer varied challenges (Fighting Gravitar is absolutely nothing like fighting Kigatilik, while fighting Rakshasa is certainly nothing like fighting Ripper). The problem is that there really isn't anything to do. The most ironic thing is that I think the CO staff is actually trying too hard to come up with these ideas to fill the gap ("Hey! We made Adventure packs! Now we made Comic book series! Now we made alerts! Now we have 10-man rampages! Now we have dailies!") instead of doing pretty much everything every other MMO I can think of has done, continuously making new zones and levelling paths to explore. Instead of crafting things like new zones (which could potentially be chock full of missions and secrets that could remain undiscovered for months after a release), they're opting to try out a bunch of experimental 'content' designs. Which seem varied, new, and exciting - until you run it once, then the repetitiveness kicks in.
Out of the 10 major updates the game has had so far, only one (revelations) has actually introduced a new zone. That's not to say that they slacked at all, given that three were adventure packs (demonflame and resistance, in particular, were quite well crafted.) But to compare, City of Heroes introduced (or remade) 6 PvE zones. Even taking the fact that CoH zones are roughly 1/6th the size of a place like Monster Island or Millennium City, that's still 6+ distinct leveling paths introduced within roughly 3 years.
The alerts and adventures are just repetitive sidetracks on the path when it comes down to it; to really get a level from them, you have to run them tens of times, and they never really are all that different when you run them again. Or you could just go back to West Side and kill Hi-Pan again, whatever floats the boat.
I think Cryptic's paranoid of creating new zones, since the last new instance they made was Vibora Bay, and pretty much nobody goes there these days. (because the crisis is stupid long and unskippable, and the missions reward strangely low experience compared to Monster Island and can't be stacked at all.) Yet even for all its shortcomings, Therakiel's Temple is still my favorite lair in the game. I'd say they should try giving the zone-creating method of development a jab again, given that every other MMO out there has managed to survive for years on a formula that is essentially: new zone with gameplay tweaks and dedicated lairs/story arcs. [end semantics rant]
Except that when a company is doing badly and sales suck...they are more likely to have layoffs because compensation and comp related costs are any companies largest expense. I believe I saw someone say there were roughly 80 people at Paragon, that's a huge cost saver. Lineages margins were probably much better than CoH's.
A solid point, but also keep in mind there's a hidden cost with brand image. The way NCSoft handled the CoH termination is going to really hurt their brand image, and that will mean a reduction in sales potential. The tough thing is, it's hard to justify sales potential to the CFO versus something concrete like payroll.
A solid point, but also keep in mind there's a hidden cost with brand image. The way NCSoft handled the CoH termination is going to really hurt their brand image, and that will mean a reduction in sales potential. The tough thing is, it's hard to justify sales potential to the CFO versus something concrete like payroll.
Maybe not really .. since the main market of NC-Soft is simly Asia, and i don't think that
a lot of people there even know about the existence of CoH. Much the same than people
in the West don't know what a success Lineage and A_ion are in Asia.
A solid point, but also keep in mind there's a hidden cost with brand image. The way NCSoft handled the CoH termination is going to really hurt their brand image, and that will mean a reduction in sales potential. The tough thing is, it's hard to justify sales potential to the CFO versus something concrete like payroll.
Reports from people who read the reports, and several web sites, apparently CoH was only 2% of NCsofts total income.
Maybe not really .. since the main market of NC-Soft is simly Asia, and i don't think that
a lot of people there even know about the existence of CoH. Much the same than people
in the West don't know what a success Lineage and A_ion are in Asia.
Basically the above.
Only 4% of NCSofts sales come from North America - and less then 1% is European.
So while the 4-5% might be mad at NCSoft about CoH the rest of their Sales Markets really have no idea what CoH even was - as it only constituted 2% of their overall sales.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Bluh hit the nail on the head. We're talking about 2 separate things. In co, I've got one character that is toggle heavy and basically a giant walking arc of destruction, very automated and... well... feels like power armor. I've got another that literally has me pressing 2,5,f1,f2,4,3,2,f3,2,3 like a maniac. Some of em are stand there and unleash, some of em are invisible bombastic ranged/melee hybrids that play like a fighting game. Because CO is so much more of an action rpg than CoH, mixed with the freeform concept, Every character plays completely different from anything else. That's more what I was talking about. I can play my stealth character, get bored, and hop on my shadow healer/tank/dpser and it feels like an entirely different game. CoH, I felt like I was ranged dps. Melee dps. Healer. Tank. All of the conventions that bored me in every other mmo.
I will 100% give the edge to CoH for lore and leveling options, though. I think cryptic shot themselves in the foot by eliminating canada as a low level option for advancement. And even if I didn't like the lore in CoH much, they did a hell of a better job telling their story. I'm specifically only talking from a mechanics standpoint, and as far as I'm concerned, there's no mmo on the market that plays as uniquely as CO does.
In game, I am @EvilTaco. Happily killing purple gang members since May 2008. RIP Caine
I will 100% give the edge to CoH for lore and leveling options, though. I think cryptic shot themselves in the foot by eliminating canada as a low level option for advancement. And even if I didn't like the lore in CoH much, they did a hell of a better job telling their story. I'm specifically only talking from a mechanics standpoint, and as far as I'm concerned, there's no mmo on the market that plays as uniquely as CO does.
Funnily this is the players fault since they whined about not enough city and too much everywhere else.
Funnily this is the players fault since they whined about not enough city and too much everywhere else.
But it was a real issue, as a superhero you spent a scant few levels in the city before going off to all corners of the world. I think the idea was that more content would've been added by now but well.....
But it was a real issue, as a superhero you spent a scant few levels in the city before going off to all corners of the world. I think the idea was that more content would've been added by now but well.....
They were doing well in the beginning, but, sadly, between the rather blatant attacks from certain groups and the fact Atari cut funds drastically things ended up going south a lot. A lot of bad press was put out on things that weren't true, and sadly, CO suffered for it. Hopefully a turn around can happen, soon and fast.
But it was a real issue, as a superhero you spent a scant few levels in the city before going off to all corners of the world. I think the idea was that more content would've been added by now but well.....
I'm one of those migrating from CoH and sniffing around CO to see if I like it. I first tried the game at launch then went back to CoH, and one of the main reasons I left was this issue. Now that I have the chance to come back I'm rather liking the change where you spend a lot more time in the city at low levels (I don't know what high levels look like yet as I'm not there).
I'll still be playing CoH until the servers shut down in November but I think there's a good chance I'll end up here afterwards, and even start leveling a character before that.
They were doing well in the beginning, but, sadly, between the rather blatant attacks from certain groups and the fact Atari cut funds drastically things ended up going south a lot. A lot of bad press was put out on things that weren't true, and sadly, CO suffered for it. Hopefully a turn around can happen, soon and fast.
Again, CoH's tragedy could be CO's blessing. According to NCSoft's quarterly report CoH was turning a profit. It wasen't steller but it was solid and consistant. In fact the main problem for CoH was that the numbers never budged. From P2P to F2P the numbers stayed completly consistant.
So now you have a very loyal superhero loving MMO community floating about, one large enough to sustain a game on their own. They are all VERY upset at NCSoft so you can bet they won't be putting their money into GW2. The game closest to the game they were playing is this one. To add a cherry on top of that ice cream sunday, these people are also some of the most friendly and helpful community in the history of MMO's. Everyone also raves about how good the CoH community is (was). From my experience so far returning the CO community also seems to be very similar. It would be a good match.
CO needs to look at this as an opportunity that won't come again. They have from now to November 30th to start thinking of content to attract these players and while they would never be able to relese it by that deadline, at least announce it to make the CoH community look their way. They're looking at the potential to double their playerbase with exatly the type of players they want to play their game and enrich their community. The playerbase is friendly and loyal to their chosen game and drops enough money into a F2P game to make it profitable. CoH was constantly adding content, and CoH players won't migrate to a game and invest in it again if it looks dead because content is not being added. We're not goint to invest time and money if we think THIS game won't be around either, and stagnant content makes us think that.
I pay for/play both CoH and CO (in fact, my forum name here is the name of one of my characters in CoH). I have fun in CO, but it's not a substitute, or a case of either/or- they're very different games, and I'm sure there will be people who try CO and decide it's not their cup of tea. Either way- gain for CO or not- if CoH shuts down for good, a lot of people will have lost something.
I pay for/play both CoH and CO (in fact, my forum name here is the name of one of my characters in CoH). I have fun in CO, but it's not a substitute, or a case of either/or- they're very different games, and I'm sure there will be people who try CO and decide it's not their cup of tea. Either way- gain for CO or not- if CoH shuts down for good, a lot of people will have lost something.
I'm sorry but no petition will change what is happening now. Every MMO that has shut down or MMO that was in development and had a petition has ever been stopped. People petitioned hard to NCSoft for Tabula Rasa. And wrote angry emails as well. Nothing came of that either.
Again, CoH's tragedy could be CO's blessing. According to NCSoft's quarterly report CoH was turning a profit. It wasen't steller but it was solid and consistant. In fact the main problem for CoH was that the numbers never budged. From P2P to F2P the numbers stayed completly consistant.
So now you have a very loyal superhero loving MMO community floating about, one large enough to sustain a game on their own. They are all VERY upset at NCSoft so you can bet they won't be putting their money into GW2. The game closest to the game they were playing is this one. To add a cherry on top of that ice cream sunday, these people are also some of the most friendly and helpful community in the history of MMO's. Everyone also raves about how good the CoH community is (was). From my experience so far returning the CO community also seems to be very similar. It would be a good match.
CO needs to look at this as an opportunity that won't come again. They have from now to November 30th to start thinking of content to attract these players and while they would never be able to relese it by that deadline, at least announce it to make the CoH community look their way. They're looking at the potential to double their playerbase with exatly the type of players they want to play their game and enrich their community. The playerbase is friendly and loyal to their chosen game and drops enough money into a F2P game to make it profitable. CoH was constantly adding content, and CoH players won't migrate to a game and invest in it again if it looks dead because content is not being added. We're not goint to invest time and money if we think THIS game won't be around either, and stagnant content makes us think that.
I have the impression that killing stable, profitable MMOs that are not AWESOME WoW KILLERZ is kind of NCSoft's thing. I also have the impression that letting stable, profitable MMOs run pretty much indefinitely is PWE's thing, whether they are AWESOME WoW KILLERZ or not. NCSoft has a bad reputation among serious MMO players for a reason. I'm not positive about my impression of PWE, though, can anyone list some MMOs that PWE has killed that were stable and profitable?
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[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I was Dubsy on the Old Forums. I am still @Dubsy in-game. Also, lol.
I have the impression that killing stable, profitable MMOs that are not AWESOME WoW KILLERZ is kind of NCSoft's thing. I also have the impression that letting stable, profitable MMOs run pretty much indefinitely is PWE's thing, whether they are AWESOME WoW KILLERZ or not. NCSoft has a bad reputation among serious MMO players for a reason. I'm not positive about my impression of PWE, though, can anyone list some MMOs that PWE has killed that were stable and profitable?
I don't know of any PWE owned title that has been closed down. PWE makes some of their revenue from ads.
I'm sorry but no petition will change what is happening now. Every MMO that has shut down or MMO that was in development and had a petition has ever been stopped. People petitioned hard to NCSoft for Tabula Rasa. And wrote angry emails as well. Nothing came of that either.
We're fully aware that nothing may come of it. So what? Most of us choose to fight for it anyway. It makes people feel better to know that they did something, and the signatures add to the sense of community- of coming together about something that matters. There are 13,002 of us (as of right now) together on this, and that's a good feeling to have, whether it changes anything or not.
Comments
I guess I'm gonna have to actually make my main CoV character over here if I want to preserve his online presence.
So what you're saying is, Champions is its own grandpa?
More seriously, I've never played CoH. I tried to get into it shortly after I first tried Champions last year (last year was my "year of the MMO"--I also tried the $100 million/month elephant in the room for the first time), but the relative lack of costume options compared to Champions and a slightly less intuitive UI cut me off before I even got past the character creator.
However, I think City of Heroes sparked my imagination when I first heard about it years ago. I had heard, of course, of the last gasp of Origin, and Always-Seek, and other games with this idea of a persistent world. The idea was interesting, but I didn't really understand how it could work
Then I heard about City of Heroes and it all clicked: everyone's their own superhero. Neat!
Other games were my first real foray in the genre, but City of Heroes helped me get my head around the concept, which is pretty cool, when you think about it. It's like they were my Carl Sagan.
Yeah, there were people over there playing.
It's no secret that while NCSoft owned the City of Heroes I.P., Cryptic still owned the engine and licensed it to them. There is a rumor floating around (but no official word on any of it), that the license had a 5 year term and then renewal. The 5 years is just about now. The rumor states that PW wanted a much, much higher licensing fee this time around, and it was much more than NCSoft felt the dated engine and graphics were worth. So, c'ya CoH.
Like I said, just a rumor currently.
This rumor is full of more hear say than anything. If, and that's a big if, the rumor were true, they would be entering their 4th year, not coming up on 5. This is what I've heard,a nd how I understand it. NCsoft is only working on titles that are profitable in both America and Asian markets. CoH was not even successful in Asia. In fact their attempt to take it overseas flopped hard.
In the end, NCsoft is reportedly $6 million in the hole, and City of was the low hanging fruit to be snipped since it's only profitable, and just barely, in America.
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Eh? As far as I know BaBs doesn't work at Paragon, hasn't for a while, unless he was posting as a normal player. But yea, I've been seeing a few people trying to blame Cryptic and Champs for what happened to CoH. Sorry to those people, I know searching for reasons, but this is all on NCsoft.
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There are a LOT of reasons this is unlikely and I'm getting tired of explaining it. Most important reason: CoH was not the only game being actively developed by Paragon. They had a second game in development there for over a year I believe. I sincerely doubt it was using the Cryptic engine, but the entire studio got canned, not just CoH. No, this was the shut down of an entire branch of a company, I really doubt it has to do with PWE (as ruthless and crazy as they can be). This is NC cutting costs, and while it was profitable, it was barely a blip on the radar next to their eastern market.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪[/i][/center]
You know that Lineage was the game with the most subscriptions before WoW ? Even
if they had only 60.000 players in the West, they had over 2 millions in Asia.
Yepp .. would totally nake sense then to close down Lineage instead of CoH .
I would say that if the rumor was true NCSoft wouldn't have hesitated to blame anyone else but themselves for shutting down COH/Paragon.
The more likely rumor I've seen is that in Q1/Q2 NCSoft hemorrhaged 11 Million and Nexon who owns them told them to do something about it. Given that they appear to have taken sudden, swift, decisive action against one of their lower producing products that might be true. It would indicate that they decided to take the appearance of action rather than actually addressing the source of their loss but never let it be said that they couldn't take swift decisive action of cutting something.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I believe BaB's works for Cryptic on Nevewinter nights now.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Either way, CoH community was my other family and this character's roots. I'll help them wherever they end up.
While Nexon is the single biggest outside shareholder, they only own 14.7% of NCSoft. Aside from that, you're probably on the money: Paragon Studios only represented something like 2% of NCSoft's revenue, and CoH wasn't able to catch on in South Korea -- NCSoft's obvious primary customer base. On paper, shutting the studio down makes sense as a cost-cutting maneuver in light of company-wide losses. Shutting everything down immediately and without warning, however, just plain sucks.
Less competition means they don't have to work as hard to keep you as a customer.
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Companies do that all the time. That isn't going to happen.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪[/i][/center]
This CoH2 thing has been in the wishlist for a long time. It's not unusual for a company to buy out the names of domains to keep competitors from potentially infringing on their trademarks, and NCSoft had just acquired City of Heroes IP fully when they did this.
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That'd be hard, considering that they just fully eliminated the team behind COH. Companies copyright and trademark sequel names as a matter of course, just to make sure they have em if they need em.
That said, everything I've read about this closing basically boils down to one thing: They went free to play to try to make more money. They made about the same amount they were making before free to play. That would never bode well, considering that it was in bad enough shape to require giving the game away for free in the hopes that people would buy more stuff. But, imo, it was time anyway. At least, for maintenance mode. Closing the servers down 100% seems drastic, especially with the wicked-short notice. One more reason why I'll never play GW2. That's a pretty messed up thing to do to your customer base, which had kept the game running for *years*.
Honestly, though, I hated CoH. The gameplay was repetitive and boring, the sprites were ugly (even for the time, ffs they look like the sprites from dungeon siege), the player base didn't impress me, and the writing was overrated. On the bright side, I expect we'll pick up quite a few more of their player base than dcuo will, considering the customization and leaner system specs we've got.
RIP Caine
I rather doubt that since according to the link in the OP, they are not just shutting down the game, but closing the studio as well. That being said, it's not unheard of for a publisher to farm out a sequel to a totally different studio, but imo, that just doesn't look likely.
and yes, after several years of CoH and almost 2 years of CO, I'm very very happy to stick with CO. we may have our own problems and issues here, but it's still so much more fun, looks so much better, and is infinitely more flexible in damn near every way.
I'll miss CoH for the memories and friends, but I'm not heartbroken.
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Except that when a company is doing badly and sales suck...they are more likely to have layoffs because compensation and comp related costs are any companies largest expense. I believe I saw someone say there were roughly 80 people at Paragon, that's a huge cost saver. Lineages margins were probably much better than CoH's.
@Lohr
Now there's nobody to race against, to exchange cool ideas and developments with. And we're at a point where PWI really needs to be encouraged to keep some momentum with CO.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
They're busy with Neverwinter.
If there had never been a COH there would never have been a CO. :cool:
This is true for any game. Hopefully you aren't implying that Co isn't repetitive. Though one thing that did stand out for CoH, each group of villain had its own attack patterns. (this didn't help make CoH less repetitive, but it was one thing it had over CO)
Thats some mighty amazingly spectacular timing.
Excelsior!
I'm not talking about the mobs, I'm talking about your character. Every class I played there felt like old school Wow "I'm dialing a telephone" gameplay. Plus, trinity. Ew. Co I can play a tanking dps healer if I want, and do decently at all 3. It's really not a fair comparison.
RIP Caine
That is.. a striking coincidence.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪[/i][/center]
CO's gameplay is as repetitive as it comes. Every time you start a new character, you go through the exact same missions, with the exact same mission text. Each time you make a new nemesis, they go through the exact same missions.
Each nemesis ends up making a mind control device and working for Dr. D. There is little in the way of variety or depth when it comes to CO. That is not to say the game isn't fun, but it doesn't make it any less repetitive then any other mmo out.
That's not the general gameplay being repetitive, that's the content being repetitive. And I don't think anyone disputes that.
COx? A lot more repetitive on the gameplay front, but way more varied on the content part. Just by rolling an alt with a different origin (Or even just starting in Galaxy City), you'd be finding yourself fighting completely different enemies and doing (slightly) different missions. CO? Your character can do whatever but they'll always invariably start out by helping bear-man in ghetto-land fight the omnipresent prune-gang.
CO's got a great combat system running, and enemies offer varied challenges (Fighting Gravitar is absolutely nothing like fighting Kigatilik, while fighting Rakshasa is certainly nothing like fighting Ripper). The problem is that there really isn't anything to do. The most ironic thing is that I think the CO staff is actually trying too hard to come up with these ideas to fill the gap ("Hey! We made Adventure packs! Now we made Comic book series! Now we made alerts! Now we have 10-man rampages! Now we have dailies!") instead of doing pretty much everything every other MMO I can think of has done, continuously making new zones and levelling paths to explore. Instead of crafting things like new zones (which could potentially be chock full of missions and secrets that could remain undiscovered for months after a release), they're opting to try out a bunch of experimental 'content' designs. Which seem varied, new, and exciting - until you run it once, then the repetitiveness kicks in.
Out of the 10 major updates the game has had so far, only one (revelations) has actually introduced a new zone. That's not to say that they slacked at all, given that three were adventure packs (demonflame and resistance, in particular, were quite well crafted.) But to compare, City of Heroes introduced (or remade) 6 PvE zones. Even taking the fact that CoH zones are roughly 1/6th the size of a place like Monster Island or Millennium City, that's still 6+ distinct leveling paths introduced within roughly 3 years.
The alerts and adventures are just repetitive sidetracks on the path when it comes down to it; to really get a level from them, you have to run them tens of times, and they never really are all that different when you run them again. Or you could just go back to West Side and kill Hi-Pan again, whatever floats the boat.
I think Cryptic's paranoid of creating new zones, since the last new instance they made was Vibora Bay, and pretty much nobody goes there these days. (because the crisis is stupid long and unskippable, and the missions reward strangely low experience compared to Monster Island and can't be stacked at all.) Yet even for all its shortcomings, Therakiel's Temple is still my favorite lair in the game. I'd say they should try giving the zone-creating method of development a jab again, given that every other MMO out there has managed to survive for years on a formula that is essentially: new zone with gameplay tweaks and dedicated lairs/story arcs.
[end semantics rant]
A solid point, but also keep in mind there's a hidden cost with brand image. The way NCSoft handled the CoH termination is going to really hurt their brand image, and that will mean a reduction in sales potential. The tough thing is, it's hard to justify sales potential to the CFO versus something concrete like payroll.
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Maybe not really .. since the main market of NC-Soft is simly Asia, and i don't think that
a lot of people there even know about the existence of CoH. Much the same than people
in the West don't know what a success Lineage and A_ion are in Asia.
Reports from people who read the reports, and several web sites, apparently CoH was only 2% of NCsofts total income.
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Only 4% of NCSofts sales come from North America - and less then 1% is European.
So while the 4-5% might be mad at NCSoft about CoH the rest of their Sales Markets really have no idea what CoH even was - as it only constituted 2% of their overall sales.
I will 100% give the edge to CoH for lore and leveling options, though. I think cryptic shot themselves in the foot by eliminating canada as a low level option for advancement. And even if I didn't like the lore in CoH much, they did a hell of a better job telling their story. I'm specifically only talking from a mechanics standpoint, and as far as I'm concerned, there's no mmo on the market that plays as uniquely as CO does.
RIP Caine
Funnily this is the players fault since they whined about not enough city and too much everywhere else.
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But it was a real issue, as a superhero you spent a scant few levels in the city before going off to all corners of the world. I think the idea was that more content would've been added by now but well.....
They were doing well in the beginning, but, sadly, between the rather blatant attacks from certain groups and the fact Atari cut funds drastically things ended up going south a lot. A lot of bad press was put out on things that weren't true, and sadly, CO suffered for it. Hopefully a turn around can happen, soon and fast.
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I hope they send out an email when that happens, I'd like to know.
I'm one of those migrating from CoH and sniffing around CO to see if I like it. I first tried the game at launch then went back to CoH, and one of the main reasons I left was this issue. Now that I have the chance to come back I'm rather liking the change where you spend a lot more time in the city at low levels (I don't know what high levels look like yet as I'm not there).
I'll still be playing CoH until the servers shut down in November but I think there's a good chance I'll end up here afterwards, and even start leveling a character before that.
Again, CoH's tragedy could be CO's blessing. According to NCSoft's quarterly report CoH was turning a profit. It wasen't steller but it was solid and consistant. In fact the main problem for CoH was that the numbers never budged. From P2P to F2P the numbers stayed completly consistant.
So now you have a very loyal superhero loving MMO community floating about, one large enough to sustain a game on their own. They are all VERY upset at NCSoft so you can bet they won't be putting their money into GW2. The game closest to the game they were playing is this one. To add a cherry on top of that ice cream sunday, these people are also some of the most friendly and helpful community in the history of MMO's. Everyone also raves about how good the CoH community is (was). From my experience so far returning the CO community also seems to be very similar. It would be a good match.
CO needs to look at this as an opportunity that won't come again. They have from now to November 30th to start thinking of content to attract these players and while they would never be able to relese it by that deadline, at least announce it to make the CoH community look their way. They're looking at the potential to double their playerbase with exatly the type of players they want to play their game and enrich their community. The playerbase is friendly and loyal to their chosen game and drops enough money into a F2P game to make it profitable. CoH was constantly adding content, and CoH players won't migrate to a game and invest in it again if it looks dead because content is not being added. We're not goint to invest time and money if we think THIS game won't be around either, and stagnant content makes us think that.
If anyone is interested in throwing some positive zen CoH's way, http://youtu.be/cYwmE-FchKk
I'm sorry but no petition will change what is happening now. Every MMO that has shut down or MMO that was in development and had a petition has ever been stopped. People petitioned hard to NCSoft for Tabula Rasa. And wrote angry emails as well. Nothing came of that either.
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Yes indeed.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I was Dubsy on the Old Forums. I am still @Dubsy in-game. Also, lol.
I don't know of any PWE owned title that has been closed down. PWE makes some of their revenue from ads.
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We're fully aware that nothing may come of it. So what? Most of us choose to fight for it anyway. It makes people feel better to know that they did something, and the signatures add to the sense of community- of coming together about something that matters. There are 13,002 of us (as of right now) together on this, and that's a good feeling to have, whether it changes anything or not.
Cheers!
http://youtu.be/cYwmE-FchKk