Angry_Citizen
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Posts
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Joined
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How would you know whether I'm "supporting" it or not? For all you know, in my absence, I'd turned several people onto the game and increased its playerbase, thus earning them more money than by simply subscribing. Don't tell me what I did and did not do like some sanctimonious shaming session. The game died for a lot of reasons, but it was not from a fickle fan base. Even having this conversation implies that accusation, so how about shutting up?
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Quote:Hi. Some of us have other responsibilities than paying for a game that they're not currently playing. Like, say, eating. Doesn't cheapen the love, it's just called reality.
Not entirely, mind you, but if you weren't paying in some way then you weren't supporting the game. -
Debbie Downer time: I'm sure all communities in all games over the years have wailed and gnashed their teeth against imminent shutdown. It rarely works. In fact, I can't think of an instance where it did.
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I think we should lose. We're not going to get a Battalion invasion because none of their powers or VFX or models have been created - probably. But I want our Hamidon and Praetorian Hamidon to join forces, invade our world, and win. The City of Heroes falls.
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One of the few good things to come from nuking CoH: all the red names have gone crazy.
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Quote:As a fellow socially introverted homeschool victim, I feel for you, I truly do. But it gets better. The introversion usually goes away eventually. I met and talked to a girl just the other day at the bus stop - never would've done anything like that a few years ago. Endure, man. Endure.Originally Posted by SDragon
There's been a flood of posts here in the past day and I don't really expect that it will get read. But this is pretty much my last chance to say this. So here it goes.
CoH saved my life.
To elaborate I'll have to give a bit of background. I first heard about CoH in an old magazine ad. PCgamer maybe? It was just a blip. A 2' square shot of the old heroes around the original AP globe. Back when it was all wire-framy. It said that there was a new super-hero themed MMO in the works. That magazine sat in my bathroom for a good few months and I kept meaning to look into it. Eventually I did.
I joined the CoH fourms far back, in the days of the Halloween colored forums. Pre-AT days my friends. Pre-everything. I remember before there was a real fourm Mod. Who was it? MacAllen? He was the mod I think. I even remember Kiyotee. I remember Aura, the mod before Cuppa. I remember the ohhs and aahs over the scattered pics we got showing off the shiny spandex(and people talking about the broken backs the poor girls had). I even remember the weekly dev Q/A with good ol' Jack.
I'm rambling a bit, yeah. I'm kinda shellshocked about this whole mess. My point being that I've been around a while. I've watched this community grow from a few dozen to a few thousand. All this time I've maintained this handle. SDragon.
I had never really been to a forum before CoH. I had only made one handle before, for an old Mod for Quake 3(Bid For Power). The name I used there didn't suit a superhero game. So I tried to think up a new one.
My favorite color is blue and my last name is Fox. Simple! Only Blue Fox was taken. Silver then. Silver is my second favorate. It's a good col-- Yeah that won't work. Eventually I dug up an old Monster Manual and looked for something more mythological. Dragons! But Blue Dragons are evil... So...
My first hero.
Fast forward a bit. I'd always been a bit of an introvert... ok maybe more then a bit. I had managed to play on Victory for several years before I ever really made any connection with anyone. I just made my own little stories in my own little head. Slowly soloing my way through all the content. It was only after a few scuffles with some of these freaky "RPers" that I considered trying to meet other people.
So I made a post on the forums on the Victory(My home) sub-forums. Asking if there was any RP going on here. Mostly I got told to go to Virtue. But one poster said a few RPers meet up in GC on the weekends. So... I got up the nerve and I went. That one post. That one poster. That all changed my life, though I didn't realize it for many years.
I did some basic RP. I did what might have been Victory's first RP PVP event right as... what was it? Issue 2? The one with the arenas. Just sorta throwing out RP stuff at the poor random people who showed up. Got into an argument about lovecraftian entities, heehee. But that kinda fizzled out over time. People sorta dispursed or moved onto Virtue I guess.
But I did make some contacts, got onto a global channel(when those came out) and eventually got invited to an SG to help build up Prestige. I don't remember the SG's name. Eventually it... I forget, I think it just kinda broke up? Either way, one of the guys invited me to his SG. Shield of Valor. It was an RP-SG even. I sorta stayed in the peripheral for the most part. Joining in on a few missions. Until one day I teamed up with a certain player. She knows who she is.
That was the first serious RP I'd ever done. Our character's randomly hit it off. Our respective quirks happened to align just right and we the players hit it off as well. Many RP adventures were had and I even wrote a few stories(at her encouragement).
Years passed.
We met up IRL and she eventually facilitated my move, helping me get my first job and car. Which is where I am now. If it wasn't for CoH, I'd never have met the people that changed my life.
...But that doesn't really explain the thread title. To understand that, you have to know what was going on in my life during all this.
When I first went into CoH, back in the beta, I was juuuust under 18. I had my dad sign the NDA for me and what not. I played it damn near religiously. I had no job or school. I was vaguely getting ready for collage and maybe a part-time job. But for the most part? I played CoH.
Being home schooled, I had literally no friends since the 4th grade. Which was when I started home schooling. When I said I was an introvert, I meant it. I played with my younger brothers in CoH(two accounts) and sometimes got my dad to play with me. Not that he didn't play, just not with me mostly. I spent my time in this weird little bubble. We had a half a million dollar home. He was pulling 6 figures a year.
Until he left.
Then, only a month or so after my 18 birthday, my life collapsed. Or the pretense of it. He had skipped out on the last year or so of mortgage payments so we lost the house. Things spiraled down from there.
Our oldest dog, she had Addison's Disease(SP?) and needed constant medication. Which we just couldn't afford a ready supply of. She ended up dying in my arms at 2:10am. I had stayed awake with her the whole night, I could tell this was her last. That was really about the most painful thing I'd ever had happen to me. Maybe that's the sheltered life speaking but it hurt. A lot.
I had no method to deal with the stress. What my family was going through. What I was going through. And it dragged on for years. My thoughts grew darker with time and I considered ending it. I considered it more then once. I'd even planned for it and drafted a few notes for my family afterwards.
Why didn't I?
That player I mentioned, the one who helped me move on with my life? She and I spent long days and nights together. Her job gave her odd hours and I was able to spend the night brainstorming and building stories with her. It gave me, well maybe nothing more then something to do, but it worked. It gave me strength to hold on a bit longer.
If it wasn't for CoH, I wouldn't have met her. If it wasn't for CoH, even if I had we would have had nothing in common to form a bond together. If it wasn't for CoH, I would have spent those years coldly pondering my own mortality until the darkness finally won.
If it wasn't for CoH, I wouldn't be here.
Through every hard time in my life, I've had CoH as the constant anchor and rock. It was always there. The gleaming towers of Steel Cannon would wait for me to sail through again. The gritty rooftops of King's would wait for me to leap from them once again. And now it's going away. I don't even know what to think.
I will survive, that I know. CoH has given me what I needed most, time. It buoyed me up long enough that I can swim on my own now. Developers, I don't know how to express myself to you properly. How much your work has meant to me. How much interacting with you, asking questions, reading your posts. How much all of that helped. How it helped keep me engrossed in this world. In your world. And how it all helped keep *my* world together.
Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I will truly miss this place when it's gone.
To any of those who worked through my self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness, wall of poorly spaced text, thank you. To all the great people I met and played with. To all the people that answered my weird PUG /tells. You helped me through a dark time, even if you didn't know. You helped.
And now I'm all teary eyed, heh. -
Quote:This also doesn't pass the sniff test. CoH was bought on Nov 6th. The game goes till Nov 30th. That means there's a 24 day period in which NCSoft is supposedly using the Cryptic engine without permission. If it were the engine license, it would be shut down on or before the 6th.
Given that the closure date is 5 years to day -
Quote:But how would it boost their books? I don't have an MBA (and god willing I never will, the bourgeois pucks), but I'm pretty sure if one's revenue stream declines, that's bad for the books. If CoH was profitable, and it doubtlessly was, then this is a net loss for them both short term and long term.
Anyway as a result of this the accounting and management types focus on the near term profit/benefit to the long term. Worse their investors do the same thing so you get games like NCSoft is playing trading a game that might bring them minor but solid bookable profit for a short term boost to their books. -
Quote:Again, if the franchise was profitable at all (and I find it hard to believe it wasn't, considering the free-to-play model gave them revenue from both subscriptions and points and quite a few people still played), then it was only a positive. Paragon Studios worked on CoH and CoH only. If the cost of development was eclipsed even by one dollar by the revenue stream, then CoH was profitable and there is no excuse to shut it down. They wouldn't be saving any money that couldn't be saved through simple downsizing.Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
Yes, but look at the money they no longer have to spend on Paragon or either of Paragon's projects. Money that no longer has to be budgeted and can be re-allocated elsewhere, like say bailing out their flailing non-Lineage Asian grindfests.
I'm just hoping Carbine isn't next. And that Arenanet has an escape plan.
That's the main reason why the "NCSoft killed CoH because of GW2" argument smells so fishy to me. If CoH wasn't making any money, then they should've downsized the development team to a skeleton crew. No one here would've liked it, but most of us would've still shelled out more and more money to keep playing. Even going on maintenance would've given them quite a tidy profit.
Something's fishy, and it's the theories being presented. We need more information, because the speculation just isn't passing the rationality test. -
Shame PvP General/Pwnz isn't around to meatspin everyone into oblivion.
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Quote:But that doesn't make a lick of sense, not even a tiny shred. When you can't pay your bills, you don't quit your second job. CoH was a compartmentalized money-making machine. It wasn't costing them any money or resources to keep it going, and it was in fact padding their revenue stream. However high or low that profit margin was, it was still profit, and now that profit is gone.
1. CoH wasn't making enough profit to offset the losses from their other games which is where they make most of their money.
Something else is the culprit. -
Didn't know there was a song :P
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Quote:Wasn't Johnny Butane predicting doom when villains arrived?Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
"CoH had a good run, but we have to acknowledge, that in all likelihood, this is it for the IP.
"Every day from this day on is a gift. Use it well""- Johnny_Butane 07-23-2012.
I remember those words and at the time, they were just words. Now they ring more truth now than ever. -
Quote:Yes.. it is. Remember how we'd all get so sad when a red name made a goodbye thread? This is like a thousand times worse because they're all doing it at once.Originally Posted by Mad Grim
All the rednames saying goodbye one by one is too much.
Also, your signature gif is perfect. I haven't felt this sad since Tennant left. -
Quote:Well, I'm pretty sure I had a hand in the original attempt at stalker improvements, which were ultimately vetoed as being too powerful. Beyond that, I have no idea. My main contribution to bug-finding was in the form of the Placate bug, which remains unfixed to this day (to my knowledge).Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
Just curious, but what do people think they suggested that actually made it into the game?
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Ah the memories. Salut, cuppa.
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I wish I could contribute. I'm still a poor college student after all. But good luck.
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My first thought was, "CoH 2???!?!?!" My second thought was, "why would they crush the subscriber base without formally announcing CoH 2? Why lay off all the old devs?"
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May she have the absolute best life she can possibly make for herself. Wonderful little girl you've got there.
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Quote:Sort of teary-eyed, but not bawling. It is very sad.Originally Posted by GreatRock
Anyone else?
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I don't think it'd make them open to RICO, but it might make them open to anti-trust lawsuits. But I honestly don't know. Is it legal to purchase other companies just so you can gain a monopoly in an industry?
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Some of you may remember me from the dark ages, before Freedom, before Incarnates, before Going Rogue. Three years ago almost to the day, I made a really emotional post to all of you: my second family. It was entitled Goodbye, So Long, Fare Thee Well, but it was never intended to be any of those things. It was just supposed to be a "see you later" - a thank-you to the people who had helped me grow so much so quickly. Well, recent events (read: doom, no joke) have compelled me to write a sequel.
Y'all may not know this, but y'all helped raise me. I joined the game at its very beginning, when I was a very young, very stupid 13 year old kid. I did not attend school, since Texas public education sucks and we had no money for a private school. But I still got an education. I learned many of my basic math skills crunching numbers on this game. The ability to analyze data, to conduct my own experiments, and to see past the numbers and glean a deeper meaning behind them was invaluable to what I do now. Using these models and experiments, I learned how to argue and present technical proposals primarily on this board, which is something I need to do for the next two years in school, and will be doing for the rest of my life. I grew my very own political philosophy and outlook on life because of a few people whom I mentioned in Part One.
That very young, very stupid 13 year old is now a very young, very stupid 21 year old at a good college, doing a degree in aerospace engineering based on the experiences he learned in a game over half a decade - with you.
I just came back a couple weeks ago. I barely had time to play through the Dark Astoria content and level a heroic elec/regen brute. I got to play the STF (now it's the MLTF, I believe) one last time. I was playing through a beam/time corr and imagining sizzled body parts flying through the air. I don't really believe in bad omens, but if there were such things, I guess I am one? If so, well, sorry!
I met good friends here, and I had a blast. I enjoyed my brief return thoroughly. I'm not sure if I'll play more or not. It seems rather like reading a book series when you know the author died before completing it. But I'm more sad because I won't have a chance to really return, to make new friends and reconnect with old ones, to infuriate new red names, to enjoy the company of you folks - strangers, really, but such glorious and dear strangers you all are.
May you all lead wonderful lives. I want you to know that I'm eternally grateful to have met you and conversed with you. Farewell.
Or perhaps just see ya later? Angry_Citizen has become my moniker online, and I'm on several other forums. I may also check out other games, likely Star Wars or Warcraft. If you see my name on another forum with the Sauron's Eye avatar, it's me, likely pissing people off just as much. Say hey sometime and we'll talk about bygone days when we killed hordes of spider-men, saved entire universes, and fought giants. -
I'm just.. finding it too difficult right now to play. I was excited to play Night Ward, which I hadn't gotten around to yet, but now.. all the revelations that were sure to be there are now purposeless. It's like getting into a book series only to find out the author died while making the last book.
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Never got a chance to know you, but au revoir.