Another_Fan

Spacewar never went away. In the 70s it became an arcade game, in the 80s you could find it on consoles and on the pc.

Now you can play it on your phone

http://appadvice.com/appguides/show/space-war

COX never had to go away, it was run into the ground. Take a look at that revenue graph for CoX

Then go here http://mmodata.net/ and take a look at the 150k to 1 mil sub chart. You see games with upward sloping sub numbers and then you have games that spike and drop.

CoH was spike and drop it could never get any growth in it's revenue why ? Because all the crap that was about the health of the game was about the developer teams whim of the moment. You can't build a business without consistent execution and follow through.

Take a look at how end game content was handled. Our playerbase was "happy" with the task force and raid model we had. Sure there were things that needed improvement. Hami needed some way to keep leaches out, there were some really bad Task Forces, and a major lack of content in that 40-50 zone. Did we get expansion of what we had ? Improvements to what was in the game ? No we had developers trying to show they could do the same crap wow does.

Remember when the CoP was re-introduced ? and flopped like a dying flounder ? What was the reponse to this.

1. It was a priority to make this game look like stupid fantasy game X
2. People who are playing have been playing but don't fit into fantasy game X aren't who we want but we need a population to make fantasy game X players happy.
3. Shovel current players into the fantasy game X content by putting game breaking rewards and nearly impossible to obtain badges behind the content.

A sensible business would have said our customers are reacting badly to this direction. Instead of mistaking people who have been supporting us endlessly and feel an inexplicable fondness for us, for toilet paper let us instead try to expand on our offerings of the things the do like and adapt what they don't like into something more palatable.

What did happen ? We got an endless parade of Itrials that involved more standing around than playing the game. The rewards from existing content were nerfed into oblivion. We got content that used mechanics that were stolen wholesale from other games that people playing here didn't like, didn't want and looked like they had no business being here.

Admittedly some things worked, combo mechanics in powersets comes to mind so do the superpacks. What do they have in common ? They both really were optional. The builder consumer powersets really were optional and you could get the vast majority of the superpack content without ever buying a superpack. Compare this to Itrials. Incarnate content was initially optional, you could do the unlock and just keep on doing things and continue to advance. You got your shards from doing things you liked and you moved on.

Then came along incarnate content. You are now forced to participate in a small set of content if you want your character to advance. You have no choice. You go from an optional and ala carte format to a shove down your throat format.

One amongst many. How many people do you think said "who the f**k does this guy think he is ?" when Positron decided to erase their work collecting AE badges ? People who had hami-O builds and didn't take kindly to having them erased ? Energy melee players ? PvPers ? People who liked dominators ? People that had 0 love for the blaster changes coming down.

Server cost is minimal but that is off the point. I don't doubt that you liked the changes everyone still here at the end was by definition someone who was pleased enough with things that they were still playing. The problem is all the people who left and never looked back.

Spacewar still lives. The basic pong/tennis game was made on an analog computer in the 40s and used an oscilloscope as a display. Still going and I expect they will be around as long as their is the tech to make electronic games.

Want to go slightly younger you have games like net trek, rogue, any variety of physics based games like cannon shoot that are not only still around but you can play in so many different variants its mind boggling.

When anyone said this game was destined for doom they were talking out of their rear. I don't see the Disney corporation going "You know our mickey mouse character is going away time to move on". The people who kept saying the game was destined for death and that it was doing really well were all people that were acting to shield the developers from the consequences of bad decisions. I expect some really believed in the concept, having seen it shouted at them on the forums, others just wanted to be friendly with the developers.

Really ?

http://www.old-games.com/download/2862/space-war

That must be a figment of my imagination.

There is no intrinsic reason why this game could not have continued indefinitely. People are still playing 50+ year old video games and enjoying them. I expect that 100 years from now nethack and spacewar will still be played provided the technological infrastucture is still available. People are still playing thousands of year old games.

As to no warning that is just sily. There was an insane amount of warning. It was their for you to see. All anyone had to do was look at NCsoft's financials or any of the posts where people were shouting out "WE ARE IN TROUBLE". Instead people on the forums chose to look at numbers that showed a game that couldn't sustain any growth and somehow say how wonderful it was doing.

If you wanted to save the game you needed to hold torch vigils when Castle was driving people away from the game, when Posi was ranting at people for not having a moral compass. You could have joined with me in trying to get incarnate content made into something that actually fit well into the game instead of a game destroying grind.

I mean really didn't the idea of being forced and bribed to do incarnate content set off a lightbulb that maybe having content that was so awful that you had to reward people with game breaking tools was a bad idea ?

You are deluded

Thank you for reaffirming my view of the forums and for validating the arguments I made about incarnate content before it was introduced on live.

The only shocker there was the businessman won the popular vote. He was a no chance prior to the debates. The election was a testament to the power of wishful thinking on the part of both sides. Not surprising that these boards also exhibit a ludicrous level of wishful thinking and walls to reality as well.

These boards were the most amusing part of the game for me during its existence. Playing spot the astroturf was always fun. I can even congratulate myself on spotting Arcanaville as co opted and paid for post I14. I still have to wonder about some if they were community manager sock puppets or just random lunatics.

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men"

Look around not only will you find MMOs that do what CoH did but better, you will be truly upset at how our devs were copying the least fun parts of other MMOs.

You see this is where we differ. I have plenty against NCsoft. If they had of handled this differently (roll out I24, the superpacks, put the game into maintenance mode and get somebody in who could properly focus on keeping the game going and maybe actually growing it out of maintenance mode), I would harbor no ill will towards them. I likely would have bought GW2 to fill in the gap.

They failed.

The game and the studio weren't doing well by comparison to current generation MMOs it looked like the inside of an army boot. Your products are part of your corporate image, if you want to be seen as state of the art, you can't have a beat up pacer on blocks in your front yard, also it didn't even have nipples.

Just what is immoral here ?? Thinking you should have the right to dictate to others what they do with their property maybe ?

It was never "OUR STUFF". It was always their stuff that they let us use. If you are upset ftom frustrated feelings of ownership take it out on the devs that encouraged them in you.

In this case absolutely. Just look at the people who knew CoH would be saved

That is a little laughable and demonstrates a near complete lack of knowledge of American history. One it's almost impossible to run industrial enterprises with slave labor that is aware it is slave labor. Two the north had something called "Imigrants" that were much better than slaves for the purpose because not being a capital investment they could be treated far worse.

O'rly ?

LOL you know what the consequences of not having such laws are going to be ?

Think about people that are using web services to do their taxes, doctors using cloud based practice management and emr systems.

At the very least you will see companies forced to provide data back to their customers in case of closure, in a usable format or with software that renders it usable.

The average gamer has the attention span of a humming bird with ADHD and when told "If we don't hang together we shall surely hang seperately" thinks it's a plot and immediately looks for the place to plant the knife.

Freeform would have been really nice. Definitely a change that would have renewed interest for many players who found their concept was not allowed. It was amazing to watch the apologists cry it wasn't possible when other games were doing it.

There is an old quote about the difference between neurotics and psychotics.

It may be time for you to take a reality check.

If you see someone driving off the edge of a cliff you'll be correct as well. It's mighty funny when the people in car say "Bahh we were planning on falling over the edge"

For three of those years players were treated as a disposable asset. Some came to the forums to try and have the games problems dealt with most just left. There are simple things that constitute customer service and providing a quality product. For every person who felt motivated to come to the forums and talk about problems like not being able to get teams because their server pops were drying up, who was pissed because castle had a case of indigestion and decided to take it on the players, or just plain didn't like the fact that there wasn't content coming out, and the changes to the game were making it more and more and grindy, you can be certain there were 10s to 100s that just left without saying a word.


I don't even want to go into the rage over nerfs. I just bought performance shifters from the store and you're nerfing them ? Are you giving me my money back ? Refund in points ? Credit for some consumables ? Oh you are changing your sign to all sales are final ? "Gee we are changing how Hami-Os work", You do understand that it took people 10s to 100s of hours to get their stashes of those things.

It really doesn't take much to understand if you screw with your customers they don't stick around. It also shouldn't be hard to understand that you have to own your mistakes and make them right by the customer.

Remember this when you think it's a good idea to store your data/records/move your business applications to the cloud.

The time to save CoH was 4-5 years ago. It went terminal when the revenue graph took that sharp drop after I13. Plan Z at best will be a forum game.

Halloween seems to be a permanent condition in TSW.