Captain-Electric
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Posts
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Joined
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It's not over till it's over, and until I have official word that it's officially over and hopeless, I'm going to keep responding to Tony's Calls to Action and keep doing my own stuff around the Internet to help.
But sometimes, I look at the past three weeks and I just can't help but think, what a senseless waste NCSoft has caused. It's hard to believe this is even happening. One day this was the world's most popular super-powered MMORPG, profitable and full of promise, lined up with new issues in the development pipeline--and then, all the sudden, the next day, for no reason that anyone has been able to make definitive sense out of--Paragon's days were given a number and its architects thrown out into the cold. Just like that. All that promise, gone.
There was a better way out for NCSoft and in their carelessness, they didn't take it, choosing instead to harm everyone involved, even tarnishing their own name for the sake of convenience. It's just senseless. What a waste.
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Quote:Oh, HECK yeah, see--that's what you call a great team-up. To say, "I'm gonna miss this place terribly," is such an understatement.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Consider an average chance team-up between City of Heroes characters. It might go something like this: A reptile from the stone age teams up with a computer nerd who got super powers from a game, a time-travelling high wizard from another land, a green space babe from Mars and a cop who moonlights as a vigilante, led by the avatar of an eldritch god here on holiday. How can this NOT be awesome?
And I'm going to miss reading your posts, Samuel, a lot. -
HEROES
NEVER
QUIT
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Oh, $target, there you are! Where were you the other day when I was having my game stolen? There's never a hero around when you need one. You've been on patrol 0 times today. There are 5,000 masks in this part of the city right now.
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In a time of crisis, even heroes must bump threads.
"Gentlemen... Let's do this." -
Please just go to www.SaveCoH.com, write letters, send masks and capes, writes posts on other forums, write open letters to NCSoft in comment sections beneath articles covering SaveCoH on gaming and other news sites. Stop wasting precious energy.
When these forums are nuked, all of these Internet arguments will go with them. Nothing you type on these forums matters as much as what you can accomplish outside of them for a fraction of the frustration and ten times the satisfaction. -
Quote:*Salutes.*Originally Posted by UberGuy
No, I'm not. Read my last few posts. I explicitly state that people should be tempering any messages of hopefulness with clarifications that any such hope is a long shot, to put it mildly. We absolutely should remind people that it's possible that we get none of what a lot of players hope for here. We might get zippo beyond November 30 in terms of a playable game we would recognize as CoH. There is nothing wrong with reminding them of that. It's all about how you do that.
Some of you, out of whatever motivation, have resorted to or fallen back on stating only that reminder that it's a long shot, with no cushion. Maybe you're tired of pulling punches. Maybe you're in a hurry and didn't post everything you're thinking. Maybe you're mean. The message I find annoying comes across as "don't be hopeful, the game is probably toast". That's a similar but different message from "it's good to be hopeful, but just remember that we're hoping for a miracle, here".
Any you're willing to split hairs over it. You insist on presenting it in that glass-half-empty way, arguing with others over it. Look back on the CPR analogy.
You're dealing with a lot of people who are emotionally invested in this game in one way or another - if that weren't true, there wouldn't be a "popular" movement to save the game. It's good to call out ridiculous optimism, but you need to expect to piss off anyone who shares that sense of investment if you come in preaching glass-half-empty. Hell, the glass isn't even really half full, but don't come in telling people "hey, your glass has almost no water in it". They want to be reminded that there's a little left.
Man, if I ever go to one of those player meetups and see you there, I'm buying you a beer. Or whatever you want.
And for those people being addressed by UberGuy, I'd say the first few times you pissed in our Cheerios, it was commendable. To temper our resolve with caution, you've done us a service. After several more times, I'd imagine you were overextending yourselves, but for good measure, I'd give you that. However, after thousands of posts collectively in the span of a couple of weeks, let's face it--you like pissing in Cheerios.
But you're all right about something. There's no point in dreaming. Dreaming won't get us anything. And for those who'd like to think they're helping simply by typing arguments and other posts on our forum, you're dreaming. If you're also posting messages toward our cause on dozens of other forums, posting open letters to NCSoft in comment sections beneath every major article about SaveCoH in the gaming press, sending physical letters, capes and masks to NCSoft, then sure, you could say you're doing something significant in the way of helping with nothing but mere words at your disposal.
Cheerio! -
Quote:Please don't even joke about that!Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
Thank God for that. *Now* I can retire.
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
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Wow. Angelus, that has oomph, especially the end. Excellent video. This isn't just another fan video, folks, it's pure win and I'd take Leandro's word for it. There's a new video artist in town.
Also, VERY slick looking website. Well-designed and easy to get around. -
Quote:Dear NCSoft,Originally Posted by Largo
I was taken aback by the announced closing, it was too sudden. I think I will really miss it, an the OP will too when that day comes where you cant actually log in. Thats when it will hurt worse. But hopefully we all will have something else by that time to ease the pain.
For me it wont be a new MMO. I am looking at a new bicycle. I was in a crash 2 months ago and broke my collarbone and had to have surgery to repair it. I am nearly ready to return to riding, and hopefully the new bike will give me some joy.
If this gentleman has another bicycle accident, it will pretty much be all your fault.
Don't let that happen. Save City of Heroes
Sincerely,
Cap -
Just an FYI, I don't have time to enter a protracted debate about this, so all I'm aiming to do here is correct a couple of misunderstandings.
Quote:No. No. No.Originally Posted by SuperOz
you're simply arguing from the 'everything will be fine' perspective.
This is actually a very dangerous perspective, whether you're trying to stop a local neighborhood business from discontinuing a product, whether you're fighting zoning changes in your city, fighting for government reform, or fighting a big scary corporation's service disruption. Whenever the odds are stacked this high against you, you need to be many in number, very loud, very public, and very newsworthy. And you still might lose. But without those things, you certainly cannot win. For the long version of this, read here. The short version is, with every hint that the franchise producer has thrown our way, he has reminded us of one thing: we are his ammunition. The bulk of this fight rests on our shoulders. Not his.
I'm singling this line out not to dishonestly "selectively quote" you (lame tactic that gets used a lot on these forums), but because I think a lot of what you typed afterward was backing this line up. And it's all worth considering. Probably not in this thread, but okay, now that we're here, what the Hades.Quote:Originally Posted by SuperOz
It's a fact, plain and simple, that the game cannot and will not be the same game regardless of how positive the outcome is.
City of Heroes has peaked. No one will argue this. (Although, as unlikely as it is to happen here, I can name two MMOs who saw multiple "peaks" during their lifetimes, Ultima Online and Eve Online, both still alive and kicking and receiving updates.) And I've made no assumptions related to the realities you're forecasting. I think most of us are prepared to "cross that bridge when we get to it," including the franchise producer, obviously, otherwise he wouldn't be batting for us.
But do keep in mind, that assumptions on either side of the fence are only assumptions and nothing more. I've personally seen revivals of resources breath new life into Ultima Online, Eve Online, and City of Heroes long after these properties seemed forgotten. I know other games out there that I haven't played have enjoyed similar "mini-revivals" after their peaks, such as Vanguard and Anarchy Online. A new publisher might just give City of Heroes a steady home to live out its days with no more big issues, or we might see the complete opposite. You don't know what's going to happen if we win, and neither do I.
City of Heroes is still the world's most popular super powered MMORPG. It doesn't need to be peaking to earn millions of dollars every year.
Again, with all due respect, I think some people are coming at this from the angle of, "Well, things end, that's life, and I'm pretty okay with City of Heroes ending now, hey look at me, I got all these years out of it, so I think it may as well just end now." Well, what about the thousands of customers who've only been playing for three years? One year? Six months? And what about our eight-year vets who weren't really gamers to begin with, and can't imagine playing anything else? How about if I could just pick anything that you can't seem to get enough of (go ahead, take a few moments to think of a few things), and snap it away from you for good based on the simple reality that "It's old hat to me, I think you ought to be willing to move on now, too. How's them apples?"
Whenever thousands of customers are involved, you can't overlay your own personality and experience onto the situation before analyzing it, and then call your assumptions reasonable. This isn't about YOU or ME. This has NOTHING to do with YOUR life experiences. The ONLY thing that matters here is the fact that a business is discontinuing a service and a large number of that business's customers are demanding uproariously for the business to reconsider its decision. That's it. Period. "You did X. NO! We want Y!" This does not qualify any customer, ever, for an automatic victory, or even a compromise. But sitting quietly ALWAYS qualifies customers for getting what they demanded: nothing. -
It's a show of ignorance, more than anything else. I know it's supposed to be funny, but it's not. None of that describes myself or any other comic book reader I know. We're just people. We have jobs, lives, families, hobbies, so on and so on. But these stereotypes are stupid and irritating, and the novelty of surprising [boring] people [without hobbies] with my nerdy/creative hobbies wore off a long time ago.
No one I know who reads comic books exclusively reads comic books. Most of my friends who read comics also watch sports. None of us live in basements or are thirty year-old virgins or any of that stereotypical crap.
I think we're all quite certain there are people who play MMORPGs who have some things in common with those stereotypes though, and I'm sure running into that stuff in a video game hits them right in the funny bone. -
Quote:The point of the thread may have been to dream or to hope, but is it any less realistic than revenge fantasy threads, or does it pose any harm when we've already got many dozens of threads full of posters who are pointing out everything you just did? With all due respect (and that's not an empty gesture, heroOriginally Posted by SuperOz
I don't really understand the question, because the premise is flawed. NCSoft doesn't want the game, and the players because of how that decision was handled don't want NCSoft.
Therefore, should the game be saved, it'll be on new servers in a new building, possibly independent and not reported on these forums which will be gone. In addition to that, any iteration of the game will not be CoH as you know it. It cannot. If NCSoft considers the game engine proprietary software, then a new engine needs to be coded. If NCSoft considers that the physical hardware of the game cannot be removed and relocated, all characters will be deleted. Even if Titan Network's program to save characters is used on a broad and extensive basis, it will take significant time to re-establish all those characters with all those badges, all those rewards and all those benefits back onto servers.
There is a ridiculous amounts of ifs in this situation and it's frankly naive to think a switch will be flipped and CoH will continue as is. This whole notion really needs to be disabused from people's perspectives.) I could list a counter-argument for every single one of your points (like the fact that the City of franchise producer is still negotiating with NCSoft for our game and he has not been told "no" yet), or how a complete divestiture package is likely to come with the game and all related data intact, just like it has almost any time in history when an MMO has changed hands, but the simple fact is, almost every other thread out there is full of those discussions already.
No one is going to die if we don't fill up every single thread on the forums with the same exact arguments, over and over and over and over.
Cryptic completely washed their hands of the game when they left NCSoft. The above rumor was debunked by Jack Emmert himself. In other words, Cryptic would have no say in any of these negotiations. None of this is even remotely related to Cryptic.Quote:Originally Posted by McCharraigin
And, NCsoft does not own the game engine. As I understand it, Cryptic does. -
Well with me, they never showed up at the same time. My token usually dropped a day later.
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If someone gets their token drop, please report here ASAP!!!!
My "billing cycle" isn't until the 24th.
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Sorry but you have it all wrong.
Some of those costume pieces aren't in the game. Yet.
See? It's a hint.
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Okay, one last thing, and this isn't to win the argument, because I really never plan on that around here.
When corporations reverse their decisions (this is similary true for democratic governments, as any South Korean could attest, ironically), like in this case about changing or cancelling a service or product, it is most often because of public outcries. And in the case of corporations especially, public outcries are often met initially with seemingly impassive silence. There can be any number of reasons why. It can even be a simple tactic. There are many moving parts in these behemoth organizations (including other corporations with their own interests at stake). But, in the end, sometimes these outcries work, if they're loud enough, if they're prolonged enough, and perhaps most importantly, believe it or not, if the so-called "unbiased" press is sympathetic enough. I said sometimes. Not every time. But when events like this become an opportunity for good PR ("We listen to our customers!"), they actually give a corporation incentive to hold off for the optimal amount of media coverage before caving to their customers demands.
Now, none of that was actually the important part. It was just stuff I bet you already know, you're a smart guy.
The important part is realizing who makes these events successful. Is it the negotiators? Shareholders? Mediators? Financially and professionally invested management? Sure, absolutely. But the biggest contributor to the success of a public outcry or media campaign is the customers, every single time. None of these talks even have a chance in Hades of happening unless and until a business's customers rally each other and the press to their cause.
It is perhaps inaccurate to confuse this campaign of action with an "Occupy" movement. There are a lot of things planned yet still for us to make our voices heard, including our community's annual charities. We're not just sitting down and taking this.
My request to you is to consider this: if this works, and City of Heroes is saved, who do you think the franchise producer will thank most of all? Lawyers? Employees? Or us? Do you think he was kidding when he asked us to keep making noise? When a circumstance like this is turned around, a consistent, maintained, prolonged and very noisy public outcry always lies at the root of it. A bunch of angry demanding customers who were willing to keep trying.
I'm not making a movie speech. Realistically, historically speaking, not every public outcry ends in failure (just ask the South Koreans). And if we do succeed here, I'll have one more question for you. What if we had all taken your advice to heart, and given up? -
Write thank you letters to everyone involved, tell everyone how great NCSoft is and encourage them to buy all of their games (keeping my word), then go visit City Hall, look up at Atlas, and smile the biggest goofiest smile ever.
Then, team up and fight some crime.
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I'll stick with Golden Girl, but good luck with your thread.
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"TwoHeadedBoy", if you want to talk, let's talk. If you want to help, then help.
But if you want to call this fight a lost cause, if you want to waste our time putting our effort down, then, well, you should actually probably just stop. You're wasting your time. -
Quote:Sure, here.Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
What was 'toxic' about anything I said? I would sincerely and legitimately like your input.
Quote:Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
Every COH player has seen those incessant, futile and well intentioned threads by now. Jeez.Actually, no. Listen.Quote:Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
I should be ostracized now, for being a realist?
We can finish this conversation tomorrow, after you've had time to sleep on this and let your anger (or whatever it is you're feeling) subside. I can't get entangled in forum arguments and then turn around and say I take the SaveCoH effort seriously. This is a time-sensitive effort.Quote:Originally Posted by Captain-Electric
But I'm not going to tell you to screw off. We need you beside us right now. Badly, desperately. Not because the weather's fine, not because we know what the odds are (besides knowing they've been stacked against us from the beginning, anyway), but because it's hopeless and terrible. The best communities pull through dark hours together or fail trying--together. -
Quote:This is some of the worst, most toxic garbage I've read by a single forum poster in my three years here. No one is ignoring you (well, now I'm sure some will be). There are a LOT of people trying to help get one important message across right now. The point isn't to be specially recognized for your voice, it's to add your voice to a chorus.Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
And in case you haven't noticed, being lightheartedly alienating is kind of my shtick.
The worst part about being me is that when I say sincere stuff, people conveniently ignore me. I know "TonyV is doing lots of stuff." You could've just said that. Every COH player has seen those incessant, futile and well intentioned threads by now. Jeez.
I pointed out that I signed the petition. I pointed out that I liked the Facebook pages and even contributed a good amount of rally screenshots. I pointed out that I recommended the iCNN articles. I thought it was awesome that Felicia Day tweeted that it was sad to watch us as members of our community tried to save the game.
Look, I know you just want to somehow magically save COH. And I can see that lots of people still think that our game can be preserved. But it can't be, and that's just the truth of the matter. Best practical case scenario, TonyV and his team copy over enough data to make a private server. There will be no professional dev's. There will be no real progress. It will probably be copyright infringement that can be shut down at any time. Do you really want to invest time or money into something illegal? It won't be above board at all.
It shows.Quote:Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
Haha, I don't want people to 'rally' behind me.
But I'm not going to tell you to screw off. We need you beside us right now. Badly, desperately. Not because the weather's fine, not because we know what the odds are (besides knowing they've been stacked against us from the beginning, anyway), but because it's hopeless and terrible. The best communities pull through dark hours together or fail trying--together.
The franchise producer himself has referred to us as torches, as ammunition; he's encouraged us to keep making noise. What more are you waiting for, man?
Sleep on it. Get your head in the right place. And tomorrow, or as soon as you have time, answer a Call to Action. -
Your belittling comments here toward the SaveCoH effort are not going to steer either the community, the gaming press, celebrities or any industry veterans, former Paragon Studios devs or negotiators toward rallying behind you. This isn't me being a jerk. It's just me being frank (I have stuff to do). We'll get to "your idea". It's on the list.
There are reasons why the case of this MMO shutting down in particular is a big deal within and outside the industry.
I noticed you signed the petition, and put the word out on some Facebook pages. Great! But you're not done yet! Be sure to send an email to NCSoft, buy a mask and cape or print out a mask and send it to NCSoft, be sure to play the game, hit the flashmobs and rallying events, keep an eye on the Titan Network's Calls to Action, watch the events calendar, write a handwritten, certified letter to NCSoft, and copy/paste any polite, reasonable letters/emails you've sent and place them in comments sections beneath articles on news sites all around the web.
Be a part, don't be apart. (See what I did there?)
(Remade my post with lots of helpful links and reposted it.)
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Maybe let's try and hold the Paragon team together first.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297497