CuppaManga

I did indeed get the Bug Hunter badge, but I never expected it.

I started harassing NCSoft support, the community managers, and the devs from the day I read at this one rumor site that they were developing CoH for Mac, because I was determined to get into the testing group so it wouldn't suck. Because so many other Mac game clients *really* suck. I think Ghost Falcon was the one who got me in.

From that point on, I wrote these weekly bug reports, sometimes with screenshots, detailing every bug I found from extreme on down. The high texture zones lag bug was one of my particular favorites to explore. I even built an entire SG base made to be as laggy as possible just so the devs could borrow it and test the issue (that means a base with lots of decoration, walls, and open space).

But like I said, I did all that just so the Mac client wouldn't suck. Imagine my surprise when I got an email which said the devs nominated me for a Bug Hunter badge.

So Castle was right all along; if you want a Bug Hunter badge, don't ask for it.

Also, one night during a beta me and pohsyb got into a lengthy discussion about personal player name colors and RGB color sets that I think scared just about everyone in the Beta Testers channel, including some of the other devs.

Those instructions are for the Windows version, D_R.

On a Mac, you need to click the expand triangle next to City of Heroes in the NC Launcher, and double-click Properties. In the "Extra Command Line Parameters" area, enter the second part of what Dark_Respite suggested:

-demoplay FILENAME

Then close the Properties window, and launch City of Heroes. It will only play the demo file until you remove the contents of the "Extra Command Lines Parameters".

Another important difference I've been repeating is that City of Heroes was not originally an in-house developed IP of NCSoft (it was developed by Cryptic). That might make them...even if only slightly...more likely to sell it.

I did a lot of thinking about why NCSoft would just close down Paragon Studios without any warning. But if you really think about it, maybe there *was* a warning.

When Apple released Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) in mid July, a warning was posted by Zwillinger to the Mac Users forum that the NCSoft Launcher crashes on some Macs running it. Since then, nobody has been able to contact NCSoft to get a fix for it. It's like the people working on the Launcher for Mac just vanished. As it turns out, they probably did.

That clue leads me to believe that in the two months since then, NCSoft has been letting people go because it's so low on cash, it can't make payroll, and can't get a loan to fill the gap. When this past weekend came along, they made the sudden decision that to save the company (NCSoft) and be able to pays its workers, it had to take the money out of the pot feeding Paragon Studios and City of Heroes. Meaning they were all fired, and the game was to be shut down immediately.

I can only speculate from that point, somewhat gratefully perhaps, that someone working at Paragon may have begged for leniency for us players, so we would be able to have a chance to say goodbye, and talked NCSoft into giving us 3 months.


Some other semi-random thoughts I have about the contents of this thread, some good and some bad:

- SOE making a bid for City of Heroes on a holiday weekend sounds more than a little suspiciously like a wishful thinking rumor. If it's real, however, the way it plays out could be interesting.

- I would also prefer a smaller studio who would appreciate the smaller profits, or an independent Paragon Studios, but when the ship is sinking, you don't say no to any rescue.

- SOE, if it is indeed making a bid, would not spend several million to bury the City of Heroes IP when it's as good as dead already. They could just let NCSoft kill it and bury it for free.

- City of Heroes is more likely to be sold by NCSoft than any other title they killed, because it is not originally an NCSoft property, and they don't really want it. They bought it from Cryptic. That means there is no reason for them to try and protect the IP unless they already have a sequel in the works.

TonyV, I'd like to add one more difference: City of Heroes was purchased, not created by NCSoft. So if they have pride issues, they could want it sold and not hanging over them.

Remember that "Cryptic Studios" icon that used to be everywhere in the game? It was there because some of the characters, including Statesman, were still owned by them. I suppose at some point NCSoft decided they didn't want to pay the license fees anymore, so they had to remove the last of the Cryptic characters from the game.

Which makes the sudden "sunsetting" even more strange, because NC was asking so much work to be put in the game to free it from its licensing agreements and make it independent. They made an effort to spin off Paragon Studios and make it autonomous, and encouraged them to not slow down, but accelerate the issue release schedule. They haven't tried this hard for *any* other game in their stable. And after all that they just cut it off? All I'll say is, I don't understand the logic behind the decision.

Ok, that's not exactly true, the only logic that makes sense is if NCSoft is days, weeks away from closing its doors from lack of finances, and their only choice is to immediately stop anything that costs money - whether its profitable in the long run or not, because there wouldn't be a long run.

Actually I'm counting on that possibility. Because if that's true, it also explains why they haven't sold the game to another company, or even entertained offers before now (they didn't have the time). And it *may* also make them more open to offers, so they get an infusion of cash, and they divest themselves of the expense. Yes, I actually thought this through.

I also thought of the possibility that one offer draws *more*. Because CoH is a profitable game with a somewhat healthy population, if there is one announcement of intent to purchase, there may be more. There are several software companies out there who specialize in revitalizing and/or keeping alive older titles, like Lord of the Rings Online. I know some of you may not like some of them (Perfect World could possibly be a bidder as well, maybe even Blizzard, though they generally prefer in-house titles) but at this point? Anywhere but here is better.

Of course, as I've said before, this all depends on whether NCSoft wants to let go. It's conceivable that they're killing CoH because they planned to replace it, only they don't have the money now, so they'll sit on the property until they do. We could try to talk them out of that, or into some sort of licensing arrangement, though that's not a certainty either. Until we know for sure, we know nothing but possibilities. But possibility is also what we're hoping for.