Dead Calm

It would have to be No More Heroes by the Stanglers.

Probably followed by What Becomes of the Broken Hearted by Jimmy Ruffin.

Plonking my hat of maximum hypothetical corporate cynicism on for a second...

Let’s say NCSoft has a bit of a cash flow problem.

They have lots of assets including CoH, a proven and profitable MMO.

The problem is that MMOs bring in money in a steady, yet slow way, whereas they need a lump of money now rather than more money spread out over a long time.

Therefore they decide they need to flog CoH, and they need to do it fairly quickly. To do this they need to make it as attractive as possible.

They know that the companies most likely to pick up CoH are likely to already be in the MMO market, and therefore have a support / CS / marketing / development / QA infrastructure in place already. In order to maximise the attractiveness of CoH to these buyers, and remove potential headaches, they get rid of the associated studio, CS and so forth before offering CoH for sale.

This leaves potential buyers free to use existing resource and to fill gaps with rehired people where needed (on lower wages nach, because EVIL).

Is this, if it is by an (admittedly slim) chance true, a good thing?
Well in my book it is better than CoH being closed. And if it means that CoH ends up somewhere that appreciates it more, that is good. It’s rubbish for everyone at Paragon though, even if they do end up moving with the product, as it is several days of stress and misery I’m sure they’d have preferred not to have.

However, my ire in this case would be focused on NCSoft for being gits rather than any potential buyer.

It's as if William Topaz McGonagall was still alive and had decided to give roleplaying a go.

It would be like pong, except with an awesome costume creator for your paddle.

A fridge just for beer.

I'm currently hungover beyond all reasonable levels, and therefore I'm finding the changes confusing and disturbing. I'm sure this will pass though (the confusion, I'm not so sure about the hangover).

Also, I've picked up a rather trendy EU name thing, so it seems that I have an american twin somewhere. Given my facial hair, I can only conclude that I am the evil one - a revelation that one should not have to deal with on a Saturday morning when feeling fragile.

Anyway, hullo Americans.

I’m staying because being able to fly and shoot lasers from your eyes for less than the cost of three pints of beer a month is a bargain.

However, if I was leaving, I wouldn't tell you, as 'I'm Leaving!' posts tend to be a massive bunch of self-indulgent ego-onanism posted by people who cannot accept that actually the game is bigger than them and will continue to exist despite the lack of their unique and individual presence, ideas and wisdom.

Even if you are leaving for totally non-contentious fluffy bunny reasons, please take the effort to tell your friends personally. Doing it with a post in the general section of the boards makes about as much sense as using the main PA system at Waterloo to say goodbye to your mates drinking across the road in the Prince of Wales.

I don't want to excite or alarm anyone, but I was just faffing about in the MA, when I got a pop-up saying the servers have gone down.

And that kids, is why you should always make sure that the MA autosave is in the 'on' position.

I like listening to this while playing on my TA/Archery defender.

I rather like my "Ha! In your face malta sapper!" button as it is, thank you very much.

Magic, Mutation and Natural get a bonus from the Blackwand.
Tech, Science and Natural get bonus from the Nemesis staff.

The reason for the second one not granting a bonus is that it would give Natural characters an advantage over other origins.

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Let's face it, it doesn't take much to get people back... there's been a LOT of new faces, the reactivation weekend worked wonders and I got on a few excellent teams (expecially Frostfire with 3 tanks and 3 blasters, mucho fun)

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Aye, During reactivation weekend there's been loads of poeple. Put some TV ads in like WoW has and i'm sure out numbers would soar!

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Put some TV ads like WoW's on, and the EU operation would go bust faster than a bank that specialises in sub-prime buy-to-let morgages.

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I will just reiterate for now: I am not aware of any plans to merge servers anytime in the near future.

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You know GR you would be much quicker just sticking that in you sig.

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But then one day GR would innocently change it to something else, and the boards would go so nuclear that they'd become a location in Fallout 3.

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she sat opposite to the one hording the pool boys. on the train. i think there was a Dinosaur with a fez...

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That would be after possibly the single most comical attempt to run for a train that has ever taken place at a British station wouldn't it?

See you about Stasis, best of luck with everything.

This reminds me, we really should sort out some London drinks at some point...

Some of mine:

Dead Calm: I was flicking through the telly listings while trying to think of names, and the film was on the box.

Dedicated Follower: My evil fashion designer. Inspired by the song Dedicated Follower of Fashion by The Kinks.

Laughing Death: An evil clown, so fairly self explanatory.

Irrepressible: My Kat/Regen scrapper. Inspired by the opening narration to Monkey, and not, as my flat mate once suggested, the tag line on Simon Heffer’s old Daily Mail columns.

Nukella: Originally a placeholder name I used while coming up with a costume. Then I accidentally started levelling her, so stuck with it.

Gold Standard: My PB who originally started out looking like a somewhat modified version of Apollo from The Authority but with more gold in the costume. Gold Standard was the best phrase with gold in it I could think of at the time.

Jones the Spider: This is what happens if you try and come up with names for VEATs while watching Zulu.

Street Value: Thugs/poison MM. His body generates drugs, hence the reference.

Stompy the Dinosaur: A dinosaur who is big and stompy.

Youngster: Youngster is often used in a fairly patronising way, so it made sense for a hyper-intelligent 12 year old who can kill people with his mind to use it as part of his war on grown ups.

Higgs Bassoon: I came up with this following a mispronunciation in the pub while discussing the LHC. He’s a Sonic/Rad defender, who used to be the bassoon player in a briefly successful electonica/woodwind fusion band called V:ision in the 1990s, but became a particle physicist and was caught in an explosion in the LHC.

Lolcat girl: Because two memes are better than one.

Asbof Levy: The ASBOF Levy is a voluntary charge on advertising in the UK that is collected by the Advertising Standards Board Of Finance, and is used to fund the Advertising Standards Authority. At a meeting once, a senior client of the organisation I work for brought along one of our invoices and, in front of all his minions, pointed at the ASBOF Levy and angrily demanded to know who Asbof Levy was and why on earth we were paying him so much. It seemed too good a name to waste.

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I like the way this thread has re ignited, after burning out once

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It's like one of those novelty birthday cake candles.

Toodle pip!

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I see, cant imagine for the life of me why companies do it then.

Maybe in practice done by people that know what they are doing, and do it every day as part of their job, its not the nightmare it looks in your block of text.

Or maybe it is i dunno, all im saying is a bit of EU advertising cant hurt can it.

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Oh, it's doable, and if you have a Proctor and Gamble size budget you can cover the world in your logo to your hearts content.

However, just if you are a newly merged organisation who's remit covers the US and Europe, and have a budget of $1m, that $1m is going to go father in the US than in Europe.

That's not to say that they won't advertise in Europe. The UK is the obvious place due to language, and presuming they are keeping the French and German servers, then they should certainly be targetted as well. Other countries that are English/French/German speaking would also be worth considering as the localisation costs are less.

However, the amount of return on investment NCsoft would get advertising in a country that thats first language isn't a server language is going to be a lot less, so I'd consider it unlikely in the extreme they'd advertise there.

It's not that those countries are rubbish or worse or not worthy or anything like that, it's just that the money doesn't strech that far, so they have to use it where they are going to get the most sales per $ spent.