End Sinister

I don't want to double post, but it's important for me to give my own confession here, so please understand everyone:

My confession is that I was too embarrassed to ever admit that I played City Of Heroes to my friends and family. For years I wanted to be a musician and I got to know a lot of people in the Philadelphia music scene. If any of them ever found out I'm sure they wouldn't have cared, but I was too cool to ever admit it and in turn I treated people in my S.G. like crap. I quit and came back several times to the game all the while with a holier-than-thou air that I'm sure was plenty obnoxious. Those people in the S.G. were there for me when I was very depressed and we all had a great time together. I used to make fun of role players, but I had a blast for about two solid years being one.

I, Aegaeon, want to thank you, every one of you, in The Empire Of Atlantis. You were great people to me and I'm sorry I was such a ****** bag. Thank you Leviathas, Nereidia, Bahamutas, Ophelia, From The Depths, and anyone else I did not name or may not have gotten to know better. I'm sorry I seemed so god damned crazy at times and I do regret never going to the one meet and greet that we had. I would have liked to meet some of you. Thank you for all the good times.

I just have to say one other thing: Tony V in that rumor article had said that he didn't want to divulge the names of the interest groups that were potentially looking to buy City Of Heroes. What point is there in withholding the names? I think he knows that whatever groups he knows of who have offered to buy the IP are not credible or such offers simply could not have been taken seriously.

Paragon Studios was owned entirely by NC Soft and everyone at Paragon negotiating a separation of the studio from NC Soft was subject to a nondisclosure agreement because of his former contract. Other companies aren't subject to that agreement. Why would it hurt any company's image if the company simply stated that it had tried to buy the IP, but NC Soft wouldn't negotiate? The company offering would have nothing to lose in any such statement; there really weren't any bridges to burn in the sales talks.

Whatever offers Tony V knows of seem incredulous at best. A medium to large sized studio would have been free to release some sort of statement when talks fell through or we would have heard something by now through the grapevine. At this point, if Tony's sources are credible, he would have nothing to lose in tarnishing NC Soft's image. Withholding the names of the interest groups just doesn't add up.

This is just speculation on my part, but I honestly think that the reason City Of Heroes is being shuttered is to provide more server room for Guild Wars 2 and Blade And Soul. Remember, it was Paragon Studios that was closed, not NC Soft West. It makes complete sense because they're willing to take a chance on something (Blade And Soul) that's done moderately well in their home country and feel they can make more of a profit by dumping that insipid anime trash onto us.

If you want to get servers on the cheap, why not dump an old game that's slowly brought in less and less revenue over the years to take a chance on a new one? I'm pretty sure this is why they were so adamant about closing City Of Heroes, they're taking a risk on two new games and crossing their fingers. Everything else, every other reason to close the game makes no sense to me. The realignment of company focus can be interpreted as Korean created games. Not to mention I'm sure they'll get some sort of return on their taxes.

Anyone else see what I'm seeing?

Edit: As far as selling City Of Heroes, I honestly believe that a developer could keep this game afloat for a few more years. How bad would it look if City Of Heroes kept going on for another five years when NC Soft said it was no longer profitable? Those a-holes at NC Soft don't want to further tarnish their image. Selling off Paragon Studios or City Of Heroes could potentially cause them a bit of grief with investors in the future.

I'm really going to miss City Of Heroes, but I'm with the majority. I've stopped playing for weeks. It's pointless to me to level up my characters when I know that the market's in ruins and that I can't even IO out one last toon before the servers go dark.

Crappy thing is after playing for nearly 5 years now do I finally get into controllers and all the other classes I wasn't previously interested in playing. I was able to finish playing a few characters and even create 4 characters based on the seasons like I had always intended doing. I'll be here on November 29th, but it is unlikely I'll be playing much before then.

As far as video games and MMO's are concerned; I'm done. I have an X-Box that gets very little use from me outside of Netflix and Hulu. It's the first system I've had since Playstation 2. My girlfriend got it for my birthday this summer, but I can't find it in me to justify getting into an involved video game anymore, especially after this. It seems I'm not alone with my feelings on games as from what I'm reading many of you share the same sentiment toward video games after NC Soft's announcement.

Wow, I can't believe this post just showed up. I literally just downloaded Champions Online again, could not play past the tutorial again, and uninstalled it, yet again. I just said the same thing to myself, "Champions Online is not at all City Of Heroes." City Of Heroes is so much better: The art, the combat system, the much more realistic animations. Virtually everything sans the outdated engine and zone design is better than what I just played. Besides those issues, Champions Online attempted to mirror City Of Heroes in so many ways. The Qularr in place of the Rikti for instance, a Statesman like hero; it was all very transparent from the get go what Cryptic tried to do and what they did was a halfhearted failure at best.

I simply couldn't get past the forced archetypes of Champions Online. I know that archetypes were never a part of the original game and they feel hashed together. I was so taken aback by how fewer power sets Champions has too. We were really spoiled with City Of Heroes and its level of customization, vastly different and nearly perfectly balanced archetypes that complemented one another, and its cornucopia of power sets.

I've known for awhile that City Of Heroes would be my main and last MMO. Back in the day, an MMO could never hold my attention for more than a month until my sister introduced me to City Of Heroes. When I played the tutorial on Champions it simply didn't have the same wow factor as City Of Heroes had when I first walked into its virtual world. NC Soft really screwed us if you ask me.

We're all upset that our beloved game is coming to an end with most probably NC Soft refusing to sell based on either potential competitor reasons or because they can probably get a hefty tax break. When all is said and done, does it really matter in the end if they win this round? There's a lot of buzz going around in the online gaming world that the MMORPG may be entering its twilight years as gamers are losing interest in them as time moves on. There are many reasons for this: The most important of which is that the demographic that made World Of Warcraft so huge (Generation Y) has aged and is now concentrating on other things such as families or careers.

In the end, given NC Soft's recent financial woes and MMO companies trying to steal players from one another from a dwindling pool of MMORPG players, don't you think that NC Soft will eventually "get theirs"? I certainly believe they will. Why? Well, MMO's aren't necessarily growing per se; there seems to be the same demographic and population of players shifting from the newest game to the next.

One indication of this is the user attrition that World Of Warcraft is experiencing. Many of those in the gaming world have known for a very long time that W.O.W.'s American subscribers began to move on years ago and that with Blizzard's expansion into the Chinese market, on paper it made it seem as if everything was fine and that the existing players were there to stay. Within a few years time those bolstered numbers were soon revealed as only a stopgap: Blizzard went from boasting of having over 13 million subscribers to our current day's numbers of nearly half that. The MMO pool is shrinking, my friends, and all NC Soft can ever hope for (if Guild Wars 2 is an overwhelming success) is to steal a piece of that ever growing stale piece of pie.

My point of all of this is that given the plight of the current world economy, NC Soft's financial distress, NC Soft's rudderless management (as expressed by former NC Soft employees), and the aging of the MMO target demographic, I have sincere doubts that NC Soft will be the same semi-large developer it is today 5 to 10 years from now. Even though City Of Heroes will be gone within the next two months, realize that mismanagement brings misfortune and NC Soft's house of cards will soon come tumbling down if they keep up with their shady business tactics. Let us not forget that almost every major financial move made by NC Soft in the past ten years has been a half baked gambit to turn a profit or stay afloat. With business executives making those types of decisions at the helm, there is no chance in hell they'll ever be the success they aim to be in the end.

I just read the news today and it is very disappointing to say the least.

Those of you suspecting that NC Soft will get more money from a tax write off than the game is worth are probably right. I would imagine that NC Soft should be able to fudge the books on their end since they seem to bundle sales of certain games/markets together and get a hefty return on shutting down City Of Heroes. I'm sure that if there were any offers NC Soft was asking for way much more money than the I.P. is currently worth. I have a feeling they stonewalled the dev.'s when it came to selling off the studio. NC Soft has a long track record of shady actions. I think our assumptions are probably spot on about what they're doing. Unfortunately, we may never be able to prove it.

[QUOTE=airhead;4400218]A couple of shots of high-jinks in Atlas Park 33 from perhaps a week ago. Unfortunately this forum won't let me login from home so they're a little out of date.

Dusty, I've said it before in many posts too. I'm with you, City Of Heroes is my last MMO and likely the last game I'll play. I haven't played anything else really in the last ten years now and I knew that the day City Of Heroes shuts down is the day I finally hang up my video game hat for good. There are too many real world things I need to spend my energy on anymore.

To be honest, I haven't been able to play much since the announcement. As much as I love the game I simply see no point in investing all that time into a character. If there were any real hope of the game being saved that might have been another issue, but at this stage in the game it looks like there is no savior for this city of heroes.

Good luck to you. Maybe you'll be doing more productive things with your time from here on out. One never does know...

This just occurred to me reading the "something special" announcement. It seems to me that NC Soft reconfirmed the date of closure for City Of Heroes. I am seriously thinking that management is considering giving us a voucher for another game, possibly Guild Wars 2 to shut us up. They really don't have anything to lose since many of us wouldn't have normally bought it anyway and there is potential room to make extra revenue from microtransactions despite the loss of a sale (they otherwise would not get). I honestly think that is the surprise and that it is unrelated to City Of Heroes.

The community is going to be pissed if this is the case.

I'm a bit skeptical when it comes to contacting the head executives over at NC Soft. They are businessmen and more than likely not video gamers. I could see a potential backlash happening by contacting them directly and having that cause any bit of reconsideration in the matter go right out the window.

However, I don't think the players have anything to lose. As a previous poster has said, TonyV is obviously somewhat in the loop as to what is going on with the former employees at Paragon. I said it in another post that the next two to three weeks is critical in securing some sort of statement on the matter from NC Soft because developers will most likely begin to be hired at different studios or have new jobs by then; the senior staff at Paragon Studios especially.

I don't think that this game is one that would have much of a community if development ceased and a skeleton crew was put on to manage it. City Of Heroes was never huge and never had the success of Everquest or World Of Warcraft. WOW will be around in some form for a very long time, just as Everquest still sputters along to this day. COH would always retain some core of players, but not in the realm of justifying paying people or for servers to keep the game in operation.

Not to mention that I feel MMO's are dieing; the demographic for MMO's is somewhere between 30 and 40 years old at this point. Last I read the average player was 35 years old. The demographic that made MMO's big, my generation, Generation Y, has grown up and is past even the aimless post college days and are starting serious careers and families. I've noticed that while my generation has its core of gamers, video game players simply aren't as serious as say Generation X.

If Jack Emmert is getting out of the MMO business, as with other developers from what I understand, and if you factor in that most MMO's now are free to play because no one is interested in paying a monthly subscription anymore, things aren't boding well for the future of MMO's. Games nowadays are moving to a much more casual format. People don't want to have to dedicate hundreds of hours to games anymore because they've simply grown up and have grown away from that kind of playing. I'm 28 years old now and I don't know anyone who is a serious video game player anymore. I certainly don't spend anywhere near as much time as I used to playing video games. Even the hardest of the hardcore that I knew stopped playing video games seriously and I think that says where the future of games that require a hefty time investment is going.