Evil_Legacy
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:sex sales. Even in America.Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
Honestly. You can sell anything to the Asian market by simply adding scantily-clad anime characters with big swords and seizure-inducing animations
Suck at music and need to make a video? No problem, add a few half naked chicks and it will sale like hot cakes.
Making a horror movie but it's stupid as crap? No worries, add a useless shower scene and people will go watch it.
Open a Lowrider magazine, a magazine that is supposedly about customization and most of those girls are barely wearing enough clothing material to make a bath towel combined.
And then there is the scantly clad sword weilding fantasy girls found in American literature, like Heavy Metal mags, and video games, that date back even to Golden Axe age, to the games like Duke Nukem 3d and the rest, to GTA Vice City/SA.
And of course our multibillion dollar porn industry. -
Quote:yeah.Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Shouted down by the forumites quite often. ("LOL Merge the servers!")
Shouted down by the forumites even more often. ("LOL Ebil marketeers!")
We have seen the enemy, and they are us!
That market was WoW without the good part. -
Quote:yeah.Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Well I thought that originally NCSoft and Cryptic were co-owners of the IP after they help paid to complete it's development. When Cryptic appeared to have a slight conflict of interest, siphoning developers off it for what was the "Marvel MMO" at the time that NCSoft stepped up to buy off Cryptic and start up a studio using the remaining developers.
We won't ever, officially at least, know the true reasons behind the closing. My reading of "realignment of focus" is both only having products that will sell well in Asia, which is the majority of their market, as well as looking to expand into markets other than PC based MMOs, meaning browser, mobile and social media gaming. This second being why they are sort of in an alliance with Nexon, co-producing a game with them.
As for not selling off the game, I don't think at the time they were planning an getting rid of CoH as well as Paragon Studio that the idea that selling them off was an option anybody thought of. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Their SOP both in the west as well as previous small games in Asia was to simply close them and layoff everyone involved. By the time they were approached with offers to buy the wheels were well into motion and it was simply too late to stop it. -
Quote:yeah they will be around fr a while unless they seriously piss off their Asian customers, which dont seem to be the direction they going.Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
Apple has 50,250 US employees.
AOL and MySpace failed to adapt to the changes in their core consumers.
NCSoft's Asian market makes up over 90% of their consumers. The changes they are making and games they are producing are specifically aimed at their biggest base of consumers.
If you are waiting for NCSoft to topple over - I would not recommend holding your breath.
Piss of a few Americans? meh, they probably lose more than that in unaccounted for jet fuel useage. -
Quote:me like.Originally Posted by Satanic_Hamster
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Quote:I think someone talked about it but not sure where it's at or did they actually follow through.Originally Posted by Sin_Stalker
I think the MMO industry is dying. As I see it, there were two types of players. Those that got the game, played the hell out of it and sometimes return for updates. Then there is the set community. Each time they kill an mmo before at least making a sequel, the playerbase community will be less likely to try again. Player investment keeps dropping.
At least when I buy a different type of game, I can keep playing it years after the devs stop updating it. Its not reliant on dev side servers. Even halo 1 for PC and xbox can still be played via solo or private servers. MMOs are a lot more expensive for the consumer, from subs to micro trans, and then when a company decides to, its all gone. It all seems illogical and a scam.
I bought the game, not the client end only codes. I understand having a monopolized server but once the company stops, the server monopolization should end. I'm hoping eventually a lawsuit can occur because this method of business is unlike any other in the game industry.
Bottom line, if I buy a game, I should be able to pull that game out 20 years later and play it, just like ALL my PC and console games I've ever bought. If not than I've never really bought the game, just rented a game for 8 years plus server rent.
Has anyone talked about pooling all our resources for a lawsuit? Because if Icant play CoH in some form or way after Nov 30th, then that's false advertising cuz Iobvously didn't really buy the game. :-(
There might be one small kink in that little agreement that states that they may pull the plug at anytime and when ok is clicked and or you continue to play it assumed that you actually read and agreed to the terms.
But yeah as an MMO, it's basically just renting.
It's one of the reason why there is usually one giant and the rest are small as it seems that the more money a game makes the safer it is. The less it makes, the less stable it is.
First MMO?
I hope it dont put a sour taste in your mouth now but yeah you're right about them saying that MMOs days are nubered. With console games now, you can play online with people just like in an MMO but when the server go offline you still are able to play the game.
I wouldnt call it illogical or scam. Just like loans. You can go through a traditional bank and not have to worry about much besides a bunch of paper work or you can go to one of those short term loan places with crazy high percentage rates but less paper work. Depending on person situation, the high percentage rate is a god send while everyone else would say it's crazy to do those types of loans. Here, you can play console games and not have to worry about putting more money into it, or you can play MMOs with the risk it can be gone any day. You can put your money into a savings account and have very low returns but low risk or you can enter stock market and have ptoential high returns but it can all be gone the next day.
Each time you log in on an MMO it is assumed that you read and agreed to their process and had no problem. If there was time for a lawsuit it would have been months to at least a year ago. Now it just look like it's a problem because the company decided to actually exercise their right as agreed by the player as being no problem before the announcement. -
Quote:yea. time flies.Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
This is the final weekend that CoH will probably ever see. So try to make it a memorable one somehow!
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Quote:Oh hell.Originally Posted by konrad knox
Wow, kids. When your roller skating rink shuts down an arcade machine, to you cry this much too?
It's games. Games shut down. The fact that you were horrible lifeless addicts who detached from reality and got engrossed in a videogame is your own personal problem.
Games shut down, they aren't meant to last forever.
It's not NC Soft's problem that you like your characters better than yourselves or something, beats me why else there would be such a tragedy and anger. There are a ton of different games out there.
City of Heroes sucked anyway. I told everyone last year that it won't last long. If they had any plans to continue it, they'd fix asset control and continuity issues and pvp and a lot of other things, lacking from a persistant world standpoint. -
Quote:Makes perfect sense except for those people who is saying NCSoft is the worse company around was telling people here who said they are leaving NCSoft alone after the Tabula Rasa thing and told them, in usually not a very nice manner, that they were over reacting and NCSoft was an upstanding company and they and some said they was just angry because TB got shutdown, yet, now it's ok and seemingly expected to be angry at NCSoft by the same people who flamed the people who was angry at NCSoft over the TB thing and Garriot fiasco. In their minds it wasnt ok then but totally ok now. But I just attributed that to being that sometimes the way people feel doesnt resonate and comes off as whining, overreacting, and such until the point hits home and now they know how those people they flamed felt, and understand that they were not over reacting as they thought as many reacted in a more strongly manner than they derided the people then for reacting. Yet if someone was to say they are over reacting, they would call it trolling, since it's trolling now, it was trolling then. So why troll someone about over reacting then turn around and react in the same manner if not more?Originally Posted by Iron_Emerald
I don't think it's at all mysterious that people have a different reaction to something they have first hand knowledge of versus something they don't. Of course I'm going to complain more about City of Heroes shutting down than I am about those other games. For myself the only one of the other games I'd even heard of before was Tabula Rasa, and I'd never heard anything about it shutting down. City of Heroes on the other hand has been my favourite game since I started playing it a couple of years ago.
If I had heard of the games shutting down at the time then I'd have felt sorry for the players and maybe even signed a petition if somebody asked. But I really wouldn't have much knowledge of which side was in the right. Here though I know enough about people like Arcanaville and the devs that I choose to believe them when they say the game was doing well. I also know that I object to the timing of it coming so close to Issue 24 coming out. Whether you agree with those reasons or not, it's information I just wouldn't have on games I haven't played and occasionally read the forums of.
And as for the "why is 4 games in 4 years closing acceptable, but 5 games in 5 years isn't?" line. Everybody will have a different kind of threshold for when this kind of thing would start to count as a red flag. For some people they won't deal with a company after they've shut a single game the 'wrong way' others are going to be just fine with 5 games in 5 years. But I'll bet they wouldn't be happy to keep giving money to an MMO company that made traditional MMOs and shut them all down after a month. The last example is silly extreme, but the point is that everybody has a level where they decide there's too much of a pattern to keep doing business with a company. Some people feel they've reached that level with NCSoft, both due to their personal feelings over City of Heroes and the number of other games they've closed. -
Quote:Well with the past outcry against server merges, and statements saying it would be too hard to do because of various things like names, loads and etc, it may have not even been a viable option according to past posts when the topic of server merges came up.Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
At least for me, it has cast doubt on some of the other games as well, and attracted further analysis of the "Ncsoft story." It turns out the rumors of attempted purchases of CoH, while maybe wrong, they do fit in line with the past. Auto Assault saw a similar demise, with offers being turned down.
It has always fascinated me, that even with a company that has decided they just don't know the West well enough to market to it, would rather squat on an IP than sell it. It's of no use to them, it's not making them money. But at the same time it's so valuable that it can't be sold?
The "game killer" still holds merit, but it depends on how you look at it. There's the old joke, "The one common factor that is the same in all of your failed relationships, is you." With this kind of a track record, it's hard to assume that everything has always been right with their business model, when there's been this many problems. Not that every business doesn't have flops somewhere, but NCsoft has somehow made a habit of it. They're either extremely unlucky, or they've been doing something wrong. I'll admit that some of what I've seen in B&S looks cool. But do I dare trust that it'll be here in a year, considering who is funding it? And if we call CoH a failure, as numerous people have lately, it seems the ONLY thing that has ever worked out for NCsoft is Guildwars. It's like the Uwe Boll of games. Flop after flop, yet somehow can still afford to make more. But at least movies don't demand multi-year personal and financial commitments from customers.
The bizarre thing about that is, things seemed to be turning around. Not that I'd call it a comeback. More like a snail crawl. Whether that means the populations were better under Freedom, or they were worse and the stubborn remnant population was spending more at the store, I don't know. And NCsoft isn't going to give us the information we need to properly analyze this anyway. Even if it would be GOOD for them, it won't happen.
More on the server issue in a moment, since you brought up the kiss of the iceberg.
I say this to the warning signs. There are certain things you typically do with an MMO when it's in trouble. We got the F2P I'll give you that, but at the time it came out, F2P was already starting to become the standard. Now games are released that way. So was it a last ditch effort, or an attempt to compete with what is becoming the more popular model?
Either way, that's the new one. What do games usually do when populations start waning? Server merges. Many players, despite being given the option for free, will often just stop playing rather than bother with transfers. Yet when that decision is made for them, they are more likely to keep playing. Why were attempts not made to merge servers? It saves money on maintenance, and it gives more content for players who were struggling on dead servers. But it never happened. They also never tried running the game with a smaller PS staff. The only "maintenance mode" period we even got was AFTER the shutdown had been announced.
So the Titanic metaphor may actually not be bad enough. This time, they didn't even bother to try deploying the lifeboats.
I think COX deployed without lifeboats. From the sound of it, the code was so spaghetti ball that downsizing would have been a nightmare, downsizing the crew, now I have no idea why didnt try that besides not wanting to causea panic, like on the Titanic where the band kept palying happy music, ordered by the captain to not cause a stir, and the bar remained opened like everything was normal even when the water reached b-deck. And of course there was no "maintence mode". Curious behavior but in the end it was our folly waiting for the crew to tell us something wasnt right instead of inquiring why was the water level getting closer to the deck and or how much damage did the iceberg actually do. Instead, we recieved our life jackets, waiting for the crew to panic and went back inside to have a drink just like the passengers of the Titanic.
At this point, even if they stated a reason beyond what they already said, half the boat is already under water and sinking fast.
In the end, it seems that we all learned something. Sometimes we have to trust our gut, dont immediately dismiss information without looking into it, not depend on the crew to say abandon ship because by then it might be too late, and if the information is available and something isnt right dont be afraid to inquire. Back in 10, when people seen servers getting less populated, less people running around, redzone started to get empty, then there should of been a louder voice.
but what bugs me most is that even now there havent been a single apology for the flames those people in the past recieved for seeing the information and trouble signs of it before anyone else that is very apparent now. Well, for those that been labeled doomsayers and immediately dismissed and flamed, we should of seen it coming, should of listened, should of done something. Just as people are demanding answers now, those answers should have been demanded then especially when the revenue was on a consistant down slope and the ture meaning of it. Now, the decision is done and kind of late to be demanding answers.
But at least now we know to not wait for maintance mode to be the main sign of trouble and pay more attention to the more "less obvious" signs. -
Quote:Fair enough.Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Why, because there was death involved? If you can't see the relevance then I'm not sure there's any real help for you as a human with empathy or as a student of history. It's most likely that you're choosing to focus on the differences between the two scenarios so that you can ignore the similarities.
If you cared about history the way you're suggesting, you'd know that the "hypocrisy" argument could be applied to ANYONE who has ever tried to change ANYTHING.
I don't think there's anyone here who actually has the answers to that. At the very least, I certainly don't, since I was not involved at Titan (if the question is indeed directed at them) until SaveCoH.
The problem with answering these questions is that I don't think they can be answered objectively. In the WWII example, there's plenty of analysis available on "Why wasn't the U.S. involved yet" that can be derived from countless records. It's much easier to dig those things up when everyone is keeping a diary like the government does. But in the case of previous issues with NCsoft, there's no core unit of players that have a common ground with all those games. And even if there were, what are the odds that there'd be any documentation on the reaction to one game getting killed, and then another, and then another? It may be out there, scattered across a thousand boards. But good luck writing the bot that's going to sift through it all and turn it into something that looks like a conclusion.
I DID answer something of the question somewhere though. But I'm not sure if it was this thread or another. Why did this Players vs. NCsoft thing not happen sooner? Those other games were failing. The business logic there was simple enough for a 2-year-old to get. CoH was still profiting. Bicker all you want that it wasn't enough. It doesn't change the fact that CoH still being in the black made this case different. And it drastically alters what we all have to think about the future of MMO's. We can no longer base the long-term viability of a game on how well its doing. That should be enough to worry ANY MMO gamer, not just CoH players.
But if those other MMOs were rightfully killed off then why is part of the campaign seem to be to paint NCSoft as a company that is an MMOKiller, as if they have a habit of going around killing good games? If anything, they killed one game off that had some life left, but the rest was a righteous kill, according to your information. So wouldnt it be moot to bring up as negative past that NCSoft killed off 5-6 games, when in actuality, according to your statement, those other games were the right buisness decision and any company probably would done the same to those games?
And also, why wasnt the earlier signs heeded to? Wasnt the sign that a profitable game could be killed off at a moment notice should of have been gotten when say it was sold to NCsoft and or when Cryptic gave up, when COX probably was making more money than it was now. Or the posts where people was worried about the population sloly dripping away but was past off as doomsayers without much thought? Or when people started to notice some servers were seemingly less populated, also passed off as mere doom saying? The signs were there, mutliple times but each time people chose to not take heed.
If FDR got word of the Japs about to bomb Pearl Harbor but dismissed it without looking into it, he probably would have been blamed for not bothering to heed the warnings and for at least looking into it even if there really wasnt much he could do at the time. Revenue postings are not new since the annuncement but they have been discussed for a while now showing slow drops in revenue and yet, it was dismissed as doomsaying without even so much as a consideration. Yet, now those same people are posting these things as evidence of slipping sales when they were flaming the person who posted it and brought up the same discussions now that is happening after the discussion.
I call it the Titanic syndrome. Not many people could believe that ship could sink, it was believed to be unsinkable until it was too late even though the signs were there but it took until it nearly under water for people to realize that yes, even the Titanic can sink. -
Quote:I dont see how that implies anything really on which side falls in which.Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Convenient way to invalidate any movement you choose, eh?
And the U.S. just should've stayed out of WWII, and let the Axis take over the world. But only because, damn, "If we get involved now, we'll be hypocrites because we didn't do it until WE got attacked. Crap."
There is probably not a single cause in all of Earth's history that you could not apply this argument to. So all the question really implies is, "I don't like SaveCoH because it is run by humans."
All I said, and meant, was those were the questions I asked too. Nothing more nothing less. There is nothing there to turn into something that it is not and has nothing to do wih SaveCOH or what I feel about them. Just questions that I asked also.
Would be nice if people stop dodging those questions and finally just answer them without turning it into an us vs them thing. I'm fine if the questions are not answered though but still it shouldnt be turned into something or assumed those questions imply something when they dont, especially what you seem to think they imply.
It's just a few simple questions that someone brought up that I just so happened to also have asked not too long ago. But last I checked in the wording I dont think me nor the questions I was replying to said anything about invalidating a movement. -
Quote:That actually explains a lot. Very good information on the reason.Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news...34_124954.html
No mention or hint at CoH. I'm not saying CoH isn't/wasn't a great game, but it was a TINY part of NCSoft. The article actually tells you WHY the slump is happening and what NCSoft has to do to get it back up to a "normal" range.
Yeah when the CEO start selling his stock, it makes any investor antsy because it can be percieved as if the CEO is selling his/her stake in his/her own company, a company where they have inside information on, then things dont look good. -
Quote:Those are the questions I asked.Originally Posted by JKedan
I can't help but wonder how this might look to someone who didn't have a stake in the game.
I wonder if they might not look at all this hubbub and think "if five games in five years is so bad, why were these people still around to get burned after four games in four years? Why is five so bad, but four is 'ok'?". Or even "These people have known since at least the Garriott case in 2010 that this company was capable of dodgy, if not outright illegal, practices. Why didn't moral outrage compel action then? Why were they still supporting a game owned and run by such a company?". In short, why did this urge to 'defend mmo gamers against the business practices of callous publishers' only show up when our game was on the block instead of any of the others that shut down, NCSoft owned or otherwise?
An outside observer might think it appears a little hypocrital, and perhaps a touch self important. A "This didn't matter until I was effected, but now everyone should take note" situation. A bit late to start complaining about something that's been going on with little protest from us for at least five years, isn't it?
Then again, I don't really think most people outside the CoX community care. At least not any more than most of us did when some other game we didn't play shut down. As I recently mentioned elsewhere, I suspect most of them, if they even notice, will shrug it off as the bitter complaining of the last holdouts of an eight year old game that had to go F2P, one that most outsiders hadn't heard of or didn't like to begin with. -
Quote:Yeah true. Sometimes it's a choice between good product bad customer service or excellent customer service but less than stellar product.Originally Posted by BrandX
While I could see them seeing a marvel superhero mmo as a serious threat and a reason to shut CoH down, the fact that there is no known Marvel MMO coming, would suggest to me it wouldn't be a factor.
Unless they consider Marvel Heroes an MMO, when really it's just Diablo 3 with Marvel skins.
I guess a person must choose which is more important but should be ready to deal with the ups and downs that go with those decisions, as it's their decisions to make that no one can make for them. -
Quote:qft. +1Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
I haven't defended any company killers. The corporates and the bakers union are both responsible for screwing over the majority of the Hostess employees.
Unions are supposed to be about worker solidarity not stabbing your fellow coworkers in the back by being stubborn and getting everyone fired. -
In my storylines:
Alot of my toons are natural because that fit many of my characters i.e either born with their power or learned it in some manner, or just a regular person that just happens to be able to take a hit. Being born with it could be fitted as mutation also for some, which about three of them are although they could be considered naturally possessing their powers. Also, natural SOs are easy to figure out what they are and do without trying to decipher some magical sounding name.
A one of my toons is magic though although they was born with the ability to draw power from this artifact due to bloodline so they could said to be also natural.
Two could either could have been science or technology given their storylines. One went with the science the other technology even though they are made by the same company and the same purpose, but one is the replacement for the other.
One corruptor shoots dark powers but ended up with technology due to the technology that is used that is used to draw that dark power even though it could be magic but it's the process that caused me to choose technology instead of magic. -
Probably not.
Already found a new home and like CO because it has things that COX doesnt have that I was looking for or wishing was implemented here, and seems more suited for my playstyle.
I liked the game COX overall, but as time passed the crowd and game it self started to become more and more like the other grind fests and less fun of a crowd to team with that either seemed to want to speed run or farm and with the wide gap between solo earnings and team earnings in incarnate level stuff, it will be even harder to get a team as often due to those people who swore off NCSoft never coming back, people who wont come back due to various other reasons, and people who lost faith in MMOs and not coming back.
I think even if it did come back, it's probably be more of an extension before it's back in the same boat again probably within a year. -
Quote:many times actually. too many times.Originally Posted by BrandX
That's been my point.
If all the game offered was the lingerie outfits, yeah, I could see the hate for the game based on that. But it's not. So it's not really any different than CoH.
Let's be honest. How many times have we seen an avatar run around with just the Eve Top -
Quote:yeah. the record was already there. I (keyword) I knew it was a greater chance for this game to meet the same fate as the others eventually with the waning population especially. I said something then, especially when I noticed many zones didnt seem to have as many people running around, then again when even on virtue the red side seemed to become a dead zone. Both times the idea of lower population and maybe it's time to take it upon ourself to at least take a look at the health of the game population and maybe try to get more people to play of our game out was dismissed as being paranoid. I figured less players, less money, ncsoft seemed to have low tolerance for underperformance, and most companies have less tolerance for low performance even if it's making a profit for older products especially if they was making ton more before.Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
I didn't play those other 4 games - so I wasn't fooled 4 times already. Heck from what I have seen posted very few people here played any of the other 4 games.
Then again I don't consider what NCSoft did "fooling me" in any shape or form. -
Quote:60-65 sounds long enough for me. After 65, I'll find a way to go out wit h bang whether it's from a heart attack while skydiving, or buying the farm while climbing Mt Everest.Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't want to live forever. Immortality just sounds exhausting.
I don't really plan on living through my 50s, though I guess we'll see how I feel about that in another 20 years. -
I'll probably do a few more First ward and Night ward missions one last time and call it a night then focus more on the other game.
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Quote:Yeah but in order to change it, the masses have to get it together. As long as the masses are occupied with fighting each other, then the 1% sure as hell will supply the fuel if it means the mass isnt focused on the real matter at hand and can keep on gaining more power that the masses give them.Originally Posted by Ironik
Ah, the Tony Robbins "my millionaire friends and I don't have enough money to pay for everything" defense. It's nonsense. The top 400 richest people in America have more wealth among them than the bottom 180 million. Read those numbers again: four hundred versus one hundred and eighty MILLION. Where else do you propose the money comes from?
Cut a couple of those defense programs the Pentagon doesn't want, there's $1.2 trillion. End the massive entitlements to wealthy industries like Big Oil. Tax the rich and corporations for the rest. Since the 1% own 38% of the wealth and the bottom 50% own 1%, you ain't getting it from bakers and armored car drivers.
I'm not a fan of unions in most cases. I *am* a fan of history and I understand why they came into existence, but the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction and unions got greedy. But now it's swung back to the conditions that created the unions in the first place. If the rich people don't pony up -- and soon -- people will take the Occupy movement to 11. Warren Buffett is one of the 400 and can see where this is heading, and protecting the entitled upper class from the unwashed masses isn't the answer. Ask Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette how that went.
Seems more people rather fight over what they think about Kim Kardashian and what she is wearing at the moment than actual stuff that can and will affect them in their lives. -
Quote:I think it seems that that is exactly what they plan on doing and have been doing by remaining silent since the second announcement.Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Oh, I'm not saying they should even try to now. The suspicions they've already incited, coupled with NCsoft's rather odd history... it is probably best that they don't try to sugarcoat it further now.
In the words of Metallica, "You know it's sad but true"Quote:Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
So in simple equations:
Great product + crap marketing = no sale.
Crap product + great marketing = gold mine.
Maybe I'm wrong about this having a detrimental impact on the economy, but I think it answers your question. -
Quote:bye.Originally Posted by AlienOne
Hey, just wanted to post a last goodbye in here to all my old friends. It's been a great run.
I have been moving recently, and haven't had any time to log in this last month of CoH, but I have been logging in this evening to take advantage of that cool Sentinel Extractor utility so I can save all my characters...
Lo and behold, I log in VestigeOne, and there is Sally riding off into the mists... I didn't have the heart to take her down.
A fitting end to a wonderful game.