FrostPox

Oooh. I look forward to more, Blue. Your stories are always a great read.

Another great one, BlueBattler. Moar! MOAR!

Jeez, another great piece of prose. CoH seems to be full of talented writers. Brilliant work, Ziggy. I had a vague idea of where this would end up at the very end when Grumblethump got his hammer, but really, for most of the time I was reading, I forgot I was even on the CoH forums, or any forum, really. The story was really engrossing IMO.

Wow. This was the most amazing piece of fan fiction I've ever read. I feel like a total dork, but it actually made me cry. Astounding work. I fully support any move to get this written into the canon. I don't think I'll have it in me to ever beat up Clockwork again, let alone their noble, tormented creator.

Another thought that just occurred to me, if the general responses in this thread are anything to go by, then I don't think people will have much trouble at all finding teams that aren't using voice-chat; if most people don't like it, than most people won't use it.

Of course, using the forums as a general indicator of a game's population's opinion of something is not necessarily going to give you an accurate feel; if you believe the WoW forums, that game is dead an no one plays and it's bleeding subscribers left and right, because everyone has quit, and every class is overpowered in PvP, except that every class needs buffs in PvP to beat the overpowered classes (which is every other class) and it has been this way since the game came out, and everything the devs do is killing the game and the Matrix Online/the new EQ2 expansion/Vanguard/DDO/Age of Conan and Warhammer/Puzzle Pirates will kill it.

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Over reacting?
no, not really.
I will never turn mine on.
Why?
I dont like to listen to people cuss.
I already have my profanity filter turned on, on all my alts and that just makes people type like this

O M G I G O T B E Y O N D T H E P R O F A N I T Y F I L T E R

I always respond to people like this

hey dummy if i wanted to read that jazz i would turn my profanity filter off.

do i want to actually hear some dimwit say, your alt is hot lets ****.

no. but i have read that exact line befor on more than 3 characters.

do i see why people would want this, no.
buts thats just me.
do i see it being abused alot?
yes, every minute of everyday, unless someone can moniter what is said.

i dont play the game to be offended, and with voice chat, there will be alotta people being offended.

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...What?

Yes. You're going to turn yours off. Good for you. So will I.

What's your point? I never said YOU specifically were overreacting, I'm just saying a lot of people are screaming like NCSoft has just shot their dog and lit them on fire, whereas if you think about, if NCSoft has even one braincell among them, they will make this purely optional, and that furthermore, in my experience, the presence of voice chat has not had a notable impact on those who cannot or chose not to use it. There is definitely some over reaction going on here.


In no game that I have ever played have I felt it obligatory or necessary to use voice chat, with the exception of end-game raiding in World of Warcraft. City of Heroes is definitely not going down that route.

So, how is anything I said relevant specifically to you? I wasn't addressing people like you who are just saying "meh, I don't like it, I'll turn it off", which is perfectly reasonable and is my reaction to.

You are, however, over reacting to my previous post. It was not directed at you, I don't know why you're acting like it was.

Unless you were generally responding to people saying that others are over reacting, but even then, no one was specifically directing them at you, from what I saw. You aren't over reacting.

I forsee that it'll work just like Voice Chat in WoW; no one will use it. Those who want to use voice chat are already using TS or Vent or something similar. Those who are not using them probably do not want voice chat, so they will not use it.

However, if NCSoft is branching out into the console market, it makes sense. You pretty much have to use voice chat with consoles, and by implementing it in all their games, it makes it easier. But I would be willing to bet money this will have almost no impact on City of Heroes/Villains.

I think there's some serious over-reaction going on here. I've played WoW and DDO, both of which have integrated voice chat. No one used the integrated voice chat in WoW, as the people who liked the idea of voicechat were already using TeamSpeak or Ventrillo.

More people didn't use the voicechat, in my experience, in DDO, than did. I also didn't have a microphone for the longest time so I couldn't talk when my guild used voice chat. No one cared. But 90% of the pick-up groups I joined didn't use the voice chat function. At all. They all typed.

I seriously doubt that there will be rapant kicking from teams for refusal to use voice chat. I seriously doubt that voice chat will be "forced" upon anyone; closing the NCSoft launcher, or muting the voice chat, will put an end to the voice chat.

You won't be hearing everyone in the zone. Since they're integrating it into the launcher, I'm assuming there will be chatrooms, or something like that, and you won't have to go into them.

Basically, I think most people are over reacting, and there will be no expectation or requirement to use the voice chat. Turning it off won't instantly ostracize you from every group, or even most groups, or even a significant number of groups.

Chill, people.

Of course, there is the chance that it will be implemented horrendously and we'll hear all 20,000+ concurrent CoX subscribers, along with all the multiple dozens or hundreds of thousands of other people playing NCSoft games creating a cacophonous sea of unintelligible, roaring voices until we all go mad as if we had gazed upon the face of Great C'Thulu himself.

But I really doubt that.

Custom-made mission arcs!? We can pick the map and the enemies and the objectives and write the clues and dialog and holy crap I'm hyper-ventilat- *passes out*

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First of all (and any forum being what it is, I know this will miss some of us) try to read my entire post before assuming I am crying DOOOOOOOM or speaking negatively about this management change.


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Likewise:
1. Why would Cryptic let go of possibly dozens of talented developers? Were they not so talented? Not so wanted? Was Cryptic that bad a place to work? Seems odd.
2. There is talk of a transition period. If just about every single person has jumped ship to NCSoft, what is there to transition? NCSoft was already part of every decision, so what is transitioning? I get the feeling that the real transition is yet to come. Where lots of new hires come in, get trained and up to speed, then one by one the old cryptic crowd stealths their way back to their old jobs/company.

I just don't get the whole EVERYBODY jumped ship. Maybe Cryptic would no longer have work for them? Get layed off or take the new job?

I find it hard to believe that Cryptic was so bad a place to work or that these employees were of so little consequence that they could jump ship or be let go en masse.

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Could be that the developers' are devoted to City of * [the game] more than Cryptic [the company]? *shrugs*. Just a thought.

I know that if I had poured three years of my heart and sould into a creative endevour, I would not be so quick to abandon it. Also, as others have stated, this is certainly due to the fact that Microsoft doesn't want the developer of one of thier games to contribute to the competition, and NCSoft feels likewise. This means there's no more conflict of interest, and more resources (time, money, manpower) for Co*. As others have said, and I agree with them, I don't think NCSoft would buy the game, open up a new studio, and keep the exact same development team, save one person, and look to hire a whole slew of new employees (I looked over the Power Developer job posting, myself... if only I were qualified *sigh*) if they were going to axe or fundamentally alter the game. I believe that they're looking to hire more developers simply because they now have the resources to hire more of them.

Overall, I think this will be a good thing. I'm open to the possibility that I could be wrong, but I hope that is not the case. The past cases a lot of people are citing, involving SOE, are different. In two of these cases, SOE has bought a floundering game, and in the case of Vanguard, on the brink of death.

For Vanguard, the game was already a terrible mess. SOE's involvment did nothing but give the game chance to be published, as word is Microsoft wanted to end it before it was released. SOE then consumed the game.

As I understand it, the fundamental chages for SWG were implemented at the behest of LucasArts, who thought thier game should be doing a helluva lot better than it was. The result was an abomination, for which both companies share the blame, if my understanding is correct.

I do not know enough about the Matrix Online to comment, but I do know it had a very, very small playerbase, much less than that of City of Heroes. I have heard that SOE had to buy the Matrix Online to get the lisence for the DC Comics MMO that they want to develop, but I do not know if there is any truth to that claim.

The fundamental difference here is that City of Heroes is not a dying game. It is doing rather well (WoW is an abberation, a fluke, and not something any MMO's subscriber base ought to be compared to). City of Heroes is NCSoft's most successful game in North America and Europe, with about 1.5x the North American and European subscribers of thier next most popular game, Lineage II, and ~110,000 or so more than Lineage. And I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that the overwhelming majority of Co* players wouldn't touch Lineage or Lineage II with a fifteen foot pole.

I don't think we have much to worry about; I don't think NCSoft is that stupid. Afterall, they're not SOE. :P

Of course, there's the very real possibility I am completely wrong and we're all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOM! ed.


Right, enough contributing, back to lurking, I now return you to your regular posters.

That's not true! That's impossible!

Nooo!

noooooo!

:`(

Thanks for all you've done for us, Cuppa. Good luck in the future. WE <3 YOU!