GadgetDon

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  1. I've got two concerns about this, that I think are fatal flaws but would be happy to be proven wrong.

    Security is going to be a huge issue. There will be hackers trying to get great onto their characters. And no, "you gotta earn it on each server you go to" isn't going to fly, particularly if one of the expectations is you go to several different servers. So I've got all incarnate slots unlocked with a couple T4 enhancements to pick between in each slot. I switch to a server and suddenly I need to unlock my Alpha slot again, or at least go through all the drops necessary to recreate all the enhancements?

    And, well - where does the money come from the pay for the programmers/writers/designers/animators for both the original game and regular updates?
  2. Love the story. Would have loved to see both the armor and the base in game. Alas.
  3. Would I play? Yes. Would I be happy? No. Would it affect how much I play? Probably.

    The loss of the characters, that would be sad, but something I could accept with some attempt at equanimity. (I might do some farming for a couple of the characters, which is something I don't do for new alts.)

    The loss of everything I've paid for over time would really suck. I like mixing and matching parts from different costume sets, use a lot of the bought powers. The money just wouldn't be there for a massive spending spree to put it back to where I am now.

    And the loss of all veteran rewards/paragon rewards would be killer.

    Now, all that is assuming it's a reboot of the game as it currently exists. If a lot of the old veteran/purchased costume sets just become part of the game (either for everyone or VIP). If there's, say, a $100 "old veterans pack" available for sale that resets that, I'd swallow hard and scramble for the money for that.
  4. Nemesis - evil mastermind with huge underground organization and his fingers on everything, or crazy coot with really good PR?
  5. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
    Everything points towards office politics and some kind of internal power struggle or reorganization at NCSoft - like the "CoH friendly" execs who were happy to support the game for all thse years and green light a new MMO from the studio have, because of NCSoft's curent financial state, been removed and replaced by execs looking to make cuts.
    Even that seems too sudden - even when there's a shakeup, there's usually a period of time before hammers fall and lots of rumor mill in that time.

    I still think the most likely answer is that someone with the clout to do so (major shareholder like Nexxon, major debt holder) said "You will take decisive action and you will take it now, or someone else will be holding your job who will." And as much as they have invested in CoH and are friendly to it, the numbers make it clear that if there is going to be a sacrificial lamb, the lamb's got a cape on it.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
    Yeah, while the "NCSoft sucks!" attiude is understandable when emotions are running high, it's important to remember that this is a totally out of the blue U-turn on their previouly supportive policy towards the game - and they had such confidence in the developers that they even green lit a new MMO from them, so something has clearly happened within NCSoft very recently to make them change that attitude.
    Yeah, that's the part that makes me think there's a whole lotta "rest of the story" involved here. Which we may or may not ever know.

    It happened. It's a fait accompli. I'm pleased that the rednames are allowed to keep posting as such, I'm pleased that they're keeping the forums up and running for a while so we can say goodbye, organize other places to meet and even what to do to try to keep it going. If NCSoft acts responsibly to the users until the game shuts down, I can live with this. (If NCSoft makes some sort of buyout or other transfer so the game can live on, I'll say very good things about them.)
  7. GadgetDon

    False Hope

    One of my favorite movies is Tangled. In the narration that sets up the story, the pregnant queen is very sick, dying.

    "And that's the point people go looking for a miracle."

    That's how I view what people are doing. Looking for a miracle. And sometimes, miracles happen.

    When someone in game says "C'mon, if we just work together we can beat this, we can do this" - that is spreading false hope, because odds are we can't. But the people who have been pursuing the alternatives have been very realistic about the probabilities (and doing the smart thing by not putting all their eggs in one basket, or even in the "game is saved" basket by creating things for exporting characters).

    So yeah, they're looking for a miracle. Sometimes, people who go looking for a miracle find one.
  8. Most recently really liked him in The Finder. But he's also done some great voice work. He was born to voice Kilowog, for example.
  9. Want to say thank you for those wonderful stories. The new DA is a marvel.

    My biggest regret is that I never got around to pitching any of my arcs for your MA runs. Would be curious how you'd feel about my takes on Dr. Aeon.
  10. I've been a computer gamer and video gamer for a lot of years, more than perhaps most here have been alive (my Dad was director of the Colorado School of Mines, and he'd sometimes bring him a terminal with a modem and let me log in to their computer and play Star Trek - he was not amused to wake up one morning and find I'd run through a whole roll of paper). I've played a lot of superhero games, and they never really got the feeling right.

    One evening I was watching X-Play on TechTV, and they said there was finally a game in beta that got the feel of being a hero right, particularly flying. I went looking for ways to get into beta, and they were right. There was something odd about this idea of playing with others, but I wasn't into that - until one day I accepted an invite, and it was fun.

    Since then, I've been superheroes of all stripes. I've soloed, I've teamed, I've leagued, I've raided. I've made friends, close friends in the games. I found a community, one I will miss more than I can say.

    Thank you for all of that. Thank you for 8 years of both living out my fantasies and making real connections.
  11. I've been trying to figure out how to say what I'm feeling. Half of it, well, wouldn't be allowed.

    But the far bigger half is thank you. Thanks to everyone for 8 years of the greatest entertainment I've ever had.
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Xzero45 View Post
    You've already set the example and told people "No breaking the rules."

    You don't need to continue making it so those of us unable to become VIP regardless of how much we may want to are restricted on features such as PMing friends and sharing personal information to stay in touch, or being involved in discussions on our own home servers between people we've grown very close to over the years.

    This decision, honestly, is doing more harm than good. It's restricting players from having that last chance to be involved in the community.
    Unfortunately, having managed forums, setting an example and telling people is not enough. There are those who will find an in sufficiently modded forum an invitation to go crazy. In an ideal world Z could ask for volunteers and cover things that way (and I would be happy to do so) but in the real world with a business related forum that's not possible.

    Though that's a point. Z, is there a simple switch to give limited accounts access to PMs? Seems less dangerous than the boards and very useful.
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex View Post
    I think the photographic evidence is pretty damning, personally:

    There are only two possibilities from this photo:
    1) NCSoft made the decision to cut City of Heroes in 10 or fewer days. In which case, they are crazy.
    2) They deliberatley misled us into buying a powerset they had no intention of supporting on even a semi-long term basis.

    I have\ never before accused a game company of straight up lying, but that's exactly what happened here. They lied, and took my money. I have no legal recourse, and am not really seeking it. But this company doesn't have a shred of respect for its own customers and I would urge anyone considering making micropurchases from them to reconsider.
    from all we know, this was a compete surprise tho everyone at Paragon Studios. Watching Wednesday's Coffee Chat, I'm positive that Zwillinger had no hint it was coming, nor his guests. Which meant business as usual for Paragon Studios, including new things Added and olther things on sale. So I doubt any was rubbing there hands going mua ha ha they'll buy this and we pull the rug out from under them.

    I've said before that the surprise is the oddest thing about this, that there wasn't a series of actions ratcheting in the screws. which tells me maybe it was a snap decision, not since Wednesday but so fast there was no coordination, or the call had been up in the air with people trying to find options until it was time to make the call.

    And I have seen both, things coming from nowhere requiring massive change TODAY and a choice being open until a call had to be made.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rubberlad View Post
    No, in my mind, there was plenty of time (and warning signs in the past year alone) for NCsoft to take action and avoid going into the red (which may or may not have curtailed any discussion of dumping City of Heroes)... so why didn't they?
    There are losses for a lot of reasons. If you're spending a lot on R&D and marketing on an upcoming product, that brings down the bottom line even though you expect it to bring in a lot of money in the future. Those at NCSoft may have believed that this was a necessary situation for future success. They may even have been right, but the quarterly reports and use of the stock market as speculation as opposed to investment means that the quarterly results are what matter.

    (I could go on for several paragraphs about the stupidity of the focus on the quarterly results and the damage it does to companies, but eh, what's the use. Saving CoH is child's play compared to turning that perception around.)
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rubberlad View Post
    Now *that's* an interesting admission... There's only one way you could know the specific timeline for sure.
    Not really. Public companies don't have the accountants close the books and instantly publish them, there's a lot of time for review, cross-checking, looking for ways to present in a better light. (And time to whisper in the ears of friendly stock analysts, hey, don't be so optimistic with your projections of our numbers.) Remember, companies report their earnings based on calendar quarters, so the August 8th report would have been for April through June.

    More importantly, while companies only publish their results on a quarterly basis, the top executives are getting updates all the time. I'm sure that well before the quarter ended, they knew it would be a bad number. Maybe not that bad of a number, but a bad number.

    So I'm sticking with my speculation. The executives said, OK, it's a bad number, but we can point to a lot of specifics for that quarter and how they'll be all better later. We can keep doing what we're doing, weather it out, and when please God there's a good Q3 number it'll all be water under the bridge. Someone, like Nexxon who just bought 15% of the company (and may have done so relying on certain statements about how the company was doing that don't mesh with a big loss), said "Take action now, or else we'll put in management that will" and needed something decisive.

    Or... OK, new speculation. What if they know that Q3 numbers are going to be as bad, if not worse? There will be significant costs involved in shutting down Paragon Studios, they can hide some of their losses by inflating those costs a bit and both be decisively taking action and hiding other problems?
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rubberlad View Post
    It's not that CoH was losing money, it's that it wasn't making *AS MUCH or MORE money* as some of the other aged IPs in NCsoft's portfolio. Again, the Earnings Report calls Aion's sales "weak" for xyz reason and that game was outperforming City of Heroes by quite a wide margin.

    I'm sure NCsoft was losing money due to a culmination of operating mistakes across its entire portfolio. Rather than take the time to investigate and tighten up each IP's operating costs however, it looks like they took the easy way out. I'm not saying or condoning their response as a smart business decision but I will say they definitely took the quick and easy way out by dropping City of Heroes off the balance sheet.

    Again, not the choice I would have made - especially in light of GW's strong "1 million preordered units" sales which would've easily buoyed NCsoft (and CoH) through hard times. They also could have (and should have) kept CoH on board and made strategic improvements across *all* their IPs. City of Heroes is still very much profitable and it could have been even more profitable had they taken a different approach. Alas, they didn't (much to our community's mutual chagrin) and now the end is nigh.

    Me personally, I say blame NCsoft's corporate leadership for their short-sighted and panicky behavior. Ultimately, they're the ones that really need to go.
    The weirdest part is the instant action. I've unfortunately been in organizations that had cash flow, profitability, and profit problems. The word comes down, need to do better. Things change. People start leaving for a variety of reasons (some laid off, some smelling the wind and looking elsewhere). Deliveries ship. Interaction with the public slows down. When the hammer falls, there's despair, sadness, anger - but usually not that much surprise.

    This doesn't have any of that. From what those inside PS have said, this came as a shock.

    So the word "panicky" rings true for me, and I suspect that the panic in part came external. A large somebody outside (Nexon is a good candidate) says "Those numbers aren't acceptable, take decisive action now or else". And looking at the numbers, closing CoH would qualify as decisive action while having the least impact on the future (NCSoft still expects great things from Aion which may be incorrect and great things from GW2 which probably is correct).
  17. You may have seen it as an investment, the law sees it as playing a game.

    Those whose current subscription goes past shutdown will presumably get refunds for the extra months, those who just bought a bunch of points might be able to get a refund.

    Me? I've spent hundreds, maybe thousands on CoH. What I got back was worth so much more.
  18. As I said in another similar thread, I can hate NCSoft for closing CoH or be grateful for eight great years of CoH. Which I will choose to do depends on how the ext few months are handled, and what leaks out about the whys of this decision.

    There's nothing else that NCSoft has that appeals to me currently. But if something does, I may take a chance on another eight great years.
  19. GadgetDon

    Boycott NCSoft

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon View Post
    Have we blamed the Gnomes of Zurich yet?
    Naw, they own the Boy Sprouts who control the Fast Food restaurants.

    And I for one am not going up against the Fast Food restaurants.
  20. GadgetDon

    Boycott NCSoft

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mrfurious76 View Post
    Yep, no GW2 for me. Or any other game by NCSoft. And if Cryptic/PW had anything to do with this, then they get the boycott from me too. (though that is a bit of a shallow threat as I don't like their games anyways!). NCSoft, hope this decision bites you right in the butt and soon.
    I find the speculation that Cryptic/PW was involved to be very unlikely. As for NCSoft -

    I'm angry. I'm really angry. Just like I'm angry at Syfy for cancelling Eureka after 5 seasons.

    But... without Syfy, there would have been no 5 seasons of Eureka I enjoyed. And without NCSoft, there would have been no 8 years of City of Heroes. If, 8 years ago, NCSoft had said "OK, we're gonna publish this game for 8 year, you can have 8 years of enjoyment from it but you won't get any more" would you have given up the time you have had because you knew it would end?

    I'm angry, both about the loss of the game I love and the treatment of the people at Paragon Studios I've come to respect. What I hear in the upcoming weeks about the story about why it happened and the way the shutdown is handled will affect that anger. I'm not going to make a blood oath now, though.
  21. GadgetDon

    Dear NCSoft...

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by LeperDave1 View Post
    NCSoft? Do YOU have such a game in the works, and is that why CoH is being given a slow death?
    While I agree with most of what you have to say - this is not a slow death. This is a bolt from the blue, struck by lightning death.
  22. OK, we're entering a process that results in the game shutting down. Taking that as a fact, there will be some things we need to know about how things go from here. There's lots of questions I'd like answered about why, but these are what we need to know.

    There may not be immediate answers to all these, but whatever we can get would be appreciated.

    (1) What are the form of communications going on, and who will be doing the communicating of news? Specifically:

    (a) How long will the forums be up, both for player to player communications and announcements.

    (b) Once the forums are gone, how will the announcements of the progress like final dates be communicated. And who will do the communicating.

    (Personal note - right now, there's a lot of anger. If there's any hope of diffusing any of that anger, handling the shutdown well is key.)

    (2) With the devs gone, no more updates. How long will the beta server be up.

    (3) You have ended the purchase of points and renewal of VIP subscriptions. For those planning on play until the server goes down, what happens to accounts where the VIP expires? Will everyone get free VIP or will it be tough, you're premium.

    (a) Flip side - those who purchased points recently looking forward to buying items in I24 or those who renewed for a period that will take them past the shut-down date, how will those people be compensated? (Again a personal note, game time or discounts for other NCSoft games will do nothing to diffuse the anger or improve good will).

    (4) It's somewhat common for a big end-of-game blowout. Will the now ex-community members and ex-developers retain access to their accounts for something fun (if they choose to do that - I would completely understand any ex-employee being too busy with jobhunting or new job or just too bummed to do so).

    I'm not a happy camper at all. But the respect shown between now and closing time will set what impression is left in people's minds.
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
    And if you go to us.ncsoft.com - they still have "Issue 24: Resurgence - coming soon!"

    You'd think they'd mention that announcement, especially *hours* later, and remove that banner from rotation.

    Honestly, I'm really, really curious as to what happened now, as this looks more and more like a rushed decision.
    Yeah, my hunch is that someone important (really big shareholder, holder of large debt) lowered the hammer and said "You make significant changes and you make them by the end of the week or else".

    People have talked about Tabula Rasa as a similar case - but everyone knew TR was in trouble.