Gangrel_EU

The only time in which we have heard *anything* about Red Names following ML for news, is concerning how the negotiations/discussions about the sale/transfer of CoX IP is going.

Which, to be fair, is something that until I am presented with evidence to say the contrary, i am inclined to believe. Because as soon as those discussions are over, then we will find out one way or another *in public* (more than likely though only if the game is successfully transferred away form NCSoft).

But, as i have already said, there have already been 2 incidents (which i have listed) where she has been unable to corroborate what she has said. (In one, the person is now to busy to tell her where they got the information from; the other, she has since deleted the information which told her about it).

Now, to me, that is very convenient.

If I did something similar, I would be chastised for it, and yet, she gets a free pass?

Yeah...

One rule for me, another rule for the famous person.

Unfortunately my opinion of her has declined since her initial announcement of offering her services to NCsoft.

Couple of reasons, but as the common saying goes "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me"

1) She has stated that in the initial announcement of the shuttering of City of Heroes, the forums would be going down September 1st (link to post when discussing Zwill's announcement of his depature from Paragon Studios)

2) That apparently the game was making $800K/month *profit* (this has been brought up on this board as well as the Titan Network forums).

Now, this one is interesting, because there are several people on the boards who have used the information from NCsofts financials to back up their arguments (both pro and against NCsoft/Paragon Studios/City of Heroes) in the past. For her statement to be correct, it means that we (the playerbase) have been reading the information in these reports incorrectly. Which in my mind is *highly* improbable.

Sure, she might have meant $800K/quarter (or even per year) but that is still a far cry from $800K/month profit, which is still the figure that she is sticking to, even when players provide evidence to the contrary.

She, however, will not supply any information/calculations/evidence to back up her claim.

So, long story short... i find her statements unbelievable until she starts backing up her claims.

To be fair, it was only after it was pointed out to me on the Titan forums...

But yes, i then went and corrected my mistakes (and NCsofts )

Mine is also spell checked

Yes... No....

Hell, not sure, this is what was posted up.

Just sometimes I wish that people would avoid timing stuff for midnight of a given day, or give it in 24 hour time.

Hell, 23:59 (or 11:59pm for those people who like am/pm splits) would be more sensible, and give *no* error for confusion.

Nope. And infact i have a link already saved just for this purpose.

Webarchive link to the EU Tabula Rasa site when the announcement of game closure came through.

bolded and enlarged important part.

Taken from here

So, times for closure are as follows:

11:59 PM 30th November - Pacific
00:59 AM 1st December - Mountain
01:59 AM 1st December - Central
02:59 AM 1st December - Eastern

And for the EU players!

07:59 AM 1st December - GMT/UTC
08:59 AM 1st December - GMT+1/UTC+1

Rest, work it out from there!

There is one up now on twitch TV

http://www.twitch.tv/paragonstudios

Well, I for one *do* enjoy the game right now.

So, just wondering but what kind of endgame does City Of Heroes have?

Just asking, because for a long time, City of Heroes was well known for *not* having an endgame, and that some forum goers out there dislike the "raiding" endgame (see Incarnate/iTrials) that City of Heroes *does* have.

Black Pebble already said (in this farewell thread where he started taking questions concerning marketing) that he was the *only* person dealing with marketing. That he didn't have legions of people backing him up.

Someone suggested giving some of the responsiblity over to the players.

Well... the thing is, the *players* shouldn't need telling to spread the word about the game. Hell, even with G+, Facebook, Twitter (ie the social side of the internet world), people just were not talking much about City of Heroes. Apart from on the official pages.

Which is good in a fashion, but it is still closed.

Now, we are looking at the #SAVECOH phenomenon, and how that is spreading.

Why on earth were we *not* doing something like that among ourselves and the people that we know, and the followers that we have before the fit hit the shan?

Laziness?
Fear of social media sites?

All of the above?

Eve Online has a *very* active #tweetfleet tag on twitter. It is handy and fun to follow (and some interesting news spreads among that hashtag), but it is still something that was embraced by the players of that game.

*shrugs*

Sure, you might not like Eve Online, but they (and the players) seem to have had a handle on how twitter can be used to get an online presence out there.

Which year/centuary/millenium will we be waiting till?

Indeed. I believe that something similar has happened to Apple and their share price. Investors expected Apple to shift something like 10million iPhones in the opening weekend.

The grand total?

5million.

And since 19th September, their share prices have *dropped* from a High of $703 down to $673. And this is *with* beating previous sales figures of the iPhone 4S.

*shakes head* stocks are funny to say the least.

*edit* here is where i got my info from Apple share prices

Possibly, and it is true that it would be the lowest in 15 months (ish), but to be fair, on the flip side there has been a decline in the stock since October 2011 (ish)... which just so happens to coincide around the launch of City of Heroes: Freedom.

Make of that what you will

<sarcasm>
Well to be fair, I *could* take the stance that anyone who played City of Heroes *after* NCsoft shuttered Auto Assault, Dungeon Runners, Tabula Rasa, Exteel are traitors as well, for not putting pressure on Paragon Studios to escape the grasp of the evil NSEESOFT when their shuttering happened.
</sarcasm>

But I don't take that stance.

People play games that they enjoy, I enjoyed City of Heroes, I enjoyed Tabula Rasa, I enjoy Guild Wars 2.

Hell, I even enjoy World of Warcraft and Eve Online (yes, I must be insane)

But do I call people who migrate to those games traitors? No.

Everyone is different, and taking the stance of "you are a traitor to the cause" is *not* a good stance to take if you want to save the game and especially if you want to save the *community* of the game.

Right now, taking that stance is just fracturing and forcing away players who might even play a spiritual successor to the game.

*shrugs*

Why is that when TR closed down, the community of players there got tighter (from what i can tell). Sure there were disagreements among players, that will always happen. But there was never this huge "if you go and play another NCsoft title, you are traitor". I cannot deny that some people thought this, but it was still a minority among the player base.

The most common thing i read/saw was "see in the other game", referring to either City of Heroes/Aion or a completely different game (I migrated over to Eve Online for a couple of years).

However here, it is more apparent that even *thinking* about swapping titles is heresy.

*shrugs* And welcome to the self destruction of a community that was well known for being open and welcoming and especially forgiving (in general... there are personal grudges out there that will not die) to its player base for any mistake that they made.

Fair enough, and it does indeed all depend on how much stuff you are including. Continuing education is important, especially as new technologies/advancements in current tech arises. Need to stay on the ball here (hell going from OpenGL 2 to OpenGL 4 requires a bit re-education).

And chances are that there are also similar things for Nvidia and ATI to attend as well.

Well, to be fair, without knowing who you are referring to specifically, I am going to believe that you were referring to Another_Fan's wage estimates (which to be fair, in my mind I *do* believe that they are a high, which is why I ended up settling for a $7million/year wage/benefits package cost for 80 developers).

However, what I was personally disputing was Mercede Lackeys figures that the game was making $800K/month *profit*. Because that means that the game was making almost $13million(ish) per year profit. However, the financial statements from NCsoft contradict that figure quite soundly. Because in 2011, they only managed to bring in just under $11million in sales/revenue over the course of the year.

And we can see that this year has been a *slight* downward slope in terms of revenue/sales/income/call it what you will (just not *profit* as that is something different).

If you want to look at it yourself, go to http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx download the file that you want, and have at look at the IR_Consolidated FactSheet (you will be wanting the Games Sales tab in the excel spreadsheet).

That is where a lot of us are getting our figures from. And to be fair, we have *never* assumed that this was profit, but pure earnings before costs are taken into consideration. And in the past, people have been *willing* to accept those figures as "pre expenditure".

Or to be more accurate, we would *love* to know how "Larry" got his figures together. That would explain a lot, especially as Mercedes is putting a lot of weight into the figures that he has given out.

So please, can you find out how on earth you can make $800,000 profit a month on $800,000 income?

The only way I can see this happening is if you have zero expenditures. Which to me seems impossible.

Now, I am going to ask you a question here.

How many subscribers (or to make it easier for you) or accounts which receive a Paragon Point stipend are there for City of Heroes, and how did you arrive at that figure?

The answer is important here, because it will show how attentive you are.

I will tell you how I arrive at my figure of 55,000-60,000 subscribers (although to be fair, the number of subscribers is likely to be *lower* although the number of "active accounts" will be higher).

I looked at the NCsoft financials and saw how much money it was making. Due to currency conversions and rounding, this is only an estimate, but still fairly accurate.

1) Take the Korean won earnings value and covert it into US$. You can find this on the NCsoft Earnings page. You will need to be looking at the Game Sales tab of the excel spreadsheet.

2,855,000,000 Korean Won = $2,552,412.
Lets call that $2.5million

2) Divide that by 3 to get monthly earnings.

$2,500,000/3 = $833,333 earnings/income/revenue

3) Divide *this* figure now by $15 (this is the maximum monthly sub that someone pays. Sticking with this figure because those in Europe actually pay more than $15/month to subscribe to the game once you take into consideration currency conversion). This will give us an *estimate* of the number of subscribers or number of *equivelent* subscribers (if you are going for active accounts) in the game

This means that we now do the following sum

$833,333/$15 = 55,555. Lets call this 55K to 60K current active subscribers to the game.

Of course, this is assuming that no one spends money to buy Paragon Points and that everyone spends just $15/month.

Of course, we know that isn't exactly true. There are free accounts and premium accounts out there. But without extra information, we cannot even begin to guess how much they are spending.

But for every full subscriber who spends money on Paragon Points, that just reduces the number of "equivalent subscribers" out there.

Now, I have read out in the big wide world, that the game *apparently* has 100,000 subscribers. However, the NCsoft financials *do not* support that theory. Unless of course the subscription fee is $7.50/month.

There is a difference between a subscriber and an active account. A subscriber pays $15/month to play the game (or there abouts) and get access to incarnate content and receives a monthly Paragon Point stipend (there are other benefits). An active account can play the game and *doesnt* get access to incarnate content nor the stipend. They can however pay to gain access to "rent" or buy access to missing features though (with the exception of Incarnate Content).

Now, all of everything that i have stated previously goes out of the window, if "game sales" doesn't mean "how much money they have coming in" and instead means "just clear profit". Infact, it throws *everything* out of the window.

A small bit of research from *your* side can help a lot. Especially when it is backed up by a conclusion as to how you arrived at the number.