JohnRobey

What if Joss Whedon were to authorize an MMORPG version of "FIREFLY"? I wonder if there'd be a nice, stable niche market for that..... ;-)

Thanks!! "Gangnam Style - Paragon Style" was hilarious!! Maaaaybe, if you aren't too busy, we'll get to see your version of "Call Me Maybe". Thank you for the 8 years of Super!! I'm really hopin' there's more Super in the future - and barring that, exciting new projects from da Super Devs!

Some of us are talking about a final party in Pocket D, November 30th. I for one plan to go out dancing - the only question is, on what toon?

(Also hoping to run each of the TFs/SFs one final time; e.g. last call for Dr Q, PST! as well as each of the incarnate trials. I think that can be done easily enough on Justice still.)

As for the soon-to-be former publisher of City of Heroes, my feelings on November 30th towards NCSoft are probably best summarized by this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_50-gOeBilc 1982 Scandal/Patty Smyth "Goodbye To You"

"Lightning in a bottle" is a good way to describe the positive feeling I get playing CoH. LOL, yeah, other than a few hours on EQ1 and watching friends play and explain UO and WoW, etc, no MMORPG appealed to me strongly prior to CoH. Once I had made my first character (spending over an hour of course playing with the costume creator and amazed at the variety of looks and combinations), gotten thru the extant tutorial (issue 15) and was out on the streets of Galaxy City, I was hooked!! Woot! This was fun!! And I had my own original superhero whose unique look nonetheless was similar to the comicbooks I'd grown up reading as a kid!

Should the development team that comprised Paragon Studios happen to form a new studio, I for one would certainly check it out! In fact, unless the IP changes hands such that the dev team can continue to bring us new Issues of City of Heroes, I hope they do just that and wish them every success in "striking gold" again. Thanks again, Dev Team and Community.

Thanks for posting this. It does me good to hear the Dev Team and I hope they continue to talk with us even after "sunset". At minimum, I'd be interested in their current MMORPG projects, if any, and otherwise remain a FAN of City of Heroes!! Thank you, Paragon Studios development team!!

Dear Van_Raye, I appreciate you feel this way (strongly) and that these are your opinions. I hope you can appreciate that I have a somewhat different view.
First, I concur with your position that I'd like to see City of Heroes continue, perhaps ideally as most of us expected: the release of Issue 24, new content, game features, the works!
Second, I feel pain and loss over the prospect of CoH going away permanently and in the near future. Hell, I even found myself tearing up again over this and it's been days since last i shed tears over this and I'm 50-something and feeling silly (in addition to hurt and angered) about feeling this way about a MMORPG. I think a lot of us feel this way.
Third, the loss is real: we each invested time (years), creativity and money. We invested in a hobby where the products vanish when unsupported, unlike say model railroading where at least one gets to keep one's purchases even should the manufacturer go out of business.
Naturally, none of us likes this one bit.
Yes, the CoH Community has been forced to speculate and conjecture because we lack information and means of securing it. I too have found NCSoft's statements about its decision to stop publishing City of Heroes irking because said statements did NOT satifsy my desire/need to know WHY something I love is going away. Note: this is a classic Grief reaction when something or someone we love suddenly dies.
As my temper has cooled (anger being a typical reaction to hurt) and as I've now logged more hours reading these and Titan Network's forums than I have playing CoH since 8/31/12, I now have a somewhat different view from what I felt and thought even a few days ago.
One post in particular--I think on Titan & you may flame me for not being a good researcher and looking it up--explained why even taking the time to sell the Intellectual Property (IP) as well as inherent costs in legal fees etc. could very easily not be worth it to NCSoft as compared to money to be made in pursuit of their other business ventures. E.g. using made up unrealistic numbers, if NCSoft can make $100 profit selling the IP but the cost to doing this is missing an opportunity to make $5000 profit then NCSoft would be making a poor business decision doing what it would take to sell the IP, regardless of any other factors. Now, did the person who wrote about IP sales and lost business opportunity know what he or she was talking about? I don't know. I don't have expertise in this and further, even that explanation is conjecture, but one I find plausible. It goes a long way toward explaining "We have exhausted all avenues" i.e. we looked at what selling the IP would entail, compared it to lost opportunity, and sorry, we're still gonna ax CoH.
To my mind (and I'll admit this is purely my opinion) I "buy" that explanation. It's logical and makes sense from a business perspective. If one takes exception to the corporate model; i.e. what's good for corporations being bad for us/the public, that's a different issue altogether.
But with this in mind, it casts NCSoft's communication to us in wholly different light, one far less sinister and Machiavellian than I've seen floated on these forums. NCSoft would optimally retain us as customers, but can't bring itself to do so in a manner that hurts its bottom line. Doing so would be a breach of fiduciary trust to its stockholders.
Yes, people are still hurt and angry and to varying extents still bewildered. Grief and Shock take time to recover from and we each recover variously and at different rates.
On to the parts of your recent post I disagree with. I don't perceive myself as being either "compliant" or "apathetic" with respect to my involvement with Community efforts to Save CoH. While I don't feel terribly hopeful about we fans saving the game, I'm still doing what I personally feel is reasonable and look every day to see if anyone on Titan Network or here has an idea I can support.
Please do not blast or flame those with whom you disagree (nor do I wish to see others blasting or flaming you.) We're fans who LOVE CoH so naturally we think it's the best MMORPG. All of us in the Community feel a world of hurt over our impending loss. (I may get flamed for this too but) This is exactly the "high note" NCSoft is urging us to adopt, the high road if you will. They know we're hurting. Quite possibly NCSoft upper management does have a special place in its corporate heart(s), at minimum from the years when it thought CoH could really take off in Asia and grow perhaps exponentially in its current markets. Kind of irrelevant, but I for one don't feel like calling them liars when I have no idea what they feel, never met or worked with them, nor had any communication other than the few statements they've made. Nor have I any special insight into their Revenue/Profit projections past or present, nor means or skills to evaluate how realistic these are. I also don't know squat about MMO Publishing as a business.
"The triumph of evil." *blink* Okay, I hear you loud and clear: NCSoft's decision to cut CoH hurts and that compounded by lack of info and perhaps the sudden unexpectedness of it feels evil. Granted. You invoke Winston Churchhill. One of my heroes as well. Again, if you want to take exception to the corporate model (making money for investors) and doing a less than stellar job at delivering a service to the public, I won't argue that. In fact, I might agree.
So getting back to the topic at hand, a discussion of the next move by the CoH Community, I'd love to see more creative constructive ideas floated. I'd really like to see us NOT grinding axes, or taking our frustration, disappointment, sadness and anger out on one another. Surely that's counterproductive in the longrun, even if a good rant can vent negative feelings--but not at another person's expense, please.
Additionally, Van_Raye I don't see (again my opinion) that you've flamed people particularly but are grappling with the closure of CoH in your own way as we all are. Additionally, I'd like to see those replying to your posts (and pretty much all fan postings) showing consideration and empathy to everyone in the community.
Sorry I went on for god knows how many pages. Until tomorrow when next I peruse these forums again, Best Wishes, Regards and Hope,
John
PS Apologies in advance for any typos, omitted words (ugh!) and that my attempt at indented paragraphs didn't work but I'm out of time.

rofl!!!!

While I agree with you 100% Techbot, I've yet to find it effective to tell any Grieving person to "lighten up!" even when perhaps what they most need and would benefit from would be to lighten up. Such is the nature of Grief, and I think we should each cut each other as much slack and understanding as possible as we go thru this. That said, apologies for being preachy.

Glad you enjoyed it! The raid leader was likely HRO, i mean Hard Rock One though if memory serves (and at this hour it may not) it might well have been Warboss or Little Side Kick (LSK). I am usually on a blaster who has 1 or more Holds assisting the Green Mito Team (composed of controllers and dominators) defeat the green mitos. Naturally I agree with your opinion that Justice runs a sweet Hami Raid. (I think Victory does also tho I've rarely done Hami raids there. Madame Pistaccio (sp?) is often the raid leader on Vic.)

LOL yes the Mitos do look similar tho the color coding is helpful but the heat of battle combined with sometimes framefreezing lag (at least on my PC) can make what seems like it should be easy far more challenging. That said, I often simply put my toon on Follow and target thru the Green Mito team leader. Never having played the role, I've no idea what the Aggro holding Tanker team does specifically but am guessing Targeting Thru isn't an option.

For what it's worth the Hamidon Raid on Justice runs (almost) every Monday and Wednesdays at 9 EST. Simply get to the Hive and say on Broadcast "LF Hami league" or add Justice United or Justice For All chat channels and ask if the Hami raid is on. Customarily we follow it with a Rikti Mothership Raid. All are welcome!

Well, I can't argue against what you are saying. For truly great AE's such as "Talos Vice", we ran that as a small team when my friend who was leading said, "This is too funny! We have to run this again with each of you holding the 'star' to see how funny and well done this is."

Additionally, Largo, while I feel your criticism is fair, it also applies to regular, non-AE content. I used to feel some frustration at players who seemed only to want to click thru quickly, even the battles and get to the reward. Among a different set of players, it was common for the lead to say "Reading" if the text was long and we none of us hurried while the text was read and any important info relayed. Ditto for all of the signature story arcs, if one of us hadn't played it yet, he or she was the defacto leader so as to get ALL of the story. (Just sayin' how some of us handled this.)

Exactly, New Dawn, I (and many others) have close to 100 alts across the many servers (admittedly some have been long neglected but I only deleted a few since I'd hoped in time to eventually get around to each of them.)

And yes, so many of my friends with 7-8 years playing 1. took breaks from CoH (either to try other MMORPGs for a whle or simply got RL busy) but 2. always came back to CoH and counted on it as something they could always return to, usually with renewed enthusiasm.

LOL, Cyber!! I still think it's ironic that the publisher NCSoft is the great AV to end all AVs. I still get a kick and a laugh from this icon Captain-Electic uses in his signature line on these forums. Filched and copied without permission:

To me the only "high note" in this is that I feel the Paragon Studios development team was at its creative peak. Each issue I played, from 15-23, the game just kept getting better! (Totally IMO) Oh! I suppose another "high note" might be the way the CoH Community rallied both to help each other with our collective grief and to try various means of Saving CoH (still ongoing.)

Best Wishes to you all and Thank You to everyone who contributed to this thread.

Sorry to single out King, but it would be really nice since we all care passionately about CoH to read forums without all these personal attacks. Please let's stay on topic--and when we disagree, can we not compound the negative feelings (anger, sorrow, grief) over NCSoft's decision with negative and incendiary remarks?

BTW, Flea, nice seeing you on the forums. I hope to see you on Justice United channel sometime on or before Nov.30th.