Scarlet Shocker

A statue of an ordinary person in City Hall where the City Rep stands and a plaque that gives a badge saying "People Power"

"The People of Paragon heard the call and were not found wanting. A City was saved."

proof there are far too many bean counters and lawyers in the world.

There are some strange numbers being bandied about as "fact" - when the truth is we really don't know.

But what we do know is that CoH was profitable but realistically, in decline over the long term. The trend seemed downwards.

However it could be made to be profitable and the reaction amongst much of the community is evidence that there's a lot of passion for this game.

You can bandy statistics about all you want but it's commonly accepted that for every community action that is taken there are plenty of supporters who agree with the action but don't act themselves. Sometimes it's naked apathy, sometimes it's too busy, a lack of perceived benefit, or perhaps even fear of ridicule or making a decision. I'm working from memory here but the general consensus is that for every person who signs a petition, there's roughly about 5 people who support the principle but don't. (From memory, studies vary and range from 3-10 - but that was in the days before there was an internet if you can imagine such a thing.) But ok let's say the ratio is roughly 1:4 once we've filtered out dupe signings etc.

So we've roughly 15000 sigs currently = 60000 potential subscribers. At $15 a month that's $900,000 a month. I'm guessing that would only support a smallish game, ie a skeleton dev team and only a few servers.

However, that's just the raw basic numbers. There are other considerations - if the fan base can make a comprehensive case to demonstrate that there is profit to be made from the game, then the shareholders must ask the board some very interesting questions.

Fighting for this game isn't for everyone. But this game and community has done a great deal for me over the years. Trying to keep it online and active is a worthy goal and personally I would much rather say "I tried my hardest and failed" than "Meh couldn't be arsed."

Thirty 7 from CoHtitan has done a lovely twibbon design for your twitter account.

If you don't know what twibbon is, it's a little marker that shows up on your twitter avatar - highlighting the fact you support a particular cause.

Get your twibbon here - it has a nice "saveCoH" banner on it so that your followers can see the cause you're supporting:

http://twibbon.com/cause/Save-City-of-Heroes

That was excellent stuff chaps.

Thanks TonyV for your excellent work and taking the lead on this - thanks too, Maressa and everyone else involved.

I enjoyed that but I'm thnking I wanted to make a toon called "Necromantic Rod"

either that or the biggest double entendre you can imagine! (it'd be dead funny... srsly)

If Super Ready weights the same as a duck I figure we should burn something.

Thanks Zwillinger for the update.

I am taking this to mean no news is good news

I've been in touch with both the http://www.expressandstar.com/ and http://www.birminghammail.net/ to let them know the meet is happening and why.

I'm not sure what response we'll get but figured better to let them know ASAP.

I'm not completely sure of the point you're trying to make but some context is required there.

Let's not forget that this was just after the launch of Going Rogue - and for that, the Dev team had expanded massively - IIRC from about 15 people to over 80.

Going Rogue was the platform for the End Game and most of that was built into GR - so once GR launched, there would almost inevitably be huge layoffs. But even after the Dev team was significantly bigger than before

But this means...

Wait... are you trying to say that something isn't mereman's fault?

I cannot process this!

Excellent work thanks for sharing!

excellent work.

Thankyou so much for this!

Beat up Frostfire then dance under Atlas with my friends

I'd love to be part of this

And I'm working on something currently that has the perfect synergy!

just seen an interesting Loading Screen Tip:

Whatever happens, there's a lesson here for games companies.

It's a very valuable lesson to most of the industry it seems to me.

Just looking around the interwebs, it's clear that NCSoft have dropped a clanger with this and it's shocked the industry as a whole. But perhaps, to counter that, the whole industry is sitting up and taking notice and going "Whoa! Those fans have it together and are behaving in a concerted manner to try and save their game."

It's making heads pop up in the gaming community at what was an unforseen reaction. It might just make gaming companies think twice before making knee-jerk changes to their games.

It's probably too late for CoH. I suspect that CoH's time is done and soon it will be pixel-dust on the wind. But I also suspect that whatever the outcome, NCSoft is going to feel that wind for a long time to come and it will hurt the company more deeply in the long term than it can imagine because their ill-considered actions has been a stone that casts many ripples.

But the next time a business looks at closing it's game or emasculating it - this has been a precedent and they will look at the options more closely. Can the game be saved with more revenue? What can the fans do to save the game? Maybe if NCSoft had asked that before they closed the game - well we can but speculate.

Let's hope that however this pans out for us, it'll make the industry think twice about how they act. Even if it's just to take a moment to stop and ask the fans.

Or it could just be wishful thinking

Scarlet Shocker is on da map innit!