Scarlet Shocker

As I'm typing this, my team, Warwickshire County Cricket Club - aka The Bears - are about to win the most prestigious award of the Season, the County Championship. They're doing that with a game in hand and are just a single wicket away.

They're also in the CB40 Final to be played next week, so there's every chance they will do "the double."

That probably doesn't mean too much to many of you - what with cricket being a minority sport and all - but it's not as popular in North America as it used to be and will be again soon if rumours are to be believed.

But we've just won as I type - with a day of this game to play!

I'd trade it all if I could. I'd trade the Championship, the CB40 and T20 for the next five years to see City of Heroes survive.

Of course that's a fallacious desire - it's not my choice to trade - but it does give a measure of how much City of Heroes means to me. I'm passionate about cricket - I was hoping we'd get a cricket bat for Titan Weapons and Mace - but I guess that's never going to be now.

The battle cry of Warwickshire is "Come on You Bears!"

Maybe it should be "Come On You Heroes!!"

That's really kind. I could always use an extra LotG 7.5% - as low as possible please to @Riffster

many thanks!

That's the Omega Slot: Irony Incarnate!

I tried CO and it's not as good as CoH in many ways - but it's very nice that they are welcoming us as a community.

For me, the biggest drawback was that it felt very much like a single player MMO. There were very rarely ever any teams and if they did last it was a brief farm and poof. And truthfully I do prefer CoH's look and feel.

If it comes to it I won't completely object to going back to CO - but that presupposes that CoH is past saving and I don't yet believe it is. But if push comes to shove...

honestly.... I'm not yet ready to consider that.

It seems to me that if that was the only choice, a binary "start from scratch or don't play at all" then I'd go with it. Of all my toons - only Scarlet would be really missed but I'd live with that.

In the grand scheme of things, it's a small price to pay, right?

;em Salute

Thankyou Sir.

I loved Praetoria.... correction - I love it.

That showed a maturity of storytelling that wasn't present in many earlier arcs and told some great tales - even if I didn't get them initially and it took a later reveal to find out what was happening.

I still wanted to the ability to remain a Loyalist til the end though!

Hence I created my own Supergroup: The Praetorian Imperial Secret Service.

Because in Praetoria, the P. I. S. S. Takes You!

(and I even got Avatea to join that with one of her alts)

There's much pain presently.

Let's face it it's been a crappy weekend in many ways. CoH, Hal David, Michael Clarke Duncan.

None of them world leaders in their own right, but each incredibly significant in their own right.

CoH was the genre breaking superhero MMO and will always be the benchmark by which other comic/superhuman MMOs are measured

Hal David wasn't a household name but he's up there with Goffin & King, Leiber & Stoller and one of the major volumes of the Great American Songbook

Michael Clarke Duncan had such stage presence he managed to turn a major Marvel Supervillain from a pasty white guy to a black powerhouse. He gave Wilson Fisk a whole double-take.

For the latter we can only mourn. Nobody comes back from the dead. Ever. But City of Heroes isn't a living entity in the same way. Thus it can be saved.

Here's a thought - based on some thoughts I've formed over the weekend as new info's come to light and the posts of others who are either generally better informed than I or maybe simply a bit smarter at joining dots.

Much of the talk has been about acquiring the IP to CoH - wresting it away from NCSoft so they can't do any more damage to the world we love so.

I don't see it like that. I don't think NCSoft have done it like that - it's certainly not a premeditated thing to kill a goose that occasionally lays a bronze egg.

Tit-Toc crystalised a thought that I hadn't quite realised in my own mind but was getting there slowly and I won't quote verbatim but was along the lines of "the disaster of selling the IP then finding the new owners make a go of it."

That speaks volumes. The whole IP, in a dead, non-functioning game - has more value than the live MMO. Maybe City of Heroes 2 will be some cheap-arsed 99p download for iPhone that's a cossie creator and a bit of flash coding that allows you to zap a couple of 2 dimensional supervillains. Like Angry Birds vs 50 Shades of Grey, but in Spandex. With more gravy. Or something.

I honestly cannot see NCSoft letting the IP of CoH get out of their control. Let's face it, they don't seem to play well with others terribly well.

And that includes making it Open Source. There have been some please - there's at least one petition out there to make the code-base Open Source. Two issues there: A) Open Source is tricky sometimes, even for the people who make open source stuff and B) the code base is worth as much as a rubber duck in the gobi unless the IP comes with it. Otherwise you end up with a completely different game along the lines of "Village of the slightly better than usual."

So what about this? Don't buy the IP. Licence it. Get a firm commitment from NCSoft for three or maybe five (that's long term) years. The proposition is simple: "Licence us the IP for a finite period with a renewal option - you make money because that's the commitment, and lose nothing because you have no operating costs. If it turns into the revenue stream you'd always imagined and a sudden influx of goose eggs devalue world gold prices, then you know you need to be talking to us about revenue streams."

With that negotiation comes the game as it stands - INCLUDING I24 as a delivered functioning issue. Plus the ability to create new content for the future - but of course NC won't be part of that. They just get to cream off any benefits later.

The WIIFM factor: NCSoft have zero cost. They license the IP, and coin the revenue. It's incredibly low risk and as risk of repeating myself they are legally bound to consider it. And if after the duration it's tanked, they just do "don't bother."

But if after the period it's showing promise... that's good for the licensee - ie us.

What's in it for the community? Leasing is likely to be a lot less in real costs. There's also lower risk because the cost is spread over time, unlike a buyout of the IP

It also means the buyers aren't saddled with a white elephant forever. Te "community" (It means you and me) get to walk away if it's burning us - there's no long term commiment. If we try it, and it doesn't work, then ok.

If it does work and is a resounding success then it's a foolish business says "let's change things up" in the midst of success.

2p

But they also need revenue.

I suspect you've hit the nail on it's proverbial bollox.

NCSoft invested a lot in CoH - three times I'd guess. Once at launch, once when they bought Cryptic out and once with Going Rogue.

In their eyes, they gave it as many chances as they could and it still owed them.

But - there's no politics with CoH unlike TR - so aside from any legal requirement to look at a potential buyer, they probalby would. There's no political impediment to them selling/leasing the IP. They would probably welcome a new buyer if you're correct.

Their response might well be "Give us the money and good luck on making your ROI!" Clearly they figured it was more cost effective to kill CoH than look for a new owner. That tells us a bit I guess

I'm guessing at this stage that nobody knows.

I just...

don't have the words.

Thanks

I will be there.

I will be there with music streaming for any who care to listen in - and a VERY VERY large gin and tonic with plenty of ice!

I guess I'd like to know but only if there's no hope of discovering it in game.

Maybe we should leave the "what comes next" until we know the fat lady's singing.

Getting this game back, getting a great team of Devs their jobs back

Whoever does that - that's gotta be a good thing, right?

I'm not thinking that far ahead. I'm just going to enjoy the time we have left to play and then I'll worry about it when I need to.

Wow... That's a way to start monday morning off. Thanks for sharing, Black Pebble

I probably made it onto your wall of (in)fame(yness) thingy. I was pretty vocal and not maybe your biggest fan. Whether or not I did, I want you to know that it's not cuz I hate you at all - far from it. It was frustration.

As a player I have been captivated by this game from the first day zapped my first bad guy. It was fantastic and let a comicbook geek like me live out my childhood fantasies. I've been playing games since I had a spectrum when I was 18 and this was the best game I ever played without a doubt and I couldn't understand why the message wasn't being broadcast across the universe at full volume. I guess it's like sport - easy to be wise as a spectator but not so easy as a player.

Best of luck in your future.

Scarlet Shocker checking in!

I'm Riff on the Titan forums

Let's remember - NCSoft saved this game.

Don't ever forget that. We might be really upset and angry with them right now but without NCSoft, City of Heroes would have died in 2007/8.

Cryptic were about to can it to move forward with the then Marvel IP they had won the rights to develop that then became CO. They were the first body to cast CoH aside - and it took NCSoft to step in, and buy the Cryptic dev team ("all except one" is how I believe it was phrased at the time) and create what ultimately became Paragon Studios.

But with that change, Paragon went from strength to strength. The game improved immeasurably once Posi and War Witch were given free rein - and that then led to the whole GR/End game thing.

We can justifiably be angry at how they've dealt with this - but it was their decision to invest in CoH again, that kept it going as long as it did. For NCsoft it was a purely commercial decision without emotion. For us, it really hurts. But without them taking the commercial decision to save it we'd have missed four years of Paragon City, and experienced none of the levelshifting Praetoria we know now.

So - hate them if you will... but also cut them a bit of slack.

Just a thought

Well said!