Steele_Magnolia

Thanks GG!

If they rescind the cancellation and rehire the staff I'll undeclare my little war, including my boycott (join because it's leverage - I'm pretty sure they're aware of my group because I have plastered their facebook page with it)

I would play COH2 when it came out as long as anyone other than NCSoft held it.

I'll give them until Friday before I get nasty. My husband knows that when I'm still angry and yelling or arguing I can still be reasoned with. When the talking stops is when I'm at my most dangerous.

I'm still talking.

Believe it or not that was the 'polite' draft. As much as I admire Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, the Dalai Lama, and Gandhi they are not the inspiration of my methods here. The Arab Spring is. I have no faith that our modern world respects the pacifist. I have even less faith that big money respects little money unless it is but to steal it.

I am more fight than flight.

It may end up in the waste basket, in fact it probably will. That does not change my resolve. If I fail I will at least have tried.

PS: If you think that was scathing you should read my political commentaries.

Dear NCSoft and Mr. Taek Jin Kim,

This has been the best MMO I've ever played. None other even comes close. I've been a continuous subscriber since 2004 for four accounts for my family.

Your treatment of the staff of Paragon Studios was inexcusable and unforgivable. Your ignorance of how players would react to that is unfathomable. You obviously know nothing about us or our culture.

The decision to cancel this profitable game while sparing unprofitable Aion (which I also played 2009-present) is dumb. I've spent thousands in subscriptions and several hundred in the stores of both games. That ends immediately. Unless the decision to cancel this game is rescinded you'll never see another penny from me. I'll be telling everyone I know never to play your games because you don't value your western hemisphere players.

I have also created a Boycott NCSoft Facebook group which is growing in size every day. https://www.facebook.com/groups/517513781597443/

In the short term petitions gain a lot of support and I've signed them, but I doubt you care about them. In the long term I hope that my boycott campaign will do actual damage and that you should care about. Ask the President of Egypt how social media worked out for him.

I will never stop unless you reinstate COH and actually value your western hemisphere players like you do the eastern hemisphere ones. Your company's vision doesn't include us, our purchase decisions shouldn't include you. I've read your financial Q2 report. I am not ignorant, it's clear where you were earning and where you were losing money.

I won't stop until your company is bankrupt or City of Heroes and the entire staff of Paragon Studios reinstated.

Power to the player!

Angela Floyd
United States

Note: Here's the info
Mr. Taek Jin Kim
CEO NCsoft Corporation
1501 4th Avenue, Suite 2050 Seattle, WA 98101
USA Tel: (512) 225-6359 or 206-588-7200

My opinion:

NCSoft retained unprofitable Aion because it's an eastern hemisphere game with eastern hemisphere jobs at the expensve of profitable COH because it's a western hemisphere game with western hemisphere jobs and . It would have made more sense to shutter Aion. They didn't.

They could have given the staff notice and treated them with respect. They didn't.

They could have given the customer base notice so as we didn't spend money on PPs we'll not use. They didn't.

I am grateful that NCSoft gave us City of Heroes. I am angry about their recent actions and I have a right to be. My decision to boycott stands until the death sentence against COH is rescinded and everyone at Paragon Studios gets their jobs back with an apology.

It make seem contradictory, but it's really not. Take my money for COH or face a boycott, NCSoft. There are no other choices, I now wouldn't play GW2 if it was given to me for free.

Posted on my Boycott NCSoft Facebook page.

It's an open page, all are welcome to join. Put social media to work for our game!

That's cool, as long as the information is out there!

City of Heroes, an 8-year strong comic-book superhero themed Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG), has remained a popular online game ever since it launched on April 27, 2004. While not as large as games such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars or Lineage, it retained a strong and very loyal fan base. Despite its age, the game still was winning awards for innovation, even being listed as the Best Sci-Fi/Superhero game of 2009 by Beckett Media. Over the years, City of Heroes has retained an incredibly loyal fan base, with an estimated 43 million characters created by over nine million players. Paragon Studios (named after the games fictional setting of Paragon City), the creative force behind City of Heroes, along with its owner NC Soft, had found a recipe for MMORPG success.

Then it came as an incredible surprise to have this post on the game’s website the past Friday, August 31st:

Farewell, from all of us at Paragon Studios
This morning we announced that Paragon Studios will be taking to the skies of City of Heroes for the last time.

In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios. Effective immediately, all development on City of Heroes will cease and we will begin preparations to sunset the world’s first, and best, Super Hero MMORPG before the end of the year. As part of this, all recurring subscription billing and Paragon Market purchasing will be discontinued effective immediately. We will have more information regarding a detailed timeline for the cessation of services and what you can expect in game in the coming weeks.

The team here at Paragon deserves special praise for all that we have accomplished over the last 5+ years. These developers are some of the most creative and talented people in the gaming industry. By now, we’ve all been given this news internally, but to anyone who may be reading this message after the fact; know that your hard work and dedication has not gone unappreciated or unnoticed. To any potential studios looking to grow your team; hire these people. You won’t regret it.

To our Community,

Thank you. Thank you for your years of support. You’ve been with us every step of the way, sharing in our challenges, encouraging us to make City of Heroes better, more than everyone else thought it could be. We couldn’t have come this far without you. I implore you all, focus on the good things of CoH and Paragon Studios. Don’t dwell on the “how” or the “why”, but rather join us in celebrating the legacy of an amazing partnership between the players and the development team.

Thank you, and I’ll see you in the skies, one last time.

Andy Belford

Community Manager

Paragon Studios.

The players found themselves shocked into disbelief, that the holding company was shutting down both a profitable game and a development studio with minimal notice. While City of Heroes was not the largest of NC Soft’s assets, it was a cash cow bringing in what has been estimated as up to $10 million net profits per year. But instead of complaining, or surrendering, the players instead decided to act like the heroes they had created, and decided on working to save themselves. To coördinate this, they turned to the still fledgling power of social media.

Almost immediately, the player community began to pull together. Within hours, they launched a petition to ask NCSoft to reconsider. Also appeared a letter writing campaign to NCSoft’s executives. Discussions began to talk about forming a campaign to raise the funds to purchase the game from NCSoft directly. Notable celebrities which played the game such as Mercedes Lackey have chimed in. Facebook groups appeared to help the players network and plan.

And even in the game itself, being kept up until November to meet contractual obligations, people took their characters to the streets in a virtual Occupy Paragon protest.

There are rumors that the shutdown is because NC Soft’s new major stockholder, Nexon, is putting pressure on them as a result of cost overruns on the new games, Guild Wars 2 and Blade & Soul, producing a $6m loss in the second quarter of this year. The announced sale did cause the stock price to rise by 3.41%. This of course helps NC Soft’s CEO, Taek Jin Kim, keep up his golden parachute.

The use of social media to effect change is still very new. While the Arab Spring showed the power of it against governments, the use of it against large multinational corporations is still in its infancy. For years, the consumer has been ignored by corporations, who outsource their customer support, sell their customers private data, artificially increase short-term profits through offshoring, or through retail tricks such as what Consumerist magazine calls the Grocery Shrink Ray, where the company advertises goods as the same size, when in fact the newer product is slightly smaller to increase profits at the expense of the customer. To further add insult to injury, with the Citizens United decision, these very multinational corporations which feel that they are above paying taxes and being responsible to clean up their messes now can buy our elections. This remains a large problem, brought into a microcosm in a single case of a company shutting down a profitable product against the wishes of its customers.

Can a customer base change their fortune? Will NC Soft change its mind, or sell off the property to a new owner? The future is uncertain. However, in the modern social-media world, where global movements can begin overnight, I would not yet count on City of Heroes flying off into the sunset just yet.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/09...ing-shut-down/

https://www.facebook.com/angela.floyd.31
kittiesarenice@yahoo.com

Something along the lines of History in the making with additional emphasis upon the community (like MSR or Hami raid scenes or gatherings upon the steps of Atlas, etc), scenery from the game, and something brief about each major NPC. It rather sounds like a movie with all this, but somehow it all fits.

5th Anniversary has been my favorite video of all and even before this announcement moved me to tears. It just wouldn't be right without the story, the cast, and world, and the community.

And I can donate again for this one.

Friday: Shock, disbelief, rage, a trip to the liquor store

Saturday: Grief, imbibing the product of said liquor store trip, play from waking up to bed

Sunday: Nostalgia, a bit more imbibing, playing favorite characters with friends, community MSR, migraine, recovering from said migraine now

Monday: I have to leave COH to go to a cookout, to be followed by more playing and possible imbibing. There's still a lot left in the bottle because I bought a 1.75L. The occasion seemed to call for it.

*Maybe the imbibing had something to do with the migraine, but maybe not. After all I've had migraines for 15 years and don't often imbibe. More likely it was the effect of staring at this monitor for almost 2 days straight.

I would play regardless of who bought it and if it meant starting over. I could do that. I would do that. I promise I'd even buy four subs (that's how many I have now for me, my husband, my mother, and my brother) and drop money into any online store the first day. I'd already resubbed three of those accounts for a year in July (the other being paid incrementally), money which I should get back, and am more than ready to drop on anyone who'll extend this olive branch.