TonyV

I was really hoping that the "craziest" would be something like, "I have an idea. Let's pretend like NCsoft is shutting down Paragon Studios and sunsetting the game to get everyone to appreciate it a lot more. We'll make a lot of headlines in the press, and when all is said and done, we'll have a TON of more subscribers and people will be more loyal than ever! I'll be we'll get SO many people posting how much they love us and the game, it will be marketing gold for decades!"

...

I'd contact Brian Clayton and let him know that I want to create a new studio with him as General Manager and, if he wants to invest as well, part owner. We'd bring back as many former Paragon Studios staffers as are still available and/or want to come back. We'd fill out the ranks of those who left and/or aren't interested in returning with new talent. After that, I'd hire a legal negotiator to make NCsoft a very good offer.

If they accepted, then great! Problem solved. I'd hit the press, make a bunch of announcements, and hopefully within a month or two, we'd have City of Heroes back up and running. We'd set it up kind of like the old Paragon Studios, with around half the team working on updating City of Heroes and half the team working on City of Heroes 2. I'd also bring in some mobile developers and web developers to expand CoH 2 into new areas, allowing people to, for example, do stuff on their phones or tablets that help them advance in the game.

If they didn't, then we'd immediately start to work on a new game with new IP. I'd also probably try to bring in some mobile and/or social game developers to churn out some quickly delivered games to keep everyone interested and playing until the new monster hits. If we did this, I'd probably donate as much of the source to the open source community as I could--keeping what needs to be closed source closed source (e.g. user database management functions, stuff that could be used for exploits), but opening what could be opened (e.g. the game engine).

I'd be very hands-off in the day-to-day affairs of the company, letting Brian pretty much run the show. I might make suggestions now and then, but it would always be with the implicit understanding that I'm letting him do his job. To be honest, with the amount of money we're talking, I'd also probably extend offers to the core Titan Network folks to help with community management and first-party (formerly third-party) tool development. I'd move to Mountain View, and life would be good.

Will all of that happen? Heh, I wish. But I did go by the store and pick up some tickets, so my chances aren't mathematically zero, just statistically extremely unlikely. I'll let you all know how it goes.

I'm downright disappointed.

Paragon Studios made multiple pitches to NCsoft. Each time, NCsoft told them, "No... we don't care for that." What NCsoft didn't tell Paragon Studios is what they were looking for. Paragon Studios didn't get any feedback like, "If you tweak this or adjust that...", or any kind of directive like, "We'd like to make something that fits into [whatever] paradigm."

So without any kind of direction or leadership from corporate, they kept pitching ideas. They finally hit upon one--the Secret Project™--but from what I've heard about it, it was not a sequel to City of Heroes. It focused heavily on crafting and customization, think kind of Minecraftish, but without everything being cubes.

Point is this. You know how if you watch Bugs Bunny and then watch Akira, it's a bit of a culture shock? Not that Akira is a bad movie, but although they're both animated, "cartoon" in western culture conjures up a different mental image than "anime" does somewhere like Japan. NCsoft suffers from not understanding western-style MMORPGs. Compounding that is that they really are incredibly stupid about the appeal of Western-style superheroes; they have no clue, they just don't "get it." And for the past few years, virtually all decisions about these games have been coming from corporate out of Seoul, with NC Interactive having little to no say in matters over which, in theory, they should have leadership and control.

Read some of the reviews at Glassdoor.com. I'm not referring to the scorchingly negative rating of the company since most people seeking out this site are doing so because they're pissed off. Ignoring the poor guy or gal who posted the positive review at the top (they were a Paragon Staffer that was laid off two days after posting it), look at the "Advice to Senior Management" sections. They all have a recurring theme that has been hammered on back to 2011: Let the western operations company run the western operations. These aren't just Paragon Studios people (who you can tell by the city being Mountain View, CA); most of them are out of Austin or Seattle--insiders within NC west itself. What's sad is that NC Interactive itself is hamstrung by the corporate overlords out of Korea. They're going to run it into the ground, and once it's dead and buried, rue how badly their U.S. colleagues were at running things when in fact, they are the ones that killed it.

I don't want anyone coming away from this thinking that Paragon Studios screwed up, as much as NCsoft would love for everyone to believe that. Paragon Studios has always had a much better grasp on its players and how the game could do well than NCsoft, and they have been trying for years to do so. If NCsoft were smart (and they're not), they wouldn't have continually hamstrung Paragon Studios, and instead, supported them and let them do what they do best. And it's not just Paragon Studios; it's ALL of their subsidiaries, which is why I genuinely fear for the people currently working at Arena.net and especially Carbine. The recent craziness going on in Guild Wars 2 that's causing such a stink is yet another example of NCsoft thinking--and being grossly mistaken--about what players want, what they're willing to take, and not listening to their development studios or letting them make decisions in the best interest of their games.

There WAS a City of Heroes 2 pitched. (Note again that I'm not referring to the Secret Project™; I'm talking about an honest-to-god sequel.) Several times, in fact, over the years. It would have been a cool game. I've gotten scraps of information here and there about what it would have been about. (Goodbye Rhode Island, hello California!) Each time it was pitched, it was turned down without explanation or help, just NCsoft corporate's silent denial to let its western properties grow and flourish and unrelenting pursuit of turning us into Korean gamers. To extend the metaphor, they resent the fact that some of us really love Bugs Bunny and are actively trying to convert it or kill it off so that everyone will watch anime instead, which they're more familiar with and understand better.

Yeah, I think it wasn't the best phrase to use. I think they were trying to convey the likelihood of success, which is admittedly not great, but not as close to zero as the trolls would have everyone believe. I don't want anyone to take the connotation from the phrase that this is a last-ditch effort, it's more like, I dunno, sending your slot receiver on a long skinny post route hoping that the defense doesn't drop too many people back into coverage on third down in the fourth quarter with a few minutes left to try to overcome a two-score deficit. You really wish that you had enough time left to run some short slants maybe using Tony Gonzalez or maybe try some screen passes over the middle to Jason Snelling or Jacquizz Rodgers, but even in a hurry-up offense, you don't want to get to the point where you're having to spike the ball to clock it or anything. And if your defense is holding up well enough--which isn't out of the question, since John Abraham is having a good year and Sean Weatherspoon is now off the IR, you may get the ball back without having to resort to an on-side kick. Did you know that leage-wide, those only have a 16% chance of success? To be honest, I don't even remember if Bosher has ever successfully pulled it off in the pros. Still, if it came down to that, I'll take 16% over the zero all those idiot talking heads keep giving us from the commentary booth any day, and if there's any quarterback in the league that you want with no timeouts left and the clock ticking down to zero with a LOT of green to go, it's Matt Ryan. Let's not forget that Carolina game, mmkay?

Wait, what were we talking about? Oh yeah. Don't overthink the sports analogy. Oh, and thanks for participating, it really does help our odds!

That's...actually useful. Insight and information into their thought process and activities is always worthwhile, and I'll be sure to address this in my letters. Thanks!

There, fixed that for ya. Reading the first couple of comments under the article from disgruntled employees, it sounds to me like the solution to Disney's problems is to hire a general manager who has a lot of proven experience running a gaming studio and building a dedicated community (I know JUST the man!), and bringing in a smaller successful game with a pre-built dedicated community known for its kindness and compatibility with Disney's vision of family-oriented entertainment, and building on that success to kick-start their interactive efforts.

I didn't know it had already been posted, it was off the front page. And yes, Disney has Marvel, but Marvel doesn't have anything like City of Heroes. From what I understand (I haven't looked into it very thorougly), the new Marvel game that's upcoming isn't comparable to City of Heroes, being a bit more "arcadey". I don't know exactly all the details of the pitch, but I suspect that it's a pretty detailed justification of how City of Heroes would round out their current holdings and help them branch into a new medium into which they haven't been particularly strong. And Disney is all about branching into new media, so I think it's actually a pretty good pitch.

Thanks for the support, I'm actually writing my letters now.

You're overlooking a couple of very important points.

First, you're right in that any designer that would let people import their characters inventory and all would probably put a serious dent in the game's economy. But this still wouldn't stop a designer from allowing people import just the character without the inventory. It would save you having to recreate the costume, power selection, slotting, etc. Plus, there's no reason a designer wouldn't allow you to start that character at level 50 (or whatever level he/she is) instead of starting over from level 1.

Second, although the possibility of reimportation is one reason that people might use Sentinel+, it's not the only reason. Some people like having a human-readable (well, XML) file that describes their character's attributes, stuff like what badges he/she has, what inventory he/she possessed, etc. People are now in the process of taking hundreds of screenshots and gigabytes of video of their characters. This is one more thing they can keep as a memento.

If you don't want to use it, fine. But please, don't go knocking people who do.

The main reason is because the game is 8-1/2 years old. A lot of the people in the SaveCoH crowd have been around before NCsoft reared its ugly MMO killer head.

It hasn't always been like this. I honestly think that NCsoft used to be a fine and decent company. We used to get a lot of support from them. Something has changed in the last few years. Personally, my theory is that there has been some significant changes in internal management, or else some other shift in culture in which the company has taken a complete different tack. It might have been around the Tabula Rasa stuff that happened. Although NCsoft had shut down some titles before that, they were mostly minor titles at best that were vastly underperforming expectations. I'm guessing that some folks at NCsoft corporate, whether justified or not, really took the stuff that happened with the Garriotts personally, and it has since tainted their outlook on the western market to the point where they're making stupid corporate decisions now because of it, effectively punishing people who had absolutely nothing to do with the brouhaha.

But whatever the reason, things definitely changed. NCsoft is a much different company today than it was before it started killing off MMOs.

To be brutally honest, this experience has indeed taught me not to be so naive. At the time, I really did buy the whole "Exteel, Auto Assault, and Dungeon Runners were money holes" line. I wasn't so quick to dismiss the whole Garriott mess because I have an immense amount of respect and admiration particularly for Richard, but I still viewed it as just a couple of behemoths duking it out over something that had little to nothing to do with City of Heroes. Believe me, in hindsight, I wish I had paid more attention to what was going on then, that I did get more involved in that fight, though I don't exactly know how. I wish that I had at least been more vocal in expressing concern over a company that was killing off games, letting NCsoft know that enough was enough.

I admit that I'm much more aware of things like Glitch closing now. I've thought long and hard over the past couple of months over when the "right" time to close an MMO is and what the "right" way to do it would be, or even if there are "right" ways at all.

Yes, to my regret it is a bit late. Like I said, I wish I had been more vocal, especially during the closure of Tabula Rasa. But I wasn't and I can't fix that now. That community didn't deserve what happened. So why now? If not now, then when? I can't fix the mistakes of the past by plugging my ears and continuing to make the same mistakes in the present. I hope that we have the support of the Tabula Rasa community who has been through this ordeal themselves. I can guarantee you that when (I'm convinced it's not a question of "if") Guild Wars/GW2 is shut down, I'll be standing there with Arena.Net and its community, both commiserating and, if there's anything I can do, helping to be part of the effort to save it. I genuinely hope that the SaveCoH people will be right there with me. Or even better, I hope that Arena.Net learns a valuable lesson in what happened to Paragon Studios so that they can obtain the Guild Wars franchise from NCsoft before it gets to this point, foregoing the need for any kind of SaveGW effort at all.

You're probably right that "most" people don't care. But a lot do. I can't tell you how many articles and comments I've seen that boil down to, "Man, that's a shame. I hope the people trying to save the game succeed." That's why I've very deliberately been working hard to frame this in terms that most people can understand, using analogies such as your favorite football team closing its doors and being told to just follow some other team instead. Sure, if you're not a Falcons fan, what do you care? Because once the deed is done and gotten away with, sooner or later, it's going to be your team.

Still, I'm well aware that a lot of people in other communities don't understand. Hopefully they won't have to go through what we are any time soon, but as more people understand the implications of games like this shutting down, I think that awareness will continue to build until the industry has to rethink when and how it happens, and their commitment to games particularly in the MMO genre, especially games that require third-party connectivity to play.

With friends like these...

Here's the thing. I didn't set out to be nasty. From the get-go, I was nothing but polite and respectful. I remind everyone that I'm the guy who posted the "NCsoft is NOT our enemy" thread. My intention was to encourage nice, friendly conversation in the spirit of helping Paragon Studios to acquire the IP and rights to City of Heroes under its own banner. Early on in this ordeal, I had honestly planned on releasing a bunch of stuff to the press publicly lauding NCsoft for their foresight and caring of its community, highly encouraging people to support the company and its games, especially the new ones coming out. I was the guy who, when the idea of a protest rally was put forward, said, "Let's call it a Unity Rally instead."

However, I was clear up front that if they jerked us around as a community, they would suffer a PR black eye. It wasn't a threat, it was just a natural reaction to their actions. Truth be known, there were already a lot of people looking to wage war on NCsoft as early as August 31, and I was trying to be a positive force in telling people to hold off. In all of the interviews and media releases I did, I reiterated that I appreciated what NCsoft had done for the game and its community, and I was looking for a solution in which we all could win.

The personal turning point to me came down to two things. First, I got word from some insiders I trust that NCsoft was demanding outlandish terms for selling the IP. Second, they posted the "all options have been exhausted" communication two months before the game was due to be shut down. Even without the other info I had, this would have ticked me off because, as I said in my response, there are always options to make something like that happen. At that point, I realized that NCsoft was not only not honestly trying to negotiate releasing the IP, but they were doing their best to brush off the community and shut them up without giving any kind of serious thought to the issue.

So at that point, I felt that we had nothing to lose. I started encouraging people to post messages where NCsoft was publicly visible letting them know how they felt. Note that I've never said, "Hey, go out and trash them." I don't consider messages I've posted to be trollish. I don't post "NCsoft sux" messages. Everywhere I've personally posted messages, I've tried to explain that NCsoft has a history of killing off MMOs, which they do. I point out that they've killed off five now in the past five years, which they have. I express that as a gamer, this concerns me because the MMO genre is particularly conducive to players investing a disproportionate amount of time and money into the games within that genre, which I feel they do. Thus in my opinion, NCsoft and other MMO publishers have a moral obligation to players to do everything reasonably possible to protect those players' investments, which I feel that NCsoft is not doing.

Other players word it differently, but to be blunt, I see very few messages of the type of "NCsoft sux." I'm actually pretty proud of the SaveCoH crowd in that even the most venomous of posts I've seen have not been so trite--they've actually done a good job of conveying not only the message that they don't like NCsoft, but why they don't like NCsoft. This is important because they're not your standard trollish kind of posts; they're reaching out to other gamers to say, "Hey, you should be concerned about this," which I feel is an extremely valid message to convey.

There are those here who feel that no one should be making any negative comments, and I disagree. If NCsoft doesn't suffer any kind of PR black eye, then there is absolutely nothing stopping them--or any publisher observing events here--from doing the same thing over and over, which I think is wrong. There are also those who think that some people go too far in expressing their anger. Maybe some people do, but I think it's pretty much in line with what I expected. I don't see people threatening physical harm to NCsoft employees, illegal activities such as attempting to hack into the company and cause damage through that avenue (which I was genuinely afraid of, to be honest), or anything like that.

So to anyone who says, "Those Titan people are going TOO FAR!!!", I'm sorry but I think you need to get a little perspective. Would you rather people post nastygrams on Facebook pages and YouTube videos, or doing something truly asinine? I guess that "TOO FAR!" is totally subjective, but I think as a whole, we're doing just fine. We're exercising our freedom of speech to inform people of what's going on against a corporation that has a lot more resources than we do, and we're doing the best we can.

If NCsoft is unhappy with the negative attention they're getting... Well, they can't say I didn't warn them that there would be a backlash. I wish I could take credit for all of the shtuff going on as if I were some sort of coordination mastermind, but if you actually look at my communications you'll see that I'm actually not personally directing a lot of it. Most of this stuff is people taking their own initiative. While I might not condone every little thing that gets posted or done, I did foresee it and warn it would happen, and I'm sure not going to try to stop people from reaching out to other NCsoft customers and raise awareness of what's going on.

I also would be remiss in pointing out that even at this late date, NCsoft still holds the cards that could at any time make this pretty much a non-issue by reopening the possibility of selling the IP for reasonable terms. Yes, there will still be people who would hate them forever. Such is the price for being so dumb for two months. But the situation is still not irrevocably unsalvageable, and if they did reopen that possibility, I think that most of us--myself included--would be happy to just part ways amicably. They've pretty much passed up the opportunity to have me recommending their products barring something truly spectacular, but at least they won't have a bunch of scrappy people like me dogging them all the time.

Hope this clarifies,
--TonyV

I am SO getting a volcano.

I know, right? I hear there were nukes and bans and stuff, and I friggin' missed it? Are you KIDDING me? Oh well, at least I saw the part where I was called a cult leader. That made my day.