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Did anyone look at what Disney Interactive - the group in charge of Disney's video games - is actually doing?

Here's the Joystiq article, but in short: running at a loss and gutting projects while also moving away from PC and consoles and towards mobile and social platforms.

Disney's dabble in the MMO space was also generally a failure.

CoH/V is a poor fit for Disney's current approach to video games.

Disney has broadly been in the process of shutting down its computer game divisions and focusing on buying IPs that they can create movie / TV content out of. CoH did have its movie rights floating around already, but we haven't heard anything about that in years.

And as Father Xmas points out, they own Marvel (and more recently LucasArts).

In the area of "who buys CoH/V?", the answer isn't Disney.

I'd be interested in seeing the pitch though.

EDIT: Oh, and I believe the Head of Marvel Video Games is ex-Cryptic / Champions Online Bill Roper. Should this pitch be considered, there's a chance he'd be brought in as part of the evaluation process.

Looks like the boards ate my last post.

Anyway: more permissive trial accounts (and then more permissive F2P accounts). With no broadcast and no ability to start a team (definitely happened in the trial accounts, not sure about F2P) it meant that new players could very easily feel isolated.

I had friends who started the trial but quit in only a few days - if I wasn't there to open the game up in terms of teaming and talking to them, they felt quite isolated. That's not how you want potential players to feel.

It's sad that so many new powers came out at this stage of CoH/V's life.

Even if you assume that everything Fansy, GG and VV says is 100% true, I'm still curious to know:

- Who out there is willing to spend at least US$10m (and probably more) to pick CoH/V back up again? and

- What NCsoft will actually be willing to sell (probably not the player account information, and if rumours of CoH/V characters being deleted en masse are true...)? and

- How those contract relationships that end when CoH/V shuts down will deal with Neo-Paragon if they have to go to renegotiate (i.e. the Cryptic Engine might be licensed from Cryptic, but Perfect World owns Cryptic now)?

And that's assuming what has been said is true and has been accurately reported and that key stakeholders are on board (e.g. the legal team might say it is okay to sell after CoH/V closes, but management or finance might have different ideas).

Ryzom (aka Ring of Ryzom, if you go back to its original name) is a MMO that released its source code irrc.

And much like the Jaguar, it is only of interest to a very small group of enthusiasts.

If NCsoft wanted to sell CoH/V, they would have done it before announcing it was closing and locking Paragon Studios out. Because it would have been worth a lot more at that point.

Are other people interested in buying it? Sure. As a title it pulled in US$10m in revenue last year. Are the people looking to buy it offering anywhere near what NCsoft would seriously consider? I don't know, but that's a good question to ask.

But unless someone offered a ridiculous figure, I can't see NCsoft selling.

Thanks to Rick Dakan, the forgotten Lead Designer of CoH. He's the one responsible for a lot of the early lore.

And yes, also thanks to Jack Emmert, who managed to get CoH released and growing on his watch.

The funny thing is that Garriott's departure had impacts on CoH/V's closure, but not in the way I've seen anyone mention.

The Garriotts - Richard and Robert - were toast as far as NCsoft were concerned after Tabula Rasa. Robert got backwards promoted to a position in the company that did nothing (and then apparently disappeared, given how little there appears to be about him since) which strikes me as the Korean way of dealing with him. He's too senior to just fire, so put him somewhere out of the way.

In the meanwhile, the ArenaNet guys were put in charge of then-new NCsoft West - Chris Chung, Jeff Strain and Patrick Wyatt (plus Microsoft's David Reid). The successful developers of Guild Wars were going to lead NCsoft West into a bright new future!

... right up to the point that at least Chung (as NCsoft West CEO) completely mishandled Richard's dismissal. It would have been fine for Richard to leave, but to shove him out the door and in such a way that led to a massive legal problem?

So NCsoft sent Jaeho Lee to replace Chung as CEO. And over time Strain, Wyatt, Reid have also gone. NCsoft West (or NCInteractive, which I believe they are called in the Earnings Reports) moved completely under NCsoft Korea's control.

Which is why the whole, "NCsoft forged the letter, so is a bad company!" strikes me as wrong. Firstly, they didn't forge it at all, but the result of what NCsoft West did was put Garriott in a place where he suffered financially due to contractual clauses regarding stock options. He successfully made the case that he didn't leave voluntarily, but was forced out, meaning he shouldn't have been forced to sell his stock.

The whole forgery angle is an emotive stab and ignores that the people who were likely involved in Richard's dismissal were all sidelined in part due to that event. It certainly wasn't business as usual for NCsoft.

Secondly, the way Richard was fired led to the point where NCsoft West lacked senior management that were independent of NCsoft Korea. It's possible that a stronger NCsoft West management would have decided CoH/V should remain open (although not guaranteed) or at least get Paragon Studios' next title out the door.

A stronger NCsoft West management would have certainly pushed for more game development within its region, which currently appears limited to Guild Wars 2, Wildstar (both of which had long development times that put them before NCsoft Korea took fuller control) and localisations of NCsoft Korean titles.

Instead, the fallout from Richard Garriott's exit led to NCsoft Korea in control of NCsoft West, which has led to a business decision to close the tiny-part-of-NCsoft-business-and-declining CoH/V title and use those resources elsewhere.

I remember first seeing an announcement for City of Heroes from GameSpy and then signing up to the forums in what must have been September / October 2001. Medieval fantasy MMOs didn't really interest me, but a superhero MMO sounded fantastic.

I remember the drip feeding of information that came during that pre-release period, the Giant Tapeworm thread, the long silence that many interpreted as CoH being vapourware, the announcement that CoH was no longer going to have a freeform powers creation system and how Streamweaver shut down his fansite at the news.

I also remember being invited into CoH's beta and having to get up at about 4am to play it, making UnSub an AR / Katana Blaster and being absolutely thrilled at the game. After so long, after so much build up, I hadn't wasted my time! CoH was not just a great MMO, but a great game!

I spent many years in-game and "arrested" a lot of villains using grenades and bullets. Many a good time (and some very frustrating times too!) were had.

A big thanks to all the developers - those who had red names, those who didn't, those who moved on, those who stayed - who helped craft CoH/V into what it was and what it became.

(And in the spirit of revelation, I'd like to announce that I was a long term player who wasn't asked to work on CoH/V in any capacity. Shhhh, don't tell anyone! ;-)