NCSoft acquires "City of" Franchise!

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Ex Libris, is Manticore coming too? (Not sure if he's still even working on CoH, to be honest, since he's shy.) And, if not, who's in charge of CoH's lore nowadays?

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Manticore as in the person behind the sig Sean Fish, left COH and Cryptic after COV launch...ironically he works for NCsoft in Austin on some other project, but I heard rumors that he and Positron have been discussing the COH/COV Bible lately.

The person in charge of COH's lore is Hero One, and speaking of shy... I'm still trying to get this guy to take a step out and introduce himself.

If you have been following the story arcs for Ouroboros this is our guy, his name is Joe Morrissey, and speaking of creative efforts, this guy is expecting his first arrival, un-known gender at this time sometime this week.

We'll get him to pop on the boards and say hello soon.

Ex

I know this hasn't been posted in this thread but here is a link to the newly updated hiring page for NCsoft. For the COH/COV project check out the Mountain View location.

There are 19 positions that were just announced.

For those interested in gainful gaming employment, check out the NCsoft North America Jobs Listing. Positions for "Mountain View" would be in our newly formed NCsoft NorCal Studio.

Ex

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BTW, to those hating on Lallendos, I don't think you're being fair.

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No more or less fair than he was in his assessment of what qualifies as new content.

If he had just come in and said, I want new zones, and you haven't given me any. That could have floated. Instead he's trying to leverage a very technical definition of new zone into no new content AT ALL.

So tell me what's more unfair?

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Ex Libris, is Manticore coming too? (Not sure if he's still even working on CoH, to be honest, since he's shy.) And, if not, who's in charge of CoH's lore nowadays?

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Manticore as in the person behind the sig Sean Fish, left COH and Cryptic after COV launch...ironically he works for NCsoft in Austin on some other project, but I heard rumors that he and Positron have been discussing the COH/COV Bible lately.

The person in charge of COH's lore is Hero One, and speaking of shy... I'm still trying to get this guy to take a step out and introduce himself.

If you have been following the story arcs for Ouroboros this is our guy, his name is Joe Morrissey, and speaking of creative efforts, this guy is expecting his first arrival, un-known gender at this time sometime this week.

We'll get him to pop on the boards and say hello soon.

Ex

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Cool, thanks for the response, and congrats to him!

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I know this hasn't been posted in this thread but here is a link to the newly updated hiring page for NCsoft. For the COH/COV project check out the Mountain View location.

There are 19 positions that were just announced.

For those interested in gainful gaming employment, check out the NCsoft North America Jobs Listing. Positions for "Mountain View" would be in our newly formed NCsoft NorCal Studio.

Ex

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The fact that all those jobs are being hired for makes me a very happy lemur. There are some very juicy job titles up for grabs and they mean some very good things for the game.

I for one am excited by the idea that this merger of sorts will open several doors for the Co* franchise! The bonuses being given to current players is also a major plus and I thank you!

One question Ex...

How long should we expect to wait for some of the "sekrit" plans that are going to come from this purchase to get announced?

I know you said that we would start seeing big effects in around 6 months, but as far as announcing what NCSofts plans are, how long are we going to be waiting to hear any further details?

Thanks

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Oh, oh wait, i'm sorry..... I admit it the REVAMPED rikti zone is an addition. sort of. With more of that new RAID content as a focal point.

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Oh, those four new arcs in there are a figment of my imagination? Not to mention the repeatable missions? Not to mentiont he arcs in Faultline?

Shame on them for actually making *completely unutilized* zones useful! They should jsut add more and more, ignoring the completely dead zones!

Get serious. It's not PVP stuff. Not even 1/3 PVP, no matter how much you want to *whine* about it.

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And you had better not mention the new TF in Issue 11 that requires a team of 1 to start... because that is definitely, most definitely NOT soloable, high level PvE content. It's yet more catering to the loot, PvP, lowbie altaholic crew.

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And you had better not mention the new TF in Issue 11 that requires a team of 1 to start... because that is definitely, most definitely NOT soloable, high level PvE content.

[/ QUOTE ] Which one? I've soloed two of them.

Dirty Rotten PVPers...I hated how they put off adding two zones Villain side to cater to them back in I9.

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The person in charge of COH's lore is Hero One, and speaking of shy... I'm still trying to get this guy to take a step out and introduce himself.


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Would he feel better if he had his own fan club cause there's a decent percentage of forumites who've posted <3 for the story arcs.

There is enough specific types there that once trained we would be seeing a definate increase in the material being released.

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his name is Joe Morrissey

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HOWDY JOE!
Good luck with the youngin!

*psst, cmon you maroons, greet Joe*

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And you had better not mention the new TF in Issue 11 that requires a team of 1 to start... because that is definitely, most definitely NOT soloable, high level PvE content.

[/ QUOTE ] Which one? I've soloed two of them.

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I think it's the Mender Silos one.

Then again, I'm the dark/dark scrapper ranting in the Beta Channel for being unable to solo on invincable and get all heroes alive by the end of the mission. (I truely am sorry...)

On the other hand, the story arcs are great! In fact, I just read my first TopCow (That IS the brand, right?) comic last week! I'm going for the rest soon!

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his name is Joe Morrissey

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HOWDY JOE!
Good luck with the youngin!

*psst, cmon you maroons, greet Joe*

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Greet? Hell join his fanclub!

<3 Hero One!

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his name is Joe Morrissey

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HOWDY JOE!
Good luck with the youngin!

*psst, cmon you maroons, greet Joe*

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Greet? Hell join his fanclub!

<3 Hero One!

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I echo these posts! Welcome Joe/Hero 1! You better come de-[Due to spoilers, removed], ya' hear!

Is Joe stealing Weaver One's orbital space platform of death since he isn't using it? Of course he will have to somehow get Lady Athyna out of it.

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There are 19 positions that were just announced.

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Teasing out and consolidating those positions:

World Designer
Win PC Tech/Admin
VFX Artist
UI Artist
Technical Artist
Systems Designer
Software Engineer
Server Engineer
Powers Designer
Office Manager
Mission Designer
Jr. Software Engineer
Game Engineer
Environment Artist
Concept/2d Artist
Concept Artist
Character Artist
Animator

From the flavor of that list, looks like either:

a) The team will finally be getting a boost to resources to do some of those long put off "too resource intensive" features that we've requested and many on the dev team have acknowledged they would love to see implemented.

b) They are gearing up for pre-alpha work on a proper expansion or third City of game.

c) More new or revamped zones in the upcoming free issues. Perhaps I11 will become a model for each issue for 2008, with zone content and two new power sets being the bulk of free issue content?

The position that intrigues me most is the list: Technical Artist. Looks like they will be working on some new backend tools--perhaps content generation and editing tools that will really streamline some aspects of issue development so more time can actually be spent on the quality of the content itself?

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There are 19 positions that were just announced.

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World Designer
Win PC Tech/Admin
VFX Artist
UI Artist
Technical Artist
Systems Designer
Software Engineer
Server Engineer
Powers Designer
Office Manager
Mission Designer
Jr. Software Engineer
Game Engineer
Environment Artist
Concept/2d Artist
Concept Artist
Character Artist
Animator

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They'll all need red names, too!

I'll take a wait and see approach on this bit of news. Right now the voices in my head are screaming "Dooooom!!!!" but who knows what can happen between now and then.

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Is Joe stealing Weaver One's orbital space platform of death since he isn't using it? Of course he will have to somehow get Lady Athyna out of it.

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Haha... you're funny.

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My concern is that it'll turn into SWG all over again.

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I am an optimist on this score. The industry saw the player reaction to the shenanigans with SWG and I hope that something was learned.

Also, my personal opinion is that if anything, CoX will not get that kind of changes, but will be used as a cash cow to set up the rest of the franchise - whether this is MMO/single player games in different styles or even a sequel, where they go to town with crazy ideas good and bad.

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I agree 100% with spidermonster on this. Statesman left CoX over a year ago to help develop Marvell Online. Everyone else who has been working on CoX for the last (awesome) year is moving with the game to the new studio. Even grumpy, yet lovable BAB...

Any similarity between this news and SWG's "New Game Enhancement" debacle is, well, I just am not seeing it.

Cautiously optimistic...

-Buxley

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I'm grumpy but loveable?

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No, you are short, dark and gruesome.

I wouldn't compare this to the SWG thing, it's much closer to when EASports bought Ultima Online.

15 miles doesn't sound like much, till you have lived through California traffic. It could add 2+ hours to a persons daily commute.

So, NC Soft owns CoX out right, and they've headhunted all of the staff that brought us the past few great Issues?
I see no Doom here.
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Congrats Joe on the impending arrival of Hero Two! (If you know us by now, that kind of thing should be expected. )

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Has the Judge awarded Soon! to both Cryptic and NC Soft in joint custody? Or did it go with the CoX Dev Team?

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Will Cryptic be moving out of Paragon City? That will open up plenty of space in town for enterprising folks to move into. Someone will have to move all that equipment, the Scrapyarders aren't doing too much. With the newer semi trucks they won't have to use all the city's box vans for the move.

Totally irrelevant and redundant, but here's to hoping that because the original CoH team jumps ship with the intellectual property, then perhaps the original CoH design will carry over with them, but on a bigger scale. And let's just hope they'll have the say in perpetuating that design.

PlayNC don't exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to making games worth playing, I'll agree, but one thing they DO have a good track record with is updating games in the spirit in which they were designed. Sure, Lineage II is the very definition of grind. But that didn't suddenly happen out of thin air. It was designed to be the definition of grind. City of Heroes has been designed as an entirely different beast altogether, and one can only hope the big boys upstairs have the smarts to keep it that way.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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Is Joe stealing Weaver One's orbital space platform of death since he isn't using it? Of course he will have to somehow get Lady Athyna out of it.

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Haha... you're funny.

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ain't he just? That won't last long, I almost have target lock.

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Is Joe stealing Weaver One's orbital space platform of death since he isn't using it? Of course he will have to somehow get Lady Athyna out of it.

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Haha... you're funny.

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ain't he just? That won't last long, I almost have target lock.

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Shame on you targeting Joe/Hero One like that.