Discussion: NCsoft Acquires City of Heroes!
By
AaronH,
Posted on: 2007-11-06 13:55 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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Special Thanks to Our Players...
Full Access to City of Heroes and City of Villains®
All players with City of Heroes retail* accounts will now have access to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail* accounts will now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now.
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OK, I expect to get flamed for what I'm about to say, and before anyone does so, know this: I don't care.
Now then, to the issue at hand.
Around the time of I6, I decided that I wanted to try out the Villain content. So my wife and I each bought a copy of City of Villains and upgraded our City of Heroes accounts. That was, what, $30 each I believe? Something like that. Now I find out that all these other people will get the same thing without having to pay for it.
I don't know who decided that fit the definiton of "thanks," since that's a slap in the face.
That now means that I had to pay for something that other people are now getting for free.
Sure, there's the argument of buying GvE and getting access to both sides for one price. But anyone who bought GvE paid for both at the time; what I'm miffed about is the people who bought the original CoH 2 years or more ago, never paid for the additional side, and now get to do something that I had to pay to do. Besides, anyone who bought GvE isn't going to get anything new from this "thanks" than they were already getting.
This is sort of like the time that I got hired into a factory job, got my first grade increase a few months later, then watched the company decide that everyone hiring into factory jobs would start at the grade I'd just had to earn, and at a higher base pay (I got a slight bump in pay to match what the new people were going to get).
NC, you want to give me some special thanks? Then refund the $60 that we had to pay in order to access both sides, now that the second side comes for free.
Im with Happy_Killmore.
Sadly, I think NCSoft forgot a bribe here. They forgot to bribe the hard, core, dedicated player. Ill grant, that group is probably not as large or as influential as any of the other three bribed, but its the group I belong to, and the group everyone I play with belongs to. And my cheeks (pick one, of the four) are feeling a little stung here. As if Ive been slapped. Taken for granted. Why would we quit over something so silly as a new owner? We've been playing for 3 years, why quit now? Why indeed. Of course we wont. These bribes arent about making players feel good about the new owners. These bribes are about business, pure and simple, and for some reason that sends a dark chill down my spine for the future of a game I love.
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I'm so happy it's our very own NCsoft & not someone we haven't heard of...or even someone we have!
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Yep. Three words to send a shiver down your spine:
Sony. Online. Entertainment.
See? It could have been bad. Real bad.
This is a positive development, indicating a considerable degree of commitment on the part of NCSoft to the future of the game. Th elast few issues ahve been terrific.
I'm not seeing a downside here...
"And in this moment, I will not run.
It is my place to stand.
We few shall carry hope
Within our bloodied hands."
Sounds awesome to me. As I said in the other thread, a lot of times during interviews or dev posts a dev would blame time/money/manpower and the lack thereof for the absence or time it takes to make new stuff or make changes/alterations/fixes, what have you. Now, that shouldn't be a problem. And with the entire original dev team on the ball, this couldn't be more awesome.
Now if the headline was "EA Acquires City of Heroes!" I'd /em slitwrist.
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NC, you want to give me some special thanks? Then refund the $60 that we had to pay in order to access both sides, now that the second side comes for free.
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I think you've probably managed to soak all the value out of that 60 bucks since I6. Ya think?
City of Cheapskates.
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I'm not entirely sure what to make of this just yet.
On the one hand, we have all the key developers staying aboard with the exception of Statesman (and who could blame him? CoX is just as much his baby as it is any other dev, but he's both a founding member of Cryptic Studios and holds an senior position there), promises of more development resources, what should be a much more streamlined and efficient QA process, and an assurance that it'll be business as usual as far as the game content and overall development go.
On the other hand, there's the general history of how well MMOs fare after being bought out by another company. Granted, NCSoft has been part of the picture since day one, and CoX is by no means a struggling property as is usually the case when an MMO changes ownership. But even with all that, I'm going to remain cautiously optimistic until such a time when I believe that things are going to remain just as good as they are now, if not better.
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I have a wait-and-see position at the present time, but won't hesitate in an instant to hit the cancel button for the 3 household accounts and either take the wife and son back to WoW, or over to WAR or some other game, if I feel I don't like where things go.
I've been in MMOs that have transfered owners before, and I work in the publishing business and have seen properties go through acquisitions (even partial transfers like this, since they both owned a piece of the pie, previously).
Knowing something of the foundations behind such moves, my main question is: why? I doubt this has to do with MUO, as that is still a ways off. Why do the sell, now? Is Cryptic, in turn, being bought by someone else (say, Microsoft, since EA is buying-up so many recently) and that announcement is forthcoming? That could definitely activate a possible clause that gave NCSoft full rights to CoX, given their development investment.
Is there another reason? CoX wasn't a struggling game, and MUO- as I said- is a fair bit away from launch. So, the CEO in me is VERY curious.
Like I said . . . I'll wait-and-see where things in CoX go, but make no promises to the new (full) developer.
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That now means that I had to pay for something that other people are now getting for free.
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Wrong. That means you paid $60 for 2 accounts to have access to CoV from then to now.
The activation of the opposing game side to players that previously only played one side does not come with 5 issues worth of playing experience.
And Ex, I'll take that Office Manager position. 
"His Imperial Majesty's Minister of Restraints and Leather" -LHF
Two naughty acronym teams / Ascension / Convenient / Artic and the Chillz / Fap / Other teams I can't remember (sorry.. mind is goin')
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I used to play a game, lets call it Ultimus Origin. The game was made by a couple folks who had made a bunch of similar themed games in the past. The leader (lets call him King England) had a vision, and he made it reality. The land was like honey, and the sky like gold. Then, the King did tire and he sold the game (and his name) to another company (lets call them E-Aye} for many gold pieces.
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E-Aye owned Ultimus Origin from Day One, no matter how much people try to pretend otherwise.
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The game it's self withered, dried and lost all forward momentum, but still lives on, played by a few die hards, and their dial-up connections.
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Ultimus Origin players (circa July 2006): approx 140,000
CoH players (circa July 2006): approx 160,000
( Source. )
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You must have missed this whole thing.
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(UO:X cancellation letter snipped.)
That's an interesting side step from your original claim - but again, the facts don't bear you out. That drop started a year before - with the horribly flawed released of AoS in 2003. Any loss from the cancellation of UO:X was incidental to the wholesale slide already in progress, at best it just steepened the curve. (Not to mention that the new BOD systems, Arties, and Marties was busily destroying crafting about the same time. That lead to more than few cancellations in their own right.)
It's also worth noting that the steepest decline also happened as WoW was hitting the streets.
Relevant dates: (Note the first two in particular.)
EA purchases Origin Systems: 9/1992
Ultima Online commences development: 1995
Ultima Online commences playerbase decline (from which it never recovers): 2nd Q 2003
EA disbands Origin: 2/2004
UO:X cancelled: 6/2004
(And no, I didn't miss it. I wuz there.)
http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/
I posted this in another thread, but I'd really like to hear the following sentence from NCSoft:
"City of Heroes Developers will not be involuntarily transferred to other NCSoft titles or laid off because of poor performance of other NCSoft titles."
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Full Access to City of Heroes and City of Villains®
All players with City of Heroes retail* accounts will now have access to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail* accounts will now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now. Just log in to check it out!
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So can I get my $30 back since you don't have to own both now?
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Sure pick one of the two games you 'would not have bought' give them back all the chars and refund them for all the playtime you spent on that side, and oh since you got a month of play time, the $15 for that also...
what? can't/won't give all that back? then what the frack are you complaining about, you GOT value for the money you paid..
or do we need to call the 'whaaaaambulance' for all you cheapscate crybabys?
Yeesh you are like the whiny babies who go splurge $3K on some fancy plasma screen and then moan that it's cheaper a year later and someone owes them a refund.. after they've been watching the thing for a full year... as if they didn't know the price would come down.
Hell I bought COV at first, and the COH just before GVE came out.. nobody heard me gripe about it because I'd gotten a full year's play time out of COV that I would not had, had I not purchased it. I even bought the GVE 'goodies' which was money well spent since it got me the jump-pack and pocket D tport powers..
Frankly I just cannot see ANY basis to gripe about having paid for both games and deserving some kind of refund (and even then you should only get a partial refund since you got a free month of play time didn't you?) unless one of the following is the case:
1) you never played one of them, and never made use of the extra character slots, costume parts, etc (e.g. got no value for that purchase) but in that case I'd have to ask why you got the companion game
2) just recently purchased both games (which seems a bit weird given that GVE has basically replaced them, and it's hard to find just COH or COV on a store shelf unless the price is highly discounted...
(actually saw like 4 CoV at a half price books today... almost bought them because hey there's a free month of play time with each one.. so I would have been ahead on the deal even after paying sales tax.. (yes the price was below $15)but I figured better to leave them for someone who might be interested in playing the game.. )
There is a lot of excitement over this. The thing is when we purchased COH/COV we chose to do it at that time because we wanted access. This is actually a positve change, and they are still working through the change. They may still come out with a compensation for characters who allready have COH vs COV - give them a little time to read the feedback and consider options. I'm excited the money I put monthly into this will go back into the group handeling CoX - the devs who have nbeen doing a killer job are staying. i11 is coming out and is exciting, give them another issue release or 2 so you can seee how they do on there own. NcSoft payed big for this, you know they'll sink some money into it to keep people on board and spark new interest.
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What it seems like is you're saying,
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"Hey! you don't own X .. Well here, now you do." ... "and you.. oh.. you've already got both games.. well I guess you're SOL.."
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Does anyone else see how unfair this is ? I'm seriously feeling unappreciated here..
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Nah. I own GvE and I don't feel unappreciated or unfairly treated at all. OTOH, I'm old enough that grew up before the current culture of entitlement settled in.
Or, it could just be that I grew up .
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QFT
/signed
Galactron - 48 Inv/SS, Samurai Gecko - 50 Kat/Reg, Moulinet - 50 DB/WP, Galactress - 50 Fire/Kin, Miss Mayhem - 50 Rad/Psi, PyroWulf - 50 WP/Fire, Solis Invicti 50 Fire/Fire, Utahraptor - 50 Claws/SR
"You can't fix stupid. Dumb people breed more than smart people. Idiocracy wasn't a comedy, it was prophecy." - Bill Z Bubba
Yeah, I bought CoV about a week ago online... and got a month of subscription plus char slots etc for all of $5 more than I would've paid anyway. I can see some of the $50 retail box folks getting a bit miffed at this, but you have to look at it from another angle, as well. There are a few minor integration problems with CoH-only accounts vs full accounts that I've noticed when I realized some of the CoH only costume options disappeared, subsumed into the collected list. This lets them treat all accounts the same way.
That ramble aside, I'm going to be sad to see States go. Jack will always be that character for me, at least a little.
So! Cautious optimism it is. My biggest concern is that without a capital V Vision centered lead, the game's going to be more concerned with profit. This means two things:
1) Keeping existing subscribers
A dangerous proposition, since it means knowing when to bow to pressure. It can lead to catering to the lowest common denominator... or worse, the noisiest denominator.
2) Bringing back old ones
Hard, since they've already judged the game and left. Many of them to other properties; I was very disappointed when I came back and saw the Auction House in Stormw... I mean, Atlas Park. I left that little ditty in a hurry, and hung around Ryzom for a while. Similarly, I was all set for Tabula Rasa back when it was Space Raver Kung-Fu Unicorns with and not Heinlein-on-half-Planetside's-budget. I figure CoX's current incarnation has about two degrees of Wow-Them before I jet again, and forget about bringing back of my ol' pals who are off in other realms. Yeah, sure, rue the loss of all of three or four subscribers... but I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way.
and 3) Bringing in new ones
This could go two very different directions. One is to tap demos that aren't getting along with current games well. You could do this by messing with the alt-culture; makeup costume options and ripped fishnets for men, over-the-top wuxia SFX on some powers, urbanizing/survival-horror/B-movie-izing powerset (shovels and wrenches might be the best thing to happen to this game in a long time) and revitalizing the pose/emote system will get you a lot of the current graphic novel demographic who isn't already here. Flavor is the game's strongest selling point. I came back, honestly, to play with the costume creator again. It needs mechanics or it's just so much fluff, but... yeah.
Or, they can give in to the dark side and try and siphon some of the 7 mil players who are largely already happy where they are (or if not, have several other well-targeted options available to them). This reeks of fail, but it's all too easy to see it happening with a corporate oversight board...
Doesn't GvE give you both anyway? At the same price as some payed for just one of the games...?
I think they should give everyone the GvE special items if they're gicing them access to the two games anyway...
Also, no more Jack Emmert!
Reaction #1: 
W-Who's gonna be my nemesis now!?
Reaction #2: I WIN!
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Well at least this will be bring all the "COH is being neglected while Cryptic focuses on MUO" posts to a crashing halt.
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I'm excited about this more then anything else. 
From the stratics interview
"NCsoft NorCal will be focusing exclusively on the City of Heroes franchise and will be doubling, if not tripling, the size of the development team in the coming months. "
Classic Dungeon Crawl Arc ID: 2232-"A satirical look at your average dungeon"
Down the Rabbit Hole Arc IDs: 24346 24397-"Rescue a little girl from an insidious dream invader."
Hmmm. The way I read the announcement and the interview, there will be more "free" issues BUT ...
The but seems to revolve around the way they hedge their language about how they intend to "expand the franchise." That sounds to me like new games to buy and/or new monthly fees, especially since they repeated that language in a few places. "Were looking beyond the normal slate of free Issues for City of Heroes. We want to use City of Heroes as a focal point and really build on this franchise."
As for the special "Thank You" gifts, have they left anyone else with the feeling that these are "in name only," or is it just my jaded old AncientSelf having spent too many years in relationship marketing.
I suspect that most of COX players already have both Heroes and Villians, so the offer to give you both for "free" sounds more like a PR gimmick than anything else to me. A few will benefit, but I got to think that the majority of players won't.
Debt wipe, also, seems like a marginal marketing ploy since it takes so little time in-game to wipe out debt to begin with.
Not sure what the extra prestige will mean for SGs. To me, it sounds like the best sweetener in the packet - but in truth, because of my limited amount of time to play, I've really been deeply involved with the creation or maintenance of a SG. I would be interested though in insight from those who do all the heavy lifting in SGs to tell be if this is good news or indifferent to mature SGs. Will the extra prestige allow you to make things bigger, better, bolder ... or have you taken the SuperGroup headquarters as far as you can go.
Of course, they didn't need to say "Thank You" at all ... and I guess I would have preferred that they didn't rather than make this half-@$%^^ effort that leaves me feeling like they're trying to manipulate how I feel about their announcement rather than actual Thank Me for staying around. (And haven't they done that already with the Veteran Rewards, which I actually enjoy because some thought has gone into them, and they oftentimes provide real game enhancement and value.)
Does anyone else feel like I do? Or am I simply acting cranky?
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But if I ever once - ONCE - smell "raid"; I quit. End of discussion.
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This is exactly what I'd like to see more of. We just need more stuff to do. The real prob imho with raids in other games has been the loot tables and not everyone getting something. CoX doesn't have that prob. Everyone that participates in a raid gets the payoff. So I say bring more raids please.
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Why? What % of the population is doing Hami raids? What about the LRSF and STF? I'm betting the % is even smaller than even I expect.
Why waste time on events that the majority don't find fun?
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How about making them fun?
Improving the Raid experience is only one of many things they could add to the game to increase it's overall appeal. I see no reason to torch the "Raids" idea to the ground because they aren't as popular as fairy wings, renewable temp powers or yet another alt.
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Well what killed hami is the fact that the time investment is no where near worth the reward. It shouldnt take 5 hours to get something that we can easily get something of similar effect thru farming a short TF. If the reward was choosable then it would be a start in making it worth it.
Bump and Grind Bane/SoA
Kenja No Ishi Earth/Empathy Controller
Legendary Sannin Ninja/Pain Mastermind
Entoxicated Ninja/PSN Mastermind
Ninja Ryukenden Kat/WP Scrapper
Hellish Thoughts Fire/PSI Dominator
Thank You Devs for Merits!!!!
Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in on the whole cheapskate discussion as to the feeling that NC is ripping off people who bought both CoV and CoH. I am a complete and total cheapskate and I bought City of Heroes this past June, I had to go to three different stores to find the solo package (G vs. E sells for around $30, I picked up the solo City of Heroes for $10) I enjoyed it so much that I got the villain solo (also had to search for it, got it for $12). So, I do not feel ripped of for paying $22 for both sides and getting 2 free months of playtime instead of waiting for the unprecedented price drop to $0 if you have one already.
You know, I paid separately for CoH and CoV (at launch for each).
Yet, a year later I could get both, together, at Wal-Mart for $20.
I paid $50 for the original SWG, $30 for Jump to Light Speed, $25 for Rage of the Wookies. Walk into any store that carries SWG, and see the core game, JTLS, RoTW, and Trials of Obi-Wan in one set for $20.
I paid $50 for WoW at launch. $40 for The Burning Crusade at launch.
Walk into Best Buy today and see the World of Warcraft Battlechest (WoW, TBC, plus both strategy guides) for a mere $40.
You know what? Welcome to the retail world, not just MMOs. Prices drop and items are repackaged . . . some becoming basically free by comparison of previous pricing guidelines. That's retail.
If NCSoft "wants" to give older customers of both games something, they will. But none of us are "entitled" to it.
Personally, I've seen enough games being bought-out or merged lately that I have deeper concerns:
1) Where does NCSoft see the future of CoX as far as content and development focus?
2) In relation to #1, what changes to CoX does NCSoft feel need to be implimented for the MMO Franchsie to be more competative with the "next generation" of super-hero MMOs like Marvel Online and DC Online? In otherwords, I've no doubt there are going to be changes, but how deep and how far reaching?
3) They brought over Cryptic staff, but how long until the lay-offs start, or developers are shifted to other NCSoft titles as part of a "title salvage operation" as is typical in such endeavors? 3 months? 6 months? 1 year?
4) MUO is far enough off from launch (or even Beta), so why the sale now? The timing of which, as a CEO in the Entertainment Property industry myself, makes me curious and suspect. My experience suspects there is more reason than: So Cryptic can focus on MUO and other projects. Consider it enough time in entertainment to know better, particularly when- from NCSOft quarterly reports- CoX wasn't a struggling game, subscriber-wise.
To me, this is the best news ever.
I've noticed a distinct lack of enthusiam for CoX from Cryptic for a while. Possibly it was just me thinking it, but I seem to recall a bug introduced a while back that was earthshatteringly game breaking (unique art objects disappearing in missions) that took an excessive amount of time to fix. When that was occurring, my mind kept thinking, "Are they too busy playing with the Marvel code?"
Now we have a team dedicated JUST to us, with the sole purpose of making CoX a money-machine and insanely popular.
I fail to see how this is a bad thing.
...and I bought: CoH, CoV:CE, GVE (x2 - but my wife didn't like the game 
)
...and I was prepared to buy: "Galaxy of Heroes", which is what I figured the "secret expansion" was they kept hinting at while showing us Rikti stuff.
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But if I ever once - ONCE - smell "raid"; I quit. End of discussion.
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This is exactly what I'd like to see more of. We just need more stuff to do. The real prob imho with raids in other games has been the loot tables and not everyone getting something. CoX doesn't have that prob. Everyone that participates in a raid gets the payoff. So I say bring more raids please.
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Why? What % of the population is doing Hami raids? What about the LRSF and STF? I'm betting the % is even smaller than even I expect.
Why waste time on events that the majority don't find fun?
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How about making them fun?
Improving the Raid experience is only one of many things they could add to the game to increase it's overall appeal. I see no reason to torch the "Raids" idea to the ground because they aren't as popular as fairy wings, renewable temp powers or yet another alt.
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Well what killed hami is the fact that the time investment is no where near worth the reward. It shouldnt take 5 hours to get something that we can easily get something of similar effect thru farming a short TF. If the reward was choosable then it would be a start in making it worth it.
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Emm what server are you trying to kill Hami on? The new hami is very quick and efficient, clocks in at not much more then an hour. Maybe the guys on Justice are just that good??
Classic Dungeon Crawl Arc ID: 2232-"A satirical look at your average dungeon"
Down the Rabbit Hole Arc IDs: 24346 24397-"Rescue a little girl from an insidious dream invader."
Okay, so one question I haven't found answered yet is this: If all of Cryptic Studios members who were part of CoH/CoV moved over to NCSoft... does that mean that they left Cryptic Studios?
Part two of this question is does Jack Emmert now work for NCSoft (CoH) *and* Cryptic Studios (MUO)?
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I used to play a game, lets call it Ultimus Origin. The game was made by a couple folks who had made a bunch of similar themed games in the past. The leader (lets call him King England) had a vision, and he made it reality. The land was like honey, and the sky like gold. Then, the King did tire and he sold the game (and his name) to another company (lets call them E-Aye} for many gold pieces.
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E-Aye owned Ultimus Origin from Day One, no matter how much people try to pretend otherwise.
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The game it's self withered, dried and lost all forward momentum, but still lives on, played by a few die hards, and their dial-up connections.
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Ultimus Origin players (circa July 2006): approx 140,000
CoH players (circa July 2006): approx 160,000
( Source. )
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You must have missed this whole thing.
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(UO:X cancellation letter snipped.)
That's an interesting side step from your original claim - but again, the facts don't bear you out. That drop started a year before - with the horribly flawed released of AoS in 2003. Any loss from the cancellation of UO:X was incidental to the wholesale slide already in progress, at best it just steepened the curve. (Not to mention that the new BOD systems, Arties, and Marties was busily destroying crafting about the same time. That lead to more than few cancellations in their own right.)
It's also worth noting that the steepest decline also happened as WoW was hitting the streets.
Relevant dates: (Note the first two in particular.)
EA purchases Origin Systems: 9/1992
Ultima Online commences development: 1995
Ultima Online commences playerbase decline (from which it never recovers): 2nd Q 2003
EA disbands Origin: 2/2004
UO:X cancelled: 6/2004
(And no, I didn't miss it. I wuz there.)
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Always good to meet a fellow UO vet!
It just seems like that when "Captain England" and his crew sold out to "E-Aye", the sails went out of "Ultimus Origin" for me. I kinda felt like all forward momentum disappeared and was replaced with corporate speak.
Again, Im not calling "Dooooom", im just re-living past events.
For me, I've had the feeling that since Statesman left "the powers that be" have been treating CoH and CoV as 1 game. The press release just confirms that the suit wearing bean counters think that way.
For the record: IMO What is good for CoH, isn't necessarily good for CoV. The games should be thought of separately, and should have fully staffed teams assigned to each.
PS: So MUO gets Statesman, Synapse and Manticore, and CoH gets Back Ally Brawler and Positron? And you call that a even deal?
The ICBM
Nuking the world since 1972
I'm so happy it's our very own NCsoft & not someone we haven't heard of...or even someone we have!
GREATNESS FOR ALL!
Oh & Cryptic, don't forget to come over & hang out. Just because you're leaving doesn't mean we still can't party!