NCSoft and Massively

Well, technically, BOB was Kenny, and Kenny is now dead.

You did it wrong.

That's a fine approach to have... that's pretty much where I am at. I do wish they had revealed more about missions, content, etc. at Herocon, but it sounds like there was more that they hadn't talked about. I also have enjoyed what content has been added as of late (I really like all the Midnighter arcs on both sides), so I'm fairly confident they can keep doing some good things there. If they can deliver a good expansion on par with the quality of the past 6-7 issues, they'll be good.

If anything, that is what I quibble most with one of Unsub's posts here... there was an implication that people will not tolerate any criticism of CoX on these forums, which is hard to follow. Plenty of us "cautious" types, and doomsayers as well. And you have to expect there to be fans and even fanboys of this game... there is a reason it's still going after all these years. I'm not going to confuse a fanboy with most of the posters here, though.

I find myself agreeing more and more with Nethergoat lately. I have no idea what that means for the safety of the free world, but I'm rolling with it.

Interesting that you quote an article concerning Emmert just before CO's launch "This is what we did wrong in CoV, so CO will be better..."

How'd that work for them?

That article you chose had an agenda. I think you just might have one too.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I'll counter that by saying maybe their target could have eventually been met by addressing many of the problems that players had with Redside:

1) That it did not do enough to distinguish itself from blueside in terms of how you played a villain.

2) Streamlining the contact system and removing filler missions does not, and should not, equate to less overall content and lengthy story arcs. (What is there is well done...but it does get old the more you play through it with new toons).

3) Leading on from point 1, is that there should have been some kind of additional gameplay which let villains measure and shape the kind of villain they wanted to portray. Even if that meant developing a totally new system that heroes didn't get. Something along the lines of a personal villain lair where your villainous actions allowed you to expand and upgrade it(one per zone), demonstrating your influence as a force of chaos and evil at your given level.

Getting back to my point: By hacking off a large portion of the dev team, it hurt not just redside. It hurt heroes as well. It hurt the whole game.

As a result, we are much less farther along than we should be in terms of how this game was developed. Perhaps by now we would have had a proper secret identity system instead of lame Day Jobs...or perhaps many more new powersets. The team we did have, did a lot with little...but we missed a lot of development because the resources simply were not there to push the game further.

I'd like to think that NCSoft won't make the same mistake after this much of a reinvestment in the game. I mean, either way we'll get something new to play with. But I'd like it to be something that ultimately helps grow the game and community for the better.

The irony of this statement coming from a dude named SLASHMAN is palpable.

No good could come from commenting on an issue like this, as nothing any one person could say would fully convey the complexity of business decisions at this level. I wasn't employed with the product at this time, and am certainly not privy to business decisions on either side, but I feel safe in assuming that whatever led to whatever decisions were made was far more complicated and had more points of view than anything given in any interview.

You tell 'em!

I agree also. Furthermore, I think CO (and its struggles) will continue to raise the awareness of CoX too because you know they'll be talking about it on their forums.

Actually, I just realized this myself. I LOLed.

The name Slashman actually comes from way back in the day when some friends and I used to get together and play games over LAN.

Back when Heretic 2 came out I somehow found that I could pretty much always manage to cut both arms off another player when we dueled using the bladestaff. Of course, eventually people stopped wanting to play with me because I was annoyingly good at the game so my fame was short lived...but the name stuck and I use it for all my online handles.

We moved on to Unreal Tournament and other games though.

I'd agree with that wholeheartedly. And given Jack's attempts in any interview I've read to distance himself from CoX (or show how he's going to do things so much better than it), makes me suspicious of anything he would say about NCSoft and CoX. No matter what, it's too little info to go on.

Source for claim?

Not saying you're wrong, as a matter of fact , I hope you're right, but I don't know of anything official being said about it.

It's not at all like "paid expansion [major or otherwise], then close" which is what was claimed. So [WARNING EXPLICIT LYRICS] flag thrown (at Brad and his rant).

His premise is flawed, and thus the rant invalidated.

As to your article/blog/post, if you're not looking to give the impression that you're anti-CoH, you might want to review your writing style. Not a sermon (or flame) just a thought.

You amortize for tax purposes, perhaps, but not for business decision purposes. See: sunk cost.


I'm not really assuming any of those things. I'm assuming the Microsoft payments were landmarked and thus Cryptic had to fund the lag, that they are unlikely to have taken out materially large loans or obligations or Atari would have announced they were assuming Cryptic's debt as part of their buyout, and that however you want to characterize it, Cryptic was making significantly more money off of their ownership and development of CoX than they were spending on it.

Actually, I spend less on our employees than our clients pay for their cumulative services. We like to call it "covering overhead" and "making a profit" not "fleecing our customers" but technically its the same thing.


I'm not the one presuming that expansion is necessary, so I'm making no statement about how easy or hard it is to expand the game. Nor am I assuming there is a "standard" model of business that CoX *must* conform to, so I am making no statement about CoX being or not being the standard. I'm assuming that CoX is a special case, because its a special case: NCSoft has been the publisher of CoX for a long time, and has yet in five years to submit the ultimatum being suggested in this thread as NCSoft's "business model" which is "hit our ultrahigh metrics or we'll abandon you." They could have done so at any time.

Granted: its only now that NCSoft *owns* the entire property, but they were always in a position to demand development direction as the publisher. And even if they did not, the very acknowledgement that NCSoft was not the owner originally makes CoX a general exception: NCSoft knew what they were buying when they bought it, because CoX already had a stable body of users and a stable development direction. That makes the decision to buy them at all a completely different circumstance than, say, Auto Assault or especially Tabula Rosa. TR hadn't yet demonstrated that they were guaranteed to stabilize at profitable levels, and there was additional corporate politics involved. There are no comparable corporate politics in the case of CoX, and CoX has already demonstrated long-term profitable stability.


That's not the best case.


I'm not stating my opinion on the circumstances under which NCSoft would substantively abandon the game. That's not an opinion I can state. I'm merely stating that the theory that the purpose of GR is purely to provide an immediate return on the investment of development resources is unlikely to be true. Its almost certainly part of a longer-term strategic commitment to the game, which is still one of its flagship titles.


Unfortunately, I've now reached the end of my speculation rope.

I'm too lazy to go look up the source, but someone did say at HeroCon that they're doing Elec Control. No ETA right now though, so we don't know if that means GR, i17, i18, or i48

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

It was mentioned at Hero Con by one of the devs.

How did one lead to the other? They are unrelated issues (IMO). I'd be cery curious how you can back up that claim.

Then again, given that it's Jack Emmert, and he has a history of at the very minimum exaggerating, if not outright lying about things he's involved in, generally to make himself, or his product look better, it's just as likely not.

Yeah, me too.

DOOOOOOOOOOOoM!!!

I concede that it's probably bad for to speculate on matters of this nature, and while I don't want to accuse Jack of lying, he did and does have an agenda, so I don't want to hold his word as the WHOLE truth.

Put it this way - however it happened, we know the City of Heroes development team was downsized, and I believe all parties involved recognise this was a mistake. I don't foresee it happening again, lest we repeat the same mistake.

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.

Since truth is an absolute defense against libel, I have no such compunctions.

He's also an underhanded, self-aggrandizing hack with a lot of bass-akward ideas about MMO design.

Anyone inclined to believe his PR spin about the company who basically kicked him to the curb, drop me a PM- I have some prime Nigerian investment opportunities I'd love to discuss with you!

/edit
Also, I wish I knew who added the tag Doom That Came to Paragon so I could +rep them.
Hilarious!