when will game be free?

This. I've played totally free online games. I wanted to kill most of the players for being rude, inconsiderate, foul mouthed idiots.

Free MMOs aren't; micro transactions for everything from ATs and power sets to equipment etc are appreciable add-on costs.

I started this game because I prefer a fixed cost per month. If I want to grab a booster I can but it's optional. The issues are free updates. Two paid expansions (CoV and GR) in the life of this game is infrequent enough for me to accept. Unlike another MMO which seems to have level-cap raising, area expanding paid expansions every month.

Will CoX last forever? Probably not, but I don't see it as on it's deathbed and that's the time it would go f2p. At that time, I suspect the micro transactions would start in, the most loyal players would leave and the game go offline as a result of f2p.

For me 15/month per account (I have two) is worthwhile for:
* many AT/power combinations
* fun of levelling
* task forces
* Oro'ing missed arcs
* badging
* base editing
* costume editing
* whatever load of stuff I 've forgot about

I think you are probably thinking of a specific other mmo that is slated to go ftp around the time another specific mmo launches. That mmo going ftp is a simple act of desperation. It failed to 'kill' CoX and is in serious danger of dying completely when a competitor with a MUCH better known IP gets going.

CoX isn't in that kind of danger. It has a strong and loyal player base (being one of those games that shows you don't have to have WoW level subscription numbers to be successful) and a very different play style (it isn't a console game at heart like the upcoming MMO).

As a side note about that other (already existing) game: I detected a strong scent of DOOOOOOM about it when it offered a lifetime subscription that was only available if purchased before launch. That sort of deal is a sure sign that a company doesn't expect to get much money from you unless they get it up front.

Hopefully never. Also, is the question mark (?) a complicated thing for you?

If this game ever needs to be reorganized under a F2P model in order to save it then something fundamentally "bad" would have had to have happened to prompt that change. It's certainly possible that, under those circumstances, a F2P scheme could keep this game afloat for quite a while afterwards. But I sincerely doubt it would ever be considered a "boost". At best it would be a desperate stop-gap tourniquet to keep this game from financially bleeding to death.

Some say he abused Excel so much he made Clippy cry and run away. And he considers decimal points completely optional punctuation in powers definitions. All we know is they call him The Castle.

Some say game design, it is a hunger; an aching endless need.

Some believe that this game here, began out there. With tribes of developers who may have been the forefathers of the Islandians, or the Ultimans, or the Evercrackians. That they may have been the architects of the great RPGs, or the lost MUDs of the Internet. Some believe that there may yet be brother game designers who even now fight to survive, somewhere amongst the development community.

I think it is funny how people who warned of this were told to sit down a shut up because they didn't know what they were talking about. A month after launch people were demanding their money back from their lifetime subs.

Does recognizing the original sources for all of these make me a hopeless geek?

Possibly. i will now pretend that i did not recognize said sources.

What does it make one if they can hear the soundtrack that underlay at least one of the original source?

Why should he apologize for being right?

Unless you work for Paragon, you don't know why people are leaving, and you shouldn't speculate (or re-post "someone else's" rumors).

If you do work for Paragon, I'm sure you've probably overstepped your authority to comment on said migrations, and again, you shouldn't say anything.


If you don't subscribe to the rumor you just put your name to when you posted it, why'd you post it in the first place?

Castle, BAB, and Ocho, among others, deserve better than to have the rumor mill churning behind them.

I just threw a duck into a pond and the duck floated. That means she's a witch, right?

I don't even know why I have to do it.


Actually, I kinda know, but am not currently employed by NCSoft.


Which is why, out of respect for them I make sure any rumor I invent about their departure is suitably epic.


For example, I heard the other day that this whole thing is Castle's fault. One day Castle decided to redesign Fireball so that every time someone used it, the game servers deposited a penny into his retirement account (ever wondered why fireball has such a short cast time? now you know). Castle figured in a few years he could have retired sitting pretty. But then datamining showed that blasters were dying too quickly and not using fireball enough. The ones that were not dying had such high defiance buffs that they were one-shotting everything and not using fireball enough. So he reduced the damage buff of defiance, and made blasters partially mez-immune. This helped greatly, but then blasters starting doing so well that blasters were using hundreds of thousands of fireballs. Pretty soon NCSoft didn't even have enough money to pay BaB and had to let him go, much to his surprise. At that point Castle knew the game was up and by year's end the auditors would catch up with him. Knowing that his finances were being monitored he transferred his ill-gotten gains to an offshore account under the name of an accomplice. Castle would then leave Paragon Studios and his accomplice, citing new opportunities out of state, would leave California and meet up with him in Aruba a few weeks later where they would split all that perk pack money.

And that, people, is why blasters were buffed.

And I'll admit the sources are familiar, yet just out of reach

I love it.

Hmmm....I always thought that "Two Days, Two Nights" did that in a better and more subtle way.

Oh I'm telling him you said that.

They're on to us, Castle! Run!

You had better be careful . . . this is, after all, the Internet. Somebody is going to actually believe that fabrication and pass it around as being true. Especially coming from YOU, the teller of all truths (said in a respectful way).

Oh, you mean like City of Heroes did before its launch?

You mean the other one.

i can find nothing anywhere that corroborates your claim that lifetime subscriptions have ever been available for City of Heroes. In light of there being no evidence to support your statement i have decided that it must be true.

See? i'm starting to get the hang of this rumor and doom stuff. Eventually i'll be making my own foil-lined hats and posting (even more) incoherent rants.

The layoff that included BAB was IIRC 8 people total. That's not unusual for a game house after a major initiative winds down. They have to keep staffing at a sustainable level. Besides, they've currently got reqs open for 5 permanent and 2 contract positions. Sounds more like they had to adjust where they were spending.

But you shouldn't include Castle or Ocho in the layoff group. Both of them specifically indicated they'd found better jobs.

That's pure speculation. It's just as likely that Posi changing to be head dev in charge of the Incarnate system happened exactly like they said it did: he wanted to be 100% head dev of that major new initiative and not manage the entire game. War Witch stepped up, and he got to focus on doing what he loves and is good at. It wouldn't be the first time that an individual contributor found out that he's not happy being a pure manager, and changed back into a more hands-on role.