City of Heroes 2 Coming Soon

I think yes for Hero and Villain content and perhaps 1-50 content but not the rest. It really depends on how they take the game. Heck, it may pure Hero this time. /shrug

I think that if you're right and they wanted to include all that then something else that would be that they launch with some sort of PvP system instead of trying to fit it in down the road (always a difficult task).

So you're not going to go back over the devs' statements and other sources to provide supporting evidence, or even "hints", for the so-called City of Heroes 2 sequel or why you are of the opinion that it's "coming soon"? Because that's the sole basis of meaningful conversation here.

This is far from the first time on the forums the possibility of a sequel to CoH has come up - such as the CoH2 domain registration or its trademarking, which happened years ago - and then been argued down (so even the bragging rights have been reserved long ago).

Whatever Paragon Studios is working on, they're keeping it to themselves, and any predictions ought to be backed up by more than just, say, tarot cards, astrology, haruspicy, or a vaudevillian mentalist act.

I disagree. The whole game has to change. If you want the old stay with coh prime.

My post wasn't emotional, if you took it that way fine, its one of the limitations of the written word.

Reading through all of this chat you have made it sound like you have information that others don't so don't be surprised at the way people react when you post an unfounded rumor. Heck look at the title of your post "City of Heroes 2 Coming Soon".

As for you "inevitable glory that being right brings", I seriously hope that is tongue and cheek. If not, then I have absolutely no more to say to you.

As for the existence of a COH2, I play this game because I enjoy it, and will enjoy it until it is not there to enjoy. If the devs create something better I will go there, if not I will make my decision when the time comes.

Per the domain being bought in June 2004 that just strengthens my point.

But then it wouldn't be a CoH game

I suggest you get used to the idea now that everything you "earned" in this game is going to go away for good some day.

Cryptic billed CoV as a standalone game (making CO the studio's third MMO); everyone else saw it as an expansion. CoV was an old engine with new content tacked on to it.

Maybe Paragon is going back to its roots and will release a new engine designed to run old content. As others have pointed out, they've hired, seemingly, everyone needed for a game except writers.

Lord knows the game needs a tuneup under the hood if the devs continue to move towards raid content. Heck, the game needs new character models (c'mon, it's 2011 -- mittens?), non bi-ped critters, bases need a reboot, there've been hints for years about cross-server teaming, and, well, you get the idea. At a certain point, it's probably more efficient to start from scratch with a new engine than to continue working on the current one.

So ... maybe CoH 2 is more like CoH 2.0.

I think you're exactly right. I think we'll see Cities of Heroes scattered around the world, and even off-world.

I agree. He should feel bad and ashamed for speculating for fun. How dare him!

Whenever you agree with anything here, it's a sign of trouble...

Be that as it may, the other thread is clearly labelled as speculation and as such, presents no problem. This one, however, advertises a purely hypothetical sequel and does not back its extraordinary claims with anything approaching evidence.

Ordinarily, the only response for the honor of the forums would be pistols at dawn, but the OP is new and not a seasoned veteran of sometimes idiosyncratic customs of discussion here, such as yourself.

Before the game shuts down for good, I'm stealing a server instance and running it in VMware until I die. I will periodically log into it and stare at my badges while rubbing my hands together and cackling, knowing that with the 231st veteran badge I'm now permanently at the top of the badge leader board.

That's something we can agree on for sure. I think any sequel or offshoot of this franchise needs to go global/stellar.

It's one thing I did enjoy about other hero games.

So, this will not be on a public server?

Agreed 100% plus another 400 over the cap!

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Might I refer you to the Cottage Rule? If they can't even get rid of some very nearly useless powers, they certainly can't do more than visual changes to our system without calling it CoH 2.

Yeah, conventional thinking and attempts to clone the market leader have been working so very well for the MMO industry lately... Listen, I'm not claiming to represent how conventional MMO publishers think, since I think they're idiots.

Wait, why the hell am I replying to Arcanaville? *sigh* This can only end badly since I don't have limitless time to respond to bombast and certitude. I cede the point, you're right, they definitely shouldn't try to retain their existing customer base at the risk of loosing some customers who would cancel after their first month.

I don't think I could host enough people at my house. Perhaps we can convince them to opensource the servers and let us stick it in a cloud somewhere when the time comes. With the actual code to run the servers, it would be not difficult at all for the community to mod the thing into the next century.

That would be the ultimate free to play MMO.

Ever worked in the video game industry? The idea of animators leaving the office to discuss work over skeeball does not sound odd to me in any way.

Just think of all the time you could save in your life by exercising a little forethought before acting.

Ignored my point, though. You'd alienate a lot more than the 30days and done crowd by allowing existing customers to transfer levels from original MMO to sequel MMO. And if you're *just* going to retain your existing customer base (and the few people that wouldn't find that level of pandering to your old customers off-putting), why bother with the effort and expense of a new game?

Well, Residentx10 said I was too negative and need to understand young people have unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace. You're telling me they should expect skeeball Fridays. That seems to be a mixed message HR is sending.

The problem is stigma. If you let people transfer from CoH1 to CoH2, all the people looking for a new game and seeing level capped characters, established social groups and supergroups, and players bringing their fixed expectations from CoH1 would drive those people away. Part of the initial appeal of a new game is that it is new: that's why we wipe beta testers. Everyone has a chance to get in on the ground floor. Even pre-order and premium head starts tend to be very short.

The only game you should transfer City of Heroes characters into is City of Heroes. And as to the question of whether the devs would ever rewrite parts of this game and replace it with new technology that implemented the same game but improved it in certain areas by reducing or eliminating limitations:

How successful they've been remains to be seen. But the devs have been willing to rewrite things, redesign things, and reimplement things to improve the game. Ultra Mode is a major rewrite of the graphical part of the client. The server tests they are performing are major rewrites of how the servers process activity and character logins. The AE was a major addition to the system, and hidden in the AE is a fundamental technology change to the game which currently isn't heavily leveraged: phasing (its how your AE contact looks different to you than it does to someone else running a different mission).

There's lots of things this game's codebase cannot do, but if you are not going to change fundamental behavior its normally not that much more difficult to simply add the feature than reimplement a whole new game just to do it. Even BaB was wrong on this score with power customization. He was correct on estimating the amount of effort required to modify all the graphical resources, which makes sense because he is involved with the graphics of the game. But he was wrong on this score in terms of the code changes required, and he admitted as much (I was right, by the way, which reinforces my certitude).

I haven't heard a suggestion or request that is intended to improve or extend the game without fundamentally changing it that I can't see a way to implement in this game. It usually comes down less to literal impossibility, and more towards practicality. What the devs can do if they decide its worth it is quite a lot. The problem is that people believe a new game engine will prevent them from having to hear that something is not worth implementing. And that's just not true. The question of whether to make a sequel itself is just a very large form of the same decision: is it worth the effort for the possible gain.

For just an extension to this game, I doubt it. For a brand new game that is completely different, and can attract all new subscribers to Paragon Studios? It might be.

It wouldn't just be pandering to the current customer base, it would also be pandering to everyone who's played CoH in the past. While I don't have figures on that, I expect the number is quite large. Obviously anecdotal, but of the MMO players I know the majority have played CoH at some point, most of those have at least one level 50, and only one is currently subscribed.

The main drawback to such an approach would be the requirement that an endgame be well developed by launch. Since a lot of new MMOs seem to lose customers due to people reaching the endgame before they thought they would, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Of course CoH 1 is 7 years old and just getting an endgame now, so I guess it's easier said than done.

There have been 2.6 million accounts created in the last 7 years.