What I dislike the most

Oh you mean the mythical project that a lot of people have been moved to within this company?

LoL

Again I'll say this; I think INERTIA is what's going to happen here. YES it would make you all a twitter with excitement and happiness should things ever change. But since a change would also upset quite a few other folks here, I doubt it would happen just to make the proverbial "you" happy. The developers have found out how easy it is to make people unhappy even with minor changes. This wouldn't be minor.

No matter how compelling YOU, and I do mean you, think your argument is... inertia rules. People don't like it when you "move their cheese".

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

You're assumption is that it is CoH2. My assumption is that we have no clue what the project is, and it could be completely unrelated to the CoH IP.

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

Ah, but the motorhead song is about the Ted Hughes book, that was turned into the animated movie The Iron Giant, which, for trademark conflicts didn't use the original name of the book.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

I think its highly unlikely that project is CoH2.

So what would it be?

Another fantasy MMO in an already over glutted market?

A sci-fi MMO? Toxic to NCSoft after Tabula Rasa?

Or is it going to be another Superhero MMO, something the devs know, even if they don't actually call it City of heroes two?

You know in the same way that ICO has the sequal Shadow of the collosus, despite them not being the same IP?

I don't think its any of those things.

Since some of the job postings have referred to it as "an exciting new IP" that would tend to make me think it is not CoH2. The term "NextGen MMO" used in some of the postings could be inferred to mean CoH2, but that's not a new IP.

That other game had so many of it's own issues, and non-unique names were one of them. In my breif tenure there I saw so much greaifing over names. There were the release day nerfs to everything, the disjointed gameplay, the mechanics that discouraged teaming, the absolutely awful character creator. About the only thing I saw over there that I would have liked to have seen there, yet doubt ever will, was the Nemesis system.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

Strangely, I never saw any name conflicts when I played. Either that game or its sci-fi sibling.

We'll have to disagree on the character creator because I happen to love the CO one. The DCUO one I can see how it is hindered by its 'also on console' status, but at least allows the player to make a sidekick character that doesn't appear to have ingested a load of bovine growth hormones.

I played CO at launch, and still play it on and off now, I have never seen name griefing, possibly because all you need to do is hover over a name to see the global, even if you turn auto display of said names off.

I have however seen name griefing in CoH, especially when it was announced that we'd be getting a server list merge, especially of EU players mains ¬_¬

DCUO though, was a great single player superhero game, but was not designed as a good MMO, seeing as it failed to even allow you to chat correctly, with a censor system that hit game areas and missions.

So if it's a Super hero MMO, but uses a different series of names, it's not CoH2?

Despite having the same design team, artists and the like behind it?

Or could it easily be called a spirtual sequal aka 'Coh 2'?

Well, I too was in open beta and at launch, only paid for 1 month and saw plenty. Never bothered me much as was never the target, but saw it.

Yes, we'll have to disagree about the character creator. It did have so much potential, but all the big bulky oversized stuff was just ugly. The power customisation, the stance selector and more control over scaling was great. I didn't even have an issue with the cel shading, It was more that every single toon looked butt ugly.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

Four colors vs two is awesome, though.

That's a possibility.

We know that the job listings have suggested a next-gen MMO. We also know that the listings have suggested a "new intellectual property." I

We were under the impression that NCSoft bought all the rights to the CoH licensing, and if so, it'd seem foolish to toss aside an intellectual property that has gotten some brand recognition to go with a new name.

Then again, in the MMO field, sequel titles haven't always fared well-- One of the challenges a sequel has is convincing others it isn't just an expansion- a retread of a several-year-old game that's getting long in the tooth. It might be that they're challenging conventional wisdom that says "use the existing franchise" and betting that a "new superhero mmo brought to you by the same people that brought you CoH" may be more able to generate the new-user-buzz than an official sequel.

Exactly, just as Cryptic (while still part owner of CoH) was working on another IP that dealt with superheroes. And part of the team that was working on it was the same team that had originally helped design CoH. That was the Marvel MMO.

After selling their share of CoH to NCSoft, that same company and team started working on another superhero MMO. That was CO.

Neither of those was CoH2 despite both being superhero MMO's with some of the people working on it that had previously worked on CoH.

What was the difference there? They were each a different IP. One IP was the CoH universe. One was the Marvel Universe. One was the Champions universe. Same genre, different IP for each game.

Because "an exciting new IP" doesn't say "same universe from before, just with a new engine". It says "new universe, new settings, new characters".

In that case, Champions Online is already CoH3.

(The aborted MUO was CoH2)

Ah, but four colours for whole character total or 2 colours per costume piece. I'll stick with 2 colours thanks.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

I have no idea what they're working on. Only those "in the know" know. Until the information gets out via Paragon Studios, or via a leak we can only guess. My guess is simple; they're working on "something" that we may, or may not hear about down the line.

(The reason I say "may not" is because things do happen. Someone could pull the plug on the project for design/financial reasons, etc. etc, etc...)

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

I've always said if we could take the best elements from both, we'd have the best character creation system ever.

I'd bet on a Super Hero or Sci Fi MMO over a Fantasy one for a few reasons. The big one is that NCSoft already owns several Fantasy MMOs and I can't see them wanting to make another competitor to those.

Another reasons is that even if the game isn't CoH2 the general plan has got to be that at some point CoH will shutdown (or at least halt development work even if the servers remain on) and the majority of Paragon Studios will focus on the new MMO. If that happens then making the new MMO one that will appeal to CoH fans and works well with what the CoH Devs know well is common sense.

Originally Posted by PapaSlade Rangle's right....this is fun.

"At some point" doesn't mean anything near "soon", though.

And frankly, CoH's playerbase right now, much less years in the future when there are so few of us that we don't even cover the cost of keeping the servers turned on, doesn't seem like a large enough demographic to mold their whole strategy around targeting us.

That was before the Avengers made a load of money.

Super heroes will be 'in' for another few years, at least in marketers minds.