Where are you going?

I'm already on Guild Wars 2. If anyone is interested in adding me to their friend's list, my global is Queenie.8964

Now that classes have started back, gaming isn't a priority. But when I have some time to kill, I spend it on GW2. Very impressed with it so far. May not "supposed" to be playing that game but it is what it is.

Well, let's see.

Got a few things to wrap up in CoH, and I'll be here on sunset day, but lately,
the fun of playing here has been almost completely sucked out by the impending
demise.

Unsurprisingly, NCsoft won't see another penny from me again (got caught in the
Tabula Rasa shutdown as well). It's not baseball, so they don't get 3 strikes - they're
done for good in my book... I'm vindictive that way...

I've spent a fair bit of time in D3 since it came out, but the replayability (sp?) just
isn't there for me, and grinding my Monk in Inferno for marginal lewt gets old pretty
quickly...

I tried CO for a bit, but it simply didn't cut it. After about an hour or so, I was done
with that... I may give 'em another hour just to confirm my first assessment,
but I'm pretty sure it's not gonna fly -- Ugh... I found it fairly hateful.

For the past month I've been flying around STO in my Heavy Cruiser. I'm old enough
to have watched ToS when it was live, trekkie enough that I'm enjoying the
various series and movie references in the game, relaxed enough that the abuses
of canon that are there don't really bother me much.

Free, a nice mix of Freelancer/Battlefield 1942 playstyle, and I can solo without
blind invites or talking to a soul ... with genuine StarTrek ships & lore???

Yep. That one's working for me so far.

As mentioned upthread, their F2P model is barely noticeable, let alone restrictive,
(I may pony up for a couple character slots, but that's about it) and I've been able
to solo to my heart's content. Perfect.

I imagine I'll be touring the galaxy there for the forseeable future.


Regards,
4

A few weeks ago, I clicked on an M pedestrian while playing my badge character, Purple Lovin'. Turns out I've logged 1224 hours on that character alone. And, I have 6 other 50s all fully IOed and T3/T4 Incarnated. And 8 other 50s in various stages of IO-ing and Incarnate-ing. And about a dozen sub-50s I've abandoned, and maybe another dozen I deleted.

Altogether, that's much, much too much time spent in the pale glow of a computer screen. I'll keep playing video games until the day I die (Dishonored, mmm...) but I think I've had it with MMORPGs.

As for where my characters will live, I'm taking the view that the City of Heroes will live on forever without us. I mean, from a storyline point of view, there are only a few ways that we can fit the shutdown in...

1) The Battalion destroys Earth.

2) Rularuu eats the dimension.

3) The heroes and villains of Paragon continue to fight on, they just don't have My User Dave looking over their shoulder anymore.

Probable nowhere.

I am not an MMOer. My first MMO was CoH. Let me explain why I am not going to certain games that others seem to be.

CO: I have tried it a few times; as recently as 2 weeks ago. The LOOK of it is a HUGE turn off to me. And I mean HUGE. I am not a comic book person...I came to CoH because I wanted to be a super hero not a comic book hero. CO's recent financial problems also put a huge question mark on it's future for me. EVEN if I could get past the god awful look of the game I would always be thinking "why bother." If CO sees 2 more years of ACTIVE development I would be extremely surprised.

GW2: I have this and most of my global friends have migrated there already. Granted my highest toon there is a level 8 Elementalist. While I do think GW2 is a beautiful game (environment wise) it just feels like your typical WoW clone to me. I don't get/like the whole loot/armor/ system; again I am not an MMOer so it makes no sense to me. While most of my friends are playing GW2 it's just very hard for me to get into the game. It doesn't bother me that it's an NCSoft game - I am not like most people here...I actually realize that NCSoft is what has kept CoH going for 8+ years and hold no ill will towards them.

DCUO: Yeah uhmm not gonna happen. I tried this game out and couldn't even play it for an hour before I was bored to death. I also do not expect this game to be around and actively developed two years from now.

TSW: Simply have no interest in it.

Titan City/Plan Z: IF this "game" ever sees the light of day I expect it will be a complete hodge podge of nonsense. The leadership and organization of it is so scattered that it reminds me of a high school project. If (and that is a HUGE IF) this project ever sees the light of day I highly doubt there will be enough of a population to make it worthwhile. I think Plan Z is in for a rude awakening in the near future as they have no idea how much time and work are truly needed to create a playable game.

CoH Emulator: Yeah no thanks. Stealing is stealing. NONE of my friends have even entertained the idea of going to an emulator and even if they were...morally and professionally I cannot be associated with such a thing. The bad part about the emulation project is you have people involved in that and Plan Z which to me discredits Plan Z immediately in my book.

So that leaves me going nowhere probably. I MIGHT play GW2 SOME; and by some I mean an hour here or there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Planetside 2 has been holding a lot of my attention. I'm thinking about X-com. I haven't been playing GW2 because I am not feeling any increase in power during it at all. I still play Diablo 3 here and there - mostly when a new patch hits - my wife and I enjoy Torchlight 2 also.

...but yeah, Planetside 2 is my current focus. What would you guys want to see on my channel, if given the opportunity?

Yeah because NCSoft is the only company to close an MMO.


Cryptic (you know the people behind Champions Online)... were the one's who abandoned CoH, but thankfully NCSoft saved it with NCNC later Paragon Studios. Yes BOOO on NCSoft for saving CoH and giving it 5 more years (Which is a lot longer than most MMOs ever last total). Oh BTW Cryptic has an F rating with the Better Business Bureau. Then again Cryptic's parent company; Perfect World has just started closing some of their games recently.... And the future of CO is VERY uncertain at this time due to it's financial struggles

Then again you could always move to an SOE game because they never close their games (*cough* SWG *cough* *cough* Matrix Online *cough*). BTW SOE tends to give their players a ONE month notice of closure...that was nice of them...maybe that's what NCSoft should have given CoH players?

Hmm maybe Funcom?? We all know they made The Secret World...and that it performed so poorly in sales that on Aug 22, 2012 (7 weeks after release) that Funcom laid off half the staff due to severe under-performance in sales....But hey if you are unsure about TSW there is always.. Age of Conan They like to blame Diablo III and GW2 for their lackluster sales.

You could also go to an EA/Bioware game... Stars Wars The Old Republic, but it is losing players at an alarming rate. they are hoping their F2P model can save them (sound familiar?). What does it matter that EA was voted the worst company in America in 2012 by The Consumerist

Blizzard...I mean who doesn't love WoW?? right?

So yeah... go ahead and bash NCSoft...the people who saved CoH when Cryptic abandoned it. Go ahead and bash NCSoft because they are a business who GASP are in the business of making money. Sure go ahead and bash them for the way they are closing CoH; because the notice they did give was more than fair. MMOs close...people need to learn that a GAME is not reality and that it is JUST a game. But you go ahead and boycott NCSoft and when your next MMO closes..boycott that company too..and the next and the next. It's called reality people... CoH could not sustain itself any longer and NCSoft had every right to close it...and they have every right not to sell it.

Me personally.. I am thankful for NCSoft because if it weren't for them the years I enjoyed playing CoH would have ended 5 years ago.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobra_Man An NCsoft game? Never again.............

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Well, I'm back to WoW. Which I came here to escape. Like some others, I'm a Mac user, and while bemoaning the lack of MMO options for the Mac in September 2011, somebody mentioned that CoH would run on my Mac.

I started playing WoW in December, 2008, when I acquired a Mac that was actually capable of running it. I didn't know there were other MMO options for Mac (actually, somebody in another thread told me the Mac version of CoH came out in Jan. 2009, but I never heard about it. Damn you NCSoft marketing!) and since I was already a fan of the WarCraft universe from the RTS games, and being pleased with Blizzard's commitment to Mac users, I was happy to sign up for WoW.

But, since I'm not a raider (and I suck at PvP too) — aside from the fact that I found raiding completely unfun, my erratic work schedule doesn't allow me to commit to a raiding guild schedule — once I got to max-level on six WoW characters, I found myself with nothing at all to do aside from running the same circuit of daily quests every day, and an inability to advance/improve my characters. On six characters. See, that's the problem with endgame-focused games: the devs forget about the players who aren't into that. Mind-numbing boredom set in, and I was ready for something new.

So somebody pointed me toward CoH, and I fell in love with the game. I especially liked the fact that end-game raiding was not the be-all, end-all objective. I'm truly one who prefers the journey to the destination, and I never got tired of rolling new characters and doing those same low-level missions over and over. Good grief, I've only played for a little over a year and still managed to create 93+ characters! My total is actually over 100, but there are several I've deleted simply because they didn't work, or I only created them as "joke" characters. I've got a character lurking somewhere named "The Grammar Fifth Columnist" (closest I could get to "Grammar Nazi") whose entire purpose was to sit in Help chat and correct everybody's grammar

On Virtue, I created 13 characters who all followed a theme: A middle-aged biophysicist developed a method of imbuing ordinary humans with superpowers. She took the name "Mother Sun", and granted superpowers to a group of volunteers from around the world. Each of them took a name that represented a planet or other major feature of our solar system: Girl Mercury (from the UK), Venus Lass (USA), Erdmädchen (Germany), Ms. Mars (an actual Martian), Fille de Jupiter (France), Saturn Signal (USA), Princesa Urana (Mexico), Neptune's Niece (Canada), Notta Planet (USA) Lunagetic (USA), Haylee Comet (USA), and Solar Sail (Brazil). All of them have the Science origin, except for Ms. Mars, who is Natural — Mother Sun's procedure didn't work on her non-human physiology, but she was already a trained warrior.

On Triumph, I created another themed team. In Galaxy City, there was a school called "Dahlia Danger's International School for Superpowered Girls". On the day the Shivan meteors destroyed Galaxy, Dahlia Danger revealed herself as an Arachnos agent, and her plan to ultimately indoctrinate her students into Arachnos. The girls were having none of that. They formed their own team and sent Dahlia scampering back to the Rogue Isles. These characters have various origins.

On Defiant, I created a team, all with Natural origins, based on characters I've created over the years in my creative writing. They weren't superheroes in their original incarnations; my original intent was to simply create them in-game to give them "physical form". But several of them ended up being a lot of fun to play.

*sigh* All for nothing. I only got a bit more than a year in this game. I'm never going to get the chance to continue the stories of my characters and their teams, unless I write them in plain text, offline

So, I'm back to WoW. Fortunately, with the new Mists of Pandaria expansion, Blizzard seems to have figured out that we "casuals", we non-raiders, need stuff to do, and so far I'm enjoying the expansion. I've only taken three of my (now) seven (and soon to be eight) eligible characters into the new zones so far. I'm taking it very slowly; I'm in no hurry to get to max-level. The journey. I'm especially enjoying the way the panda NPCs keep telling me to "Slow down! Life should be savored!"

I have a Champions Online account, which I can play on my Windows laptop, along with DnD Online. I also have an Aion account, but I refuse to play that game any more (though I decided that game sucks long before NCSoft decided to cancel CoH). But I really don't enjoy playing on the laptop. I'm too accustomed to playing on my Mac, with its much larger screen. I feel cramped on the laptop.

I may look into Elder Scrolls Online, which will have a Mac version. I've never played any of the Elder Scrolls games, but I've heard they're good. And I don't think NCSoft has anything to do with them.

But as far as finding a new game ... I don't really care about genre. I care about gameplay, and philosophy. Do any of my fellow Mac users remember a Mac shareware game called "Escape Velocity"? My god, that game was, in my opinion, the spiritual ancestor of the modern MMOs and "sandbox" games. It was an outer-space "trading" game. You started out as a space pilot with a tiny shuttle with a puny laser cannon. From there, you could do any damn thing you wanted. Make a fortune simply by shuttling cargo between planets, upgrading to better ships as you could afford it. Become a space pirate by attacking "NPC" cargo ships. Do work for the "Galactic Federation" and become aligned with them, or work for the Rebels. The two sequels added even more options. There was constant begging by players for the game to be converted to online, multiplayer, though that never happened. And this was a few years before Everquest. I haven't played EVE Online, but from what I've heard it's the spiritual successor to Escape Velocity. I suspect its creators were inspired by Escape Velocity (called "EV" by the players - c'mon, EV -> EVE?) Man, I got almost 10 years of entertainment and great gameplay out of EV and its sequels!

In CoH, for me, it wasn't really about being a superhero (though I love superheroes - I've been a comic collector for 25 years). It was about the gameplay. The philosophy behind the game. The customization that let me make my characters look exactly how I wanted them to look. The wonderful community this game has — unless you also came here after a few years in WoW, you won't understand what a breath of fresh air you guys were. I know WoW has a lot of adult players, but you'd never know it from watching the chat channels there. I suspect the "grownups" just keep silent over there. But here in CoH, I've found a community of grownups. I sincerely regret that I never really took the opportunity to get to know more of you. You guys are awesome, and even though I don't really know you, I'm gonna miss you all.

It's also the only studio that ever bothered saving CoH Had NCSoft not stepped up to the plate 5 years ago CoH would have died then. So you can be grateful to them for the past 5 years of the game.

And FYI just how many of the games that were shut down were due to not bringing enough subs/profit.... Business are in the business of making money and just because a game is liked by 20-50,000 people does not mean they are providing enough of (if any) profit to be maintained...pretty much Business 101.

Auto Assault was BLEEDING money
Dungeon Runners was NOT profitable...it was LOSING money
Exteel never made back what it cost to produce and so it was shut down due to it being a financial drag on the company.
Tabula Rasa while loved by a few...was just that..too little of a subscriber base...and it was not making a profit.

Seeing the trend here? And while CoH was not unprofitable it was not bringing in the profts NCSoft wanted..so they shut it down. It is a business... and like all businesses has to make decisions regarding their future and sometimes those decisions are hard for the customer to deal with. CoH was dying...and if you fail to see that then you are simply refusing to see the facts. Sure it probably could have survived a year or two more, but then again it was not the flourishing game that some people would like to paint it as being.

So you go ahead and hate on NCSoft for being the big bad meanie of a business that you think it is...but remember it is that big bad business that gave you Issues 11-23......they gave you 5 more years of playing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Starsman It's the only company to have closed 6.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

What NCSoft did was give CoH 5 more years of life.
What NCSoft did was give an extended sunsetting time frame compared to most MMOs that are closed down.

Pretty convenient that people forget those two things. NCSoft did not screw over the CoH players...but you go right ahead and keep thinking that. I choose to look at it from a realistic stand point instead of an overly emotional stand point. CoH was not some thriving community contrary to what others want people to think. It was a small..declining group of players who couldn't be bothered with saving the game until it was too late. Things that led to this point: Inhospitable forums...way too many servers spreading the population thin...lack of advertisement...and a piss poor Hybrid model that encouraged people not to sub... Frankly I was always surprised CoH lasted as long as it did.

Don't get me wrong.. I loved CoH the game, but the "community" I could have done without. Even now the supposed community has become nothing but spoiled brats whining about how NCSoft is evil and took their toys...all while forgetting that NCSoft saved this game when no one else wanted it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project As someone that bought GW2 a month before the CoH shutdown announcement, it's not about feeling happy about playing another NCSoft game. It's about getting the value out of the money I spent cuz I can't get it back. The way GW2's business model is set up allows me to play the game indefinitely which allows me to get my moneys worth, and I have the ability to convert my ingame currency into credit in their microtransaction store, which allows me to buy anything I want while thumbing my nose at NCSoft by not spending another frakking dime. I and others like me get to be an anchor around their necks dragging down their profits for what they did to CoH. A constant reminder of what happens when they screw over their customers. Alone I may not have much impact but united the GW2 community can send them a message in the only place NCSoft pays attention to. Their wallets.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

I must also admit to the whole 'lost' issue. It's a shock to the system, like being suddenly yanked off medication, yes I am liking it to that, after all, some of the symptoms almost match. (yes I have actually been there in my past)

Well, I've owned STO since it was released, and really hadn't played it much, my original sub was CoH and I couldn't really justify subbing to both even though I like STO. However it is now F2P and with CoH closing down, i've been over there a lot more, so much in fact i've hit 50 on 2 characters already. Since CO uses the same system and is also F2P I created a character over there as well, but CO seems a bit rough around the edges, so far the only reason its there is because it shares my STO account. I do like that it does that though, I'd recommended it to anyone here. Hey, its free, both games are already filled with CoH players, channels, fleets, guilds etc.

The Secret World is another one my wife and I are thinking about, but to be honest, i'm a little 'meh' with spending sub money again.

Although I didn't like the wing commander series a whole lot, It was very popular and Chris Roberts latest project looks very interesting

EvE Online is a maybe too. I do like that game and have played it in the past.

For anyone considering Star Trek Online there is a Fleet (like a Super Group) over there entirely made up of current and former CoH players. You can check out our forum page:

Paragon Expeditionary Fleet
pef.guildportal.com

You can join global channel CoX (case sensitive) and say you're looking for a fleet. Or you can let us know on our forum. Either way there are friendly and helpful people there.
BTW, the CoX global channel is for both CO and STO. Both Cryptic games can chat with each other.
The Paragon Expeditionary Fleet (and our "Red Side" KDF Fleet Arachnos Armada) are a part of this Community that is staying together.