Where did the game go wrong?
By
Agonus,
Posted on: 2012-09-01 18:46 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
The problem wasn't Freedom being a failure. That's about all we actually know (Freedom certainly increased the life of the game).
The problem was most likely NCSoft needed to cut something due to Aion underperforming, and GW2 costing a crapton of money to market... and they were running a deficit of $6 million, so they needed to cut something. Unfortunately, CoH, being their smallest thing, simply made the most sense.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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The failing of this game wasn't Paragon's doing.
It was NC Soft's. If NC Soft actually put money behind the only successful MMO IP in the US it managed to stumble upon, instead of blowing hundreds of thousands on wasted ads and publicity stunts for shovelware like Auto Assault, we might have been in a different place.
If NC Soft had even a semblance of a marketing department, we would have seen them try to capitalize on every major mainstream superhero breakthrough of the last decade. Ads during Heroes and Smallville. Demo discs and posters in comic shops. A push with more comic companies to feature their characters in the game for cross promotion.
Instead, they did jack and squat. They sat there with their thumb up their *** even when given free shout outs by Big Bang Theory.
Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser
King of Electricity, Lead Inmate running the Carl and Sons asylum, the "Man" behind the Establishment, Given Honor in Hat Form By Paragon City (Favorite Forum Poster 2006!), Master of Ceremonies of the Fair Use Law podcast
The game didn't go wrong anywhere.
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Y'know, I get your ire, but Auto Assault was far from shovelware. Might wanna get your knickers out of a bunch and stop putting blame on the wrong games, my friend.
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Originally Posted by Friggin_Taser
The failing of this game wasn't Paragon's doing.
It was NC Soft's. If NC Soft actually put money behind the only successful MMO IP in the US it managed to stumble upon, instead of blowing hundreds of thousands on wasted ads and publicity stunts for shovelware like Auto Assault, we might have been in a different place. If NC Soft had even a semblance of a marketing department, we would have seen them try to capitalize on every major mainstream superhero breakthrough of the last decade. Ads during Heroes and Smallville. Demo discs and posters in comic shops. A push with more comic companies to feature their characters in the game for cross promotion. Instead, they did jack and squat. They sat there with their thumb up their *** even when given free shout outs by Big Bang Theory. |
"I have something to say! It's better to burn out then to fade away!"
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To their credit, they did save CoH from Cryptic slowly bleeding it to death, and put a large amount of money into it (which allowed the dev team to expand many times over). CoH would have been gone many years ago if it wasn't for them purchasing the game.|
Originally Posted by Friggin_Taser
Instead, they did jack and squat. They sat there with their thumb up their *** even when given free shout outs by Big Bang Theory.
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Not that I'm happy in the slightest about what just happened.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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It could have been the best game ever and still be alive to this day. It didn't deserve the kind of money NC Soft threw at it in pre-production promotion such as having huge rock shows at e3 that led to NC Soft's CEO throwing a hissy fit when they were told they couldn't hold huge rock shows at e3 and proclaiming that he's boycotting all future e3s.
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
Y'know, I get your ire, but Auto Assault was far from shovelware. Might wanna get your knickers out of a bunch and stop putting blame on the wrong games, my friend.
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Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser
King of Electricity, Lead Inmate running the Carl and Sons asylum, the "Man" behind the Establishment, Given Honor in Hat Form By Paragon City (Favorite Forum Poster 2006!), Master of Ceremonies of the Fair Use Law podcast
That wasn't the game itself though, again that was NCsoft.
"I have something to say! It's better to burn out then to fade away!"
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Yeah, re-read my post. I'm not blaming other games NC Soft put out. I'm blaming NC Soft's marketing department.
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
That wasn't the game itself though, again that was NCsoft.
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Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser
King of Electricity, Lead Inmate running the Carl and Sons asylum, the "Man" behind the Establishment, Given Honor in Hat Form By Paragon City (Favorite Forum Poster 2006!), Master of Ceremonies of the Fair Use Law podcast
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Well, it failed to gain any market share in Asia, so it would have dropped down NCSoft's priority list.
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Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
The game didn't go wrong anywhere.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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The game is still profitable - it's not being closed because it's not making money.
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Originally Posted by Residentx10
This is so sad but we mentioned the F2P issue.
I tried to tell them the sub 50 content was the best content in the game but they kept pushing the incarnate nonsense. Now we don't get to see the final slots or the coming storm. I wish they would of listened...they barely made it a year with freedom. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
The game didn't wrong; the marketing did. And this started even before the game was released. The real problem of the game is that it was a well-kept secret, which is a hard way to run an MMO. The only reason it stayed around for so long was because of the loyalty of the fanbase, because it did too little to get itself in the hands of new players.
TW/Elec Optimization
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Well, it failed to gain any market share in Asia, so it would have dropped down NCSoft's priority list.
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Super Heroes are western icons. That seems like more of a cultural conflict to me- For whatever reason, Asian culture is very popular amongst the gaming-inclined folks in the west. They just didn't seem to reciprocate the feeling when it came to heroes.
Also: Are there even eastern translations of COH? I know we had French and German servers, but I don't remember hearing anything about Chinese/Korean/etc. COH servers. AFAIK, COH never even made an effort to appeal to that market.
And even if it did, and it was before my time, I'm 99% certain that it was before Freedom launched.. Which means that NCSoft was fully aware of the marketing base before they green lighted Freedom.
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I know - the Asian failure wasn't really through any fault of CoH - it's a game based on one of the most iconic parts of American pop culture, so it'll travel well to some places, and not so well to others - and it looks like NCSoft are now focusing on one of those places that it didn't travel so well to.
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Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
Super Heroes are western icons. That seems like more of a cultural conflict to me- For whatever reason, Asian culture is very popular amongst the gaming-inclined folks in the west. They just didn't seem to reciprocate the feeling when it came to heroes.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I know - the Asian failure wasn't really through any fault of CoH - it's a game based on one of the most iconic parts of American pop culture, so it'll travel well to some places, and not so well to others - and it looks like NCSoft are now focusing on one of those places that it didn't travel so well to.
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See my edit. >.>
Oh, I had to edit my edit. And now I'm editing my edit to explain that I had to edit a previous edit.
THB now stands for "too hammered boy."
They did an asian launch called "City of Hero". It was an utter failure. That was a LONG time ago... I think before NCSoft even bought the game&devs.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Did you never hear about City of Hero? The failed Korean port of the game?|
Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
Also: Are there even eastern translations of COH? I know we had French and German servers, but I don't remember hearing anything about Chinese/Korean/etc. COH servers. AFAIK, COH never even made an effort to appeal to that market.
And even if it did, and it was before my time, I'm 99% certain that it was after Freedom launched.. Which means that NCSoft was fully aware of the marketing base before they green lighted Freedom. |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-soNvI6-xnc
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When I read the report i see nothing but them digging themselves into the ground with GW2 marketing, yet i can barely remember the last time i so much as saw a website banner add for CoH let alone any real marketing.
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They came out with "City of Hero" and tried to market CoH to Koreans. It didn't go over with them so well and bombed pretty quickly.|
Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
And even if it did, and it was before my time, I'm 99% certain that it was before Freedom launched.. Which means that NCSoft was fully aware of the marketing base before they green lighted Freedom.
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That's how we got all those Asian themed characters from the group WISDOM, like Foreshadow and Mirror Spirit.
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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
They did an asian launch called "City of Hero". It was an utter failure. That was a LONG time ago... I think before NCSoft even bought the game&devs.
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The ultimate point here is that NCS obviously knew COH had no eastern market, so that's just not a fair excuse to me. Why fund Freedom if your fallback for it not meeting your expectations is "Well it had no Eastern market."
No **** it had no Eastern market. It wasn't even sold in the East.
Editing to get this back on track, because all of my comments related to this subject have been in cascading response to:
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Well, it failed to gain any market share in Asia, so it would have dropped down NCSoft's priority list.
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Maybe if we all email the continent of Asia, we can get them to help us resurrect the City of Hero IP!
Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser
King of Electricity, Lead Inmate running the Carl and Sons asylum, the "Man" behind the Establishment, Given Honor in Hat Form By Paragon City (Favorite Forum Poster 2006!), Master of Ceremonies of the Fair Use Law podcast
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Sort of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of...s#City_of_Hero |
Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
Super Heroes are western icons. That seems like more of a cultural conflict to me- For whatever reason, Asian culture is very popular amongst the gaming-inclined folks in the west. They just didn't seem to reciprocate the feeling when it came to heroes.
Also: Are there even eastern translations of COH? I know we had French and German servers, but I don't remember hearing anything about Chinese/Korean/etc. COH servers. AFAIK, COH never even made an effort to appeal to that market. And even if it did, and it was before my time, I'm 99% certain that it was before Freedom launched.. Which means that NCSoft was fully aware of the marketing base before they green lighted Freedom. |
It actually had an offline character creator, which would be so awesome to have again.
Edit; so beaten.
I'm just a holy fool, oh baby it's so cruel
Thessalia, by Darkchildx2k
COh did nothing wrong. NCsoft did. I don't know what exactly, but we are having to suffer for it because COH didn't do well in NCsoft's homeland.
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It was sold - and it didn't sell well.|
Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
The ultimate point here is that NCS obviously knew COH had no eastern market, so that's just not a fair excuse to me. Why fund Freedom if your fallback for it not meeting your expectations is "Well it had no Eastern market."
No **** it had no Eastern market. It wasn't even sold in the East. |
That meant that CoH was then flagged as Western-only MMO in NCSoft's eyes - which is fine if they're fosuing on the Western and the Asian markets - but not so fine if they decide to "refocus" everything on the Asian market, as they seem to be doing now.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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It's still floating sround cyberspace somewhere.
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Originally Posted by Thessalia
It actually had an offline character creator, which would be so awesome to have again.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
This is so sad but we mentioned the F2P issue.
I tried to tell them the sub 50 content was the best content in the game but they kept pushing the incarnate nonsense. Now we don't get to see the final slots or the coming storm.
I wish they would of listened...they barely made it a year with freedom.