Savior spelled = SOE?

It might just be unwarranted optimism talking, but I'm hopeful that most any buyer would be pretty good news both for the community as a whole and the team at Paragon.

I can't see any company buying an 8 year old MMORPG with the intent of making massive changes to the way the game plays and runs. They have to know that a large chunk of the existing player base would react badly to such a thing and they're not likely to get a swarm of new players into a near decade old game.

To my mind if an established company is looking at City of Heroes then there are likely to be two possible reasons for that, possibly with quite a bit of interaction between the two. The first is that the company knows the game makes money and is prepared to bet on the idea that the company will keep making money long enough for the investment to be worthwhile. It may or may not come with some element of cost cutting, but is likely to involve keeping the same team as much as possible and making minimal changes.

The second possibility is that the purchaser has more interest in the IP itself. They might be interested in building support for the game and trying to grow it with the release of a City of Heroes 2. Again this is likely to require keeping the old team together at least to some degree, since the value of the IP lies in the goodwill of the fanbase towards the game. Goodwill that could be severely harmed by completely changing the development team.

I think the bigger concern is whether NCSoft are willing to sell or not. But I'd like to think they'd have interest in selling it off either to another MMO company or the fan initiative lead by Titan. It's not really a game that competes with their other properties and I don't think it sounds like they'd be all that interested in making a City of Heroes 2. So if somebody is ready and a deal can be reached then things would hopefully work out for everyone involved.

*crosses fingers*

I agree, this rumour made me happy. I hope that CoH will be able to live on.

As an Everquest 2 fan I certainly won't mind seeing CoH in the hands of SOE. IMO EQ2 has improved considerably since I played it in '06 and even improved a lot since it became free. More story based low levels, faster travel, even a system for creating user dungeons. In short, it added things I liked about CoH. I also hope that if SOE gets CoH they'd simplify the F2P system to something closer to their other games. The current system is awfully complex and IMO off-putting.

As a long-time SOE customer, I feel like weighing in on this topic.

*) The station pass doesn't apply any more. ALL of SOE's games have become freemium games. Even EQ2, where they originally went to the trouble of creating a freemium version (EQ2 Extended) while keeping the original subscription game as a separate service for the players that were certain that freemium would be the death knell of the game and its community. As it turned out, EQ2X tripled the number of people playing the game and most of the EQ2 players ended up with EQ2X accounts anyway just because that was where there were people to team up with.

*) As has been noted, SOE has no problem running three different high fantasy games as well as an arguably fantasy-themed game aimed at young people. Never mind games like Legends of Norrath, Pox Nora, and Magic The Gathering Tactics (or whatever their MtG "miniatures" game is called). Having two superhero games in the stable is no stretch for them at all. As long as it sells Station Cash, they're happy to run it.

*) SOE knows how to run a decent store. In the process of interfacing CoH to their Station Cash market system, they'd no doubt build a much better "Paragon Market".

*) For several years now, SOE has concentrated development in-house. That is, they don't really have individual "studios" for individual games. They have departments for programming, marketing, program management, etc... and people from those departments are assigned where they are needed. While they might feel the need to hire someone like Protean or Dink, for the most part they would be unlikely to make a goal out of reforming the original team. Rather, they would be looking at transitioning it to their own internal team. This would probably mean that people doing story work for DCUO would be likely to be put on CoH as well, just at a guess. (Pirates may be the one exception, in that I'm pretty sure that Flying Lab is still more or less in charge of it, though I think they sort of qualify as a "wholly-owned subsidiary" these days.)

*) SOE has a history of keeping games going as long as they are making even a small profit. The only game that ever really failed that test was The Matrix Online, and I suspect that Warner Brothers had something to do with that. Planetside and Everquest are still running. Planetside is getting a sequel, even. Pirates of the Burning Sea is still going. Free Realms is still going, even though they looked to almost be trying to kill it there for a while. In fact, Free Realms is going through something of a resurgence, not unlike what happened when CoH transitioned from Cryptic to NCSoft, which gives me some hope for other games from SOE.

*) Star Wars Galaxies was an aberration. It's time for everyone to let it go. LucasArts shares responsibility. The NGE was their baby. It was not SOE's decision to release an expansion themed around creature handlers (hunters, in WoW terms) and then one month later make a drastic change in the game that eliminated them from the game entirely. However, it WAS their work that eventually brought almost all of that functionality back into the game.

This is the thing that people tend to ignore about SWG. Despite what LucasArts forced them into with the NGE (and to everyone's credit, they WERE trying to address the complaints that the game was not "star warsy", in the sense that it was not enough action), over the next two years SOE brought the game mostly back to what it had been before and they made huge improvements in the non-combat games like the entertainer jobs.

In the end, it was not SOE that killed SWG. It was LucasArts that killed it because they didn't want competition to TOR. SOE just chose to close down when the renewal date came up instead of waiting to close when TOR launched.

SWG was still running, still being played, still getting content development and still making money. Pretty much the same as what happened to CoH, for what may turn out to be substantially similar reasons.

So, in the end, SOE may not be the company of anyone's dreams, but they would be a far cry from someone like EA. It might be that they would go the Matrix Online route and simply run the game and never make any more content for it other than simple things like costume bits. If they did take over the content development, we'd have to expect that with new people at the helm that Paragon City would take a new direction in its story.

All just speculation now, but I can think of worse endings for the game than ending up under the SOE umbrella.

I have no problem with the IP of this game going to SOE or anyone else (my personal bet? Funcom would eye off this game as an independent developer themselves that favors unique IPs and development teams, even in the light of their recent statements about moving out of the MMO environment).

Why do I say this? Because being completely practical, this is about money. And SOE or any other company would be envious at the player retention numbers for this game, and know that making it part of a stable would have the potential to raise the revenue stream.

From NCSoft's point of view, selling the game is the last viable way to make money from it. That's a bottom line fact, because profit is the whole reason it was axed. The argument would be 'but wasn't CoH the lowest profit earner?' and the answer to that is 'yes, but selling the property is positive earnings.' And that is the black and white, accounting-driven, bare bones of the matter.

I can't see NCSoft turning this down, and if SOE and at least one other company have already made offers for the game, then they see potential in them where NCSoft does not. And being an independent IP, there's no undue presure on the game and its developers to follow particular mandates as has happened to both Star Wars games.

I do expect that an updating of the engine would be mandatory, that even some elements of the gameplay would be changed to make it more 'actiony' and accessable for a broader audience, but as has been noted, SOE is surprisingly hands-off if there's no outside influences going on.

Lastly, I'd be surprised if SOE didn't hire on necessary Paragon Studios people just simply because of familiarity with the engine. The sooner you can get a game up and running again, the sooner you make money. Just straight up and down thinking.

I'll be curious to see what happens.



S.

Getting this game back, getting a great team of Devs their jobs back

Whoever does that - that's gotta be a good thing, right?

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I'd happily play the game if SOE got it, even if it meant starting all over again. I know everything about all of my main toons, and would easily be able to remake them.

Contact me in-game: @CheeseSlicer

Opposing view on SWG and the "NGE":

From what I was told by someone who worked on the game (the late Jeff "Dundee" Freeman), the game was bleeding users. Projections showed they were some months away from reaching a number of subscribers low enough to contractually return the rights to LucasArts. They had to do something drastic to prevent that, and the NGE was it. NGE cost them a lot of users at once, and it probably wasn't the best (never mind only) possible response, but it did let them keep the license until TOR rolled around. Thereby allowing another company to take what should have been a license to print money and blow it.

I have no idea what game the pre-NGE fluffers were playing but it wasn't any version of SWG I logged in to. Combat was a joke, the economy was even worse, the crafting system was a grind from hell (every player I knew who was into crafting except one quit as soon as they got their grandmaster rank; they didn't even want to think about touching the game again), the "non-combat" professions like "entertainer" were complete disasters.... I was out of the game before the NGE arrived (and it literally nerfed my character out of existence; he was a Creature Handler/Ranger type) but it is hard to believe the replacement systems could possibly have been any worse.

SOE is not the devil, and if they got their hands on City it would not necessarily be a complete disaster. Of course it probably wouldn't be all rainbows and kittens, either, but it's hard for me to see a scenario in which a SOE-run City would be worse than no City at all.

Venture said exactly what I would have said, except that he probably worded it much better than I would have. So I'll just say that some people seem to have forgotten that many many thousands of other people quit playing SWG before the NGE because they didn't feel it was worth paying for.

And yes Angry Citizen, I would be happy if SOE picked up City of Heroes/Villains. I wouldn't be happy if they didn't also hire at least some of Paragon's people but I'd still give them money to keep playing City of Heroes.

I'm complex enough that I can be happy about one thing and also feel not so happy about something else at the same time.

I'm up for whatever saves this game. I really never wanted to stop playing it, and am willing to pony up the same $15/mo fee I always did in order to keep it running.

If Sony is willing to take it, I say, let's go!

And as for SWG, I left at the first combat upgrade (CU), so I didn't even get to experience the NGE that everyone who stayed talks about.

oh please oh please oh please oh please

and while I'm at it, oh please can we keep the devs too?

Wow... you know... if this is true... I might actually forgive the SWG implosion. Somewhat. Certainly enough to stay on.

And here I'd consigned SOE to the "those who shalt never again be mentioned" bin some 6+ years ago.

So I just read something about how the President of SoE was a pretty Ace dude. While this all sounds like conjecture and rumors and what haves, the fact that the guy in Charge seems to be, at least, a decent human being about topics I really care about makes me happy enough to potentially Have SoE in charge.

I'm still at mixed feelings on this (taking acount the pros/cons of this). But if it leaves the game still running, if somewhat intact, and leaves the Dev crew as it to keep on doing what they do to make it better then I'm guess all for it.

... but ...

(I've got to backup this whole conjecture.)

One wonders why, this:

* surprise announcement of "We're shutting CoX down. Devs, Martha will bring you your pink slips this afternoon."

instead of this:

* Press Release: "NCSoft is refocusing it's priorities, and it's acclaimed and profitable City of Heroes MMO is up for sale. We will be considering all offers and hope to choose one that pleases the fans, the CoX developers, and NCSoft stockholders."

I'm hoping that there are offers from folks who want to keep this game and Paragon Studios going. ... but I can't help wondering why NCSoft would kick the puppy before selling it.

Plonking my hat of maximum hypothetical corporate cynicism on for a second...

Let’s say NCSoft has a bit of a cash flow problem.

They have lots of assets including CoH, a proven and profitable MMO.

The problem is that MMOs bring in money in a steady, yet slow way, whereas they need a lump of money now rather than more money spread out over a long time.

Therefore they decide they need to flog CoH, and they need to do it fairly quickly. To do this they need to make it as attractive as possible.

They know that the companies most likely to pick up CoH are likely to already be in the MMO market, and therefore have a support / CS / marketing / development / QA infrastructure in place already. In order to maximise the attractiveness of CoH to these buyers, and remove potential headaches, they get rid of the associated studio, CS and so forth before offering CoH for sale.

This leaves potential buyers free to use existing resource and to fill gaps with rehired people where needed (on lower wages nach, because EVIL).

Is this, if it is by an (admittedly slim) chance true, a good thing?
Well in my book it is better than CoH being closed. And if it means that CoH ends up somewhere that appreciates it more, that is good. It’s rubbish for everyone at Paragon though, even if they do end up moving with the product, as it is several days of stress and misery I’m sure they’d have preferred not to have.

However, my ire in this case would be focused on NCSoft for being gits rather than any potential buyer.

For those who are all - what about the Devs you guys suck wanting the game without the Devs!

Without the GAME alive no Devs are needed.

Once the GAME is saved and running whoever takes it would sooner or later NEED the experience of the current Devs. If the GAME is not saved, neither are the Devs.

But some people just like to avoid logic.