Savior spelled = SOE?

I refuse to get my hopes up until this rumour is officially confirmed.

Better once crushed, than twice.

SOE maybe stepping in to save CoX?

SWG was my first MMO. I absolutely loved that game. I'd gone through several different skill masteries, I was working towards making my main a Jedi, I was part of a fantastic guild and had made some great friends. Then the NGE hit and for all I tried to keep playing, it just hurt too much. Our thriving player city turned into a ghost town over night (as did many others).

I played a few other MMOs after that, then I eventually settled on CoX and I have happily been here ever since, always coming back to it after a brief dabble with other MMOs. While DDO, LotRO, WoW, WAR et al had some great bits to them, nothing ever captured my imagination in the same way.

Honestly, even now, I still haven't forgiven SOE for the incredibly poor way they handled the NGE, but if they were the ones to save CoX, I'd at least give them another go.

If the game can be saved, then I'm all for Sony, EA or whomever wants to take it over. Ideally, it'd be wonderful if they hired back the entire Paragon Studios staff as well.

Let's see what happens. I'm more than willing to commit if the game and staff get picked up.

Not to put a damper on this, but I mentioned this topic to my wife, and she brought up a very dismal possibility. SOE may want the CoH IP just to bury it, to ensure nobody else revives it as a competitor to DCUO. I hope that's not the case (seems like a drastic step for a game that's essentially dead anyway), but it's a possibility we might have to face.

But I'll just hope that the game survives as-is, just under a new publisher's wing (hopefully one that's relatively hands-off*), with the majority (if not the entirety) of the Paragon team intact, and the game relaunching with I24 (which would make the name Resurgence more appropriate than ever).

---

*Yes, the publisher's wings should have no hands. I STINK AT METAPHORS, OKAY?

I'm remaining cautiously optimistic about something like this being the future of CoX as with the best will in the world trying to reverse engineer a private server or spamming MD's of favoured gaming houses is unlikely to come out well. Assuming NCSoft are open to offers this has to be the way forward that's best for everyone.

As for those of you worried about companies like SoE and EA picking up the reigns, it's not necessarily going to end badly. EA purchased Mythic Entertainment, the company behind Dark Age of Camelot and that game has enjoyed a bit of a resurgence and remains largely untouched by the big bad corporate monster.

I'm going to spend the next couple of months playing as if I'll never be able to play CoH again, but I will be closely following this rumour to see whether or not that's going to be necessary.

The forums and servers are managed by a 3rd party. There's likely a 3 month notification of termination clause involved.

At this point, rumours are just that: rumours. I choose to be hopeful until the servers go dark or until we have some other form of concrete news. With it being Labour Day in the US, I doubt very much that we will hear anything concrete in either direction (assuming we ever do) until tomorrow.

Honestly, right now I think I'll take what I can get.

I'd wage the Devs are already resigned to the fact they are moving on. Even if Sony or someone else buys the franchise, they are probably going to run it cheaper with fewer Devs just in order to save money after making the initial investment.

I could handle starting over again so long as the gameplay and options remained mostly the same. (It'd even give me the chance to reroll a few of my mains into something I might enjoy more!)

I have a lifetime subscription to their other super hero game. I love the graphics but I find character creation and gameplay limited.

Perhaps if they buy COH they will port some of the COH innovations into THAT game as well.

And honestly, for a company that could afford it, earning the loyalty of a fanbase like COH-- not huge, but VERY VERY loyal-- could be worth the trouble.

I guess the question would be if the people who want the game would be willing to make an offer that would bring in NcSoft more money than they could gain from a tax write off...

I'm sure there are some companys out there that really want take City of Heroes over, even in germany where the game is not much present there was news about it and no one can understand what's happening there, but when NC-Soft really wanted to sell the game, then they don't fire the entire team so fast. They will tell that the game is closing on 30.Nov and then when nothing else happen they fire the team. Bounty Bay Online for example, published here from Gameforge wanted to close this game and now it's going on because Snail Games take it over. So when even such an small old title finds a buyer then I'm sure for City of Heroes is not only one offer on the table from NC-Soft, but did they really want to sell it? I hope for an happy end, but NC-Soft never selled any IPs so far. They just close them, ignore everything what happens after it and this is the reason why they are losing money right now because the costumers remember this. Why starting with Wildstar when you can't know that the game is still up after 3 years of playing and paying for this?

I'm also sure that Paragon Studios don't have to look long for an other job. They do a great work here and when a publisher can't have City of Heroes because NC-Soft wont sell it, so why don't take the team then and let them work on a new game? All in all I'm not so sure that this was the best idea to close the game in that way... time will tell...

As much as I want this to happen.. NCSoft doesn't sell its IPs, it shoots them in the head and dumps them on the side of a desert road, never to be seen again.

... Yea, I'd take SOE over nothing.

At least they do server merges instead of just shutting the game down.

I'm really not a fan of SoE, but it's worth noting that several of the bigwigs who were in charge of the game during the launch and NGE of SWG actually went on to be lead designers at Bioware Austin, and are currently busy running SWTOR into the ground. So they won't be around to mess with CoH. :P

I'm just going to quietly hope that whoever buys the game, if anyone does, will recognize that Paragon had a good thing going in spite of the utterly nonsensical shutdown, and will let the devs continue business pretty much as usual.

I'm taking the Ben Franklin approach to this. Expect the worst, and be pleasantly surprised if it turns out differently.