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*cough* In order to preserve you innocence, I recommend you never, EVER visit the mmorpg.com forums.
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Originally Posted by Premonitions
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.
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@Texarkana
@Thexder
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CoH also has a ratehr unique and complex engine with years of twaks and fixes - why hire someone who didn't know how it worked and spend time training them when there are developers out there and available who kow the whole thing inside out?|
Originally Posted by BlueBattler
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.
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Plus, there's the whole retun on their investment angle - if they buy the game, they'd very likely want it -and especially the Paragon Market - up and running as soon as possible - and there are unfinished power sets and cosutme parts already on Beta, as well as a whole Issue, and the people who worked on it are still available to continue working on it.
I just can't why SOE buy the game, then put it into maintenance mode for a few months while they hire and train a whole new dev team for a relaunch, rather than just rehiring the original devs and getting the subs and market cash flow back up and running within a week.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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I don't feel quite that way about the devs though. I don't look to them as simply developers but more like mentors and paragons who we should model ourselves (or other developers from other games should model themselves after). That they deserve just as good as they treat their playerbase and their game.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I like our devs and love what they've done with the game over the past year.
But as a gamer I'm here for THE GAME. As fondly as I feel toward our developers, as much as I respect their talent, dedication and perseverance, it is a relationship anchored by THE GAME. Whatever attention they pay to me is in the context of being a well informed player. Whatever attention I pay to them is in the context of their making a game that has been a major part of my life for close to a decade. So while yes, I would prefer that everything stay exactly as it is now with no alterations, I reserve the right to be ecstatically happy with *any* outcome where my characters survive this virtual Armageddon. |
That said, I feel the devs of CoX deserve *better* than CoX. If they feel compelled to finish their work, that is hugely admirable. But I also don't feel they should or would be shackled to this game until then. They deserve, far more than we deserve to keep playing, to spread their wings if they so desire.
So this news that Sony is interested in the CoX IP is good news...probably not for me since while I love and play this game, I'm more here for the forums and chat...even if they don't keep Paragon Studios.
My true hope is, War Witch and the other big red-names find new, bigger and more innovative endeavors while some of the smaller red-names look into staying with CoX where they can break their gums on filling their former bosses' shoes while keeping CoX going with new compelling content.
I think the interesting thing though is, there will be change for our game if it continues. Some of it won't be good but we'll be better for it in the end.
Here's hoping
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Where are people getting this notion that we don't want the devs?|
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
For those who are all - what about the Devs you guys suck wanting the game without the Devs!
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In an ideal world, we could just go back to the status quo, the way things were. Because of NCsoft's extremely sudden and rash action, I really doubt that is possible now.
Practically speaking, I think the best case scenario is that another publisher comes along, buys the game from NCsoft, and basically reforms Paragon Studios. There are 80+ people who suddenly don't have a job, and given that they found out immediately before a long holiday weekend, most of them probably haven't found anything else yet. If another publisher acquires the game quickly enough, it's entirely possible that the studio can be re-formed with minimal loss.
Realistically speaking, the longer it is before Paragon Studios can be re-formed, the more attrition you will have. While I'm sure that the developers, artists, managers, designers, testers, marketers, community relations folks, admin assistants, and everyone else who worked at Paragon Studios would love to hang around and see what happens, they need to ensure their own financial stability first and foremost, which means that after the long holiday, they're going to be pounding the pavement looking for jobs. With such a proven track record of working on such a successful genre-defining game, I suspect that a lot of them will be snatched up by other companies very quickly, and they have a lot of contacts in the form of people who used to work on City of Heroes who are at other companies, big and small, now. So if another studio acquires the game a month from now and wants to re-form Paragon Studios, they might be able to get, I dunno, 80% of the employees back (I'm guessing), but we might be minus a Matt Miller or Melissa Bianco or Sean McCann or Nate Birkholz or... well, you get the idea.
Going on down the line of n-case scenarios, the company or organization that acquires the game might not be able to retain Paragon Studios in any form at all. For example, I'm working on a crowd funding effort to purchase the game if something like this doesn't come through. I'm hoping to get enough money that we can either buy or license the game from NCsoft and keep the lights on. Without some really hard work and a lot of luck, however, we'll probably have nowhere near enough money to accomplish that AND hire an 80+ person crew to work on the game. You're talking about millions of dollars in expenses every month. If another studio doesn't acquire the game, the fallback notion is that at the very least, the game is worth saving. We look at it like the Mona Lisa. Even if Leonardo DaVinci is long dead, the painting has intrinsic value, it is a work of art that should be preserved and in the hands of someone who won't just put it in the attic, cover it up, and let it collect dust. It should still be seen and appreciated. And who knows? Until various developers are able to find other jobs, maybe they would be willing to continue helping us out on a volunteer basis, or maybe we'll have enough crowd funding effort to hire some of them on a contractual basis and help us make modest improvements to the game until we can get it back on its feet.
Continuing on down, the WORST-case scenario is that the game is permanently shuttered and it dies. Not only do we lose the Paragon Studios team, but we lose the product of their years of effort. When people talk about options for preserving the game, some of which include not being able to preserve the Paragon Studios team, it's not because we hate the devs. Quite the opposite, we're doing our damned best to save their jobs. But we also have to have backup plans, places to go in case that's not possible. Priority number one is to keep the lights on in Paragon City at all costs. Only after that can we start indulging in exploring other avenues for preserving the status quo.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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You're damn right I'm spiteful. Just like people are mad at NCSoft for killing CoH, I was mad at SoE for killing the SWG I loved. And I don't know how many times I have to say this, the fact that they have the money does not make them trustworthy stewards of the franchise.|
Originally Posted by Paladiamors
So people aren't allowed to be hopeful that a beloved MMO might be saved? Right. Makes perfect sense.
What happened to the devs is terrible. But that wasn't SoE what done it to them. And I don't think we should feel guilty about being hopeful about the prospect of at least getting the game itself back. I think this is just sheer spite talking. |
People here seem willing to give up their existing characters, the (up until Friday) existing dev team, and whatever else they have to just to not lose their toy. I maintain that once you're bargaining and giving things up, you've lost, and this game WON'T BE COH ANY MORE.
It's not wrong for people to be doubtful and scornful of the idea that a rumored saving angel isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
Be hopeful all you want, but a simple fact of life is every party has to end, and sometimes it's a lot better to make a graceful exit even if you want to stay, than to try and stay and end up in a situation you will probably regret even more.
"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
Another vote here for paying my sub fee to anyone who'd keep the game going, Star-Wars-game-ruiners, Saddam Hussein's corpse, drug cartels, furries, Democrats/Republicans, you name it! If that comes to pass, then we'll see. Gaging the likelihood of them then ruining our game is a bridge to cross when or if we reach it, seems a little senseless to argue about it right now.
And obviously yes I would like the same devs to still work on it - seriously who wouldn't? The chances of that may be lowish... on top of lowish... but if we're gonna pie-in-the-sky this... (but then it seems a bit silly to discuss that right now too)
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From what I've read they were willing to sell Auto Assault back to the developer, but asked for more money than Netdevil was willing (or perhaps able) to pay. So there is a hint of precedence for them selling off titles there.|
Originally Posted by Aisynia
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.
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I don't know about the others, though I'd guess that the legal shenanigans surrounding Tabula Rasa gave them reason to hold onto that IP.
Given the high risk, high cost and long development time involved in launching new MMOs, especially in the current market, I can easily envisage an established title like CoH being an attractive property to acquire. Sure, it'll never be the WoW-style cash cow that publishers dream of, but it's a solid title, prominent in its own genre, with years and years of content just sitting there, and an exceptionally loyal fanbase.
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So far, NCSoft is too good at those. |
Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
a graceful exit
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| a situation you will probably regret even more. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Until there is any definitive announcements, I'm just going to treat everything as just speculation. It's great to discuss the possibilities one way or the other, but before we have cold hard facts, everything is just theories.
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Any, very importanly in the current MMO market, it has an established hybrid payment model - it's not like they're picking up a struggling title and then adding a F2P option in the hope it'll work - what they'd get in CoH is a stable and profitable title with an established F2P system.|
Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree
Given the high risk, high cost and long development time involved in launching new MMOs, especially in the current market, I can easily envisage an established title like CoH being an attractive property to acquire. Sure, it'll never be the WoW-style cash cow that publishers dream of, but it's a solid title, prominent in its own genre, with years and years of content just sitting there, and an exceptionally loyal fanbase.
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For any buyer, CoH is very much a "pick up and play" title that can generate a profit without needing any extra investment above the level it was receiving from NCSoft.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Hmmm:|
Originally Posted by Venture
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.
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-They could retcon a lot of the Lore so that Paragon City is some sort of suburb of another big city...basically try and shoehorn Paragon into their DC universe. And hey, they already removed Statesman...now just copy/paste Superman in there...
-They could get rid of the Rogue Isles...Oh I'd HHAAAAAAATEEEE that...but if red-side (and gold-side) is viewed as dead weight because few players play it?...
-They could meld RI and PC so that they aren't separate games and induct world PvP into the City...oh so many of you would hate that...I wouldn't particularly mind but it's definitely not a good thing.
-Another round of nerfs because our heroes are just too damned good
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Lack of imagination on your part. I can think of dozens of nightmare scenarios. That doesn't mean they're likely to happen, but there are worse things than no longer being alive.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I'm trying to think of a situation on CoH that I'd regret more than a total shut down of the game.
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Anyway, for the sake of the fans, it'd be good if anyone rescued the franchise, but in my eyes, SOE is evil - not for anything to do with SWG, but because of Station Exchange.
Edit: Those are some good "bad" scenarios, Leo.
I just want to keep playing this game the way we doing it.
I would love if they get the whole Paragon back!
But I dont care who is the publisher, as long as we keep our game alive.
QR to the OP:
Thanks M_C_M. Good to know that the game-funding world did not just look at our news and shrug. I will keep up hope that someone will pick up our game.
@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.
[QUOTE=Leo_G;4376983
-They could get rid of the Rogue Isles...Oh I'd HHAAAAAAATEEEE that...but if red-side (and gold-side) is viewed as dead weight because few players play it?...
[/QUOTE]
Speaking as a player who once frequented the Distinguished Competition for a couple months after release, their "red side" is exactly how many players want our redside. Beating up cops and setting them on fire, stealing souls, etc. It's evil done amazingly well. In other words, I don't think you'd have to worry about redside getting cut
And to weigh in on the topic at hand, I'm all for anyone that can save the property. Valve, SoE, Funcom, EA... this is a title in need of a champion. I'd love if they could take back in the entire dev team as well, but if not... at least the dev's legacy lives on, instead of sitting on a bunch of hard drives in some NCSoft warehouse... right next to the legacies of Exteel, Dungeon Runners, Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa.
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If only life was that simple!|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I just can't why SOE buy the game, then put it into maintenance mode for a few months while they hire and train a whole new dev team for a relaunch, rather than just rehiring the original devs and getting the subs and market cash flow back up and running within a week.
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Any company that purchased the game would be faced with several challenges immediately. Let's just imagine that it's SOE for argument's sake.
1) The NCSoft master accounts have to be "detached" and the existing game accounts have to be ported to SOE's master account system. Anyone who does not have a station ID (which is likely to be 90% or more) would have to have one assigned or would have to register at station.com and then reconnect their old CoH account(s) to the new master account. This would probably entail new user ID's and passwords all around. It would almost make more sense to just relaunch the game and make everyone start over; it would certainly be much more clean and viable from the new publisher's point of view.
2) The market has to be rebuilt from scratch. SOE, Funcom, EA, whoever they are, they all have their own virtual currencies. The one out here for SOE is that they already have some experience in this area with Pirates of the Burning Sea. When they converted PotBS to freemium, they didn't replace their currency with Station Cash, they built an interface where you convert your Station Cash to "writs" (some hand-waving here, PotBS has a slightly unorthodox kind of "currency") and then use the "writs" as currency. It's possible that they might choose to do similarly, and write an interface to convert Station Cash to Paragon Points. Considering the deficiencies of the Paragon Market, I'd rather see it just remade from whole cloth, frankly.
3) Billing would have to go through the new publisher's billing process and that's likely to be entirely different from NCSoft's and to also be non-trivial to interface to.
4) The new publisher will have their own server farms, their own operating systems, and their own support services. It's possible that they would just take over whatever contract NCSoft has with their current providers but unlikely. There would be some potentially major porting issues involved, just in things like producing status and usage reports that are used by the new company that were done differently or not at all by the previous company.
On the plus side, if another publisher buys the game in the next few days, then they have three months to make these ports. They don't have to do it in a week.
SOE may look attractive to NCSoft from another standpoint - SOE has experience with licensed properties. It's entirely possible that NCSoft might license the IP to SOE while retaining the ownership rights to it. Whether SOE would go for that deal is hard to say, but between Star Wars, The Matrix, and DC they have more experience with managing licensed properties than any other MMO publisher. Where other publishers might balk at the idea of licensing the IP instead of buying it outright, SOE is one that might be amenable if the terms were right.
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That's ridiculous. SOE prides themselves on a whole stable of games, many of which are similar. Never has Vanguard been shoe-horned into Norrath, never has EQ1 even been shoe-horned into EQ2.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
Hmmm:
-They could retcon a lot of the Lore so that Paragon City is some sort of suburb of another big city...basically try and shoehorn Paragon into their DC universe. And hey, they already removed Statesman...now just copy/paste Superman in there... -They could get rid of the Rogue Isles...Oh I'd HHAAAAAAATEEEE that...but if red-side (and gold-side) is viewed as dead weight because few players play it?... -They could meld RI and PC so that they aren't separate games and induct world PvP into the City...oh so many of you would hate that...I wouldn't particularly mind but it's definitely not a good thing. -Another round of nerfs because our heroes are just too damned good |
Please make sense if you're going to project end-of-the-world type scenarios.
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You do realize that both Vox and Bazaar, EQ2's Station Exchange servers, were shut down permanently last year when their Livegamer contracts finally expired, right? (And Vanguard's Livegamer servers were closed down at that same time, too.) And you do realize that SOE was trying to offer a legal way for illegal RMT-minded players who would otherwise compromise their accounts and bork game worlds' economies to buy gold and items that they would otherwise buy through gold farming hacker sites anyway, right? I wasn't a fan, and believe me, the EQ2 player base at large hated Livegamer players with what could only be described as feelings bordering on fanatical hatred, lol, but I am adult enough to see both sides of this issue.|
Originally Posted by Brillig
Lack of imagination on your part. I can think of dozens of nightmare scenarios. That doesn't mean they're likely to happen, but there are worse things than no longer being alive.
Anyway, for the sake of the fans, it'd be good if anyone rescued the franchise, but in my eyes, SOE is evil - not for anything to do with SWG, but because of Station Exchange. Edit: Those are some good "bad" scenarios, Leo. |
And to this day, EQ2's cash shop remains devoid of game-breaking Pay-to-Win items. 40% of the transactions there are purely for their mounts (tons more of which are available via questing in-game), and many players (at least on Freeport server, where I copied my mains to during its F2P Alpha before all servers went F2P last November and never looked back) have their awesome cash-shop houses (there are tons of homes available in-game too) and yet other players sport their station cash capes and vanity pets. They have a lot of transmorg-type items for pet classes' pets, too; my Necro's skeleton can become a cute cow, a genie, and all kinds of other cool stuff-- a lot of which is also available in-game.
I like vanity items, and supporting my fav devs. I've bought every power set in CoH, am a maxxed-out tier 9 vet, and get plenty of vanity pets and items here, too.
If you don't like that stuff, that's fine. But what my toons wear and the vanity pets they run around with aren't hurting your game any. So I really don't see that as a problem.
And also, regarding the now-dead Livegamer: I'd glad SOE corralled those peeps onto their own PvP (Vox) and PvE (Bazaar) server than deal with all the RMT-buying, hacker-encouraging, lazy-arsed kiddies who otherwise infest every MMO out there and are the real reason devs and gamers deal with a perpetual onslaught of gold farmers and hackers every day.
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I was quoting Venture. You can scare him by threatening the lore |
Originally Posted by shadow35
That's ridiculous. SOE prides themselves on a whole stable of games, many of which are similar. Never has Vanguard been shoe-horned into Norrath, never has EQ1 even been shoe-horned into EQ2.
Please make sense if you're going to project end-of-the-world type scenarios. |
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Yeah, I realize that. I was there on the forums when Smed pushed that reasoning and said that a huge amount of CS time was spent helping with people who got scammed in RMT transactions.|
Originally Posted by shadow35
You do realize that both Vox and Bazzaar were shut down permanently last year when their Livegamer contracts finally expired, right? And you do realize that SOE was trying to offer a legal way for illegal RMT-minded players who would otherwise compromise their accounts and bork game worlds' economies to buy gold and items that they would otherwise buy through gold farming hacker sites anyway, right? I wasn't a fan, and believe me, the EQ2 player base at large hated Livegamer players with what could only be described as feelings bordering on fanatacism, lol, but I am adult enough to see both sides of this issue.
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My response was simple. "You're not supposed to HELP them Smed. You're supposed to BAN them."
One of the main reasons RMT was and is such a plague is because companies are too damn wimpy to actually enforce their own rules. They'll go after the RMT company's accounts, but the buyers rarely get more than a slap on the wrist. Station Exchange was just a cop-out.
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Originally Posted by shadow35
And also, regarding the now-dead Livegamer: I'd glad SOE corralled those peeps onto their own PvP (Vox) and PvE (Bazaar) server than deal with all the RMT-buying, hacker-encouraging, lazy-arsed kiddies who otherwise infest every MMO out there and are the real reason devs and gamers deal with a perpetual onslaught of gold farmers and hackers every day.
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*bows*
All hail our new SOE overlords!
*bows*
.....
wut? It hasn't happened, yet? ... oh, nevermind.
Okay, here's the situation. My parents went away -- no, no, sorry. Tired.
I'm not gonna get my hopes up, but neither will I let them be crushed. And yes, I will be playing until literally the moment they yank the cords out of the servers.
The SOE thing, that does kinda worry/reassure me. Worry, because I'm not sure how much they had to do with the SWG mess. That might have been just something they tried on a lark: "Hey, everyone likes Jedis!" Reassures, because hey, it's Sony. They've got money to burn.
Now, if I had to restart my character...honestly, if the game stays around, I couldn't give a flying **** about having to restart my character. If all the costume options, power pools, etc. are there...does it really MATTER if you have to start from scratch? This is a 'choose your own adventure' game anyway, that just gives you a chance to go back and do it again. In fairness, part of this may be because ever since I got burned by Mass Effect 1(I didn't write down the 'map' I used to make my FemShep, ergo, I've never been able to get her exactly right again), I have always made a list of everything I do when I create a character, e.g., "Nose 3 clicks from the left, etc." So I have everything for my toons -- powers, Enhancements, hell, even my menu options -- written down. So for me, this isn't a problem. Who am I kidding, it wouldn't even be a consideration.
So I'll just say I don't have a problem with this. Short of one of us winning the lottery and waving a bag of money at Kim, 3rd-party intevention is pretty much our best bet. "We shall watch, and pray."
Interesting. I find this rumor a bit more credible than all the hopes of this community taking the game over (I consider that to be a cold day in a place normally hotter than Phoenix, but I'm a pessimist).
Certainly, there would be a fair bit of work by a company like Sony (or whoever) to adapt to their system, but on the other hand, that is what they do.
I doubt though, that they'd really be looking at doing this unless they had a view much further down the road.
After all, for all the awesome that this game has done recently, financially it hasn't been that great. The revenue for the game has been flatlined since about GR. Freedom did not create the kind of growth that EQ or LOTRO or DDO saw. That's the deepest issue of all. So, unless someone thought their marketing engine could rev the game up, you're looking at a slowly dwindling fan base.
That sounds pessimistic, but that's why I mention the Long View. It makes sense if they are exploring the possibility of CoH 2. Now that could play for them. Keep CoH going, keep the core fans around, even keep the expansions going well enough to keep the community engaged, but use all of that as "marketing" as it were for the coming of CoH2, where they could then hope to make a bigger splash on the MMO community.
I am still putting the odds at 70/30 (or worse) against seeing Atlas Park on December 1, but this at least has moved the needle off of my former "not ever gonna happen" stance, so that's something.
(All on Virtue)
Guidestar: lvl50 Grav/FF Controller
Madame Insight: Lvl 50 El/El Blaster
Astrolabe Lvl 50 Grav/Eng Dom
Too many others to consider.
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Doubtful. TimeWarner still owns the DC IP not Sony.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
Hmmm:
-They could retcon a lot of the Lore so that Paragon City is some sort of suburb of another big city...basically try and shoehorn Paragon into their DC universe. And hey, they already removed Statesman...now just copy/paste Superman in there... |
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| -They could get rid of the Rogue Isles...Oh I'd HHAAAAAAATEEEE that...but if red-side (and gold-side) is viewed as dead weight because few players play it?... |
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| -They could meld RI and PC so that they aren't separate games and induct world PvP into the City...oh so many of you would hate that...I wouldn't particularly mind but it's definitely not a good thing. |
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-Another round of nerfs because our heroes are just too damned good
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--Rad
/whereami:
Add my name to the list of those who'd rather have an SOE-run COH than no COH at all. (I'd rather have it with Paragon Studios personnel on-board than without, too, but like Randy Bachman, I'll take what I can get.)
Hi, my name is @Bouncing Betty, and I... am an altaholic. (Hi, Betty.)
"I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were always heroes - epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothers in arms."
-- G.K. Chesterton, "The Man Who Was Thursday"