Does Shutting Down CoH Constitute Fraud?

City of Heroes Freedom was advertised as "Free to Play. Forever." In fact it still is on the CoH website. Doesn't that constitute fraud on NCSoft's part since they are not in fact providing free to play forever (not even close to it)?

Unless you expected CoH (and every other thing that has ever advertised "forever" or used similar terms) to last beyond the heat death of the universe - no, probably not.

Well I wasn't going to go that far but it is reasonable to assume that forever lasts more than a year (actually not even a year since Freedom launch right?). They still used the term "forever" of their own accord and I can't actually remember any other company using it in advertising before, though I assume some have and may have been sued for it.

Forever in this case means that they will never go back to a subscription only model. For the remainder of the life of the product, if you never want to actually spend a dime on it, you can. That's what it means.

No more so than when some run-down local restaurant claims they have "World Famous Burgers!"

My favorite is where a sign advertises a product for ".50 cents," I always want to give them a penny from the penny cup and ask for change... but that wouldn't work.

Neither would this.

The technical term for this kind of thing is Puffery. Just like the "World Famous Burgers" example given earlier, it's an exaggeration that no one expects to be taken seriously.

It still doesn't make the shutdown any less disappointing, though.

Or (like I said in another thread) they're just rounding down on the "Mayan Doomsday" and figured twenty or so days didn't matter in the long run.