ATTN: Mr. Miller - Player buy back of COH properties.

Mr. Miller... Listen carefully please...

Ask the loyal player base to invest 15 dollars or more, through a website not related to Paragon Studios, outside NCSoft ownership, and create a player based, private share holder, "buy back" of the City of Heroes properties.

I would gladly invest 30 dollars or more, and I'm sure many others would agree to do the same outside this forum, if it meant a chance for the Lead developers to create a new company and buy back the City of Heroes properties, licensing, coding rights from NCSoft or affiliates. There are thousands of players and each of us could muster, as a collective, a few million to invest in this buy back. It would be the first of it's kind. A player owned, Matt Miller controlled, private share holder owned MMO property. Then, just buy it back from us over time via monthly subscriptions.

This game means allot to me. My mother passed away as of June 14th and this game has given me a bit comfort, taking my mind off her death. Please don't go down without a fight. COH is our home in our homes. I and many others have invested hours upon hours into this game for it to be tossed aside by a PlayNC like other MMO's.

All is not lost. There are other ways around legalities and license agreements. Break and remake yourselves and I'll support you as best I can under whatever company you form. You can count on my money to help get back our beloved game if you're willing to fight for your creation.

Please don't give up so damn easy. Fight and we'll fight beside you.

Thank you

Being unemployed I don't have a lot of spare money, but I would gladly donate every cent I can scrounge up to an effort at saving CoH.

Matt Miller doesn't own CoH. NcSoft does.

The CoH Titan group is looking to do something along these lines.

More info will be made available once they've got some concrete options, but for now, just know that the vast majority of us feel the same way--we want to save this game in any format possible, but the more intact (including development staff) the better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I don't actually think that s/he's saying that Positron owns the game. I think he's asking him to spearhead the effort which has its own legal difficulties and ramifications (none of which I'm privy to).

It _must_ live. I have my doubts that Sega would be interested or Valve (but at least they're west coast). Zynga might if they can show enough profit but I'm pretty sure they lost a lot of value recently. Maybe Paradox or SquareEnix?

It would be preferable to have it be player-owned certainly - but it will be a lot of money.

Disclaimer: This is speculation, so please don't go linking other posts to this one and using it as "proof" of anything.

I've been under severance agreements in the past, and I strongly suspect that all of the Paragon Studios staff are under one now. Basically it says something to the effect of, "If you agree to these terms [A, B, C, ...], then we will continue to pay you for twelve weeks." The exact terms and length of severance vary, but it gives employees a cushion to keep living on while they search for a new job, which when you've just been laid off, is very important--even moreso if you're someone like Matt Miller who has a wife and kids to feed, but really, true for anyone in this situation.

If Matt (or anyone else) violates the terms of this severance, not only will NCsoft stop paying them, but they could very well try to get any payments already paid under the agreement back, which could be financially devastating.

It's pretty standard for severance agreements to have clauses that agree not to talk about the terms of severance, not to portray the company in a bad light, and more than anything else, not to compete or otherwise do anything that could cause financial harm to the company. If Matt Miller or any other former Paragon Studios staff member is under a severance contract, as I strongly suspect they all are, they absolutely, positively could not respond to a post like this. Not now, not for weeks, maybe not for months.

I hope that precisely what you proposed comes to pass, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't make posts like these, I'm glad to see the community and I thinking along the same lines, and I hope that at least some of the Paragon Studios staff are also thinking along these lines even though I know that if they are, they dare not talk about it. But if you don't see any kind of response, don't get frustrated. This really is something they absolutely, positively cannot talk about.