Important - Message Control

The players have got media attention, which was the goal.

HOWEVER, the rally has a lot of stories as a 'protest,' and the primary goal was a show of solidarity, determination, loyalty. We should not let it create a story that the rally was just a whinefest, instead of a positive event intended to demonstrate to investors and executives that the game has a solid, dependable base to provide plenty of profit and financial stability, at least if the paragon market was improved and offered better monetization.

Please make the goal a priority and respond to articles not just to thank the media for covering this but to demonstrate our intentions, especially in articles such as the post at kotaku where the commenters are taking the opposite.

Exactly. The last thing we want is to convey the message that we're just upset that our game has been taken away. Especially if we want attention outside of just the gaming media.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Ugh. As glad as I am that we've gotten exposure at a top gaming journalism site, the judgemental remarks from people commenting there put my teeth on edge. You could tell that a lot of them looked only at the article itself before commenting, assuming that's all we as a community were doing, and that it was an angry protest rather than a show of unity and support for Paragon Studios.

We even got called a "City of Children" by a veteran developer for networking code in games, who made the same assumptions.

When Tabula Rasa was shut down, its passing attracted a lot of smug snark from observers. I would have expected a more positive and supportive reaction with a game like City of Heroes that is as old as it is, and still has a big player base.

Indeed. This game has remained profitable. This community has remained loyal, happy to spend money and stayed a consistent size (which, again, has remained profitable).
The game, itself, has constantly advanced and been respected as an innovator and one of the few successes that is not following the industry's stale formula.
Tons of additions are already in the pipelines and many more have been in the works.

None of that should come to an end right now.
We may be considered a smaller, niche customer-base, but that doesn't mean that we don't matter and it doesn't mean that this product cannot continue to make the profits it has (or even increase... super heroes continue to get a larger audience... Look at the Avengers movie).

Now is an absurd time to end this successful product and great community.


Those are my 2 cents, at least... plus tax.

I think that if this game was given any sort of actual advertisement it'd be raking in money.

Oh and yea. There were some people who insisted on holding protest signs, not torches.

The torchlights were also getting taken the wrong way, too. Somebody compared it to this:



Personally I liked the idea of a torchlight vigil, but in retrospect I see now why the guy who organized the server-wide vigil wanted people to use /em lotus ... harder to interpret the wrong way.

It would've been nice if we had an /em zippo or /em candle for stuff like this, though.

i have noticed this a bit too, there are a great many articles but in many there are prolly 1/4-1/2 of the commenters trolling/flaming/misinterpreting

while it is good to see coh in the news, i think that some of the wording that some of the articles takes does make it seem more like a protest, almost half or more of the articles use protest in the title


i think one of the few news places thats actually made good coverage regarding whats happening is massively because they have also been the most proactive in trying to research/keep track of whats going on

i also think the word protest has been used a lot because one of the first things that is linked is the petition, and petitions are usually considered forms of protest

there could be other factors contributing as well, but i do agree that some of the news sites may be misinterpreting what we are trying to do (negative articles though are bound to pop up, either from trolls or from poeple who do not understand nor had experience with something of this magnitude)

1000 monks, 1000 religions.

People can put the tag they want on this kind of gathering.
For some it's a fest or a community moment showing unity, for others it's a testominy of the good times passed on this game, an hommage to the devs, a little prayer for the players who have passed away, a farewell and for some it's a protest.

Everyone has his own reason to participate and whatever it is, noone should say "this is good" or "this is bad" or "this is not what it was intended to be".
IT WAS. What we made of it as individuals and as a collective. Every personal reason was righteous.

For me it was certainly a bit of everything. Protest included. I won't hide myself behind words. One thing is sure. None of the participants want this game to end. That's what matters.

If external eyes have badmouthed about it, be sure they were badmouthing the game much before this event. And would have done that whatever we do.

The attendance was fantastic today and it looks like the world was watching. For with the world watching it saw a great unity of players congregating to appreciate the game we have loved for so long, and for some - not so long. They watched the infantile chat responses and trolling. They watched the expletives adorning chat. They watched players using the ignore feature as a threat. Frankly, today was the first time ever I have felt embarrassed to be associated with the game. I stuck it out though, I'm in this as much as anyone. One of the most important days of our games' life and it was like somebody had spilled a tub of jerks again. I hope it doesn't do too much damage but negative reports have already been springing up.

The control freaks were out too. "Turn off all powers and dismiss all pets." came the demand. And what's this ..""nah nah is holding a protest sign blah .. and "nah nah should be holding a torch blah .." Let me remind you control freaks, while you were popping in today for a couple of hours, I and many others have been protesting with the 'Protest' emote for 7 days for long hours. I will continue with that. Also, I paid good money to use a mastermind, when you pay for my account tell me what to do with my powers. If your system cannot handle it - "GET A NEW ONE THAT CAN" - and stop blaming my AT for the poor performance of your inadequate computer.

That said - the overall response has been fantastic and we all feel , it seems, that the message got out to the majority of our audience.

Please clarify the article about the COH protest / Unity Rally

I write to implore you to clarify this article, because critical background information is not included and a lot of people are interpreting the rally, expressly organized to support the development team, as a DOS attack or angry mob.

Please understand - the team and a lot of the player base are desperately trying to attract investors or another gaming company to buy it out or convince the publisher to let them.

The Unity Rally was explicitly organized as a show of support and loyalty to demonstrate financial viability. People actually requested that the protesters NOT use emotes like a protest sign or angry speech. The torch was popular but some people without context interpreted it as a mob organizing instead of a vigil. A costume contest honoring a favorite developer was held immediately after the event!

That costume contest should explain why this is not just another MMO closure. The game is a way people express their creativity and community. No other game has supported such a massive library of customization and community options. You can customize costumes and write a biography and build a base involving thousands of objects and customize the animations of the abilities you have. Along with the extreme level of dev communication and participation what you have is a smaller scale version of, for a popular example, a publisher buying out Mojang and not only ending Minecraft but automatically having every world a player created deleted with little warning, despite the player community still supporting the game to a modest profit by the way. I believe that the creative aspect of the title, not similarities to the reeling industry of major MMOs, is why the game can still increase its profits and attract investors with enough publicity.

I participated in the rally and was amazed at the success. A player organized this through the forums and despite different time zones and schedules, many players not even getting the news and having to get informed through chat channels in the game, and a large population not participating because they had given up, we got 4000 people and surprisingly the extreme majority cooperated with requests to demonstrate class and it had a shocking lack of trolls. The developer team was humbled and amazed at the huge amount of support.

The good news was a huge improvement to morale: trending on twitter, a lot of articles, and then KOTAKU! But when I saw a lot of people taking the Kotaku article out of context and accusing the players of DOS, it was like a punch to the gut.

Please, for creative and social gaming, or celebrating developers who interact with the players, I implore you, please post a followup and edit the post to let people know the story has a lot more involved.

Additional info and references:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=296768

The organization post. Definitely not a DOS or tantrum.

"Our next Call to Action is something fun that will be a display of unity, an opportunity for photo ops for press releases and communications to NCsoft, and that best of all will simultaneously give a shot in the arm of morale to people who probably need it badly and deserve our unwavering support: the programmers, designers, managers, marketers, artists, testers, accountants, community relaters, moderators, administrative assistants, and everyone else with a job title that doesn't fit neatly in the above whose incredible talents and awesome work ethic have built the world in which our imaginations live."

http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/rumour...ns-heroes.html

Confirmation that discussions have happened.

[Admin] Alpha Wolf: Sorry guys but I don't have any new update. I know Paragon management is having discussion with ncsoft and investors. Continue get people to sign online petitions, post on game forums, and just continue to make noises so ncsoft cannot ignore players.

Good thinking, ChaosExMachina! Were you planning on taking that message to the media? If so, the only thing I might caution you about would be the "punch to the gut" phrasing. Something less confrontational, especially in light of the protest/rally distinction, may be warranted?

Thousands of us were protesting, its not a dirty word. If you take my money for years, invent a new system that I dump more money into then pull the plug and walk off with my cash a protest is a reasonable response. Yes the event was billed as a unity rally but you can't stop people from protesting.

I PROTEST THE DECISION TO ERASE PARAGON CITY!

If you don't like my decision feel free to put me on ignore. People who would paint protesters as angry children probably don't understand the situation or have the backbone to stand up for themselves.

Whatever.

I have WoW. I just want my money back. =)

While to some protest may not be a dirty word it is certain an aggressive one. And while we may all be passionate about the game and all have our own reasons for being there last night. It was ultimately a rallying of the community. TonyV and I have been making sure in our press releases not to call it a protest. And we will continue to do so in the press release we put out today. Sadly we cannot control what gets put into other people's words. Publicity is publicity. If there is negativity remember to respond to it in a respectful, but honest manner. We can do this if we all work together.

In hindsight any location besides the steps of city hall would probably been better if you didn't want this to be referred to as a protest. The rally was awesome thanks for putting it together. It was amazing seeing everyone turn out in support of our game.