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I think the issue is to chose from the things that CAN have positive out comes verses those that CAN'T.

I believe this e-mail option to be a serious misstep. Not dooming us but certainly not helping.

I agree, it is jumping the gun way too soon.

This. Pretty much opening Pandora's Box.

So don't email them.

Just so you know though... South Koreans are probably the most active protesters in the world. Protests happen in Seoul on a weekly basis and if it were not for these protest many of the democratic reforms and changes in labor laws would never have happened. Unity and standing up to a perceived problem are both accepted in South Korea (and constitutionally protected) and heralded as a means of change.

South Koreans are not like the Chinese in this effect where one does not protest; especially the government.

I think people here are confusing South Korean culture and etiquette with some of the other Asian cultures.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Since you edited it out (I'm all in favour of selective quoting, but c'mon, it was the next line) I'll say it again...

"If there is any deal in the offing, however unlikely, then it's not going to be sunk because Mr Kim receives a few emails from angry and upset players."

Or from trolls.

Will it do any good? I dunno. It literally can't make things any worse. If there's a deal on the table that we don't know about it will not be taken off the table by angry words from unhappy players. That would be an insane way to run a business. Any business. Anywhere.

Besides, good manners is not a one way street. I wouldn't feel bad about upsetting NCsoft when they've given no indication that they feel bad about upsetting us.

So do nothing...that is your choice.

Just like writing a professional email requesting them to reconsider their options was mine...and I do not regret my choice.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

THIS!!!

Cheers Heroes and Villians!

MT

LOL

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

I think quoting those posts in that order provides a good point-counterpoint to the situation here.

I fully expect that Taek-Jin Kim, Song-Yee Yoon, and Dong-Il Kim are going to recieve hateful nastygrams—or even death threats. Not just from people who can't be civil or diplomatic about this, but also from anti-fans and trolls looking to sabotage the player base's efforts to keep the game alive.

If it hasn't happened yet, it will. Especially since these e-mail addresses were Tweeted.

So the only thing we can do is try to drown out the death threats and hate speech with the kind of thing TonyV's asking from us: stories about how much City of Heroes has meant to us or affected our lives, or reasoned letters explaining why we feel the way we do about their decision to pull the plug and why selling City of Heroes to another party would be a good idea.

If you guys don't want to write letters to NCSoft, that's fine; but just remember, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

I agree with this. This was a rather precipitous step. Anyone can now use these email addresses.


To be fair, CoH is such a tiny part of their portfolio, I wonder how much involvement the CEO had in this decision.


You're missing the point. The people expressing concern are NOT the ones who would misuse the addresses.


Oh, and we're back to categorizing NCSoft as "evil"?

The quote was meant to simply show: Nothing can be achieved by doing nothing. The "evil" here is the lights being turned out on 11/30... The evil is the disappearance of Paragon City. I am sure some people do consider NCSoft evil, but there are many more who see them simply for what they are: a business who made a decision that thousands disagree with...and so those people are trying to do whatever they can to show NCSoft that they can still make a better decision by working with outsiders to not completely end CoH.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

This isn't necessarily true. Certainly, a few harsh emails to NCSoft from members of the community wouldn't fundamentally change the numbers. But humans aren't robots and harming goodwill can certainly harm deals. If NCSoft are in a position where selling won't make them a lot of money, then they could easily decide that we're just not worth dealing with.

Not to mention that potential purchasers could easily be put off if they hear that NCSoft executives got a whole stack of personally abusive email from fans.

Did you even bother reading my post, or are you pretending that what you quoted is all I had to say?

That wasn't the evil I was referring to at all. I spent my entire post addressing the very real possibility that publicly releasing the e-mail addresses of NCSoft's upper echelons will result in trolls and anti-fans sending abusive mail.

If there's people who could send in a clear-headed, convincing letter that demonstrates City of Heroes has more worth selling off than by sitting on the IP, but won't because they don't agree with what TonyV has done here, while the trolls and anti-fans send off their death threats and nastygrams, thereby decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio and giving the bigwigs the impression that the CoH fanbase is an internet hate machine ... That's a pretty good example of evil triumphing because good men did nothing, isn't it?

Seriously, I'm a mite ticked off at Ironblade right now for trying to make it look like I was calling NCSoft evil.

Hooray, guilt-tripping. :|

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

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Think about the Massively poll to fight for City of Heroes or let it go, and why TonyV rallied to have people vote in support of keeping it up. There were still several hundred people voting to let the game die. If Tony hadn't put the call out, and it escaped the notice of the community, how would the numbers have looked?

As an informal, unscientific poll, it didn't hold much value as actual marketing research, but it did hold value symbolically by showing that the decision to shut the game down is unpopular on some level.

But this? This is a bit more serious, since it's directly contacting people in top management. Their e-mail addresses are "in the wild" now. I've seen people post them on Twitter, where nobody's going to see TonyV's pleas to be diplomatic. I have no doubt in my mind that these three are going to receive some abusive mail, whether it be from angry fans/players telling them off, or from trolls and anti-fans taking advantage of this to throw a wrench into things.

The only way to combat that is to write in yourself and try to drown out the negativity.

This.

Those of you who are openly demeaning this latest effort are casting us in the WORST possible light, holding us back, keeping us down, and letting less respectful letters slip by ahead of yours.

Those of you who are speaking your mind directly and concisely are giving NCSoft's management exactly the kind of respect that South Korean business etiquette demands.

Write your emails and letters and STOP insulting our South Korean friends by confusing them with isolated and close-minded cultures.

Edit: And before anyone chimes in with their Team America perspective, I've already received private messages from South Korean-American players thanking me for saying this. So everyone with their foot in their mouth, have some humility for everyone's sake and join our ranks.

Our enemy (time) gains more ground while we argue among ourselves in the trench.

I am... quite humbled. Thank you, I'm glad you think well of it, means a lot. I hope it makes TPTB take a second look at things, myself. But I'm also a realist... more on this below.

But again, sincerely and humbly, thank you very much.

---

Guys and gals, the box has been opened, indeed. And as has been said, the fix, if there is any to this, is what I said in my message, which is, I hope to outnumber, or perhaps outflank, the rabble-rabble of the angry idiots (yes, I'm calling them that) who would verbally beat the living **** out of any of the CEOs.

THAT is the one and only reason I even fired one off. To try to tip the balance from the dumb *****. It may be a futile effort, but once the damage was done, I had to do my part *immediately* so the better message that I hope my letter is wouldn't be lumped into the 'forget that noise' bin of their mail servers. Time was absolutely of the essence in this.

Even then, however, the, oh, 3 or 4 hours maybe? It was perhaps too late to avoid the auto-pruning of anything Co* related. I can only hope at this point.. hey, there's a Pandora's Box reference for ya.

---

And having said THAT... it may be a moot point anyway. One, it could be they'll just ask the email people to give them a new address, shoot it to the important people, and then box the others for now, just dumping everything into a spare server or such to weed out any important emails and junk the rest.

Secondly, they may get a ton of junk mail anyway, and can weed it out themselves very quickly. I know I can with my email. Move the ones I wanna keep into a folder, destroy the rest. Tada.

So they may not even open One. Single. Email. from us.

Regardless, it felt... and now, especially, still does... feel like the right thing is to do something to balance out any bozos who would say the dumbest of things that would do nothing but confirm their decision being right, we players are just pining for the game.

I am not. I can, in fact, live my life without it. I will not be happy about losing the game, but... I'm going to get on with my life because that's what I should do.

I'd just rather it didn't get destroyed and lost like so many other fantastic works of art have in the past, and dishonor/disappoint/disillusion the people who made it:

The Producers, The Publishers, The Devs, the Mods, and Us.

And if they can somehow get some... or all... of Paragon Studios to survive, keep their jobs, keep the game going, and they can keep the game profitable? Bonus. Way the hell awesome bonus.

#SaveCoH
#AP33Forever
Pinnacle Represent!

Mike

/Soapbox

If there was a call for the 'stop' from a Redname... it would have been done already. I can tell you right now that Dr. Aeon and Fire Man are both on. They can get a hold of Zwill, and this whole thread is dead before it really even started. And they're not the only Reds watching.

Further, Zwill would have probably banhammered TonyV, regardless of his involvement, the very minute the post came to his attention, if it was a problem. Forum tweaks such as these are trivial matters on vBulletin. It apparently is not a problem. Yet...?

I'm thinking at this point, the only ones who will protest would likely be the three whos emails are out there... and they are unlikely to do so. Doing so would be... bad PR.

As silly as 'bad PR' sounds there... it's the truth.

Mike