Put us out of our misery

Forbin is the troll here, always has been. js

I've been here longer than many of you (early beta.) My wife and I have been playing CoH for over 8 years...

That said, why is it magically the publisher's job to personally tell you anything all of a sudden, instead of the development team? Why are the people who worked on the game mean nothing to you whatsoever now - and their news of the game shutting down something you choose to ignore? Did you go and thank NCSoft for the issue releases instead of Paragon/Cryptic all these years?

Also, the TonyV thing - he's pretty much given up his personal efforts and wants us to contact the gang at NCSoft. There is no 'talks' between Titan Network and NCSoft because NCSoft has so far refused to even give one reply to TonyV and Titan Network.

I want this game to continue but I'm realistic.

Honestly, I take the silence as a promising sign.

If NCSoft was doing the "right" thing, then they ought by now to have put something on the launcher about the "sunset". My memory may be faulty but I recall that with Tabula Rasa they wasted little time doing just that.

If they hoped to sell the game along with its existing base of users then the last thing they'd want to do is to encourage users to start leaving in droves.

The silence suggests the possibility that "negotiations" might actually be happening. In that case, nobody says anything that might derail the deal.

In any case, two weeks is a short time; too short to reasonably expect to hear anything from a large business that moves at the speed of bureaucracy. Especially if there IS a negotiation in play. They need to work out what the sunset plans actually are, and how those plans will be implemented. They need to work out how to contact everyone, including the people like Shadowe's wife, who just play the game and don't follow gaming news. If there are offers, then they have to put a dollar value on the IP and its customers, and they have to draw up contracts, and they have to dicker.

Expecting to hear anything at all before the end of September is an unreasonable expectation, IMO.

I think the community outpouring has been great; I never thought that people online would band together like this over a video game. I'll keep signing any petition that comes my way, but it looks as if NC Soft isn't changing its mind.

I don't want to sound negative and be one of the few who drives down the energy of the Save City Of Heroes campaign, but TonyV posted exactly what I was thinking in his latest post. Talks aside, I doubt any of the development team has been or is willing to stick around and not look for a job on the slim chance NC Soft might change its mind. The biggest threat to the death of this game is already happening. I'm sure that some of the dev.'s have pretty much secured new jobs and TonyV is aware of this.

The biggest trial will be getting a reaction from NC Soft in the next two to three weeks. The executives at NC Soft know that no sane person from Paragon Studios is going to stick around in the hope that the company might reverse its decision. My feeling is that after a month to five weeks from the date of the statement being made to sunset the game is the most integral time period. After the next two to three weeks I wouldn't put much hope into the game being saved. TonyV knows this. Furthermore, if the developers get hired elsewhere, City Of Heroes will not be the same game even if it survives under another studio's banner. TonyV is seeming more desperate and I know I am not the only one sensing this. Since he has direct contact with some of the people at Paragon Studios I would not take this as a good sign.

In the meantime everyone should keep up the support, I will, but be very realistic that as with anything in life, nothing lasts forever and that this game had a great run of eight years. Eight years is much longer than what most MMO's stick around for nowadays and we should be happy that we got to play for this long and happy that the player base isn't taking this lying down. I do feel that NC Soft has a right to do what it wants (obviously) with its own property, but they should have given more respect to the development team and players and have given City Of Heroes a proper send off. They should have kept a small staff on to create a small end of the world event. One final assault from The Battalion let's say.

As for emailing the top executives at NC Soft? That's something I'd refrain from doing. My father works in upper management and while it may not be a video game company he works for, I imagine that the upper management at NC Soft is very similar. I doubt that most of the executives even play video games. They are only concerned about making more money and are not entirely too concerned with an old IP that they find insignificant. Emailing the executives directly, in my mind, is a bad idea and may only serve to annoy them and reinforce their decision to shutter the game. If I know my dad and his coworkers well enough, annoyance is probably what will be the end result and make them less likely to reconsider sunsetting City Of Heroes.

Actually, I thought I heard NCSoft was helping with a job fair for Paragon shortly after the layoff.