The most productive, practical thing we can do...

Is lobby on behalf of our dev's at Cryptic!

I feel I got us off to a decent start.

What I would like to do is start posting testimonials of all the awesome stuff our dev's have done for our game, and why they are so important to us, on Cryptic's forums. It would be great to show the Cryptic staff as well as the Champions community why we love our dev's so much and what exactly they have brought to our game, as well as demonstrating how important it is to the COH playerbase to see them working on a similar game and that we would be more likely to head over there as a whole on that basis.

Maybe let's try and hold the Paragon team together first.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297497

I admire your sentiment, but I have to point out that it may be a little premature - given the situation of the ongoing negotiations.

I keep hearing about ongoing negotiations. Do we know that this is happening or is everyone just repeating rumors from the boards?

Yeah... Honestly, while I love you all as a community- Don't get me wrong- I do not consider the effort to 'save' COH to be the least bit practical.

I think the best productive and practical thing we can do is encourage Cryptic to hire our dev's before they all find other jobs. Probably to go work on generic fantasy MMO's, which would be a giant shame.

Unless one of our fellow players, a well known author, decided to smear her name with us and by extension her fans, than I'll take it at her word that she's on the outside edge of the loop when it comes to "the negotiations". To which, at last report, said negotiations are still happening.

Such things take time as it's simply not a matter of:

PS to NCSoft: Hey how much ya want for Cityof
NCSoft: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$
PS: tosses a breif case full of greenbacks on the table. That should cover it, see ya!

Theres the IP, engine license (which involves a third party), in-house soft ware rights, possible request for hardware and costs, transer of data - be it game info, player account info, etc..., then there is various merchandise rights and on it goes and it all does end up in a dollar amount.

Not only does PS have to negotiate with investor(s) once they have all of this various information from NCSoft. They may have interested parties they approached NCSoft with first, but once they hammer all the details out with NCSoft, it's then back to the investor(s). They might in turn request certain changes on NCSoft's first offer, and so PS goes back to NCSoft. And on that goes.

All the while, NCSoft has to go about their business of shutting down the game on their end, and manage the business of the rest of the company. Which keeps execs busy, so they aren't at NCSoft's beck and call. Just a request for a new meeting can take days to go through, then there's the matter of scheduling, which would involve multiple departments execs, their legal dept, etc...

So.. Negotiations are in process. With a company that laid off its dev staff already, that was working on an 8 year old game that made up, what, 3% of its profit? But it's ok, because some science fiction authors I've never heard of are sympathetic?

And so, because of that, we should be assuming that our dev's will be magically re-hired, after the company that swatted them away like flies, who has a long history of killing MMO's, will somehow magically enter negotiations to sell an MMO that is worth essentially nothing to them... And most importantly, that we as a community should just assume, that by some miracle, another company will choose to buy an MMO, and then pinpoint every single member of its staff... And that this entire elaborate process will happen before any of them get sub-par jobs elsewhere?

Really? This is the plan?

It'd be a pretty big step down in quality for the CoH devs.

An action-MMO(with a block feature!) by Jack Emerett? How could that go wrong? Yeah, no thanks champ. I'll stick with the game I love no matter how crazy the plan to save it is.

way ahead of ya. http://co-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=2419741&postcount=77
I do feel your comments are unhelpful and nonconstructive here, and question whether you actually have the professional background to be making those statements with your air of certainty, but whatever, as a last ditch effort, I made the suggestions, hopefully some of them will even be on co, rather than being fast tracked to neverwinter like babs was.

also, suggestion box? nobody reads the suggestion box. i went in the main forums at least.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Your belittling comments here toward the SaveCoH effort are not going to steer either the community, the gaming press, celebrities or any industry veterans, former Paragon Studios devs or negotiators toward rallying behind you. This isn't me being a jerk. It's just me being frank (I have stuff to do). We'll get to "your idea". It's on the list.

There are reasons why the case of this MMO shutting down in particular is a big deal within and outside the industry.

I noticed you signed the petition, and put the word out on some Facebook pages. Great! But you're not done yet! Be sure to send an email to NCSoft, buy a mask and cape or print out a mask and send it to NCSoft, be sure to play the game, hit the flashmobs and rallying events, keep an eye on the Titan Network's Calls to Action, watch the events calendar, write a handwritten, certified letter to NCSoft, and copy/paste any polite, reasonable letters/emails you've sent and place them in comments sections beneath articles on news sites all around the web.

Be a part, don't be apart. (See what I did there?)

(Remade my post with lots of helpful links and reposted it. )