A crazy capitalist idea

This is going to sound crazy, and I apologize for that in advance, but here we go.

As far as I can tell from the PR material put out by NC Soft Global, there is no sane business reason to shut down CoH. If they need to free up resources for other projects, it would make far more sense to sell it.

So maybe the players and the Paragon Studios staff should pool their resources together and buy it?

A private equity fund could be set up by the legal staff at Paragon Studios. Anyone who wanted to invest could then contribute to the fund. If the sale succeeds, each contributor would be an "owner". A reward/promotional system of some kind could be set up that cost little or nothing and linked directly to the amount invested. For example:

$1-100 Special forum name color
$101-500 Special forum name color + preferential invites to the Beta Server
$501-1000 All above, plus priority access to a special suggestions forum
$1001-5000 Limited (maybe 3 years) VIP status without paying a subscription fee
$5001-10,000 Lifetime VIP status
$10,001-25,000 All of the above plus extra character slots
$25,001-50,000 Preferred stock in the actual corporate body that purchases the IP
$50,001-250,000 Dividend-paying stock in the actual corporate body that purchases the IP
$250,001 and above Voting stock in the actual corporate body that purchases the IP

Or something along those lines.

We have until November 30th, right? Perhaps until the end of the year or a bit beyond. I'm certain the programs, databases, and software (the actual IP) is not going to just disappear, so once the fund was set up a deadline of six or ten months could be established until the idea was considered a failure and remaining funds were returned in proportion to the amount invested. So, yes, there would be a strong risk for anyone who put up their money to save the game, but for the larger investors there would also be potential for great reward.

Just an idea.

Brian K. Miller

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AE Story Arc #536752: Torn Asunder
An army from far, far away has been driven from their homeland and landed on Earth. They desperately need a new home and they're liking the look of ours.

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Unfortunately there IS no legal staff at Paragon Studios. They have one or two techs to make sure the servers don't crash and burn before the end of November and a couple community support people to make sure the forums don't dissolve into anarchy (and put out information as NCSoft releases it). That's pretty much it.

Now, on the bright side, negotiations are ALREADY going on.

Brian Clayton, GM of Paragon Studios is apparently in talks with NCSoft to see if the game can be rescued. As soon as there's news, we'll know something. Then we can start asking how we can support the game and its developers in a monetary fashion.

Now, even if it can be saved, there's still going to be a service interruption in December. There's a LOT of parts to the game that are tied into NCSoft's billing system, and it'll probably take time to rework them into another billing system or simply turn them into normal content in the game.

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As long as the game is free-to-play you can count me in.

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Understood.

I wish they'd shout every little change in the situation out. But that's not normally the way businesses conduct themselves.

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Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project