I hate to say this...but, I think it's really over for our beloved game.

Having been with City of Heroes since pre-launch beta, I, like many others, was extremely saddened by the announcement made on Aug. 31. I have been holding out hope that somehow our beloved game would be saved. Sadly though it appears that the Paragon Studios staff is beginning to move on.

Taken from this....

"We’ve been very lucky to land some great talent from 38 Studios and Paragon Studios."

To me, this news does not bode well for any hope of the 'City of' franchise being saved.

I do not share this news to discourage further attempts at saving CoH, however to demonstrate that the efforts might be in vain at this point. Afterall, if the staff of Paragon Studios is moving on....what would our game be like with out them?

There was ~80 people at Paragon Studios, and not all of them were working on CoH. We don't know who it was (it could potentially be one of the ones working on the secret project), or it could be one of the red names. Either way, it doesn't make a difference.

Oh, and fyi, there are negotiations going on between the leadership of (what was) Paragon Studios and NCSoft to spin off the game.

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

There are prominent members of the PS team who have not posted since the announcement was made. I'd been assuming that they were already looking for guaranteed employment.

I've said it before, but these men and women have families and mortgages and RL responsibilities to think of. If they need to take other employment, God bless 'em. Realistically, we were never going to keep everyone from the studio. Keeping even as much as the "Freem 15" would be amazing, in many respects.

I wish those departing every success.

I wish those still fighting the good fight the same.

Honestly, it was over 3 weeks ago.

At one point this game was only run by bareknuckles staff. I think it was around 16 people. So it was 16 people for a whole year producing new content and keeping the game running.

While it may indeed be over as we know it, and indeed it's probably wise to assume that's the most likely outcome, I don't think you can positively infer that from this message, or really any we've gotten.

What's almost surely impossible at this point is that things will suddenly be like they were leading up to the sunset announcement. This posting makes it clear, but I think most of us assumed that most Paragon Studios people were looking for new jobs. If NCSoft had let them go, most of them are unlikely to be able to hold out for a miracle - it just doesn't make sense for them, unless they're personally actively involved in some effort to spin off a new studio. (That this is the plan under negotiation is, I think, mostly an assumption by the community. We know something is being discussed, but not what.)

As long as at least a couple old members are still on the team or the spirit of the game is kept alive by a team with similar ideas, it's fine. If Retro Studios, a company completely seperate from Rare, can come out with Donkey Kong Country Returns and capture the same feel and excitement of the older games, I'm sure a new team could do the same for CoH. They may even do better and improve on a lot of the faults CoH had.

And plus if a new CoH is born, I don't think it's much of a stretch that MANY of the most loyal players will be swarming back. I myself would gladly do so. So maybe we can maintain that family feeling that I think many of us agree was one of CoH's greatest strengths.

At least half the studio were working on non-CoH Paragon studio projects before the closure announcement.
For example, David Nakayama, Second Measure, Dark Watcher and Black Scorpion have all been off CoH for months now.

Why do they need a third party publisher? Is that even necessary these days? Why couldn't they hire the people necessary to handle everything in house?

Make that decision and all you need is the IP released from NCSoft (which will no doubt cost a nasty chunk of change) and financial backing to get the studio back online.

And move the studio to Austin. Cost of living down here us much cheaper than CA and they could hire me since I'm sick of my job and want to branch out.

^ That.

Bonus for some who'd come on over to the Austin area... We have awesome roads over there too. And plenty to see and do.

Mike

/Kerrville/Comfort/Fredricksburg/Medina/Leakey, et al, is a particularly awesome area for motorcyclin' about...

All good points, KK. That last bit was mostly tongue in cheek. Fact is, as far as I can tell from information I've read here, CoH was a profitable enterprise. You'd think that would at least make it easier to get future financial backing. But.. if NCSoft throws a figure out there that's ridiculous on the purchase of the IP, it won't really matter.