Do you think if this game was better advertised early on...
Well, I'd have to say you are probably in the minority then. Most people become attached to one character or a small subset of their characters, and want to continue playing and improving that character. Leveling a character to 50, then scrapping and starting a new toon is not what I want out of a game.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I don't think they're in the minority. I actually think alt-centric, "50 is a journey" was a majority perspective from the CoH player community. And I say that as someone just like you - I have played my core characters to death. But while everyone I know has one or a few characters like that, almost all of them were far bigger on alts than I was. Even the power-gamer types.
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I'm the journey to 50 and move on to another toon myself. I might dabble in end content to see what it's about with a character or two but to me, there is no reason to improve. There are no more levels to be gained, the incarnate story arcs are done, and usually after that it's tryign to get on a team for incarnate stuff, which seemed to consist of the usual three and magi farms, which get old fast outside the odd MoM or DD and other like the UG that comes around every so often and have to be basically in the right time and place, lucky and logged or else might find not much interest in it. So I make a new character. and after playing the end game, it became even more get to 50 and drop them. Probably one of the reasons I never bothered with rushing, or PLing or trying to get to 50 as fast as possible because 50 is the end for my stable.
-Female Player-
yeah. I have a feeling if NCSoft do give COX a whirl again, it probably will be more along the lines of the MMO leaders and how they do things, or turn it into COX-Fantasy style. Statesman a barbarian, Positron an elf, takes 504 hours to get to level 10 out of 80 and thats fast tracking, more loot stuff and costumes no longer there for looks.
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I've pretty much lived on the Internet since 1996, but I don't remember seeing any advertising for this game. I'm also a comic book collector who purchased the first several issues of the CoH comic, and somehow I never made the connection that the comic was tied into a game. Meanwhile, I'd heard of Everquest, I'd heard of Ultima Online, and of course I heard about WoW.
Not to mention that, as far as I know, they never put any emphasis on the fact that you could play the game on a Mac. That kind of news gets around the Mac community, where we're accustomed to every new non-Blizzard PC game being "Windows-only". But I don't remember hearing anything. At least nothing that I still remembered by 2008 when I finally got a Mac capable of playing games like this.
ETA: I guess I should ask - was this game Mac-compatible from Day One? Or was the Cider wrapper thing added later?
The traditional 4-color comic super-hero is a bit of a niche concept compared to fantasy. It has strong appeal in America, and less so abroad. That's certainly one of the challenges, but also one of the strengths that City of Heroes has.
I think what films such as Avengers and X-Men have shown is that with the right twist, those same characters can have huge international appeal.
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CoH never would have outsold WoW.
CoH was horrendously marketed. To me it's a superhero game, but you can play a wizard, a troll, a mad scientist, a fairy, a cowboy, a soldier, medieval warrior, a space man, or an alien. The character creator was NOT advertised the way it could have been. |
Think of a mage, a paladin or even a plain warrior. They have powers and skills beyond the human range.
In fact WoW would be a excellent superhero game changing nothing except the environement that is seting it in the modern times instead of the medieval ones
CoH never would have outsold WoW.
CoH was horrendously marketed. To me it's a superhero game, but you can play a wizard, a troll, a mad scientist, a fairy, a cowboy, a soldier, medieval warrior, a space man, or an alien. The character creator was NOT advertised the way it could have been. |
![Frown](images/smilies/frown.gif)
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*hangs her head and sighs*
Y'know, I didn't want to make this public, but...
It's my fault. I'm the reason that they never advertised the game. They figured, "Hey, we've got this schnook doing it for free, why should *WE* spend money?"
Public stonings will be held on December 1st.
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
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I don't think they're in the minority. I actually think alt-centric, "50 is a journey" was a majority perspective from the CoH player community. And I say that as someone just like you - I have played my core characters to death. But while everyone I know has one or a few characters like that, almost all of them were far bigger on alts than I was. Even the power-gamer types.
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And Dark Respite? I let my sub drop for vastly more time than I paid in over the last two years, so I'll take some blame and get stoned with you.
Be well, people of CoH.
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*hangs her head and sighs*
Y'know, I didn't want to make this public, but... It's my fault. I'm the reason that they never advertised the game. They figured, "Hey, we've got this schnook doing it for free, why should *WE* spend money?" Public stonings will be held on December 1st. Michelle aka Samuraiko/Dark_Respite |
No stonings for you. Can't waste good talent like yours.
![Wink](images/smilies/wink.gif)
There I was between a rock and a hard place. Then I thought, "What am I doing on this side of the rock?"
I think NCSoft thoughthat they can't war with newly arriving Marvel MMO (I doubt they checked what kind of game it is they just knew marvel was releasing something to do with MMO) with all the movies and such they though CoH will not have any chance along with other secret reasons it was a good time like any to cancel game.
For outselling WoW. Superhero genre probably can't do that. Other than USA and some European contries Superhero genre is not popular. Most of world knows marvel and DC and again most countries don't have any ongoing superhero genre on their own. But all countries have some sort of myths and fantasies that is fantasy genre is more popular than any (and yes sci-fi is also limited though not as much as superhero genre).
WoW's advantages that CoH didn't had;
1) Blizzard was already a successful company and had a good fanbase in both USA, europe and Asia. Only company that comes close to this is Bioware but their products are have less impact on Asian market.
2) Blizzard was releatively recently released their mew Warcraft expansion and was successful in seeling game so it would fit to continue story. If they released any other game as MMO (like Diablo or Starcraft) it may have been successful but not a big hit as Warcraft (Diablo 2's ending was like an ending of all so continuing from there maynot good for starcraft there was a long gap and like I said fantasy genre is more accepted than any)
3) Blizzard didn't make any partnership with any other company they both produced and distributed WoW which means there was less paperwork when trying to make some decisions.
4) Time was good not only because there were less MMO's but people already got bored what is out there and were searching for something new. It is debatable CoH had same advantage but WoW came out after a few other fantasy oriented MMO's CoH was first and only superhero one at that time.
5) For 5 or 6 years (until Starcraft 2 released) Blizzard literally poured all of their power into WoW and this is something. We are talking about a studio that manage to get all kind of movie-stars to play in their advertisement. Blizzard took a gamble by pouring everything they have into WoW and be rewarded for that.
There are a few other points but these are IMO major points.
It seems to me that NCsoft doesn't believe in the subscription model. Based on their behavior, they assume that gamers buy the latest thing on impulse, play it like crazy for a week or a month until they're burned out, leave for a while, then return when another expansion comes out, which they burn through in a few days. Then they move on for good.
Advertising an eight-year-old game this past summer would have been viewed as a waste of money, even though Avengers was a huge hit, because those impulse-buying gamers knew that CoH was ancient and therefore unworthy of their attention.
The problem with MMOs is that it's flat-out impossible to make enough content to keep short-attention-span players who want to race from zero to level 50 (or 80 or 85) in a day and half of non-stop keybanging. I'm guessing a large percentage of purchases of MMOs are soloists who treat MMOs like standalone games that they "beat," and then they move on to the next thing.
If that's the way players really behave, then the CoH model is a financial loser compared to the GW2 model (only $15 revenue for a month's subscription compared to $60 for GW2). F2P only makes that calculation worse. Granted, some small number of players will hang around for years, but the lost opportunity costs make CoH a poor investment in corporate board rooms.
The CoH devs did a ton of things to encourage people to team, I presume in order to engender a feeling of community and attachment to other players, all in the effort to promote long-term subscribers. I'm guessing players of CoH, and perhaps hard-core MMO players in general, are more mature and stable than computer gamers in general.
CoH players are like loyal Ford customers who always buy F150s and keep them until the odometer rolls over a few times. But NCsoft doesn't want to sell F150s, even though they might make a decent profit at it.
They want to sell iPhones, because they know iPhone owners always have to have the latest iPhone, and will ditch the old one the instant a new one comes out.
It may be as simple as NCsoft thinking they should be more like Apple than Ford.
I think the premise of this thread is flawed if we're comparing ourselves to the success of WoW. City of Heroes had a pretty solid subscription number for many years. WoW was and is the giant outlier. Witness many of the games that have debuted since that started strong and withered within months. If you've got several hundred thousand playing your game, you're doing well. If you've still got several hundred thousand accounts 5 years later, you're in the minority.
Marketing could have been different, but not in the beginning of the game. Remember that Cryptic was a start up, and no one had done a Superhero game before. There were very few console games that were better than mediocre, let alone something online. If a game doesn't hit the marketing hard at the beginning, no amount of push later is going to make much of a difference unless you're totally revamping the product. Word of mouth served this game very well, probably better than most.
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One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
WoW is a world of its own. That being said, friend that plays WoW told me they made a Kung-Fu Panda raid that needs 40 people because it has over a hundred million hit points...yeah. It's great that they have millions of monkeys pressing 12345 but when you're reaching the point of self-parody, might be time to take a step back and look at the game and see where it needs to go.
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WoW is a world of its own. That being said, friend that plays WoW told me they made a Kung-Fu Panda raid that needs 40 people because it has over a hundred million hit points...yeah. It's great that they have millions of monkeys pressing 12345 but when you're reaching the point of self-parody, might be time to take a step back and look at the game and see where it needs to go.
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To be fair, there is a *severe* upgrade in quality of gear for the players, so you are dealing more damage as well... welcome to the world of player power inflation (like we have had as well).
*hangs her head and sighs*
Y'know, I didn't want to make this public, but... It's my fault. I'm the reason that they never advertised the game. They figured, "Hey, we've got this schnook doing it for free, why should *WE* spend money?" Public stonings will be held on December 1st. Michelle aka Samuraiko/Dark_Respite |
We may be able to blame any number of people for the lack of advertisement, but blaming you of all people is just plain silly.
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WoW is a world of its own. That being said, friend that plays WoW told me they made a Kung-Fu Panda raid that needs 40 people because it has over a hundred million hit points...yeah. It's great that they have millions of monkeys pressing 12345 but when you're reaching the point of self-parody, might be time to take a step back and look at the game and see where it needs to go.
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And in a game where you can easily equip a character to solo max group sizes at max difficulties and have bosses that are also nothing but bags of HPs (Reichsman) and that also just played me-too by adding an endless endgame treadmill, I'd be a bit more careful with the self parody card.
That it would have been a very competitive/outsold WoW?
Just curious what you all think. Personally, I would rather have people blatantly copy this game than WoW (Not like champions or DC, like, Carbon clone with different names and such.) |
Would it have outsold WoW?
Not in a million, billion, trillion years. I'm not sure who (or how many) at Blizzard sold their souls for this success. But WoW is just an absolute mutant phenomenon of an MMO. I honestly don't think ANYTHING's going to duplicate the ridiculous level of success it had.
That said, would CoH have benefited from an actual and continuous advertising budget?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but HELL YEAH!
Think about how many comic shops there are in the US.
Polybags every now and again.
Ads in comics for each issue and maybe a multi-page booklet format for expansions?
I honestly think that, with a proper advertsing budget, CoH could have continued drawing players in at a healthy rate and maintained MUCH higher retention numbers.
Paragon at least understood that a great community can do wonders for retention. But NCSoft, I don't think, understands the community aspect of these games and how they can be used to drive profits. All they tried to do was eliminate any and all expenses. Never mind the fact that, at times, you have to spend money to make money.
What could CoH have done with retention numbers in the 100-150K range?
God...
The traditional 4-color comic super-hero is a bit of a niche concept compared to fantasy. It has strong appeal in America, and less so abroad. That's certainly one of the challenges, but also one of the strengths that City of Heroes has.
I think what films such as Avengers and X-Men have shown is that with the right twist, those same characters can have huge international appeal. |
I hate that stuff. I mean, I really, really detest it. Always have - save for a few more
oddball books, I grew up unable to tolerate most superhero comics. Terrible writing, bad
art, mostly uninteresting characters and concepts, and endlessly looping plots that never
go anywhere in the long term(since the goal is to preserve the franchise in perpetuity,
rather than tell a good, coherant story. Yes, I know exceptions like Watchmen.)
But I love this game. It lets you have fun with the genre, without subjecting yourself to
all the crap that makes it bad. Many of my friends aren't into superhero stuff either(even
if they don't hate most of it as much as I do,) and most of them, too, were able to find
things they enjoyed about this game, even if it wasn't a priority with some of them.
If this game had presented itself like, say, Champions does, I guarantee most of us would
never have tried it out, though. All the people who like that stuff, can play CityOf and get
as much as they want. All the people who don't can play CityOf, and find things
to enjoy as well, without having to immerse themselves in FREEM constantly.
That's why CityOf is a great game.
I can't speak for other European countries, but I've been claiming for the situation here in Spain for years.
Lets put an example... while in other countries Issue 14 (Architect) had a boxed version, here we could be consider ourselves lucky if we could find a dusted box of City of Villains... release version! which means Issue 6!... meanwhile shelves got crowded with all the new games from Blizzard, Activision and EA. We had no Good vs. Evil edition, nor Architect Edition, and barely a few Going Rogue boxes.
And that's about boxes, you can imagine having hours (so to speak) of Blizzard, Activision and EA games advertisements on TV, while no reference at all was made about CoH not even in PC games magazines like PC Games or Micromania... lets add these magazines are not "n00b", are being published since 1994 or so, so they should know the ropes already, my guess is if they didn't say anything it's because NCSoft Brighton or NCSoft main offices didn't move a single finger regarding spreading word about the mere existence of this gorgeous game, at least here.
What was the situation in other EU countries?
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I can't speak for other European countries, but I've been claiming for the situation here in Spain for years.
Lets put an example... while in other countries Issue 14 (Architect) had a boxed version, here we could be consider ourselves lucky if we could find a dusted box of City of Villains... release version! which means Issue 6!... meanwhile shelves got crowded with all the new games from Blizzard, Activision and EA. We had no Good vs. Evil edition, nor Architect Edition, and barely a few Going Rogue boxes. And that's about boxes, you can imagine having hours (so to speak) of Blizzard, Activision and EA games advertisements on TV, while no reference at all was made about CoH not even in PC games magazines like PC Games or Micromania... lets add these magazines are not "n00b", are being published since 1994 or so, so they should know the ropes already, my guess is if they didn't say anything it's because NCSoft Brighton or NCSoft main offices didn't move a single finger regarding spreading word about the mere existence of this gorgeous game, at least here. What was the situation in other EU countries? |
Architect Edition and Going Rogue were never released as a boxed set for EU accounts.
I know that it was *incredibly* hard to find *any* of the CoX boxes soon after release (although strangely enough, at events that the EU offices attended and they had a merchandising stall, you could still pick up the CoV Collectors edition).
Apart from that, very very thin on the ground for several years.
It had a popular brand - the Warcraft lore setting was already very popular in gaming contexts, and already had spin-off products. You could buy licensed Warcraft world settings books for Dungeons and Dragons tabletop play, for example. The previous Warcraft RTS games had a large following, and the game maker was popular. WoW successfully re-used some of the most popular design aspects of prior MMOs - they may not have been that original, but they were smart about what they put in and how it worked.
And perhaps most importantly, it was the first game to really hit those sweet spots simultaneously. From there the network effect ensured it got even more massive from there.
I do not think any MMO could have bested it. As much as I love it myself, CoH's appeal was too limited to compete with a game of WoW's scale. A lot of hard-core MMO players were not satisfied with CoH - it had no PvP, no end game, and not much grind. Yes, there are people who claim to like grind. Better advertising would not have addressed any of that.
By making a game that appealed to people who didn't care for other MMOs, CoH became a game that could probably never be as large as the most popular MMOs.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA