Posi Confirms: COH Largest and Most Active MMO Ever Shut Down

While your point about the back and forth of negotiations (even when they break down) is well taken, the NFL analogy has one aspect that's dissimilar from the CoH situation: Football has an understood window of opportunity, i.e. its "season", but MMORPGs have no sense of looming deadlines that would bring the parties back to the negotiating table. Worse, as time passes and new games are released, CoH loses perceived value as "old", making it easier for NCSoft to write it off as not worth the effort to sell or resurrect.

That's the only reason I'm not completely discouraged at the lack of news from either red names or NCSoft. In fact, if there were leaks coming out about the last round of negotiations, that would be a sign that people were burning their bridges and have given up entirely on making a deal.

Heh, that might be too out there for me. Garriot had a hand in many NCSoft projects that went west being the CEO.

He was also instrumental in resurrecting Dungeon runners (which tanked) and of course Tabula rasa which allegedly cost $100mil which also tanked by only getting $11 mil for the year it was running. (In comparison, CoX during that same period made $28mil)

CoX probably was one or the only one that Garriot was involved in that made enough money. Maybe that's why among the NCSoft shuttered games, CoX is the only one that lasted longer than 3 years.

But if it wasn't about money and were just a grudge against him...the perfect time to wash their hands of him completely would've been when Cryptic decided to work on a directly competing product (MUO) and maybe just let them keep CoX and part ways then.

But we're back to CoX making $25mil that year being too tempting to let go.



* Again, the above is mostly speculation...it's a bit fun to put on the tinfoil every now and then till more credible information shows up.

Well, got to admit we are emotionally invested and that's never good in business, not as an economical investor.

But yes, Paragon Studios like an independent development house would be in a good position to secure some VC money. It's a team of proven developers, with a money maker in the pocket to make sure any side project sees the light of light (eventually, under moderated budget) and potentially release a big splash. It more than complies with the VC logic of investing in high risk companies and expect less than 10% of them not to go bankrupt and then sell out for a few million once their products become a huge social hit.

The problem with that type of investment is at some point in grouth VCs may actually force a sale and some one like Activision or EA ends up gublilng them up.

Good management always understands that stressing your employees out by demanding upsales is not the best way to encourage effective upsales.

Since the "we exhausted all options" bull****, I have held the mind there is zero hope for this game.

My only hope today is Matt will find the financial backing to start up a new project. CoH was a great game but there were so many things that could be better, so many artificial barriers that can be removed only in an all-new title. So my hope is they will learn not only from CoH's downfalls, but also from the downfalls of Champions and DCuO (hopefully also from the advancements in Star Trek Online's race creator) and come up with a much better version that somehow retains enough of the feel from City of Heroes.

I explained the cultural aspect poorly. Here is the example I'm familiar with, Anime licensing in the early 90s. Previously the only anime that legally came over to NA were for TV syndication/broadcast and were altered and dub for our consumption. Gigantor, Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets, Starblazers, Robotech. Direct sales to consumers of subtitled and in the original language anime was unheard of. It's one of the reasons university club fansubs were the way of things.

There were a limited number of players in NA in those early days. Viz was directly owned by a major Japanese publisher. AnimEigo's Robert Woodhead lived in Japan for several years while porting his Wizardry PC games. His wife if Japanese and it was because of his name was recognized, it allowed him to secure the Urusei Yatsura TV license from the company that owned Viz before Viz got into anime.

Other license holders in Japan had little information as to what was a good price their IP. Some were fairly high for series that were popular among the various university clubs in NA. Because of that some of the NA distributors went with the "make money from cheap Adult anime licensing so we could afford the popular mainstream title". That's how ADV and Central Park Media were able to build a reputation with other Japanese publishers. They had to prove they were successful first with minor properties before the popular ones could even be discussed.

This made it very difficult for new players to enter the marketplace in the mid to late 90s. You needed a preexisting relationship or be a known player to even get a meeting. And even then your very first licenses tend to be priced a little higher than normal. It was a difficult market to break into and this was before companies like Bandai decided to do it themselves, taking all their popular IP off the table.

As for NCSoft itself, I was suggesting a corporate culture were selling wasn't even thought of as an option. If the idea of selling it off simply isn't part of your companies DNA, it doesn't mater how much due diligence an investor group does based on "insider" provided numbers to come up with a fair offer from their POV.

I admit my "hubris/pride" comment is based more on senior management actions I've seen in both NA and European companies over my long years, rejecting ideas simply because they hadn't thought of it first or have dismissed out of hand because it was suggest by a group of underlings who didn't have PhDs or MBAs or didn't attend the same elite universities or colleges that senior management had.

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if Matt finds backing that at some point someone buys the IP from NCSoft, so they can make CoH2. That maybe a totally different negotiation.

They wouldn't have to start from scratch and they would be able to reconnect with a portion of the playerbase and a larger portion of players that know that Paragon Studios did a good job with CoH1.

In actuality, there is no difference between the two cultures as far as associative pride goes. The Anime matter required establishing a relationship. Your Euro/NA corporate culture example is another example of establishing a relationship.

In either case you have people not taking another group of people seriously (for a variety of sub motives) because they are not a known entity.

In the end we would like to see something where an idea stood or fell on it's own merits, not because the idea came from someone we don't know or didn't graduate from X.

It is unfortunate but I think once the game shuts down, CoH 2 becomes even less plausible.

There is always the "only a subset of the original will play it" thing, but now in addition a lot of the general market may also think "oh a sequel to a failed game." Most people out there will forever associate the City of Heroes label with failure.

There is also the baggage that comes from restricting your lore in a way that it works as a sequel.

At this point, buying the CoH IP solely in a way to make a brand new game may be a waste of money and an development encumbrance. Would be just better to start anew with a brand new IP, or with a license from another comic book publisher... I would LOVE to see a game based on the expanded Savage Dragon mini-verse

Another idea is to make something way looser. Imagine the Minecraft of super hero gaming... the devs won’t work on creating new content, but instead give the player tools to create their content, content that is much better balance-restricted than the AH in coh but also much more organic (you place your content in the world, not a holo-deck.)

The devs can spend most their development time creating new environments, themes, soundtracks, power sets (or frameworks or whatever) and character customization options. Maybe have a couple guys cranking content in the content creator just to have some stuff at launch day.

On that note… imagine if instead of picking your gloves, you picked from chunks of gloves and were able to place them anywhere in the arm you wish… you want a glowing ball on the back of your fist, go for it. Want to push it to your wrist? Go for it. Middle of the arm? Sure why not. Rotate it so the stripe in the center is 45% degrees? Customizable power!

Man... I just derrailed big time.

I feel like I'm derailing this even more (man, this thread moves FAST!) but no, Minecraft doesn't charge for updates, as I detailed. Neither is customer service - once you buy the game, if something breaks down or bugs or the login servers go down (so they're still paying CS people and for the login server) then they take care of that.

It's completely possible to make a game like this AND make money. It wouldn't hurt game developers to be told that once they sell a product, the product belongs to the player and they CANNOT take it away. Taking away THEIR servers is all well and good, but they should not have the right to remove our ability to host our own servers if we so choose.

It's a sale, not a rental.

Unfortunately, those deadline pressures apply to the negotiating parties disproportionately. NCSoft had already crossed their Rubicon with CoH and Paragon Studios on August 31st (hereinafter referred to as Black Friday), so the passing of each one after that doesn't offer them enticements to return to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, anyone hoping to save CoH is under the gun, since as you say, once the lights go out, getting the customers back will be very difficult. If both parties stood to lose their stakes after a certain date, revisiting the sale of CoH would be more attractive, but that's not the case.

As things stand, NCSoft has decided to act, to put it in a less than kind simile, like gangsters torching a mobbed-up bar for the insurance, i.e. whatever balance sheet write-off NCSoft hopes to get from the closure of Paragon Studies, instead of worrying about its clientele.

The City of Heroes IP would definitely be another set of negotiations. The CoH lore, however, is probably the least valuable aspect of the game, particularly when established IPs from DC, Marvel, and even Champions* are taken into account. (The CoH code is strictly fire sale stuff.) If that also includes the CoH game's "look and feel", then maybe a spiritual successor with City of the Reborn or what have you might work. NCSoft has still shat in the punchbowl.


* My own impression is that Cryptic has done an absolutely dismal job of translating Champions lore to an MMORPG. Their snarky attitudes towards the superhero genre (which clearly come from the top) made playing the trial, well, a trial for me. More's the pity—Foxbat is actually a great villain in his pen-and-paper incarnation.

Dang, i glossed over this...that's happening too often now

Yes, $8-20mil sounds like a reasonable offer from a seller's point of view if that were the bids with $15mil probably a contender. $8mil would probably be too low for NCSoft to consider selling but an ok starting point

But from an investor's view, i would think even $15mil would be an uncomfortable risk. Unless they already have something set up, they still have to establish the infrastructure to operate the game which would add to the initial investment.

Not sure how much that added cost would be but maybe a hint from when Turbine decided to run DDO on their own without a publisher after getting an $18mil funding from a vc.

So the time to recoup their investment would get jacked up to years even if they slash to a skeleton crew. Then again, CoX is primarily a content-driven game...with decreased staffing, it could affect rates of development and run risk of more people leaving or spending less, and increasing the time to recover their money. Also considering CoX's revenue was still expected to decrease before the closure.

And that $18mil turbine example was back in 2003...not sure if that's still reasonable today.

On this point, I don't think you'll find many supporters, either among the anti-NCSoft crowd or the pro-NCSoft crowd, or the much more numerous in-between crowd who know better than to post their thoughts here. Few here are associating City of Heroes with failure. Even those who don't blame NCSoft for closing City of Heroes aren't calling it a failure; on the contrary, they're speaking in admiration for the long, 8 year-run the game had under NCSoft (of all companies).

One thing most of us actually have in common is praise for City of Heroes as a success--and when I say most of us, I don't just mean the COH community (such as it is, these days), but the industry and gaming media as well. No one is in the dark about what happened, only about how and why it happened. Gaming magazines and websites are calling COH a trailblazing success and they're calling the closure premature, and they'll be saying the same thing five years from now. Super hero MMOs weaknesses will continue to be compared to COH's strengths for many years to come. So, to the contrary, I think most people out there will forever associate the City of Heroes label with success. COH forged a new sub-genre within the industry, and did it with class and originality, and had a long life jam-packed with awesome updates--and it was cut woefully short.

Based on what we know about Issue 24 and plans for successive issues, I would have liked to have seen a couple more years at least, a resolution to the Coming Storm storyline, followed by a COH 2 announcement for a game where we'd all enter into it with characters that felt more powerful in the early levels (of course, now I know that NCSoft cancelled COH 2 before it even got off the ground). Even then, I would have preferred to see COH put into an EQ-style low development priority mode (this is different from saying maintenance mode; EQ still receives updates) for many years to come, but I would have never really expected NCSoft to go the Sony Station route (and I wouldn't have held it against them--it's not everyone's business model).

I also think people here are underestimating the value of the IP. I hold a pretty different suspicion than most of you (maybe all of you), regarding the likelihood that we'll see a COH 2 anytime [relatively] soon. I'm paraphrasing, but in some recent emails to fans who continued to write in to NCSoft (yes, someone in NCSoft actually sent out a few replies to fans--the exact response is on the Titan Forums somewhere), they hinted at plans for something they were sure COH fans would be pleased with, along with a rather heavy-handed assurance that they were sure they would not regret their decision to close City of Heroes down in the future. But hold on to your hats--no, really, hold on to your hats. And your pants, especially around the backside. Because while I actually expect there might be a COH 2 in the planning stages somewhere, I also suspect there's a likely reason why they wouldn't have green-lighted Paragon's plans for a more realistic, more mature COH 2 (and partly why they've now fired Paragon to boot). Two words: "grind fest."

Probably aimed at a less mature audience. And given what I suspect some stuffy suits "statistical market analyses" might have turned up about more profitable demographics, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd long considered bringing in "new blood" in the form of an entirely new studio to continue the IP, sacrifice our community for a larger more profitable one, and set afire Paragon Studios' design vision.

I don't think Starsman is talking about anyone here. I think he's talking about everyone else in the world, like the people in the gaming press that all (wrongly) assumed that it was shut down because it wasn't bringing in profit anymore.

Edit: Hell, he said it in the sentence before the one you quoted. He's talking about the general market.

And those assumptions shriveled up and died within a few weeks. Like I said, gaming magazines and websites are calling COH a trailblazing success and they're calling the closure premature, and they'll be saying the same thing five years from now.

Well then we'll have to prove that is what we really want. The next game that is an actual sale for PC MMO, then flock to it. If it fails, then it looks like people prefer the rental way. Of course, have to leave the rentals alone then.

Words are words in buisness but money is what is important. If we want them to change, then we have to speak with our money. Remember who the law makers are. Mostly people that own buisnesses and or have investments in buisness. They usually dont make a law that is not in buisness failure unless they have to or after dragging the entire way until they are cornered especially if there i no benefit for them and there are plenty of people that dont seem to mind and keep giving them money for rental.

Maybe Plan Z should follow this format. Sell the game only once and the player owns it forever and have online access to it forever. This is the chance to set the standard that we wish to impose. This is also a way to show that even in this modern word with new MMOs, that format can work. And then must make the other game makers hungry by taking their customers with the ethic of valuing every customer.

But if a player only pays one time, and updates for COX like game costs money to make but the player isnt paying for it, where is the income coming from to pay for this, the CS people and development staff? Especially at a release rate that is not considered too slow, which seems to be most games outside COX. And to cover this income loss that is gone from monthly subs, what would be the price of the game to compensate for this income source loss?

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Probably.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

Which gaming magazines/sites described the closure as premature?

Most of the news about it was pretty straightforward report of the event. The blogs that i found that had a more emotional take tends to be authored by people that play(ed) CoX.

Those can be considered as people "from here."

I think that's a very good idea. If any more MMO-for-purchase-not-rental games like Minecraft come along, if their gameplay is worthwhile, you can bet I at least (and millions of people, if Mojang's sale numbers are any indication) will buy it.

You'd have to ask Mojang. They make their sales mostly by word of mouth. My husband played the trial on the advice of a pair of our friends, loved it, and harassed me into playing it. I emailed the trial download to all of our friends who play computer games at all. Our little group accounted for about 25 sales, friends and relatives to play at their own pace and time, many of whom choose not to play it on servers, or contrarily want a much bigger, more active server than our sleepy little 10-man group.

But you could take GW2 as an example. It's a one-time purchase game with no need to buy anything else. People DO buy things in the gem shop, but it's not required nor is it pushed in any way (anyone who tells you the current holiday event "forced" people to buy keys or anything out of the store is exaggerating to a ridiculous degree, I didn't buy a single thing for the holiday and experienced every part of it.) So far, it put out a MAJOR content event for the Halloween holiday, and is planning to release a new zone plus an opening event, with a dungeon and a storyline, on November 16.

Sadly, GW2 isn't a purchase-and-own MMO, it's a rental-MMO like every other one out there, but it's still a good example of a game that isn't charging a rental "fee" and is still putting out content, fixing bugs, etc.

As far as I know, Minecraft is the only one of its kind, but I do think and hope it will not be the last.

Alright then.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

You know, I'm familiar with your posting style by now, and I know you're just asking an honest question. Nevertheless, as someone who has "City of Heroes" and "MMORPG" sections in his custom Google News page, and as someone who regularly keeps up with sites like MMORPG.com, Massively, Ten Ton Hammer and Blue's News, my initial reaction to reading this question was simple shock and surprise, and ya'know, the thought did enter my mind, "Does this guy READ the news?"

My second reaction (beyond, "Okay, so many articles, where do I start?") was the desire to fire up Google, my browser's bookmarks, and the Titan Network's Thank the Media thread and set aside two or three hours or so, and then just dump a MEGA EXPLOSION of proof in a reply here and be like, YO DAWG I HERD YOU LIKE ARTICLES--and, actually, on some other night, I'd probably be up for this and may do it later (unless someone beats me to the punch). Though I'll admit, I'm slightly disincentivized (I made that word up) because we're nearing the 300th post in a quickly moving, wildly meandering thread and I'm suspicious my proof would be just be glossed over. Your request is also, essentially, a request for me to go and spend my night collecting news articles so that I can make a point because someone is wrong on the Internet--and I'm sure someone would still find a counterargument. Normally I try not to get sucked into that sort of thing, but on the other hand, I'm extremely impressed by all of the insight I've gained by watching people I agree and disagree with alike, people like you, Gangrel, Arcanaville, Codewalker and Tony actually go and dig out old PDFs, statements, archived websites and copyright laws to debunk or hold up claims that have been made around here. So I don't really feel like the whole "You're still a unicorn even if you win..." phrase about arguments on the Internet strictly applies in this thread.

This also is one of those debates that makes me think that in highly polarized debates, our human brains work against the evidence by focusing our vision on articles and statements that agree with our conscious or subconscious biases, and encouraging us to disregard the specific significance and weight of evidence to the contrary. I mean, in my mind, it's like, "Geez Pebblebrook, that's all I see is articles talking about how City of Heroes is being cut down while it's still profitable, dozens and dozens over the past few weeks!" But, collecting some articles actually sounds very easy compared to proving this other suspicion of mine.

yeah, seen some of those that said this game was cut down prematurely. Also I've seen just as many just mention the game is shutting down. And yet at least a couple that say that it was time for the game to go.

I just wish some one would release some more direct facts about some things about this shutdown. With all the speculation about the reason why, coming from the side of people that seem to highly dislike NCSoft now, seem to be more in a negative light and no matter what NCSoft say is dismissed as pure BS without even being there in the decision. It makes sense because it did not support the idea of the reason why that is made up before the announcement was released. Maybe it is BS, the statements from NCSoft is. Maybe this isnt just about realignment of the company and maybe they didnt exhaust all sources. Only if there was totally unbiased view from a reliable unbiased source of the reason why and what went on. All we have now is pure speculation about everything. And that only seems natural because there isnt much details, although I doubt many would believe it anyways unless it's exactly what they want to hear and already decided is "truth".

So naturally of course probably wotn be much details from NCSoft. It might be other legal things they cant or dont want to explain at work. I know if I was NCSoft, I wouldnt bother releasing much information at this point as all that is going to happen is that the words will be used to strole the already angry flame, especially judging from the tone. It's like many anti-NCSoft people are saying "We are willing to listen." but got their fingers in their ears. Not very constructive for two way talks.

But if some source that is not leaning either way coud release the actual facts, that would be great to end the speculation that seems to be past around as The Facts a little too often. The way some people present the information you would swear they was right there in the board room when the decisions were made or was the ones that did the offering, or was the one that made the decision to kill the game. So far only true reason we have is mostly realignment focus. Was it a proper reason? Maybe maybe not but anyone else that was actually there and handed the true reason by some NCsoft insider can debunk it or came across another statement by them that proves otherwise. I bet if NCSoft gave the reason that they already believed I bet that there wouldnt be a single one of them calling the reason BS then. But since it's not a reason they believe, it's considered automatic BS. Funny how that works.

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!