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

Go to it!

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!

Thousands of dollars in lawyers fees aren't worth a few hundred dollars back from NCsoft.
If might not be illegal right now but neither was slavery 300 years ago.

It will change eventually because people are/will get sick of buying something like oh say a video game with a box(COH) then just cause it's on a computer and online they say "hey we can take this away when ever we want you only rented it" when no other console games this happens.

**** me I get the rental part I have cable and a phone and internet but this is like my cable company cancelling their service then stopping by to try and take my television and my internet provider trying to take my computer, get it? NCsoft cancelled their service and now are taking my game.

I wont play any games that are strictly online only anymore waste of money and time for myself.

It's not the few bucks on points that counts it's called Principle.

I'm not sure if this is a new level of stupid, or just an uncharted part of the deepest level of stupid, but I do not believe you get a reward for clearing the fog of war from every map of stupid.

Not sure I agree the First Sale Doctrine isn't a case of public good. Doesn't this enable used re-sale markets and the like? But yes consumers do have other rights granted that just seemed fair, I suppose. I still don't see this as a reason for making laws about MMOs shutting down. Aren't there already sufficient laws governing service providers?

See that's just it - for some reason some lawyers got it into their head that 'we can treat software as a service' so now every user agreement states something about how you never own the software you purchase - you are just paying a fee to use their property.

No. No I don't get it. Because what you just said is completely wrong. The cable company doesn't own your TV. The internet provider doesn't own your computer. This is more like having to return a cable set-top box that you've only been renting from the cable company.

This was an online-only game and you knew it. Stop trying to pretend otherwise.

Now THIS is a proper response. If the value-proposition of MMOs disagrees with you, hit the road and don't look back. I continue to play MMOs because I only play them if I enjoy playing them. And if I am enjoying playing them then, just like a cable TV subscription, I am getting my money's worth. I am getting what I paid for.

Yes, you are being silly. Do not try to tell me you read "forever" in that ad and assumed the game would literally NEVER shut down. Because I don't believe you. And I don't think any court would either.

Not trying to give you a hard time, but it's more like the TV network cancelling the program you like to watch. Or the cable company deciding to stop broadcasting a particular network. The TV programs and networks don't belong to you.

Oh and cable companies do expect you to return their cable boxes when you stop using their services. At least all the ones I've ever dealt with have.

Your post is fairly incoherent, but I wish you'd stop trying to tarr the GW2 player with the anti-Titan-SaveCOH brush. They may have a Venn diagram overlap, but they are disparate populations. Lots of us that do play GW2 have been very fervent in our support of SaveCOH and Titan. And most of the people doing the grief-trolling are not GW2 players, or at least, have not posted that they are.

You are dumb.

See: Minecraft.

I bought Minecraft for $35 about a year and a half ago. I own Minecraft. Minecraft does not host servers. I host my own server (we pay about $60/year for a rented server host, however, we could run a (laggy) server from my home computer. Or play it single player.

When the Minecraft.net login server is down? I don't lose access to my single player games. I can even set my server to ignore login IDs and allow me to continue playing online when I can't log in, but that's a proposition that opens me up to hackers and griefers stopping by the server, so I don't.

In the year and a half I've owned Minecraft, it has put out 5 or 6 content updates that have significantly altered and improved gameplay, added new things, fixed bugs, and generally made the game more pleasant to play. We have never paid Mojang a single cent, over and above the initial purchase price, yet the programmers continue to work on it and add things to it.

Is it less complicated than a "real" MMO? In many ways yes, and in some ways no - I'd love to see any MMO allow free-form building and the server load that creates (let me tell you, the server map that my 9 friends and I have been playing on for the past year? It is ENORMOUS and takes forever to render in a mapping program!!!) It also allows the creation of lots of mods, skins, and server tools. You want to fly around? There's a mod for that. You want the game graphics to look prettier? You can do that. You want a system of banks like other MMOs (all banks access the same inventory) or PvP or character classes or factions? There are mods for all those things. The players have an almost inifinite ability to shape the game to their own style.

So yeah. It can be done. And Mojang has sold millions of copies and made a ton of money. And no one would ever call Minecraft a "WoW clone."

Arcanaville, I hate to ask, but is there any chance of finding out whether this still exists, and whether it's at all possible to distribute it? Whatever version it may be? Just finding out that existed makes me excited!!

I would honestly kill to have a version of COH that runs like Minecraft - you buy it, you own it, play it offline in singleplayer or on servers that you personally pay for to link up with friends.

I honestly believe that MMOs will end up there.

I'm not specifically advocating such laws, but I'm specifically stating that laws are created all of the time which in effect create specific rights that are deemed to be reasonable or fair, for not other reason than they are reasonable and fair and for no other deeper legal reasoning. And its worth noting corporate interests attempt to create laws all of the time creating new rights for no other reason but that it is in their best interests as well. Consider what was legally patentable in 1980 vs 2012. Consider the logic behind extending copyright protection indefinitely. The DMCA criminalizes what is effectively a contractual dispute. There is no legal justification for that law besides what the people who drafted and supported it felt was fair.

To the extent that First Sale and other similar laws can be seen to be in the public good, there's no question that a hypothetical law that required MMO service provides to provide for a means to continue to use the content after shutdown provides for a comparable level of public good. It is to the benefit of all parties in the general sense that consumers have reasonable faith in the long-term integrity of the entertainment they purchase.

To give a specific example, on December 1 a strict interpretation of the EULA for the game requires I delete the game client from my computer, as I will no longer have a license to use it. However, its the only way to view demorecords I have preserved. So I won't. I'm aware I'm in violation of the EULA, which is still binding after the game terminates. I believe I have an ethical reason to do so which may not stand up in court, but I believe the rationale is entirely fair even in the legal sense and is worth following.

The question is: *should* I have that right? At the moment, its unclear that I do. But it definitely appears to be a situation that has public good ramifications in the general sense, if not in the strictly legal sense. It is a case where there is an unambiguous consumer benefit to limit the ability for EULAs to curtail this behavior, that is entirely analogous to the Sony timeshifting precedent.

I'll give you another example. Very long ago, I was involved in a project that involved a company managing large amounts of critical data for its customers. In their contract with those customers they claimed that if the customer cancelled the contract, they would make "ever effort" to return that data in a useable format.

The problem was that they deliberately made no attempt to document, analyze, or design a way to actually do that for any customer. They literally did not know how. This was on purpose. If a customer attempted to cancel service, they could truthfully claim that it would take an enormous amount of time to return the customer's data, and the information necessary to do so in a structured way might no longer exist by then.

All perfectly legal. The question is: should the law allow a service provider to take data they do not own, and essentially hold it for ransom from its customers? At the moment, it is entirely legal, and it happens all the time.

I ultimately walked away from that one, and never really looked back.

Before anyone points out the obvious, this situation is different in that NCsoft owns the data as well as the service. But the example illustrates the principle that the current legal rights of service providers is not obviously congruent to the public interest, and the rationale that a service provider should be allowed to do whatever they want with their service is not automatically obviously true. Service providers can easily escape the legal consequences of withholding customer data by not withholding it, and simply returning it in a proprietary format that is virtually useless to the customer.

I'm sure it still exists, but its entirely possible no one outside of NCsoft has access to it anymore. Its probably on computers in cardboard boxes earmarked for that warehouse the Lost Ark is kept in.

After the shutdown announcement, anyone notice the ustreams were being done on laptops? Anyone wonder why?

Ok that is how Minecraft is set up, not NCSoft. And that is their choice, keywords there, choices not forced by law. COX do not seem to be set up for that type of play. And do not seem that NCSoft is interested in setting up COX for that. Their choice. I never said it cant be done. Where did I say it cant be done? I just said that it's not a good idea to make it a forceful law. If companies choose to do it, that is fine. If not then that should be fine too.

If those games are doing it the way it "should be done" then why have you bothered giving a company that is "doing it wrong" any money or time at all when you had the choice to go to a company that was doing it what you considered "should be forced by law" way of doing it?

Also Mincraft is a totally different kind of game than WoW. It's more similar to Warcraft 3 or Warcraft 2 if anything. WoW is considered to be Blizzrd's first true MMORPG just like COX is considered a MMORPG. If WoW servers were to go down, can you play it as a single player?

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!

Take note, did I call your view stupid? Did I call you stupid? But you already start with the personal attacks and so have Feycat.


I think I mentioned that many people will resort to personal attacks just for expressing a view and if for some reason there was no evidence prior, there sure is now.

You can get your point across just fine without resorting to personal attacks you know.

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!

Well, I tried looking up what legal precedents might exist in this regard, but my quick and cursory Google search came up with only one article on a UK website that essentially demonstrates that companies are doing what I already figured they were doing; legally redefining words and phrases so they can continue using them in their ads to make them sound better. Such as "forever" and "unlimited". And they actually act surprised when customers call them on it.

If you don't mean "forever", then don't say "forever". Why is that so hard to understand?

That's an awesomely cool idea. The Paragon City we're now familiar with would be the base, as the game comes out-of-the-box. And you could add to it. Your own missions, your own contacts, your own NPC groups, your own zones. Or you could change other things you didn't like in the default game, or remove them altogether.

which would be a pain in the butt since you would have to download a hefty update every time someone changed something.

Full scale buildings take a bit longer to load than 16 bit cubes.


Even then, only playing with a scant few friends at a time? eh, I'll pass. City of Heroes without the city full of heroes wouldn't last for me.

My point was that was the stupidest thing I've read in weeks. Its stupid because:

1. Pointing out that you can use other content when content access is revoked completely misses not just the point of Rangle's post, it fails to comprehend what the point of viewing content is. Human beings don't generally view content because they have a content viewing minimum they have to maintain, like calories or oxygen. If someone takes away my copy of The Avengers its not a trivial loss if I can just watch Halloween 5 instead. The loss of access to specific content is not replaceable with completely different content because content is not fungible.

2. Pointing out that other forms of games do not have a revocation problem is missing the point of a discussion of what MMOs *should* be as opposed to what they currently are. That's comparable to saying that if you were opposed to Aparteid, rather than complain about it you should simply avoid countries that practice it.

3. Speaking of analogies, analogizing the shutdown of an MMO to capricious and random ways of dying isn't stupid because of its extreme exaggeration, its stupid because it analogizes the shutdown of MMOs to other situations people would oppose and fight to prevent even more strongly. Which is a case of someone shooting themselves in their own foot, and having the bullet ricochet off the ground and blow a hole in their own forehead. Its implying the exact opposite of what was intended, in a manner worthy of ridicule besides.

4. And it ends with an implied statement about the profitability of the game, a subject you have zero knowledge about and are as a result completely wrong about. The game was, in fact, very profitable, and not in any danger of being unprofitable for the foreseeable future. That's the primary reason the developers themselves were surprised by the shutdown; they are simply barred from commenting on the specific circumstances of the shutdown.

Certainty in the face of ignorance, nonsense masquerading as logic, self-annihilating extreme exaggeration without irony, semantics without substance, all with the implication of the exact opposite of its vacuous extent.

"Stupid" seemed to cover it colloquially, but I'm generally open to elucidation upon request.

Advertising puffery is hardly something that is just now happening in the modern world. Generally, it is allowed in advertising provided the relevant trade authorities believe no "reasonable person" would take such claims literally. In this particular case it is just a concise way of saying you can continue to play the game without paying recurring fees. It is implied, again to any reasonable person, that one can only play the game for as long as it exists. I knew this. You knew this. Any reasonable person knew this.

So what's the problem?

I'm not defending every advertising claim ever, mind. Advertisers cross the line all the time and get called on it all the time. I don't think this is such a case is all. No one should have read this and actually believed it was a promise to keep this game running literally for all time.

You know what they currently are. How you think they should be is immaterial, especially someone like you who can probably cite specific sections of the EULA from memory. You clicked "I agree," right? I really can't understand your whole consumer rights angle when you as a consumer agreed to conditions that you apparently didn't find agreeable. I think you should own your decisions.

Actually, that's essentially what the world already does. In the US we have very strict labor and wage laws that make it economically infeasible for the majority of American owned companies to manufacture affordable products here and still turn an optimal profit. This leads to outsourcing of jobs to places like China, ie: places with labor standards that we consider unethical in our country. We don't boycott trade with them or do anything to alter their laws even though we find them morally disagreeable.

But Arcana, don't you know that the argument "nuh-uh!" means that you're wrong in this instance? After all, there are several other players that have frequently and vehemeountly espoused how CoX was indeed not profitable? One look at the last NCSoft financial release says as much. Well that and making up a bunch of numbers supporting the supposition.

Despite the circumstancial evidence to support your statement that PS wasn't in the red, those that disagree will simply ask "well what proof do you have?"

As Scooby once said, "ruh-roh". To which he usually runs off afterward, I suggest you do the same (with this part of the conversation anyway, you won't like what you see when the mask gets pulled off at the end of this one).

I could imagine a bunch of players who probably would have been so mad that they would have -wanted- to sue NCsoft. But sadly according to the EULA they really would not have had any serious legal ground to stand on. NCsoft had every legal right to shut the game down on ANY day they wanted. Sure it would have been silly for them to do that on August 31st, but only from a company reputation point of view, not out of any fear of player-based litigation.

I myself had just spent $100 for Paragon Points about a week before August 31st. Sure that timing sucked for me, but I would not have been naive enough to have wasted my time trying to "sue" for that even if the game had shut down on August 31st. *shrugs*

No. The 3 extra months we got wasn't a "we don't want to get sued" maneuver because that wouldn't have been seriously possible anyway. The 3 months was a "we know we're doing an incredibly unpopular thing by shutting down this game so we want to diffuse the public relations damage to our company by giving our hyper-mad players a reasonable amount of time to scream about it then calm down enough to accept it".

NCsoft ultimately only cared enough about this situation to give everyone enough time for a semi-orderly account shutdown/refund period. Sure we can always remain mad that NCsoft killed our game, but we ought to be grateful they were reasonable enough to give us 3 full extra months to play essentially on their dime for free. If they were actually ever afraid of getting sued by angry players they probably wouldn't have shut the game down in the first place. The 3 months was in fact their way of "softening the blow".

And this is precisely the point that is spawning most of the thoughts, feelings and efforts of 1) this game shouldn't be ending 2) we're going to try our best to prevent its complete removal from the world and 3) perhaps there should be certain legalities that would prevent a situation as extreme as this one (and this is entirely where this all fits into this original topic - "most active mmorpg to be shut down"? Yep, it sure felt like it and it seems wrong. And it's not just me thinking and saying it).

I'm not saying I fully believe there should be new laws in place (or any that would prevent this case). However, I am also not sure that there shouldn't. Laws just aren't really my thing (Hey, don't judge me!) and I haven't given it a lot of consideration (yet).
It does seem to me that this is a clear matter of the continued new landscape of virtual properties and the internet and the world of inter-connectivity and trying to figure out the rules and laws of such things. Simple (and complicated) as that.

It's probably best to ditch the analogies. We've seen and learned a good amount about what an mmorpg is and/or could be.
If we want to see any others remotely like this one within our future, we may need to establish new rules (whether they are just codes of conduct or actual laws... and, honestly, I'm not sure the human race is capable of doing well with just codes of conduct any more).

Again, what is the kicker to all of this? It's not that this game was struggling and dying and no good, so there you have it.
It was thriving (as much or more than it had in a long while). People were pumping money in, because they believed in it and wanted it to do well for some time to come.

"Forever" in an advertisement may certainly not mean "forever" (yay), but I think a solid argument could be made for interpreting it as more than a year.

And, in the end, the argument is not that they can't legally (or even that they shouldn't be able to legally) shut down the game and their servers. The argument is the idea of legally requiring an offline backup quality of service for situations in which the cancellation of that service (and refusal/inability to sell it) seem less to do with an actual need to drop it as opposed to simply a new refocusing and lack of care/commitment.

Now, why should that be the case for a video game that you knew was an online only game?
The answer to that is that these mmorpgs are not simply just games, but communities built around a game and sustained by customers and hobbyists and people putting in real labors of love.
Again, I'm not saying that any of that should legally prevent a closure, but I could certainly see it enabling a backup recompense (that most would feel rather worthless anyway, heh).

I know I'd be a lot happier if I could have even just a strictly single-player instance of the game, despite NCSoft being tuna-brained lousy heads (that's a Calvin and Hobbes reference and not some sort of racially/nationally-charge slur!).

I like being able to log in as Electric-Knight and zap some baddies now and then and if they won't take my money for it, I'd kindly like to still be able to (without a costume, tasers and the risk of legal ramifications).

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