Fansy Returns!

Ok this is a different argument. Lets look at pure revenue

In its first year CoH had roughly 33 million in sales this year it might have been lucky and gotten up to 10. Overall that is bad but liveable the problem is the game staffed up to support microtransactions the cost of achieving those sales was higher, how much I don't know but I can be 100% certain it wasn't cheaper.

This means CoH's profit margin and RoI was in the toilet compared to earlier years.

I used your friggin' numbers. That was my point: they're pure unadulterated BS. So if you want to complain about them being completely unrealistic, you'll get nothing but a hell yeah from me, and I'm glad we agree that the numbers you put forward came from whence the sun don't shine.

This is reality.

I'm not Starsman, and 'ROFL?' Is that how you talk with your BFF Jill at school?

Actually, some of us have already moved on. Where can I expect your crusade for attention to arrive at on December 1st?

Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader

Entropy Legion * Hyperion Force * Hero Heights

I doubt you would recognize reality if it bit you.

You want reality ? This is reality.

"The game was health"
The game wasn't making enough to be viewed as a worthwhile investment by its owner.

"Things are going very well"
The game will go dark nov 30 it will not be live after that.

Plan Z is on a path to take money from people for vapor ware. This is treated seriously despite Plan Zs first move was to start a process to steal NCsofts property.

Save CoH's motto "This is what heroes do"

Apparently what heroes do is ignore any law they don't like and rob people if its convenient for them.

I think that this where the stigma kicks in about F2P.

Swapping from subscription only over to F2P/Hybrid can be seen as a sign that the ship is sinking. And for most people they treat it as such.

It happened to City of Heroes, it has happened to SWTOR. As to how accurate they are, that is open to debate.

There are other companies who have indeed succesfully managed to make the conversion over. Granted, they are from Turbine (DDO and LORTO). DDO infact was very successful in conversion apparently increasing by over 1000%. But unfortunately, without knowing as to how much money that title was bringing in, 1000% increase could just be from $10K/month to $110K/month.

That is not to say that games that *release* as B2P (Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 for example), or F2P cannot be succesful.

It is that they chose their bed from the outset and work for that alone.

Now, you say about the number of subscribers...

Using the financial reports that NCsoft provide us, for Q3 2011 (Just as the game hit Freedom mode) City of Heroes made (using a rough 1000KWon to the $ conversion ratio), the game made about $2.8millon, about the same as it made in Q2 2011 incase you are wondering.

Actually, we can use Q2 2011 to better show the figures here, because in this case there was *no* Freedom option. It was "subscribe or not play".

$2.8million/3 = $933,333 (ish) per month.

$933,333/$15 = 62,222 players roughly.

But this is where the game had no other subscription options. You could subscribe for a longer period of time and get a discount, so that means that the shooting range for the number of players *at that point in time* was roughly 60-70K players.

However, since then, and indeed after the introduction of the Hybrid model, the money didn't increase, and infact decreased (with the notable exception of Q4 2011, which I would have expected anways, as people load up on points).

Now comes the interesting part.

The figures for CoX in Q1 and Q2 2012 are around the same as before introduction of Freedom.

What does this mean?

Well, we know that people have been buying stuff off the Paragon Market. How much, who knows. But for every single person who buys Paragon Points, it decreases the number of potential susbcribers. Now remember, we have never really contested using the "subscribers Via NCsoft financial" calculation in the past, especially once NCsoft stopped reporting them directly.

So by using the same argument, the fact that people *could* play the game without spending any money, and that subscribers could and did buy points for their accounts, the total number of susbcribers has *had* to have decreased.

If you say "The number of subscribers is the same pre Freedom as post Freedom" the only thing that we (as a player base) can say then is "well that means that freedom was a failure and no one bought points".

But we know that not to be true though. There are several people on the boards who have spent *hundreds* of dollars above and beyond their normal sub free since freedom launched. And in this case, it doesn't take all that many people to increase their spending to actually decrease the number of "paying customers".

Using my calculation above, and just increasing the spend from $15/month to $20/month means that the number of players paying *on average* that amount goes from roughly 62,000 players to just 46700 (ish) players. A drop of almost 16,000.

Now, there are figures that NCsoft have never released to us.

The total number of active accounts nor the average spend of an active account (although the 2nd could be derived from knowing the 1st).

So whilst overall Freedom *worked* it didn't actually improve their average spend per customer. It decreased it (assuming that the player base increased).

Or the average spend *did* increase (in which case, the player base shrank).

Which side is more likely?

*edit* I would like to point out that I view a subscriber as someone who has a VIP account (so $15/month spend). When I mention player base, I am lumping together VIP and free players into the same group.

Robbing implies a financial loss.

I thought that early on to, until I noticed the gradual shift in the MMO business model. Many see F2P as the future standard, not the exception. The problem is likely not that the ships are sinking. Taking the metaphor full circle, it's that the salinity in the ocean is decreasing and more buoyancy is needed to stay afloat. In other words, the economy sucks right now and players dishing out monthly subs for entertainment are a lot less realistic than they were 10 years ago. From this standpoint, it makes all too much sense for MMO's to use the F2P model. Older games that started out as P2P can either convert to hybrid, or risk being undersold. Even the demigod WoW, has some degree of F2P now. The number of times I've seen that frigging green guy dancing for joy over the game being free until level 15, to any average joe would suggest that Blizzard is desperate for new players. But those of us who have actually been following along know fully well that WoW is in no danger.

So if I use your work without payment, permission or attribution I wouldn't be robbing you ?

If I'm selling it, you're robbing me.

If I'm not selling it, and you are selling it, you're robbing me.

If I'm not selling it, and you're not selling it, just credit your source.

So any creator who's not actively selling their work has no complaint if it gets posted on the internet?

That's absurd.

Only absurd because the Naysay Clan wants any excuse to villify the Titan Network.

MMO publishers in particular have no valid grievance here since the games require an active server.

A book or movie can be enjoyed indefinitely once someone has pirated it. With an MMO this is not the case. If NCsoft wishes to resurrect CoH sometime down the road, the private servers can be terminated and players will migrate back to the official one.

The fact that so many of us have congregated on your site and came to your side speaks to this largely being the case.
However, no matter who you are and what you've done, there will always be haters.

It's funny, a lot of those haters talked about how people were following you blindly and all that crap... No, we gathered together at the most provably stable place that there was/is regarding this game and this community. It's that simple. If we wanted to coordinate (and we did/do), if Tony and Titan are staying put (and you sure as pancakes made it clear that you were)... then this makes the most sense. The services of Titan Network and your personal efforts and resources spent on this community for all of this time didn't make you our totalitarian leader (as you very well know!)... they made your place a place we all knew we could trust to be legit. And we gathered together and you stood up to take a strong leadership role as well. It could have been somebody else and we still would have needed to gather on the Titan network.

Anyway... hopefully what I said was relevant and worth saying, haha... Some of the nutters in here are just ridiculous and the only thing I generally have left to do in threads like these (after the initial reading of pertinent information) is to have fun and laugh... with the occasional relaying of sincere, reasonable thoughts thrown in just in case.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

*can* be terminated.

This is, of course, contradicted by the plans to "release the code into the wild" if a C&D comes down.

Actually, this is true!

At least in the typical sense of superhero heroes, inwhich they tend to work outside the law (breaking and entering, vigilantism...ect), because they don't think the laws are working.

Even if it means they're helping people.

Actually, from everything I've seen of many people...can be terminated, yes, but will be, no.

They'll go with the mindset of "Why pay, when I can have for free?" and thus NCSoft would lose out on the chance for a potential costumer.

It's no different than people who pirate their music. Did they really lose all that much, with a small amount of pirating (assuming it is a small amount)? No. Did they still lose out on making money, when someone took it for free? Yes.

I defy you to find anything from NCsoft indicating that they are shutting down the game due to it not performing financially. There is nothing, because once again, this is a baseless assumption. In fact, NCsoft has explicitly said that this is a business decision related to their long term goals, never once mentioning any financial aspect of it. And before you try to weasel out with some "well, they wouldn't come right out and say it," yeah, actually they would.

Already addressed and you're lying about the context of this, the second time you've done so.

I'll get to the idiotic stealing accusation in a minute...

Regarding taking money from people, only in the sense that any organization "takes money from people" for a product or service. Will it be vaporware? How about letting the people who are investing their money decide that? Why are you so afraid of us making the case that it won't be? How is it that you so nonchalantly ignore the fact that with the exception of really simple single-developer products, all software if vaporware when they ask for investment? Or are you under the mistaken impression that we've already started the crowd funding effort?

To date, I have asked for money for exactly one thing: The "Dinner's on Us!" drive for the developers. I've also encouraged people to take part in the Extra Life charity drive organized by Maressa and the Real World Hero charity drive organized by The Wentworths, causes I personally think are worthy.

Believe me, people are champing at the bit to kick off the crowdfunding campaign. The truth--you know, that little inconvenient thing you keep ignoring?--is that I have been actively dissuading such a campaign until we are further along and have done the due diligence to prove to people that this game will launch.

In fact, just the other day, I was in a conversation with some Plan Z folks and someone mentioned something about crowdfunding some tool or something. I'd have to dig through the logs to get the exact quotes, but I told them that I want to be especially careful about going to the crowdfunding well for that kind of thing, because the last thing I want people to think is that we're nickel and diming them on this stuff. I've asked what tools we need to create this game with the intention of either buying them outright or otherwise wrangling up the funding to get them, with crowdfunding their purchase as a last resort. And you know what the team's answer was? That so far, we're doing just fine with open source and/or freeware solutions and that spending money at this point is premature.

So yeah, with this talk as if we're out to fleece the community and steal their money, you can shove that right back where the sun don't shine, which is where you got it from to start with. If you don't think we can complete the project, then we don't want your money, plain and simple.

I also have to point out that in all of the years of running the Paragon Wiki and the Titan Network, although I've accepted donations, I have never engaged in fundraising efforts such as placing ads on the site(s), implying that the sites might be taken down if people don't contribute, or anything of the sort. Since day one, I've been clear that I will fund the sites as much as necessary out of my own pocket to ensure their continued existence and any donations will be used solely for the purpose of defraying hosting costs. And you know, I've never asked people to exude gratitude or anything for doing so. But for you to spout off that a project I'm involved in is out to rob people is not just personally offensive, it's sheer idiocy.

Another steaming pile of BS. I have repeatedly stated that I do not condone any illegal activities--to the point where it's actually been published in interviews with me:

And it's not like this message is particularly new, I've made it explicitly clear for a long time that this is my take on the matter:

So what specific law do you think we're ignoring? The law against reverse engineering? I hate to jerk you back to the real world like this, but that law doesn't exist because reverse engineering is legal. Not only legal, but it is explicitly a fair use exemption to copyright and patent law. Or is it the law against copyright/trademark infringement? Put up or shut up. You link any reference to me indicating that we're going to infringe on NCsoft's IP. I can tell you ahead of time, you can't because I've consistently said the exact opposite. I've taken very deliberate pains to ensure that none of our planning involves IP infringement. Here's the latest of many times I've addressed the issue specifically.

So yeah, remind me again which law don't I like, which ones I'm ignoring and/or encouraging other people to ignore? How do you think we're robbing people? And be specific, because make no mistake: I'm calling you out on this. Don't give me this "someone said something at some point" BS. I want to know when I have ever asked or encouraged someone to violate the law.

Everything you've spouted off here about is either a blatant lie, gross exaggeration, or baseless accusation that, more often than not, are the exact opposite of what people involved with SaveCoH, the Titan Network, and/or Plan Z have been saying. Either you are just so grossly out of touch with reality that you truly have no grasp at all what is going on, or you are trolling these forums in a deliberate attempt to tear down the reputations of people who are really nice, motivated, capable people. Either way, I'm happy to show people with crystal clarity just how wrong and trollish you are.

So please, go on, what else have you got? I actually have the luxury of a little bit of time this afternoon to shoot down your next round of crap.

Except your typical vigilante heroes break laws for important things like saving lives. Not for a video game.

Unless you somehow think that the server is going to be run from Sealand, you don't have much to worry about there. And assuming for a moment that someone could run a server in secret that NC doesn't find out about, the number of individuals who could be trusted not to leak the address would be so infinitesimally small, NC might as well be flipping out over a LAN party. And since most of the allure of MMO's is the ability to interact in a living world populated by thousands of other people, the only purpose for such a secret server would be a fun little diversion or to experience a little nostalgia by flying over an empty city. (and the latter could easily be granted by any company as a parting gift with just a couple days of coding)

As for the "release the code into the wild" comment, link pls.

True!

But the comment was "heroes don't break laws"

Also, people tend to do what is in their capability, which keeps the life-saving 'Superhero' population rather small. Most vigilantes are not Kung Fu masters with self-regenerating bio-armor and a telepathic sensor array that can lock onto a purse-snatching from 5 blocks away.

If the superhero population wasn't small, the genre wouldn't be as fun

When someone accuses you of stealing money from the community, "I believe you're in error because..." isn't the kind of response that merits.

The point is that I'm really sick and tired that there are three or four trolls that post in every single thread that has anything remotely to do with keeping City of Heroes alive. They tell people they're foolish for keeping up their "false hope", they post "facts" and "reality" that are 180 degrees apart from what's actually going on, and then when anyone challenges them on their unbridled pessimism, they start just making sh*t up to reinforce their doom and gloom predictions and stances--stuff like Plan Z being a deliberate attempt to steal NCsoft's IP, stuff like the game was on its last leg with one foot in the grave, stuff like us wanting to steal people's money, stuff like taking a quote of me saying that at one point in September, things were looking good on selling the game and turned south, and presenting it out of context as if I were saying that this are going really well now.

I've been civil. In fact, the specific reason I don't post here very often any more is because I don't have a lot of time to waste defending our teams against the same tired old lies and misconceptions over and over and over again. But at this point, the same people are posting them, the same people who ought to know better. It's not just a simple misunderstanding. They are misrepresenting the truth with deliberate malice, which is why I said above that I don't want there to be any mistake about it, I'm calling out anyone who feels like they can justify any ludicrous claim of anything like we want to steal IP or we want to rob the community or we want to break the law. If you want to make such outlandish and offensive claims, then you'd better damn well be willing to back them up and I'm not going to worry too much about civility when I refute them.

So when you agree to the EULA you think your word is worthless and you can set it aside at will ?

/em applause

You tell 'em, Tony!