Where CoH went wrong

And it's not the first time that's happened.

Angel was getting the best ratings on CW and look what happened to it.

Just because high up are high ups doesnt mean they don't get panicky or make choices based on personal opinions.

And it would be a sin to not mention the most notorious popular show to ever get canceled





Firefly




Hopefully with Whedon's popularity directing the Avengers movies we can get it back.

Uh, it wasn't that popular - that's why it was cancelled.

I haven't seen any spite from NCSoft. It's all coming from the other place.

NCsoft's PR firm?

tell you the truth, only seen a couple of announcements from them that either told the reason or was vague depending on who is it is asked.
I personally did not feel there was anything in those messages from ncsoft that were spiful or the definition of spite: a malicious, usually petty, desire to harm, annoy, frustrate, or humiliate another person; bitter ill will ; malice.

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!

If anything is petty/insulting, it's not the messages for me (unless the "response to SaveCoH" is a lie. It's that NCsoft never officially announced the closure of CoH themselves. In fact, if you go to their website, the closest thing they have to one is their response to the rallies. While one can technically call that their announcement, the fact that it took a month of whining to even get that, is unsettling. Equally unsettling is, would they have ever announced it themselves had SaveCoH not intervened? Or were they just going to let Paragon Studios deliver the shutdown message and take all the flak, while NCsoft sat in the background hoping nobody would notice?

It has a "let's just sweep it under the rug" ambience about it, that only got botched up because of those meddling kids.

How dare you insult a Corporation? They are only following the one commandment of their religion, increase share holder value, as long as they hold to that one commandment they are sinless in the eyes of their Profit.

We, the lowly customers, are nothing in the eyes of a mighty corporation and are naught but blades of grass to cushion their feet as they march to Greener pastures. They owe us nothing and we should be grateful that they deigned to allow us to give them our money at all.

Define "better." Slightly better image quality, sure. Able to hold more than 45 minutes of footage? No.

This is a huge, HUGE miss on NCSoft's part. The point here is not to cut and run but to double down. Make some kick-*** trailers and get them in theatres showing the various superhero movies.

"Be a superhero! Free to Play! Bonuses and even more content for Subscribers!"

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million people worldwide saw The Avengers. Even if only .1% of those viewers checked out CoH, that's 100,000 people showing up.

GR went ghosty long before the new tute. Even on Virtue I barely saw anyone there. Implementing side-switching could've been done so much better than creating that entire new area. I suppose they did it to make more money from box sales, which is a good short-term strategy, but it was clear it was going to do the same thing to the playerbase CoV did.

Doubt that would've ever happened though with Marvel being a rival comic company that is owned by one of the most powerful entertainment empires in the known universe.

Actually, not too long ago I was wondering if Disney taking over Marvel could've factored into the shutdown. Kinda like, "Well, now there's definitely no way in Hell we can compete. Might as well quit while we're ahead."

I have to agree. The very little we've heard from NCSoft on this has been nothing but typical corporate PR fluff. At worst, it's an insult to one's intelligence, but spiteful? Nah.

Possible they might have made the message anyways but just as possible that they wouldnt have. At this point, who knows for sure? If they made more announcements, would it have been viewed as petty/insulting and then in hindsight better off remaining silent? If they delivered the shutdown message themselves would Paragon Studios take the flak anyways for not telling us first or would NCSoft be viewed as even more cold/petty/insulting for going around Paragon Studios and not letting Paragon studios make the announcement? Even if today or tommorrow if they made one final announcement about thier decision, would that make the situation better or worse? Who knows. Depending on the reason, it might be better to not elaborate on it and make it any worse.

Like any road where a choice is made, there will always be what ifs, could have been should have beens would have been theories on if the other road was taken.

But so far what they have said seemed standard prcedure for major corporations. Most dont give a reason at all why they make a certain decision. Many seem to only address it because the media got ahold of the information. If the media never said anything about it, it is possible that they would have not said anything at all too, like the countless other products that are ended out the blue that sometimes not even realized is gone on a mass scale until years later when someone says "Say, whatever happened to that (insert product)." and someone replies "They stopped making those things years ago."

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!

What on Earth would that have to do with advertising in theatres? Disney doesn't control what ads are shown in front of their movies, nor does any studio.

I've... seen things like that happen before with advertising. At least with businesses big enough to afford "forced marketing."

At best, it would've made the most sense for both sites to announce it on the same day, or within a very short time of each other. It certainly shouldn't have taken as long as it did. I'm just going by what I've seen other companies have done under similar circumstances with joint-projects.

Yeah, there are so many spots per thing and some companies like Disney spend more on advertising in a month alone than what some companies make in ten years.

Why do it cost millions for a commercial during super bowl while any other day on the same channel it may cost a thousands? Because major companies are willing to pay premium for it that smaller budgeted companies cant compete with. That is why usually a person can basically know or have an idea of what companies will have a new commercial during the super bowl. Forced marketing. And even advertising goes by the standby of supply and demand.

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!

By law the biggest players aren't allowed to dominate the ad market. Which is why you see ads for local businesses during the Super Bowl.

yeah.

But unfortunately it did, but the main question should be is "now what?" No matter what they say now, or dont say, those the time between those messages took too long for many people. So what could they possibly say that, assuming people are ready to actually listen to them, could make things better about their decison?

You know, I read that Glitch posting about that shut down and how their official response over it was mostly applauded for the way they handled it and from the looks of it, they always been in touch and more intune with the customer base. I just wonder why is companies with good service and communication skills usually end up being the smallest ones, with a small customer base, although tight, yet the cold hearted corporations that have "robots" hired for PR seem to rake in millions and in some cases billions? Shouldnt people be flocking to those companies with good customer services?

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!

hm never noticed advertising from local companies during the Super bowl.

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!

Ah yes, you see local ad's for local people, but for the *national* ad slots, you will see the same ad at the same time. THAT is what the premium is for, and as the Superbowl is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) US sporting event out there, it doesn't really surprise me that big money gets spent for ads on that day. You are pretty much guaranteed to catch more people than normal.

Having caught a few of the superbowls online in the past (shhh), I was suprised that I managed to get the *same* "big name" ad as a friend of mine, even though he was in Seattle, and I believe I was watching a stream from *somewhere*. There were different regional ads though.

Oh, I'm not saying they should even try to now. The suspicions they've already incited, coupled with NCsoft's rather odd history... it is probably best that they don't try to sugarcoat it further now.

Well I don't want to get into another big political debate about capitalism, but I'll just say that this is one of the reasons I didn't think the "vote with your wallet" argument was a fair balance between business and consumer. I think why the "evil" companies are the ones that have all the money and power, is because marketing is the driving force behind it all. Ever since the beginning of human trade, it has never been about whether or not the bean is magical (product quality), but who you can convince of it (advertising). Add mass-marketing to that kind of manipulative power and you have a rather unstoppable monster.

So in simple equations:

Great product + crap marketing = no sale.
Crap product + great marketing = gold mine.

Maybe I'm wrong about this having a detrimental impact on the economy, but I think it answers your question. It's practically the same as asking why the bad boys always get the girls. Simple. The bad boys focus more on the packaging of the product, and are always working on their sales pitch. Even after they're known to be liars, cheaters, and potential rapists, they're STILL the ones getting the girls.

I think it seems that that is exactly what they plan on doing and have been doing by remaining silent since the second announcement.


In the words of Metallica, "You know it's sad but true"

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!