Would you Stay if NCSoft turned Payments back on?

I don't know. I've seen how NCSoft repay 8 years of loyalty and I don't really think they deserve any more of my time. On the other hand, it is City of Heroes we're talking about. So I don't know. I'd be torn.

To be honest, I'm more upset with how NCSoft handled the whole affair than that the affair happened in the first place. Nothing lasts forever, but after this much time, I think they could have put in more effort to appease us than that "lol, sucks to be you" post of theirs.

NCSoft aren't getting another penny from me. If NCSoft did do an about-face, I'd see them as even more incompetent as I see them now.

As others have said, it's not so much about the game closing, it was about the way they went about it. The reasons they gave were evasive and pathetic. As a community member I've seen many changes made because players and Developers talked to each other. There was a degree of honesty there - even if I didn't like it at times. To be fobbed off shows an utter lack of respect.

If someone else picked it up, I'd be back in a flash, but with NCSoft. No. Just no.

-H

Not immediately, no. If nothing else the closure has prompted me to gave other games more of a chance and give them more than just a passing look. I've been a gamer for more or less 30 years, so just because I can't play one game I really like, won't stop me gaming altogether.

As I've said in other posts, I get the feeling that MMOs are entering a new generation. Devs are finally getting in to their heads that WoW isn't the be all and end all formula for a successful title, and that being innovative and introducing different things is the way forward. GW2s open quest system, TSWs Skill wheel and investigation missions are just examples of teams being brave enough to try something beyond the "Talk to this contact, go kill Skuls" approach we've seen time and time again before.

To that end, I've discovered a number of games that I'll either try (currently loving TSW, and rediscovered Skyrim thanks to the extensive modding scene) or keep my eye on (Otherland, The Repopulation and Greed Monger look interesting) and the funny thing is, however much CoH did right to keep me playing it for as long as I did, when you see what's around now you really start to see just how dated it is.

Given NC's "realignment of company focus" I can't see me playing any more of their games, not because of some short sighted sense of duty, but their new direction is unlikely to produce any games I'm going to like.

CoX was my first MMO. I just found out yesterday about the closure as RL has really pulled me off the game for the last few years. I am one of those very casual gamers.

I stuck with CoX because I knew I could always go back to it and pick up right where I left off.

This entire thing has me questioning ever getting back into an MMO at all, much less re-signing up to CoX in some new iteration.

Even if the game gets extended somehow, it will still only be temporary, for what, maybe a few more years? The game clearly had plenty of life in it, but sooner or later, it was going to be gone anyway.

The lack of permanency in any MMO has me entirely turned off from the genre in any way, shape or form.

Since I largely soloed anyway, my personal hope is that someone manages to hack it such that you can play it on your own computer where no one can ever turn if off on you again. i.e. an offline version.

If they hadn't turned off the payment system I would have happily stumped up for 3 months until Next Friday. Hell, if they turn payments back on right now I will pay my $15 until next Friday.

If NCSoft decided to reverse their decision to shut the game down and start taking payments again, would I re-sub?

Hell no!

Don't get me wrong, I love CoH and planned to be playing it for years to come, but this whole closure thing has just been so ugly and needless that I have ZERO faith in NCSoft anymore. Them deciding to keep the game alive at this point would simply be another money grab and I will never give them a single penny again.

Unless I somehow came into a lot of money, enough that I could BUY CoH from them and potentially restart it/keep it running.

NCSoft gutted the game. They burned Paragon Studios to the ground and utterly destroyed the soul of the community on August 31st. Even if the entire staff of PS were to come back and obscene amounts of money was thrown at them to increase the development on the game, I'm not sure players who have already left, would return. (I would, though I am still here so...)

And without Paragon Studios the game just wouldn't be the same as far as future content releases. Sure, the possibility is there that perhaps some of them could be available but a lot of the more involved Devs have new jobs already and I couldn't see them giving up the "sure thing" they have now to take a chance with someone new running the game.

Bottom line -

If the entire shutdown debacle had never happened, I'd still be paying and playing CoH. But it did happen and NCSoft can go rot in the pits of perdition for all I care.

Nope I'm done. I really think any attempt to put the toothpaste back in the tube would fall far short of my memories and expectations on a personal level.

if I knew that the game would continue, even for a finite amount of time, I would happily pay to sustain that - providing the goalposts weren't moved dramatically (like the sub was $100 a month and only 2 people per server allowed etc - yes that was slightly OTT but you take my point I hope)

I guess if NCSoft did the right thing, then I'd applaud that and celebrate by giving them money - but would it be indefinite? Probably not unless there was some continuous development of the game.

It's hypothetical anyhow so meh

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I would stay. I never really left. But...

I would pay my sub. But that'd be about it. They'd get no more money out of me than that. And that with extreme wariness.

Any trust I had with them is gone, as others have mentioned.

For them to get it back would require a MAJOR effort. The comments about butt-kissing above are apt.

They would have to APOLOGIZE openly and sincerely. In an open letter to the players and fans with NO CORPORATE DOUBLE-SPEAK. Total and complete transparency as to why the decision was made to shut-down the game and what made them change their minds - even if the process shows them in an unflattering light.

If they open themselves like that... Well... That would be a first step. I'd warily be willing to LISTEN to them at that point.

The next step is to re-constitute Paragon Studios with as many former employees as can come back. Recognizing that all 80+ of them don't need to come back just for City of Heroes (many were on the secret project), they could still have full development with - I'm completely guessing here - about 30-35 of them. Matt Miller and Melissa Bianco would have to be part of that. That's very important. Because if they come back, as stated above, that means that NCSoft has negotiated in such a way as to convince them it's worth it.

Once they have the Devs back and things running again, they'd have to insure that I-24 gets it's final polish and out onto the Live Servers first thing.

At this point, they'd have enough of my trust back that I would consider paying a slightly more expensive subscription if that's what it took to help City of Heroes stay solvent and profitable. If it's about 15 dollars a month now, I'm willing to pay 18-20. I understand the realities of the situation and if they're completely open about what they need as a business to run, then I'd be fine with it.

Lastly - they would have to COMMIT to an ACTUAL BUDGET for ADVERTISING! They'd have to practically relaunch the game anyway. So this is within their best interests as well. We have been saying all this time that City of Heroes managed a more or less stable population via word-of-mouth alone. If it was actually advertised - say in conjunction with promos of upcoming superhero films? - then can you imagine how well it would do? As long as they DON'T EXPECT A WoW KILLER, though. It'll never be that. But it would be quite profitable given the amount of money they'd put into it.

All of that would be an extraordinarily tall order though. And I think the chances of that particular corporate culture actually doing it? Absolutely 0.00000000000000000000001%. Or however near infinitely close to Zero as your mind can conceive without actually being zero.

Basically I feel the same as those i saw respond. I have yet to find any game that interests me as much as this did. I never once in 7 years stopped subbing so if they turned the pay to play back on yeah I'd stay. but if the Dev teams stays out of work and they never make another upgrade.. It wouldn't last long.

As it is right now the game hasn't had any significant maintenance done since they fired everyone and it gets harder and garder to play. earlier tonight I was on three straight Magi Farm teams.. got the boot glitch twice (wound up back in DA and had to be reinvited) and dc'd after freezing on the third. Three runs abd I made a whole 14% of the needed XP to open hybrid on my last 50 level incarnate. At that rate it will only take anoth 20 or so to actually open the power up.

If I am PAYING to play I explect new content, new trials, power, costumes .. in short everything I was paying for before NC Soft got STUPID. Hmmm that would require a team of developers and technicians.. Wonder if anyone out there needs work. (I MEAN THAT to be VERY SARCASTIC not as a joke about the devs losing their jobs)

The cheapest form of advertising is to have boxes in stores. WoW still have boxes in stores. GW, since most of it's income was from box sales had to by default have a constant stream of box expansions or box sets (original game + some number of expansions) in the store.

Actually on second thought boxes in stores aren't all that cheap but you do expect them to be sold at least. The cheapest is to keep up a constant flood of press releases, insider interviews and sneak peaks to the gaming press sites like Massively, MMORPG.com, Ten Ton Hammer, and their ilk. Advertising is all about keeping your name in front of potential customers. Some sites are more receptive than others to a stream of PR.

Well in 2004-05 there still were computer gaming magazines in NA. CGW, Computer Gaming World, was still alive and well and not yet regurgitated into Games for Windows magazine for instance. I remember the CGW review of the game from the perspective of the character CEO of Earth. Later an evil version of him appeared to do the review of CoV.

But then the magazines died off. Online PC gaming sites tended to review FPS and RTS games than look at MMOs, other than WoW of course after it took off.

The oldest CoH post at Massively was from Oct 7, 2007 about the new rename/transfer feature, this was before Issue 11 which gave us Ouroboros. Not sure if that lined up with the official start of Massively or that's just how far back their archive goes (their first article about Everquest is the same date, first UO was Oct 25th). Massively's earliest article in their archive is from Sept 25th, 2007 with their 2nd article, about WoW dated Oct 4th.

Now if you were talking about the Beckett Massive magazine while it might have featured CoH in one issue it rapidly became almost all WoW almost all the time and I quickly learned to ignore it on my grocery store magazine rack until they stopped carrying it for a magazine that worshiped Twilight.

Sadly, probably not. This whole situation has pretty much tipped me over the fence on whether to continue playing MMORPGs at all. I'm currently trying CO, but I'm finding it more and more difficult to want to devote time to something that could just be pulled out from under me for any reason at any moment.

I would, for the sole purpose of finishing as many of the videos on my list as I could.

But that's it.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Oh no you misunderstood. Massively had a fairly large archive of CoH articles as well as a regular column but its very first article was in Oct of 2007 which is either as far back as the site archived it's articles or was around the time Joystick started up Massively. There is over 900 articles tagged with some mention about CoH including player gatherings, player led tools and fanzines, as well as holiday events, invention guides, issue reviews, feature comparisons, a weekly column about the game for the last few years, etc.. The problem was I only discovered Massively a not so long ago.

But it's true that the game got more coverage in more gaming sites once the closing was announced and our futile attempts to change NCSoft's minds. Actually it was the later action that caused more news articles about the game from places I never would have expected. Even saw a segment on a Russian gaming video news blog about the Atlas Park protest. WTH? If anything the level of our passion for this game did raise a few eyebrows and turned a few heads, sadly not any that made any difference.

Advertising has always been one of those things blamed for the game not being as popular as we thought it should be, but in the scheme of things, even during the "glory years" of i6-i12 was it really advertised less than any other games that aren't WoW?