Their competition is "MMOs." Just read this thread a bit, see how many "This is the only MMO I came back to," or "this is the first MMO I played" comments there are. There is a certain percentage of people willing to play MMOs in general, no matter if they're an elf or a giant robot.
I beta tested this game over 8 and a half years ago and have continued playing this game ever since. The community of people surrounding CoH, the Devs, the players, even the 3rd party companies, are the most wonderful gamers I've ever encountered and in my opinion, no game in the world had a more caring, dedicated group of developers than Paragon Studios.
In a vast sea of 'yet another fantasy-based MMO', CoH is completely unique and now that specialness is being crushed and taken off the playing field. NCSoft doesn't even want to sell it. Even though CoH is a popular game that is making money for them, they simply want to kill that potential competition. According to their own reports, CoH made 2.5 million for NCSoft in just the 2nd quarter of this year.
This action on the part of NCSoft should cause outrage all across the gaming industry. You don't treat customers or dedicated employees in that manner, and if publishers like NCSoft aren't sent a loud and clear message this this is not acceptable, then GuildWars 2 may well find themselves in the same situation down the road because this is not the first time NCSoft has done this to a game - remember Tabla Rasa? it is unfair to the good people at ArenaNet, but if they are paying attention to this, as I'm certain they are, then they should be actively seeking another publisher.
CoH was my first real MMO (I played Horizons a bit, Earth and Beyond a week before it closed).
I loved it dearly, and still do—it's the game that set such high standards for dev team behavior for me.
It's a shame to see it go... I still have all of my old screenshots and the music videos I made from back in the day, too.
Personally, I strongly suspect that it's being shuttered in order for NCSoft to have more resources to funnel into GW2. If so, then... well, I hope it works for the best, and I hope ArenaNet is able to snag a bunch of personnel from Paragon Studios. (To be honest, I stopped playing before it switched hands from Cryptic to PS).
It's not the fact that it's ending, but how. We always knew it would end, but that there would be a build up of sorts, the culmination of years of story telling and resolving the majority of loose ends.
But not like this.
I want to make an analogy here, but nothing seems to fit. Like drowning a bag of kittens because you're a dog person?
Like if Marvel fired all their staff and torched all their inventory?
It's like visiting a dying relative in the hospital. You know your relative's passing on pretty soon, but you want the chance to listen to their stories and talk to them one last time. Besides which, they're actually doing a little better then they where last time you visited, still not likely to get back to 100%, but no longer on death's door either. While visiting the relative gets into telling a truly fascinating story. It rambles for a while, but it always keeps your attention. Then, just as they're getting to what promises to be a truly epic climax in the story, Nurse Soft walks in and pulls the plug.
Flatline. Your relative's gone. You'll never know how the story ends. The nurse shrugs and tells you that they needed the space.
I guess that's my blatant exaggeration and overreaction quota for the week.
I have to admit, I'm kinda glad I wasn't able to spend money on unlocking access to the second SSA yet because then I really would have been invested in it's story and thus be even more upset over not seeing it's end.
Powerblaze (became Teknoblaze when I moved him from his original server to Virtue): a fire/dev blaster I was really planning to play the crap out of when the blaster changes dropped
Fleeting Shadow: my first lvl 50 and only hero to make it to 50. a dark melee/super reflexes scrapper. When shield defense came out I rolled a similar character, a dark melee/shield brute (Nightwarder Zero) who only made it to 41. Then Street Justice came out and I resisted the urge to re-roll the brute as Street Justice/Shield Defense. Street Justice is still pretty badass, though.
H A Z - M A T : my other 50, this time on redside. A radiation/thermal corruptor. I felt bad for anyone trying to add me to a team by typing out my name, what with all the spaces in it, but fuck it, that name owns. Marvel later on made a character with that exact same name and a similar theme (trapped inside a protective suit to keep everyone around from getting sick/dying) for their Avengers Academy title. Their character was female and used a yellow/black color scheme, though.
Like pretty much everyone, I'm going back to CoH for a while for its swansong. Going from old VIP to Premium, though. Can anyone help me figure out the global/server slot thing? I have 3 globals and 0 servers right now, apparently. Can these be used on old characters? I don't want to waste one on a new character if it means I can't unlock an old one.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
Well, I got my main hero unlocked. It felt good playing Angsty again after about half a decade. Unfortunately, the power set I wanted to try on a new character, dual pistols, is money locked. So much for that plan; I'll have to think of something new then.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
We will *never* get to see Colorized Power Pools.
Hasten and Super Speed will forever be yellow.
I will have been stuck having to keep Purple as a color scheme to match Power Slide, for the entirety of this game.
Teleport will always be way too short distance-wise and involve too much clicking.
Blasters will never be able to return to their City Of Blasters glory days.
HOWEVER
Rag Doll Control was turned awesome, and people got to remember why the fuck they took Gravity Control in the first place.
Water Blast came out and allowed me to finally have fun with my character I ripped off from a Shower Installation Company.
We got every stupid Emmert character killed off and finally had a World Without A Superman, if only for a few brief awesome months. WE WERE ON THE MOTHERFUCKING MOON
I got a character, just in time, to level 50
I'm kind of glad that I only know you guys as acquaintances, because if I was any more attached to you motherucking nerds, I'd probably have random bursts of tears over the next few months. As it stands, it's way easier for me to focus on the positives that this game brought, and maybe if all of our account do slowly go freemium over the next few months, focus on the positives that this game ending so suddenly will bring.
Has anyone made a Steam Group or something similar so that we can all keep in touch post-CoX? I know some of you are in my Steam List already, and maybe if you all decide to dick around a bit in Champions or whatever, I'll head there.
Gah, I want to go through all my characters and take screenshots of their costumes and bios, but I'm not really thrilled to throw $15 at a dead MMO just to be able to access them all.
Gah, I want to go through all my characters and take screenshots of their costumes and bios, but I'm not really thrilled to throw $15 at a dead MMO just to be able to access them all.
Can't anyways, they're not letting people pay for subs from now on.
Gah, I want to go through all my characters and take screenshots of their costumes and bios, but I'm not really thrilled to throw $15 at a dead MMO just to be able to access them all.
If it helps, you can take screenshots of every character from the character select screen, and you should have enough veteran points to unlock at least a few characters to take in-game screenshots of.
Best case scenario would be either "hay guys the whole shutdown thing was our bad; one of our accountants got totes drunk and started firing everyone, so we hired everybody back on and everything shall continue as usual" or perhaps "we are transferring the game, accounts, and character DB to company X, who will reform Paragon and everything shall continue on as usual."
Jim Hague of the rpg.net forums just posted an old, OLD (pre-CoV) copy of the game bible he had from when he was working on the City of Heroes tabletop RPG from a while back. Also has a bunch of write-ups he did for the RPG as well.
Posts
In a vast sea of 'yet another fantasy-based MMO', CoH is completely unique and now that specialness is being crushed and taken off the playing field. NCSoft doesn't even want to sell it. Even though CoH is a popular game that is making money for them, they simply want to kill that potential competition. According to their own reports, CoH made 2.5 million for NCSoft in just the 2nd quarter of this year.
This action on the part of NCSoft should cause outrage all across the gaming industry. You don't treat customers or dedicated employees in that manner, and if publishers like NCSoft aren't sent a loud and clear message this this is not acceptable, then GuildWars 2 may well find themselves in the same situation down the road because this is not the first time NCSoft has done this to a game - remember Tabla Rasa? it is unfair to the good people at ArenaNet, but if they are paying attention to this, as I'm certain they are, then they should be actively seeking another publisher.
I loved it dearly, and still do—it's the game that set such high standards for dev team behavior for me.
It's a shame to see it go... I still have all of my old screenshots and the music videos I made from back in the day, too.
Personally, I strongly suspect that it's being shuttered in order for NCSoft to have more resources to funnel into GW2. If so, then... well, I hope it works for the best, and I hope ArenaNet is able to snag a bunch of personnel from Paragon Studios. (To be honest, I stopped playing before it switched hands from Cryptic to PS).
were we supposed to think Japh was a man
Actually, it'd probably Lugnut Liar.
ahh, here we are
There's no disagree button to share my feelings toward this statement.
It's like visiting a dying relative in the hospital. You know your relative's passing on pretty soon, but you want the chance to listen to their stories and talk to them one last time. Besides which, they're actually doing a little better then they where last time you visited, still not likely to get back to 100%, but no longer on death's door either. While visiting the relative gets into telling a truly fascinating story. It rambles for a while, but it always keeps your attention. Then, just as they're getting to what promises to be a truly epic climax in the story, Nurse Soft walks in and pulls the plug.
Flatline. Your relative's gone. You'll never know how the story ends. The nurse shrugs and tells you that they needed the space.
I guess that's my blatant exaggeration and overreaction quota for the week.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Powerblaze (became Teknoblaze when I moved him from his original server to Virtue): a fire/dev blaster I was really planning to play the crap out of when the blaster changes dropped
Fleeting Shadow: my first lvl 50 and only hero to make it to 50. a dark melee/super reflexes scrapper. When shield defense came out I rolled a similar character, a dark melee/shield brute (Nightwarder Zero) who only made it to 41. Then Street Justice came out and I resisted the urge to re-roll the brute as Street Justice/Shield Defense. Street Justice is still pretty badass, though.
H A Z - M A T : my other 50, this time on redside. A radiation/thermal corruptor. I felt bad for anyone trying to add me to a team by typing out my name, what with all the spaces in it, but fuck it, that name owns. Marvel later on made a character with that exact same name and a similar theme (trapped inside a protective suit to keep everyone around from getting sick/dying) for their Avengers Academy title. Their character was female and used a yellow/black color scheme, though.
I can only hope private servers might salvage CoX somehow. I know it won't end up happening, but I'd like to hope.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Were his last words "Today Germany, tomorrow the mooooooon!"?
Hasten and Super Speed will forever be yellow.
I will have been stuck having to keep Purple as a color scheme to match Power Slide, for the entirety of this game.
Teleport will always be way too short distance-wise and involve too much clicking.
Blasters will never be able to return to their City Of Blasters glory days.
HOWEVER
Rag Doll Control was turned awesome, and people got to remember why the fuck they took Gravity Control in the first place.
Water Blast came out and allowed me to finally have fun with my character I ripped off from a Shower Installation Company.
We got every stupid Emmert character killed off and finally had a World Without A Superman, if only for a few brief awesome months.
WE WERE ON THE MOTHERFUCKING MOON
I got a character, just in time, to level 50
I'm kind of glad that I only know you guys as acquaintances, because if I was any more attached to you motherucking nerds, I'd probably have random bursts of tears over the next few months. As it stands, it's way easier for me to focus on the positives that this game brought, and maybe if all of our account do slowly go freemium over the next few months, focus on the positives that this game ending so suddenly will bring.
Has anyone made a Steam Group or something similar so that we can all keep in touch post-CoX? I know some of you are in my Steam List already, and maybe if you all decide to dick around a bit in Champions or whatever, I'll head there.
Can't anyways, they're not letting people pay for subs from now on.
If it helps, you can take screenshots of every character from the character select screen, and you should have enough veteran points to unlock at least a few characters to take in-game screenshots of.
So I figure best case scenario out of all this, someone convinces NCsoft to sell the IP, and they make COH2.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I still love you all.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
This SG has always managed to put together stuff even when States ran the show.
DS Friend code: 3840-6605-3406
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)