New efforts! -- metadiscussion

[TonyV]

Hey all, so Facebook has been exploding the past couple of days over a post there, as well as the "New Efforts" thread here.  It's gotten a bit out of control with accusations flying about and posts being deleted, so I'm going to air out a bit of dirty laundry here to hopefully calm everyone down, clear the air, and set some expectations.

First of all, as I've said before, there is a team of people currently in communication with NCsoft to try to acquire the rights to relaunch City of Heroes.  I don't think that's a secret, it's been talked about to death, but just in case anyone has been hiding under a rock and missed the news, it's true, it's not a hoax, it is going on.  For simplicity's sake, I'm going to call this team "Hail Mary", because to date, although some people know who they are, they have not publicly revealed themselves yet.

So here's who all knows who they are, to my knowledge, in addition to me.  There may be others; if so, I don't know about them.  The team members themselves, of course.  Also, Ironwolf, and Robert DiGregorio from the Facebook "CoH Survivors" group.  I've also told some of the admins here on the Titan Network because some of them are in a unique position to be able to help out.  Last, but not least, a handful of people at NCsoft (both America and Korea) know, and I'm pretty sure some of the former Paragon Studios people were consulted to help out with information and contacts.  Please keep in mind that all of these people except the members of the "Hail Mary" team--including me!--are secondhand sources of information.  These are people who have talked to the Hail Mary team in various capacities, but there is currently zero firsthand information out there on who's doing what and how it's going.  So anything you hear or read--including the information in this post!--should be considered "friend of a friend..." news and information.

I have tried repeatedly to emphasize this point to little or no avail, this is NOT a done deal.  No papers have been signed, no agreements have been reached, no champagne has been drunk.  The reason this is so important for me to convey to you is that it is entirely possible that when the Hail Mary team does make an announcement, that announcement is, "Sorry folks, it's a no-go."  You need to prepare yourself for this possibility.  I'm not saying that this is what's going to happen, because of what I said at the start of this paragraph.  I'm saying it could go either way, and you should not read any post by Ironwolf, Robert, me, or anyone else except the Hail Mary team once they weigh in, as "wow, this is really going to happen!"  It may happen.  Say it with me: It MAY happen.  So be excited, but no so much that you're going to be in a pit of despair if it doesn't go through.

My problem is that some folks have been posting as if they're on the Hail Mary team, or at the very least, as if they are posting on behalf of the Hail Mary team.  And not all of their posts have been correct.  For example, last month Ironwolf at one point posted that a decision was forthcoming within a few days.  Now, I don't mean to pick on Ironwolf because god knows he's not the only guilty party.  And I'm not saying that he was lying.  He was posting what he genuinely thought was an accurate statement of where the Hail Mary team was after talking to one of its members.  Unfortunately, either he misunderstood something or the person he was talking to was mistaken about something, and what started out with no malice of ill intent ended up getting everyone riled up and excited, only to be let down when he later posted an "oops!" message about the misunderstanding.  To this day, some people think that Ironwolf is a troll posting hoax messages because of that incident, and that impression is simply not true.

The latest brouhaha was Robert DiGregorio posting on Facebook that there will be an announcement on September 1 (Monday) from the Hail Mary team.  Here's a sample of some of his posts:

• "You'll be hearing more on the 1st trust me ;)"
• "MONDAY.... stay tuned"
• "Jaw dropping i assure you..."  (In response to a post saying, "monday better be awesome")
• "I will say I now have 100% confidence in the chance of this deal happening... It's all going to ride on ncsoft now."
• "Monday, an announcement will be made about the identity of those behind the deal to purchase CoH. They MAY also decide at that time to reveal the plan for when the deal goes through."  (Notice how he says when, not if.)
• "Hello Dark/poison.... Oh how I've missed you" (Referring to a previous post about "the moment CoX Deal goes thru".)
• "Have faith, the announcement will be MONDAY. if they don't tell you....I will :) / That's how confident I am in them"

By this time, I was getting kind of irritated.  I don't have any ax to grind with Robert, but for one thing, he is not a member of the Hail Mary team.  He has absolutely zero business posting any kind of time frames for announcements.  He knows someone on the Hail Mary team who told him that there would be an announcement on Monday, and decided to disclose this information publicly.  For another, I feel like he doesn't understand the concept that what he's posting is secondhand information.  He knows what he heard from the Hail Mary team member he talked to, its firsthand to him, so everyone else should just automatically have 100% faith in what he's saying.  For yet another, I believe that his posts are uninformedly portraying what the announcement is going to be that he heard about as positive--he's assuming that the announcement will be related to the re-release of City of Heroes when in fact, it's no such thing.  (See again the NOT a done deal paragraph.)  The news might be good ("Yay, relaunch!"), it might be neutral ("This is who we are."), or it might be devastating ("Sorry folks, NCsoft told us to take a long walk off a short pier.").

That's why in my posts about this subject in the past, I've tried to emphasize to everyone to have tempered optimism.  Be excited, because even if this particular deal doesn't go through, I'm still 100% convinced that eventually, some deal will.  We have lots and lots of time.  But unless and until the Hail Mary team says that the relaunch is a go, don't pin all of your hopes on this one effort. We still need you eager to continue following future efforts, acting when we have calls to action, spreading the word and being a member of the CoH community, and not wallowing in a pool of self-pity.  And if it turns out that it is a relaunch announcement, woot!  Trust me, we'll have plenty of time to celebrate!

So regarding the content of Robert's posts: Yes, I'll verify that the Hail Mary team is expecting to have some news one way or another by Monday, September 1.  Contrary to what Robert thought, I was indeed "in the loop" on that also, as the person I talked to indicated that they plan on making some sort of announcement.  The reason I didn't post anything about it is threefold: First, I'm not their spokesman and I don't feel it's my place to be informing everyone of their timetables.  Second, I don't want people to get overly excited by incorrectly interpreting that to mean that the game's relaunch will be announced Monday, and no matter how anyone words this little news nugget, I know that some people will take it that way.  I'm not guessing on this, I've been burned by it myself in the past when I doled out other news nuggets, and I only have to look at a copy of the thread that I archived seeing posts of people already planning their builds for the relaunch to know it's true.

Third, and probably most importantly, by their planned announcement being publicly disclosed now, it puts enormous pressure on the Hail Mary team to follow through on it.  What if something comes up and NCsoft tells the Hail Mary team, "Sorry, we need to push our meeting until tomorrow," and they don't have anything to announce on Monday?  Well, they sure as hell can't push it to Tuesday now, can they?

That's why in response to Robert's posts, I posted the following message:

Tony Vazquez this is my quandry. why make an announcement for something you havent accomplished yet?

Shane, no one from the team working on this has made any kind of announcement. In fact, they haven't promised any kind of announcement. That's what is a bit frustrating to me, is that we have these third party intermediaries who are making pseudo-announcements, and folks are taking them as gospel as if they're coming straight from the negotiating team themselves, which is not the case. That's why I keep highly encouraging people to not put much credence in what you're hearing. Not that I'm saying anyone is deliberately lying or misleading everyone, but just remember that everything in this thread is "I heard from a friend of a friend..." news and information.

The reason I qualified what I said with, "Not that I'm saying anyone is deliberately lying or misleading everyone..." is because I also knew that the Hail Mary team is planning on an announcement Monday.  I didn't intend to come off as saying that Robert had ill intention, just that 1) Robert is not a spokesman for the Hail Mary team, and 2) no matter how much someone swears up and down that they know something as absolute fact, you should ALWAYS treat such information as "friend of a friend" information unless they can point you to the firsthand source that you can check yourself.  And yes, as I've said before, that includes anything I post as well.  (Unless, of course, I'm posting specifically about the Titan Network, in which case I am a firsthand source of information.)

Nonetheless, I got a bunch of angry chat from Robert this afternoon as a result of that post saying that I was basically calling him a liar.  No, I'm not.  I'm just saying that there's such a thing as discretion.  This announcement is supposed to happen in three days.  THREE DAYS.  We've waited for two years after the game's announced shutdown; can't we just wait three more days to get some sort of announcement so that it's coming from a firsthand source instead of just continuing to churn the rumor mill with posts from random Internet strangers?

So yeah, the big news tidbit of the day is that the Hail Mary team is planning on making an announcement this Monday, September 1.  As I have all along, I highly encourage people to not get too worked up over it until after you've seen what it is.  It might not be good news, so please don't post about how you're getting your Mids builds ready to import into the new game yet.  It might not be bad news, so please don't tell us how we're just cruelly setting everyone up to have their hopes dashed.  Just hold your horses for three days. You can do it, I have faith in you.  Has knowing this changed your life in any meaningful way?  Given that this announcement is likely to be plastered all over these forums, Facebook, Twitter, possibly even on some gaming press sites, are you really worried that it might have been Tuesday before you found out?  Do you really want to hear this from me, who can only tell you that we don't know what the announcement will be, or would you rather have gotten the information firsthand, secure in the knowledge that you'll know what the announcement is, for better or worse?

To the Hail Mary team, I strongly urge you to stop telling people anything, because if it's not obvious by now, anything you tell folks is likely going to be public knowledge in short order.  If that means that you stop telling me stuff too, then I'd rather know nothing while knowing that everyone else knows nothing, than to have all of these proxy spokesmen posting secondhand information that might very well put you in a very tough spot.

As for everyone else--including Ironwolf and Robert--if you do manage to get your hands on a news nugget, please exercise a bit of discretion.  Ask yourself, does everyone really need to know this?  How will people react to it?  What if plans change and this turns out to be false, even if everyone today thinks it will be true?  Am I really the person that should be breaking this news?  Is it really "has been drunk", or should that be "drank"?

And then we can all relax a little bit, with a much higher signal-to-noise ratio of information coming from firsthand sources.

So that's my 2¢'s worth.  Feel free to share yours below, but keep it civil.
Cheers

[Dispari]

So what I'm understanding here is that I should get my Mids build ready to import into the new game. ;)

[Darkfaith]

So what I'm understanding here is that I should get my Mids build ready to import into the new game. ;)

>.> You mean you don't already have them ready? I kid, I kid...

Very sensible post, TonyV. While I'm excited by the possibility of an announcement either way, I've also waited almost two years. If they can't get their announcement out as planned, I certainly won't hold it against anyone.

[Heroette]

And my post didn't fit so just move on. 

[Kistulot]

Thank you, Tony, for your constant due diligence for the community.

I'm with you. Discretion is the better part of valor. If we mess with Hail Mary, or even worse, if we make NCSoft not want to play ball, then all of this hope is for nothing.

I'm keeping my hopes unrealistically high because I can't help it. CoH, Paragon, all of that means a lot to me, and the hope that this is another step towards going back Home is making a very stressful time feel welll... both more stressful, but also like I don't need to count on just one thing working out.

I know if I was on Hail Mary I'd keep abreast of this forum, if from a distance, but if you could pass on a heartfelt thanks from all of us here for ya know, puttin up with the stress of this sort of thing and doing their best to get our game back, I know we'd all appreciate it :)

[Biz]

I was under the impression that the Hail Mary team told Robert he could spread the news of the "alleged" press release on Monday. Was this not the case? If not, I suppose I can understand how he could get a little excited and spill the beans without checking to make sure it was ok first. Not the best idea obviously, but I can understand it.

[Angel Phoenix77]

Thank you, Tony, for your constant due diligence for the community.

I'm with you. Discretion is the better part of valor. If we mess with Hail Mary, or even worse, if we make NCSoft not want to play ball, then all of this hope is for nothing.

I'm keeping my hopes unrealistically high because I can't help it. CoH, Paragon, all of that means a lot to me, and the hope that this is another step towards going back Home is making a very stressful time feel welll... both more stressful, but also like I don't need to count on just one thing working out.

I know if I was on Hail Mary I'd keep abreast of this forum, if from a distance, but if you could pass on a heartfelt thanks from all of us here for ya know, puttin up with the stress of this sort of thing and doing their best to get our game back, I know we'd all appreciate it :)

I agree with this whole heartily, and thank you Tony, I want to go home that I have to sometimes step back time to time and think of something else (thanks to college :) ).

[Waffles]

You're not alone, Robert kinda pissed me off too.

"Like, dude. Shut the hell up until things are finalized. You can only do harm."

[Ohioknight]

  Do you really want to hear this from me, who can only tell you that we don't know what the announcement will be... ?

YES!
;D

Oh, and 'cause you own the site, the official winner of the name contest is "the 'Hail Mary' team"

[BadWolf]

Thank you very much for the clarification! With as many pieces of information flying around as there are, and as many people talking as there are, it's really nice to hear something like this.

[Mistress Urd]

Thanks Tony, its been some 21 months, since the game closed, a few more days isn't so long.

Edit: I think herding cats is preferable than dealing with facebook bad apples.

[Burnt Toast]

So basically what TonyV is saying is that January 6, 2015 is the official relaunch date for CoH?


That's what I got from his post.


:)


(Putting in my vacation request right now)

[Kistulot]

Edit: I think herding cats is preferable than dealing with facebook bad apples.

To be fair, I don't think its bad apples so much as over eager apples. And we can all appreciate eagerness at this point :)

[Kaos Arcanna]

I have a friend who was devastated by the shutdown, and I'm not saying one word about these efforts-- or any efforts-- until we get a positive answer, so I well understand Tony's caution.

I don't quite know why, but I feel a bit less hopeful now than I have in the past. Maybe it's because there have been so many leaks recently.

Still, even if this one doesn't work, at least we know NcSoft is willing to sell the game and we have a better idea of what the buyers might wind up with.

[DarkCurrent]

So basically what TonyV is saying is that January 6, 2015 is the official relaunch date for CoH?


That's what I got from his post.


:)


(Putting in my vacation request right now)

By the miracle of numerology!

[Burnt Toast]

I am of the exact opposite thinking... NCSoft knows that this is being discussed in the open here and now on a gaming site. The last thing NCsoft wants is ANOTHER backlash or for people to say "See I told you they wouldn't sell" again. I think NCSoft asking team Hail Mary to show they are competent to run the game is them making sure that THE deal they do strike will go off as smoothly as possible so as not to tarnish their name again.
I believe (and this is just my personal opinion as I have absolutely NO affiliation with the Hail Mary team) that this is a planned release of some basic information to start the hype of the return not just here but in the gaming community in general...and I believe that this news release is a good sign of things moving forward and closer to an actual signing of the deal. I am pretty sure team Hail Mary has advised NCSoft they are going to announce themselves on Monday and NCSoft agreed to such a thing because they are impressed with what they have seen and are wanting to move forward.


And that is my 2¢ :)

I have a friend who was devastated by the shutdown, and I'm not saying one word about these efforts-- or any efforts-- until we get a positive answer, so I well understand Tony's caution.

I don't quite know why, but I feel a bit less hopeful now than I have in the past. Maybe it's because there have been so many leaks recently.

Still, even if this one doesn't work, at least we know NcSoft is willing to sell the game and we have a better idea of what the buyers might wind up with.

[Risha]

Yes, the leaks make me nervous.  I used to post about how wonderful COH was and how I missed it a couple of times a month on my FB account.  The only thing I do now is heroes/heroines and costume images.  I've tried to stay mum, though my whole family (who could care less) know I'm excited.

I want this back so much, and especially now that I have some extra time to play, I don't want any beans spilled or ships sunk because someone couldn't keep their mouth shut.

[duane]

Thank you for this post.

Being in the know and being the person to deliver the news can be two different things.

I certainly would not want be accountable to the COH community and not able to deliver the promised goods.

[Codewalker]

I am pretty sure team Hail Mary has advised NCSoft they are going to announce themselves on Monday and NCSoft agreed to such a thing because they are impressed with what they have seen and are wanting to move forward.

I certainly hope so, because if they HAVEN'T cleared it with NCSoft, and they do make an announcement on Monday, it's a golden opportunity for NCSoft to kill the deal without looking like the bad guys. After all, how can they trust a group to take good care of COH that can't even keep their own people from leaking information to people who sensationalize it on Facebook, and get backed into a corner of having to announce it themselves, ready or not?

[Mistress Urd]

To be fair, I don't think its bad apples so much as over eager apples. And we can all appreciate eagerness at this point :)

I'm pretty sure quite a few of us want our game back NAO! That said, it only takes a few bad ones to spoil the cart. You can be overeager without being a total narcissist like we see on FB.