New efforts!

[Surelle]

I typed that wrongly - the Holding company will own the IP. NCSoft is just selling it to the holding company.

I was trying to gather my own thoughts as well and was doing so while multi-tasking at work!

I guess the big question is, "Is the Holding Company going to be some sort of division of NCSoft, or have any employees of NCSoft in it?"  Hopefully we hear something by next year.  Til such time comes we just have to wait.

[blacksly]

O.o My mids dose have Bio Armor, but not Wind Control, Rad Melee, or Martial Assault. Can you provide the link of mids that provides all that? (I got mine from here http://www.cohplanner.com/)

It is possible to edit the Mid's database, including adding new powers, IOs, etc. I haven't yet done anything with new IOs, but I felt like looking at the new powersets, so I had to write up the new powersets and pool sets. So now I have a non-standard Mid's database. Zipped it's 2mb in size... if you have a place for me to send it to, or upload it, I can let you have it. I assume I zipped the right files, heh. I would back up my version of Mid's before unzipping it, but since Mid's is pretty stand-alone it's not like it would be hard to revert to a backed up version, just rename the Data directory to Data-old then unzip my Data.zip file to get the new powers.

[Joshex]

The closing may have been a bit of a wakeup call to some as to what the "reality" of online gaming is....

....Don't get attached.   You will lose your game at some point.

I put "reality" into quotes because I believe that needs to change and I think it will.   No other type of game comes with this built in "doom".   It's almost immoral.

auto-piloting servers can only go so far, even if you fix all the bugs in the code there can still be memory mishaps or physical hardware failure and freak accidents.

all that means is you need someone to baby sit it on call. and that costs money.

yeah typically the player base will pay enough to the game for it to be covered on average, However, the eventual dwindling of players as people "get comfortable" is inevitable, there will be months when people just don't play much and if they buy it will be Very Rare and I'm not referencing item rarity.

that's when even autopilot dies.

there is only one thing left but it's dangerous for the MMO industry as a whole; P2P MMOs rebuild the game to be calculated predominantly on the player-side with each connected machine pulling some of the server weight. naturally hacking will be unavoidable without some sort of sensor built into everyone's client to ignore hacked responses. if there is a server it needs to be minimalistic, like a first connect/log-in router: "these people are online, [IP Address, account name]"

[MM3squints]

It is possible to edit the Mid's database, including adding new powers, IOs, etc. I haven't yet done anything with new IOs, but I felt like looking at the new powersets, so I had to write up the new powersets and pool sets. So now I have a non-standard Mid's database. Zipped it's 2mb in size... if you have a place for me to send it to, or upload it, I can let you have it. I assume I zipped the right files, heh. I would back up my version of Mid's before unzipping it, but since Mid's is pretty stand-alone it's not like it would be hard to revert to a backed up version, just rename the Data directory to Data-old then unzip my Data.zip file to get the new powers.

I would appreciate that. I'll pm you my e-mail

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

You're both right, now stop arguing and get back to Mids! :p

Eh, don't really need Mids for the start.  i have many builds already saved and anyway i would frequently slot my builds by eye as i leveled and tweak them in Mids once i got into the 40s decided to go for those last couple percentage points of whatever bonuses i was aiming for.

[Illusionss]

Harpo: The closing may have been a bit of a wakeup call to some as to what the "reality" of online gaming is....

....Don't get attached. You will lose your game at some point.

Here is the thing, for people like me though: I play such things with the express intent of "getting attached." If I am NOT attached, I visit the game for a half hour or so once a month, and then log off. Just like I do right now with CO. I log in, fly around a bit, run a mission or do an alert, go *....giant meh, ho-hum* and log. I am not in the least attached there, it is merely the most bearable of a bad lot of substitutes.

There is no doubt that this mindset you speak of would be ideal, and I salute everyone capable of playing a game often enough to become really skillful, without caring or getting attached. But that's not me.

You know, what will be interesting is when WoW shuts down. The screams of agony will be audible on Alpha Centauri. It will make the upset our closing triggered look like a game of pat-a-cake with the nearest toddler. We cried and got upset. WoW people will be jumping off bridges.

Good advice to not get attached, really hard to follow.

[Remaugen]

It's very hard to not get attached.   

[LaughingAlex]

Here is the thing, for people like me though: I play such things with the express intent of "getting attached." If I am NOT attached, I visit the game for a half hour or so once a month, and then log off. Just like I do right now with CO. I log in, fly around a bit, run a mission or do an alert, go *....giant meh, ho-hum* and log. I am not in the least attached there, it is merely the most bearable of a bad lot of substitutes.

I tend to be that way with games I don't really care about much at times.  There are also times where i cannot play anything if something that really interesting is coming up.  This is one of those times admittedly for me.  So I'm just watching speed runs most the time.  I'm currently waiting for an update on VO, hopefully it'll see an update this week for more things to test/break.

[Power Gamer]

Here is the thing, for people like me though: I play such things with the express intent of "getting attached." If I am NOT attached, I visit the game for a half hour or so once a month, and then log off. Just like I do right now with CO. I log in, fly around a bit, run a mission or do an alert, go *....giant meh, ho-hum* and log. I am not in the least attached there, it is merely the most bearable of a bad lot of substitutes.

There is no doubt that this mindset you speak of would be ideal, and I salute everyone capable of playing a game often enough to become really skillful, without caring or getting attached. But that's not me.

You know, what will be interesting is when WoW shuts down. The screams of agony will be audible on Alpha Centauri. It will make the upset our closing triggered look like a game of pat-a-cake with the nearest toddler. We cried and got upset. WoW people will be jumping off bridges.

Good advice to not get attached, really hard to follow.

It's very hard to not get attached.   

If we weren't attached in some significant way, I doubt this community could exist.

I don't get attached to my breakfast. Not that I don't like breaky, its just that it's there and gone and I don't give it much thought.

But something like CoX was worthy of being attached to because of the community and game play.
We could express ourselves in so many unique ways. And get appreciation and recognition for it.

If you didn't get attached at some level, and you continued to play I would question your rationality. (j/king) No, I really mean there must be something intellectually and emotionally wrong with you. (really j/king) NO, I'm NOT! *carts Power_Gamer back to his padded room and his thorizine big gulp*

[Harpospoke]

Here is the thing, for people like me though: I play such things with the express intent of "getting attached." If I am NOT attached, I visit the game for a half hour or so once a month, and then log off. Just like I do right now with CO. I log in, fly around a bit, run a mission or do an alert, go *....giant meh, ho-hum* and log. I am not in the least attached there, it is merely the most bearable of a bad lot of substitutes.

There is no doubt that this mindset you speak of would be ideal, and I salute everyone capable of playing a game often enough to become really skillful, without caring or getting attached. But that's not me.

You know, what will be interesting is when WoW shuts down. The screams of agony will be audible on Alpha Centauri. It will make the upset our closing triggered look like a game of pat-a-cake with the nearest toddler. We cried and got upset. WoW people will be jumping off bridges.

Good advice to not get attached, really hard to follow.

I doubt a person could really enjoy a game like we did CoH and not get attached.   That's why I think the built-in "doom" of online games is going to have to change at some point.   Inflicting that sort of pain on costumers over and over is going to start to add up and force a change in attitude about online games.   The "it's going away at some point" thing can't last.

[LaughingAlex]

The same that was said about CoX, is the same that was said about a game that wasnt an online game.  Skyrim was a game that seriously drew people in, had a way of getting people attached to it.  Other earlier games that stand the test of time were the same way, they didn't have to be online, some were, some weren't, still have the fanbase.

Just that mmorpgs suffer from the life span problem that we are fighting here.

[thunderforce]

You know, what will be interesting is when WoW shuts down. The screams of agony will be audible on Alpha Centauri. It will make the upset our closing triggered look like a game of pat-a-cake with the nearest toddler. We cried and got upset. WoW people will be jumping off bridges.

When? Say, rather, "if". EQ1's still going after 15 years - getting yet another expansion next month. Given that WoW is far bigger than EQ1 ever was, how long will it be before it's not even viable to keep it going in maintenance mode? I think it's fair to say that almost all the costs of an MMO in maintenance mode are proportional to the number of players (bandwidth, electricity, hardware replacement, GMs) so as the playerbase shrinks costs naturally shrink as well.

Frankly, what I don't understand after the CoX shutdown is why other MMO publishers aren't tripping over themselves to promise not to do that and advertise that fact like crazy; and I wouldn't be surprised if WoW keeps running essentially as long as a tiny number of people are interested in playing it, quite possibly for decades yet.

[Ironwolf]

That would be awesome.   ..."If someone were doing it".   

One question popped into my head though.

If NCSoft doesn't want to sell it because it may be intertwined with other games somehow....would a reverse engineering project recreate that issue as a logical extension of coming up with something that would run CoH?

Reverse engineering means ALL new code - written to make the game do what it does - in the manner dictated by a new group of programmers. It may be similar in writing but without access to the original code the game may have the same result in a completely different manner.

There are a multitude of ways to generate code to have a fireball fly 30 feet and do 100 damage (fire + DoT). CoH in the original code did it there way - another coder does not have to use C to write the game they can rebuild all tables using LUA, they can use C++ or any other language that does what they want. Basically you could rewrite the game more efficiently and must more robustly - but it would take time and money most studios would never spend.

The specific code that might offend would not be used directly - at least not knowingly.

[Felderburg]

I doubt a person could really enjoy a game like we did CoH and not get attached.   That's why I think the built-in "doom" of online games is going to have to change at some point.   Inflicting that sort of pain on costumers over and over is going to start to add up and force a change in attitude about online games.   The "it's going away at some point" thing can't last.

Well, for some of the more popular games, sure. But if a game happens to have most of its players of a certain age, there's a good chance many of them will grow up, have kids / careers / epiphanies / whatever, and leave the game. Depending on how the game is marketed or the appearance of other games at that time, maybe the first game just doesn't get new players, its old players drift away, and it stops running.

That's a very particular situation, but I'm not sure how to reconcile a company's need to make money by shutting down a game eventually with a clause in the EULA or something that says "this game will run forever!" Because even if a company runs servers, there might not be players.

[Harpospoke]

Reverse engineering means ALL new code - written to make the game do what it does - in the manner dictated by a new group of programmers. It may be similar in writing but without access to the original code the game may have the same result in a completely different manner.

There are a multitude of ways to generate code to have a fireball fly 30 feet and do 100 damage (fire + DoT). CoH in the original code did it there way - another coder does not have to use C to write the game they can rebuild all tables using LUA, they can use C++ or any other language that does what they want. Basically you could rewrite the game more efficiently and must more robustly - but it would take time and money most studios would never spend.

The specific code that might offend would not be used directly - at least not knowingly.

Thanks, that makes sense.   The thought was just tickling my brain.   Didn't want NCSoft to have any real reason to step in.

Well, for some of the more popular games, sure. But if a game happens to have most of its players of a certain age, there's a good chance many of them will grow up, have kids / careers / epiphanies / whatever, and leave the game. Depending on how the game is marketed or the appearance of other games at that time, maybe the first game just doesn't get new players, its old players drift away, and it stops running.

That's a very particular situation, but I'm not sure how to reconcile a company's need to make money by shutting down a game eventually with a clause in the EULA or something that says "this game will run forever!" Because even if a company runs servers, there might not be players.

If there is a game where no players are interested, it wouldn't need to exist.   That's not really what I'm talking about.

I don't know how this will happen, but as games continue to close and leave players unhappy, this will inevitably have an effect on the industry.   This is the sort of problem that someone will solve at some point in the future. 

That's the way the world tends to work.   We don't keep paying long distance charges to a phone company....cells phones show up.   The phone companies who thought they were forever safe to charge extra for long distance for no reason are then left scrambling as costumers leave them in droves.

We don't keep buying film, take 35 pics at a time, send that film off in an envelope, and wait for a week to see if any of the pics are any good.   Someone invents digital photography.   Film processing companies who did not think of the future go out of business.

Record companies used to take almost all the profit from record sales.  They would sell you a CD that you would need to buy again when the CD stopped working.   Well now costumers reject that system and the record companies are hurting big time.

So do I believe online gaming will always work like it does now?   Nope.   Players of every game out there are going to get hurt at some point and that's going to have an effect.   The company that solves this issue first is going to be in a good position.

[Felderburg]

If there is a game where no players are interested, it wouldn't need to exist.   That's not really what I'm talking about.

Right, but I'm saying that a large company like NCsoft isn't going to promise to "keep the lights on" forever, just because a game might become the next big thing. And I doubt they would make that promise partway through the game's life. No matter how popular a game is, there's no guarantee that it will remain popular, and a company guaranteeing a server forever is going to cause issues: either they're wasting money on a game no one plays, or they're legally liable to keep a server running even if they go bankrupt or management changes hands or something.

Most of the examples you mentioned were technological in nature. But the technology already exists - releasing the code to the public. I suspect the only thing preventing a line being put in a EULA somewhere that says "if the game closes, we'll give you the code" is a legal issue.

[Harpospoke]

Right, but I'm saying that a large company like NCsoft isn't going to promise to "keep the lights on" forever, just because a game might become the next big thing. And I doubt they would make that promise partway through the game's life. No matter how popular a game is, there's no guarantee that it will remain popular, and a company guaranteeing a server forever is going to cause issues: either they're wasting money on a game no one plays, or they're legally liable to keep a server running even if they go bankrupt or management changes hands or something.

Most of the examples you mentioned were technological in nature. But the technology already exists - releasing the code to the public. I suspect the only thing preventing a line being put in a EULA somewhere that says "if the game closes, we'll give you the code" is a legal issue.

I already know how the process works now.  I just don't think it's always going to be that way.   The solution to this problem (and it is a problem) may not even involve a company like NCSoft...so their wants and needs are not really a consideration.

[GenericHero05]

Hey all.  My brain is kind of addled thanks to my kids so I would greatly appreciate it if someone would be kind enough to help me with this question.  In the very beginning, was Perez Park different than how it is now?  I seem to have this memory of immediately entering the actual park part as opposed to now first entering a street area with buildings and then entering the park section.  As a goofy Newb, I didn't realize that there were trams available to take you all over the city so I pretty much ran everywhere.  I used to try and short-cut it through Perez, always with horrible results.

[Reiraku]

The street/building area was always there. I remember first going there with my Ice/SS tank at pre-launch.

[GenericHero05]

The street/building area was always there. I remember first going there with my Ice/SS tank at pre-launch.

It is the weirdest thing. I have this distinct memory of entering from another zone and being right there at the start of one of the paths. Must have been a dream. I was pretty consumed by this game when it first arrived. I would actually eat my meals at my PC desk.