So if you haven't seen it already,
NCsoft has officially communicated on the SaveCoH effort, saying that they feel that all efforts have been exhausted in selling City of Heroes. I wanted to post a short message acknowledging that I did see it, and to share my thoughts about it.
While this isn't an ideal situation, I cannot emphasize this enough:
This is not a horrible thing. As far as I'm concerned, the only bad outcome of our efforts would be if everyone gives up on our efforts to save City of Heroes. We've known all along that this is a possibility (our first clue was on August 31 when they said, "We're shutting everything down..."), and it's one we've been preparing for. So seriously, don't panic, and any doom-crying is still grossly premature.
In a way, this actually helps us. Until now, we've been holding out hope that the negotiations between Paragon Studios and NCsoft would come through and make any further activities unneeded. As long as we were proceeding from that assumption, we've been trying to be very careful to not undermine those negotiations. At this point, I don't think that any negotiations are taking place any longer, which frees us up quite a bit more in pursuing alternatives such as reverse engineering and developing a new game.
Believe it or not, I'm
still hopeful that NCsoft at some point realizes that this is not the way to go. They might shut down the servers on November 30, but you never know what management changes in the future might bring about. Having worked in the corporate world and been involved in the IT industry in some capacity for over two decades, I've learned that situations do change and you should never, ever say never. I'm also going to try to drum up some press around not just the City of Heroes community, but the issue at large of a game like this shutting down, the impact it has on its community, and what ethical responsibilities (if any) companies have to do what they can to not destroy communities like ours because of a business decision when there options available like we have.
Still, at this point, at least for now, I think that our efforts should be fully focused on reverse engineering the game servers (which they are). I also
highly suggest that you use the
Sentinel+ Extractor character export tool to export your characters. Even if those data files aren't used directly by CoH-derived servers, I'm sure we'll figure out some use for them at some point in the future. And of course, we still have an active contingent of people looking to
develop an entirely new game to follow in City of Heroes' footsteps. I'm also definitely going to keep my ear to the Paragon Studios rail to find out what their intentions are going forward; regardless of the ultimate fate of City of Heroes, I feel like they've proven that they can develop and run a successful game, and we might have some unique opportunities due to our long history as a community supporting their endeavors to be a part of that development process if they decide to take on another poject. (No, not in the sense of being on the board of directors, but in offering feedback on what we liked about City of Heroes, what we didn't care for so much, and things we'd like to see.)
And speaking of community, no matter what happens, I fully intend to keep the Titan Network up and active for players to continue interacting and discuss our efforts. So please stay tuned, you're not going to want to miss out on any good stuff.