Has any game ever closed down with more servers still up and viable?

[redgiant]

I can't think of any game that had a healthier server population that shut its doors. Not even close in fact.

SWG comes to mind as another close second.

Can anyone think of one?

[GuyPerfect]

some CoX servers were dead

Normally I'd say [citation needed], but I already know this particular claim is absolutely false.

[Klaw10]

Paragon virtualised the servers (the new server technology they went on about 2 years ago (I think it was)) so in reality it was all just one server.

[redgiant]

Implementation tech aside, I'm refering to the notion of 'server' in the classic sense of an expected population presence of the same folks who have affinity to a specific home server.

i.e., my toons on Virtue don't suddenly show up on Justice.

When I say healthy, I mean there is still a dedicated core of stable population folks who continue the community, even if it gets small. As long as its still large enough to warrant an operational server for that community (again, no matter how its pooled/balanced underneath).

The reason I brought this up is it is just one more aspect of 'why killing this game is without much precedent given its population, revenue and passion'.

I was honestly trying to objectively think of another game that suffered this fate when measured similarly. And also why another company has not yet negotiated for it  (current game + retain population + rights to COH2).

CoH has a heartbeat to it that no modern-made MMOs have, and very few classic ones (still) do.

[Copper Cockroach]

.... even before the closure announcement, some CoX servers were dead, whilst others were very active.

Virtue was rockin' the Three Red Dots every single night right up until August 31.

[Mr. NoPants]

When i mean dead, they had a very low active population...

I disagree with this definition.

[Valjean]

The answer to the OP is NO.

[Copper Cockroach]

And thank you for just confirming my point.

Almost responded. Thought better of it. Moving on.

[Coffin]

/jranger

[Starsman]

Tonight, every single US server (other than VIP) was over 60% capacity.

Virtue was at critical capacity with queues to log in.

What kind of game ever got canceled with such a high level of attendance? What server was so dead? The international language servers? Got to admit those are to be expected.

Anyways... its now over. I been crying non stop since the 5 minute mark... a 35 year old man that can count how many times he cried in  his life with just one hand... and I'm crying over this...

[redgiant]

Watch Evangel's goodbye video again.

That will clear your ducts but good.

[KoA]

I hear ya, Starsman. I just dont get it. Its hard to make any sense out of something that just makes absolutely no sense.

[FatherXmas]

Interestingly enough I listen to Regen Radio (wish I knew about them before) throughout tonight and they're British (I think) so I'm surprised the UK servers didn't have a bigger showing.

[Starsman]

I think since the servers being all consolidated under a single farm, everyone that was able to tolerate the US English speakers simply moved to US servers.

[Coffin]

Just watch the original game announcement video from 2002 if you have it around Stars.

This was the home on the net for many vets, our little virtual village.
CoH was old enough to have its initials as its URL (www.coh.com still works).
I could just type c-o-h and hit ctrl+enter, I would be home.

My login was my first name, just my first name. For Mr. Fantastic's sake.

It was not just about being able to turn a bazillion ideas of mine into functional characters to play, but about meeting yours.
Any day I logged in I would see some cool hero or villain that someone cooked up.
And I could find a team in a minute, hop in and play with the dreams and creations of others.

It is this culture and this amount of shared creativity that I have not been able find anywhere else on the net for the whole of last decade.

I am sad over a video game. Yeah.
I have lived in this online utopia for 10 years.
Not easy to let go.

[Medic Tai]

Watch Evangel's goodbye video again.

That will clear your ducts but good.

I hadn't seen this, amazing work. And yes, it hit a lot more emotional soft spots than I knew I had. Thanks for the link!

[General Idiot]

It should be noted that the dots on the server select screen don't represent a static number, they're a percentage of capacity. And they upgraded the servers at least twice that I know of, once before Going Rogue and once before Freedom. That not one but ALL of the US servers got to at least two dots anyway on the final night of the game is astounding, for a game that's supposedly so dead.

Also, for the record - it was pretty active where I was on Protector.

[Shadowhawke]

Every server had population at shutdown. I noticed the Euro servers were lowest, but you must remember what time it was for them. North American servers were all consistently yellow, with the exception of Virtue, which was fire-engine red the whole evening.

We did em' proud, Paragon. We all came out for one last hurrah.

[AkuTenshiiZero]

I still think they could have saved the game with a heavy server merge.  Sure, it would have borked a lot of people's names, but 2-3 servers would have saved the company a ton of money and obviously been the lesser evil.  Shutting it down was the easy way out.

If you look at successful F2P games nowadays, most of them only have 1-2 servers, and are none the worse off for it.  COX going F2P was, to be brutally honest, sloppy and haphazard, and the poor handling was I believe a huge factor in the game's decline.  Too many servers, not enough players to justify those servers, and not enough money coming in to support those servers.  If they had only cut the fat and dove 100% into F2P, I truly believe it could have been saved.

[GuyPerfect]

[..] could have saved [...] easy way out [...] poor handling [...] the game's decline [...] not enough players [...] not enough money [...] could have been saved

City of Heroes was not performing poorly, and was not shut down for financial reasons.