Indeed. I can respect the desire to stay civil about this, but so far, being polite hasn't worked. We're on borrowed time here, and we need to let NCsoft know that they can't continue to ignore us without consequences.
For eight years, since April 28th of 2004, we've enjoyed the victories and defeats, the comraderies and alliances-of-necessity, the friendly rivalries and bitter arch-nemeses of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. We have lived, loved, laughed, shouted, sang and even
died in this game. There are children of veteran players who
owe their childhood to this game. There are many of us who owe their mental, if not physical, wellbeing and improvement to it as well. I should know, I'm one of them.
On November 6th, 2007, we celebrated NCSoft's purchase of the CoH intellectual property, as it meant that our game would survive a while longer. NCSoft's silence was not troubling for us, because Paragon Studios opened their minds and hearts to us in NCsoft's place and spoke openly to their fans. We adored it - creating dev-activity trackers to watch for their every word. They spoke and we listened, but more importantly,
we spoke and
they listened. We had open communication with our developers and GM staff, something few MMOs could possibly claim. I've played enough to know.
For nearly five years thereafter (the anniversary will be next month, the month in which the game will be closed if we can't find a way to save it) we've been more-or-less content. The deafening silence left by NCsoft was filled with communication by and with our devs and staff at Paragon Studios. Then came the August 31st closure announcement, with November 30th being the final day of operation. All of the devs we've cherished, kicked out of their offices. The staff we've come to trust and rely on, reduced to a skeleton crew. The I24 update, which would have fixed nearly everything wrong with the game and added so much more content besides, languishes incomplete upon the Beta Server, never to know the touch of a developer ever again.
For nearly a month now, we've tried to remain relatively civil. We've tried to impress upon NCsoft the vitality of the community and the viability of the game. We've made overtures to purchase sufficient rights and permissions to run the game ourselves. We've offered them alternatives to simply shutting down. We've tried explaining to them that what they're doing is a terrible, horrible idea, and that they shouldn't do it.
We have barely more than a month left, assuming NCsoft doesn't change its mind and close early. The iron, once hot, has begun to cool. If we are to make a difference and actually save CoH, the time for kind words is past. We must prove to NCsoft that the maddening silence to which we've been treated will not work. We've tried communicating directly. They haven't listened. We've demonstrated shows of goodwill and good faith, only for our efforts to go nearly completely without reply. It's time we started hitting them where it hurts; in the pocketbook.
There are people out there still unaware of what's going on here. We need to make them aware. We need to fill them with indignity at how we've been treated. We need to scare them, and let them know that if NCsoft can do this to us, they could be next. And with how deadly quiet NCsoft is, it could happen at any time to any one. Like a ganking stalker on a cold night in Warburg, NCsoft could come out of nowhere and kill your game. If CoH dies now, how long will it be before Guild Wars goes down? Or Aion? Or Lineage II? Or maybe Trickster, or PangYa? All of the players of these games are just as at-risk as we are, even if they just don't know it yet.
We've established that NCsoft has a history as a game-killer. Auto Assault. Tabula Rasa. Exteel. Dungeon Runners. Dragonica. Doesn't matter what sort of game you run, NCsoft is not afraid to cut you down, without warning. Worse? You can be assured that when you
do get cut down, NCsoft wills squat on the carcass of your intellectual property rights like a bloated vulture, too engorged to fly, squalling at anyone who dares to try and take what's left of its prize. When Auto Assault was shut down, NCsoft patently ignored any attempt to allow the game to continue under someone else. They even sent gift-accounts for Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes to players. How's that for irony?
I, for one, am not about to let the vulture squat without a fight. I have friends in a lot of other gaming communities. I've been talking to them, telling them about the bad-faith activities of NCsoft, about their previous actions. I'm not about to let this sit idle. Already I've got people cancelling their subscriptions to Guild Wars 2. I'm not anyone influential - I'm sure there's plenty of you that are a lot more capable of getting the message out than me. But I don't care whether you're capable or not. I don't care if you can only talk to one other person. Do it.
Word of mouth made City of Heroes what it is. It's what made it a success. It's still our best weapon against CoH's closure. We need to scrape off NCsoft's benign little facade and reveal the corporate monstrosity beneath. We need to grab NCsoft by the wrist that it is holding behind its back and hold it up high, so that everyone can see the still-bloody knife it has clutched in its grip. We need to point out the dying carcass of City of Heroes, and point to NCsoft's other games and scream, "THIS COULD BE YOU NEXT!"
We've shown them our hearts, and they've stomped on them. It's high time we showed them our claws, and then used them to rip out their hearts!
Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!
(I decided to
record audio of this. This is my own, spoken voice, in a completely raw recording. I've made no editing to this whatsoever - you're hearing it just as I spoke it. Stutters and odd timings are either the faults of my own speech, or are because my only sound recording software only records sixty seconds at a time and I had to splice it all together.
If you think it's useful for anything, feel free to download and repost it.)