I'd love to say that "I hate to be the downer" here.. but frankly.. I'm a bit.. well.. passably upset here about this:
First off - NCSoft is a company.. their not going to license anything to someone without getting something in return. This means either an outlay of money on the front end, or a monthly residual from subscriptions. I'm curious where the new companies involved are coming up with this capital, or where they plan to come up with it when the negotiation is close to being finalized?
Secondly - as much as I want to be happy about this news.. and oh believe me I soooo want to be happy about it.. the reality is, as much as we love and trust MWM and APR.. there shouldn't be a single one of us here who trusts ANYTHING coming from NCSoft. The mere fact that they have a title sitting on the digital shelf doing nothing for their bottom line yet refuse to sell the whole sheebang without an immense amount of legalese, is just mind blowing. Yes, yes.. I know the Korean corporate culture thing.. ya ya yadda. Reality is, the deal is starting to sound like some of the small snippets that NCSoft was attaching to anyone who wanted to buy the IP outright before closing. To me, that's a laundry list of red flags.
Thirdly - the Hail Mary Team.. you guys have done a great job even getting NCSoft to open it's doors, and your work is commendable to an extreme level that no text on a board could adequately convey. That being said.. I hope with all I am that you all continue to fight the good fight, and keep the players in mind that have supported you in many ways. Even guys like me who generally stay away from message boards because.. well.. quite obviously.. what I have to say people generally don't want to hear
Lastly.. and this is where I think I have the biggest problem here with all of this:
Your looking at having a series of superhero MMO's launch as "successor" to CoX. That's awesomesauce.. total awesomesauce.. HOWEVER.. it also means that each of the companies are going to be competing for a rather small gaming market segment of player funded dollars. This means longer times between updates and expansions, no matter the financial model you use, because your only getting a small segment of the market share. This is going to eventually cause a lot of friction, and even downright hostility between the companies involved. We've all seen it before, especially with the various movements of CoH over the early years. And frankly, I know I don't want to see it again. I would suggest putting your collective heads together, and at least a couple of you merging over, with the consent of a majority of your player base that's financially supported you obviously, and making a banner under which the teams, like true heroes, work together to achieve a common goal. In this case.. producing the best game possible, and keeping as many of us "refugee's" under the same digital roof. Now, it's already been posted that Valiance want's no part of this arrangement, and that's on them frankly. They've got their little red ball and they can run off with it and do their own thing, that's their right. But really.. what's the point of taking the player base from CoX (say it was 100K players) and splitting it all up over 2 or 3 different successor games? Especially if 2 of those games are running on the same engine already? I think the arguments of the past when CoX was ripped away from us by the "evil monsters of digimon land" need to get laid to rest, and the two of you at least need to get onboard and start pooling resources and talent.. and get this ball rolling down the hill so fast that even superspeed can't keep up!
And that ladies and gents.. is my 2 cents. Or nickel.. heck.. let's call it a dime for inflation
No matter how it goes.. I know where my money's already gone and where I'll be playing. I have no problems with that funding moving into a joint company that's going to run CoH-I23 and be the successor company with CoH1.5/CoH2.0.. long as I get my kickstarter bene's that is, and get to use shadowmaul on circle of thorns again at least
*flips on my little fly toggle and heads back to the top of the world in AP*
PseudoCool