New efforts!

[adarict]

idk the whole thing smells bad. If there is any shenanigans I know it isn't nate or whoever. Ncsoft is the only one who *could* gain from this somehow.

Doesn't hold up.  I can see no way NCSoft could possibly benefit from "shenanigans".  If they are proceeding in bad faith, then basically every outcome is negative for NCSoft.  There is no way to spin that in a positive light.  Well, not to the majority of people anyway.  There will always be some people who believe anything.  Bad faith would have been a plausible explanation during the first year.  Maybe they wanted to gauge the reactions and see how much they could get.  After that though, there is no benefit for NCSoft.  Granted, it also takes next to no effort on their part.  Just stop answering calls or emails.  if you built your NDA to prevent discussion of the process at all, as long as you never said "no", everyone would still be under the NDA.  Even after they said no, the NDA could still prevent discussion, though I like to think it wouldn't last this long without something leaking out.

In any case, I still visit here and hope that someday I will see an announcement of CoH's return.  If not, oh well.  The game has been gone this long, it isn't going to hurt me more for it to not come back at all.  Besides, it is interesting to see all the different theories, as well as the weird tangents we go off on. 

[Ulysses Dare]

For PR sake, even couldn't NcSoft make a damn statement?

At this point there are basically three possibilities:

1) The deal is done or nearly so. An announcement to that effect would make us, the buyers and their investors happy. For NCSoft it might produce a small bit of good press in the gaming media.

2) The deal is dead or moribund. An announcement to that effect would just make NCSoft look like a villain all over again.

3) The deal is still up in the air. An announcement here could unfairly raise expectations. It would also put the CoH closure back in the news cycle.

Of the three, only the first gives NCSOft the slightest motivation to make a public announcement and even there it's not great.

[Taceus Jiwede]

Doesn't hold up.  I can see no way NCSoft could possibly benefit from "shenanigans".  If they are proceeding in bad faith, then basically every outcome is negative for NCSoft.  There is no way to spin that in a positive light.  Well, not to the majority of people anyway.  There will always be some people who believe anything.  Bad faith would have been a plausible explanation during the first year.  Maybe they wanted to gauge the reactions and see how much they could get.  After that though, there is no benefit for NCSoft.  Granted, it also takes next to no effort on their part.  Just stop answering calls or emails.  if you built your NDA to prevent discussion of the process at all, as long as you never said "no", everyone would still be under the NDA.  Even after they said no, the NDA could still prevent discussion, though I like to think it wouldn't last this long without something leaking out.

In any case, I still visit here and hope that someday I will see an announcement of CoH's return.  If not, oh well.  The game has been gone this long, it isn't going to hurt me more for it to not come back at all.  Besides, it is interesting to see all the different theories, as well as the weird tangents we go off on. 

I agree.

On a side note not directly targeting to your post or the post you were quoting.

I love CoH as much as the next person but it often is taken way to personally on this board.  NCSoft doesn't actually owe us anything nor does Nate.

To NCSoft its just business.  And trolling potential customers is not standard business practice for any business, anywhere in the world.

I know its hard to look at this way but NCSoft are not a bunch of evil people focused on making us unhappy.  In fact most are probably totally indifferent to whether or not CoH comes back.  Probably no strong feelings one way or the other.  They don't owe us an announcement, they don't owe us a game.  You don't have to like NCSoft.  You don't even have to give them your business.  But you can't expect them to meet the expectations of what we think should happen.   This was just business and nothing more.  And like many things in life.  Good things come and good things go.  If you are lucky they cme back for another brief moment or in a different form.  If not then you can just charish them for what they are.  Hating NCSoft only hurts us.  It does not make CoH comeback.  It does not make them change their business model's.  It only makes the person who hates them angry.  There a thousand pieces moving in a situation like this.  It is not as simple as "NCSoft shut down COH and refuses to sell it because they are bunch of jerks"

As long as the community is around there is always a chance of CoH coming back.  Lots of games come back from the dead ages after they die.  This is not a war between us and NCSoft.  But anyone holding their breath for the game to come back tomorrow is just hurting themselves.  Don't ever give up hope.  But don't let that hope torture you.

[Mental Minister]

Well said... I'll drink to that.

[Ohioknight]

... at the price of selling out to the mainstream by retconning Kryptonians as shapeshifters.  Why? To have Superman transform from one actor as Clark Kent to another as Kal-El (to shut up the "eyeglasses isn't enough of a disguise" people and keep filling seats in theaters

I'm sure this is entirely off your point, but that wouldn't technically be retconning. 

Superman used to have the power to change his face to disguise himself as another person -- about 1940 in the Siegel and Schuster era -- like the pulp character the Avenger (revived at DC in the 70's in the Justice Inc comic).

When he was disguised, he was still drawn to look like Clark Kent -- the presumption being that comic drawn faces weren't distinct enough to make a difference -- but everybody saw him as looking different than Kent.

[Brigadine]

I'm seriously considering, they could have easily just put the NDA in place to ensure no one else will ever bring it up, ever again.  It's the anniversary of CoH this week, couldn't we get SOME word for gods sake?  For PR sake, even couldn't NcSoft make a damn statement?

Exactly, their silence is POINTLESS

[LateNights]

NCSoft never cared after the day it was closed.

If you missed that part of the story, you need to rethink things. They don't want to make it easy/hard/impossible for the buyers they want to make it easy for themselves.

They don't want to spend money on a closed project. To them it was a done deal and gone, Nate and the new Overlords got them to talk about it. They actually did a few things to prove they could run/maintain the game and NCSoft was happy.

I personally feel it was too many moving parts at once clogging the deal. I do think things are still happening but no where near what we would like speed wise. I have talked to Nate in the past on the phone and I think he is smart enough to word something to the community if it all failed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but acquiring the CoH I.P isn't the foremost thing on Nates mind?

If that is true, it's a valid reason that negotiations have stalled or at least explain why they may have seemed to - because neither party needs to push for a deal, nor stands to profit from being pushy, no?

If so, this could drag out for quite some time - fear of the deal evaporating altogether prevents any kind of "bluff" on our part to get things moving as we might like.

It is, after all, a very large company doing business with "some dude and his friends", rather than what they might consider an equal partner...

They have no real choice but to be extremely cautious.

[Baaleos]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but acquiring the CoH I.P isn't the foremost thing on Nates mind?

If that is true, it's a valid reason that negotiations have stalled or at least explain why they may have seemed to - because neither party needs to push for a deal, nor stands to profit from being pushy, no?

If so, this could drag out for quite some time - fear of the deal evaporating altogether prevents any kind of "bluff" on our part to get things moving as we might like.

It is, after all, a very large company doing business with "some dude and his friends", rather than what they might consider an equal partner...

They have no real choice but to be extremely cautious.

I would imagine that is true.
The Devs looking to buy the IP, all have day jobs I would imagine, they do their work, get a salary and are in no way financially dependent on a deal being made.
They live their lives just like any of us, when a new game comes out on steam, they probably buy it and play it and get a good amount of satisfaction out of it.
Our priority of wanting CoH back in the world, was not necessarily shared by the Dev party - as much.
Why would they spend a significant amount of their time trying to buy a disused IP, when they could be making 'other' profitable games and/or other projects.

I would however say, that there is little to no chance of it actually coming together as we want.
I would imagine there is larger chance of a spiritual successor to CoX, than actually getting the game back at I1 or I23/24 state.
NCSoft as a corporation would need to invest significant time and resources just to get the servers source code together and in a deliverable package for a sale.
Companies have been sued for selling 'supposedly' complete source code packages, then months down the line a dependency that wasn't advertised / declared is found which puts one party in breech of the sale.

Its not a case of NCSoft management saying to Bob -
'Hey bob, can you go look out the CoX server source code, we want to send it to Nate and his mates....'

They would create a project for the sale, something that gets put into timesheets - employees involved in the project would put time against the project. Either NCSoft shoulders the cost, or they pass it on to Nate and his mates.
I worked for a consultancy that handled certification of source code in prelude to sale of IP etc.
(One company was leasing software for like 15 years, so they decided to just buy the IP outright - no more subscription costs. : One example)

I would say that the general turn around time for that project/system (which was a significant amount of code) - was about 3 months.
(It was a large system that linked PDA's for pipe technicians, so they could see the next job they had to go to etc: Might sound like a boring subject matter, but the amount of code contained in that system was phenominal - lots of it was legacy too - VB - Eugh)

My point is - that this system was something that had been developed and expanded over 15-20 years, and we were able to negotiate the price and sale of the IP in 3-4 months.
In Nates defense - he has a day job most likely, so this will not be his priority.
However, several years, does sort of feel like his wheels are spinning and making no new ground - at least, none that is perceivable to us.

[hurple]

No one knows that the deal is dead (outside of directly involved parties) and no one knows what they could say or not say either way.  But some are speculating that if the deal was dead someone would definitely say something.  That's not necessarily true - nothing anyone has said about the deal outside of directly informed parties is necessarily true, particularly their logical deductions, except for the people saying nothing is certain.

In that context, there are at least three reasons that could explain how the deal could be technically dead at the moment (meaning there is no current open line of negotiations occurring) and yet we'd hear nothing: one: the negotiating team could be operating under a non-disclosure agreement that stipulates they are not allowed to discuss any element of the negotiations for a certain amount of (possibly lengthy, possibly indefinitely) time.  Two: the negotiations stalled and are not currently ongoing but the negotiating team feels it is possible talks could restart after some time has passed or the negotiating climate improves, and they do not want to poison the environment by talking openly about the discussions.  Three: they feel nothing they say would be helpful: those who have given up couldn't give up more, those that haven't given up would only have their hopes dashed, and those on the fence aren't likely to stay on the fence indefinitely either way.

Bottom line: there are lots of reasons why the negotiating team would continue to be silent: some imply talks are still on-going and some imply they are not ongoing.  Some involve legal limits, and some involve legal loopholes.  Some you might even disagree with strongly, but that doesn't mean other people wouldn't believe are reasonable.  Either way, how you choose to interpret silence says more about what you want to believe than on what can be logically deduced.

This is possibly the most perfect post on this topic yet written.

[Power Gamer]

No one knows that the deal is dead (outside of directly involved parties) and no one knows what they could say or not say either way.  But some are speculating that if the deal was dead someone would definitely say something.  That's not necessarily true - nothing anyone has said about the deal outside of directly informed parties is necessarily true, particularly their logical deductions, except for the people saying nothing is certain.

In that context, there are at least three reasons that could explain how the deal could be technically dead at the moment (meaning there is no current open line of negotiations occurring) and yet we'd hear nothing: one: the negotiating team could be operating under a non-disclosure agreement that stipulates they are not allowed to discuss any element of the negotiations for a certain amount of (possibly lengthy, possibly indefinitely) time.  Two: the negotiations stalled and are not currently ongoing but the negotiating team feels it is possible talks could restart after some time has passed or the negotiating climate improves, and they do not want to poison the environment by talking openly about the discussions.  Three: they feel nothing they say would be helpful: those who have given up couldn't give up more, those that haven't given up would only have their hopes dashed, and those on the fence aren't likely to stay on the fence indefinitely either way.

Bottom line: there are lots of reasons why the negotiating team would continue to be silent: some imply talks are still on-going and some imply they are not ongoing.  Some involve legal limits, and some involve legal loopholes.  Some you might even disagree with strongly, but that doesn't mean other people wouldn't believe are reasonable.  Either way, how you choose to interpret silence says more about what you want to believe than on what can be logically deduced.

OR perhaps the negotiating team has acquired CoX and has agreed to say nothing until development on its spiritual successor is completed so that it may be bundled together.   

[Baja]

For how long this "deal" has been in the works I've lost hope. I'd say to most people right now the best thing to do emotionally is assume dead until proven otherwise.

[Baaleos]

OR perhaps the negotiating team has acquired CoX and has agreed to say nothing until development on its spiritual successor is completed so that it may be bundled together.   

Lol - forever the optimist.
Realistically - getting a retired game brought back to life was a long shot. It doesn't happen often where a game studio discontinues a game then years later they agree to let some other studio take the IP and rights to the game and revive it.

Anything the new dev studio do to CoX - could have an impact on NCSoft - which is a business risk.
Imagine a dev studio took City of Heroes, and made it so instead of Heroes and Villains, it was Care Bears and My Little Pony

NCSoft would be cringing from their ivory studio/tower: but what can they do - they sold the right to object.
Thats why I feel it would be highly unlikely for a sale to go through, where NCSoft are granting 100% creative rights to the new Devs.

Something like City of Heroes - which was one of the first Super Hero MMO's : was a good achievement for NCSoft, whether they want to keep it running or not.
Any action that changes the perception of CoX, can have detrimental (or beneficial) impact on the perception of the original creators of the series.
Eg:
Person 1: City of Heroes rocks man, I can't wait to get home and play it again!
Person 2: Yeah Studio XYZ did great time resurrecting it...
Person 1: Yeah, but NCSoft they made a great game to begin with!!

Positive impact of it being resurrected and well maintained.

Eg:
Person 1: Hey do you want to play CoX tonight?
Person 2: Nah, to be honest, I don't really like it since update 26, when they added blood to the game and the begging mechanic where your victims could beg realistically reminded me of some videos I had watched on Live Leak.... it made me sad.
Person 1: Yeah.... why would NCSoft make such a feature!
Person 2: They didn't... studio XYZ did it....
Person 1: Oh.... well still... why would NCSoft let them do that... they ruined my treasured memories.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

OR perhaps the negotiating team has acquired CoX and has agreed to say nothing until development on its spiritual successor is completed so that it may be bundled together.   

That... seems highly unlikely. There have been several shuttered MMOs that were bought out and relaunched, but i can't recall any where someone bought the IP and code and then kept it a deep, dark secret while working on a sequel. In general it makes far more sense to relaunch the original while announcing work on an upgraded version. Fans of the game will pay to play the original game while the sequel is being worked on, and that means the game is bringing in money to help fund the successor while it's in development rather than sitting on it with no revenue at all for the years it takes to develop it and no publicity or word of mouth to drum up interest in the game. That's a really strange and implausible premise that makes no sense from a financial or promotional standpoint.

[blacksly]

Um, no real changes would be made to CoH even if the discussions are wildly successful, as the source code is not part of the negotiations. At best we may get access to the powers/powersets databases so we could add/change powers (and that's IF the client supports an expandable powers/powersets list in character creation). By "we", I mean the prospective new developers. However, they would not be able to change things to the degree that you are suggesting.

They WOULD be able to create CoH2, granted, but that would clearly be under their own name and not under NCSoft. I really don't see where NCSoft would have much to worry about with regards to "the new devs did damage to our reputation with the changes that they introduced to the game".

[Power Gamer]

That... seems highly unlikely. There have been several shuttered MMOs that were bought out and relaunched, but i can't recall any where someone bought the IP and code and then kept it a deep, dark secret while working on a sequel. In general it makes far more sense to relaunch the original while announcing work on an upgraded version. Fans of the game will pay to play the original game while the sequel is being worked on, and that means the game is bringing in money to help fund the successor while it's in development rather than sitting on it with no revenue at all for the years it takes to develop it and no publicity or word of mouth to drum up interest in the game. That's a really strange and implausible premise that makes no sense from a financial or promotional standpoint.

Depends on how marketable a zombie-version of CoX would be. Some on this forum have stated that they would not shell out much cash for such a version. Some won't play a game that will not receive updates.

Under these conditions, if these words reflect behavior, then it makes perfect sense to bundle a zombie-CoX with its spiritual successor.

That way you retain those true believers with the community, while providing a new experience that you can develop.

[Twisted Toon]

Lol - forever the optimist.
Realistically - getting a retired game brought back to life was a long shot. It doesn't happen often where a game studio discontinues a game then years later they agree to let some other studio take the IP and rights to the game and revive it.

Anything the new dev studio do to CoX - could have an impact on NCSoft - which is a business risk.
Imagine a dev studio took City of Heroes, and made it so instead of Heroes and Villains, it was Care Bears and My Little Pony

NCSoft would be cringing from their ivory studio/tower: but what can they do - they sold the right to object.
Thats why I feel it would be highly unlikely for a sale to go through, where NCSoft are granting 100% creative rights to the new Devs.

Something like City of Heroes - which was one of the first Super Hero MMO's : was a good achievement for NCSoft, whether they want to keep it running or not.
Any action that changes the perception of CoX, can have detrimental (or beneficial) impact on the perception of the original creators of the series.
Eg:
Person 1: City of Heroes rocks man, I can't wait to get home and play it again!
Person 2: Yeah Studio XYZ did great time resurrecting it...
Person 1: Yeah, but NCSoft they made a great game to begin with!!

Positive impact of it being resurrected and well maintained.

Eg:
Person 1: Hey do you want to play CoX tonight?
Person 2: Nah, to be honest, I don't really like it since update 26, when they added blood to the game and the begging mechanic where your victims could beg realistically reminded me of some videos I had watched on Live Leak.... it made me sad.
Person 1: Yeah.... why would NCSoft make such a feature!
Person 2: They didn't... studio XYZ did it....
Person 1: Oh.... well still... why would NCSoft let them do that... they ruined my treasured memories.

Wasn't Cryptic the ones that created CoH with NCSoft as a somewhat silent partner that provided some funds?

Not that that would make much difference to the people that really have a dislike for anything related to NCSoft...

[Arcana]

OR perhaps the negotiating team has acquired CoX and has agreed to say nothing until development on its spiritual successor is completed so that it may be bundled together.   

That is a possibility, but it is not a valid possibility that could explain how the deal could be technically dead at the moment and yet we'd hear nothing, so its not an "or" I can tack onto the end of my post.  It is also inordinately unlikely, as it would be counter-productive to hold back a playable version of CoH until a successor game was developed.

[Felderburg]

Imagine a dev studio took City of Heroes, and made it so instead of Heroes and Villains, it was Care Bears and My Little Pony

That would make this hypothetical dev studio possibly the best IP purchasers in the world.

[Power Gamer]

That is a possibility, but it is not a valid possibility that could explain how the deal could be technically dead at the moment and yet we'd hear nothing, so its not an "or" I can tack onto the end of my post.  It is also inordinately unlikely, as it would be counter-productive to hold back a playable version of CoH until a successor game was developed.

Assuming the deal is dead. It may not be. Until we get word one way or another, speculation is just that.

Since you state the it is a possibility, it is as valid as other premises offered. My statements only have to rise to the level of whether they are possible NOT if they are likely or probable in any sense.

Also since you have already stated that my premise is possible, saying that it would be 'inordinately unlikely' is illogical or possibly irrational. 

It is a proverb in sales and marketing that all transactions are emotional. Even if we accept that it would be counter-productive to hold back CoX, logic will not necessarily restrain the individual or a corporation from taking  irrational acts. Perception makes peeps, companies and governments do the weirdest things. 

[Arcana]

Assuming the deal is dead. It may not be. Until we get word one way or another, speculation is just that.

I think you need to reread my post.  While your statement might be true, it is nonsequitor to what I was saying, and I was pointing that out.

Since you state the it is a possibility, it is as valid as other premises offered. My statements only have to rise to the level of whether they are possible NOT if they are likely or probable in any sense.

Also since you have already stated that my premise is possible, saying that it would be 'inordinately unlikely' is illogical or possibly irrational.

It is possible I can win the lottery.  But it is inordinately unlikely.  I have no idea how you are able to conclude that saying something is possible and saying the same thing is also incredibly unlikely is somehow illogical, unless you have a very strange definition of "logic."

It is a proverb in sales and marketing that all transactions are emotional. Even if we accept that it would be counter-productive to hold back CoX, logic will not necessarily restrain the individual or a corporation from taking  irrational acts. Perception makes peeps, companies and governments do the weirdest things. 

Sure, you can say anything is possible, but then there's no point in saying anything anymore, because any discussion is meaningless.  Anything is possible.  But when I say it is inordinately unlikely that the negotiation team would deliberately hold back a playable version of the game because of some strange motivation to withhold it from the players until a successor game launches, so they can "combine" the releases, that's not because that is illogical in some formalized sense.  Rather, it is nonsensical in the extreme because it ascribes completely ludicrous motives to those involved.  First, if you read the post at the beginning of this thread, you'll see that one of the stated intents of separating this project from MWM's development was to ensure that any IP licensed would be made more generally available to the community and not just isolated to a single project.  Withholding the completion of the deal would make it impossible for either development project to use the licensed IP for their games if desired, unless you presume that all of the community contributors in all of the development teams would voluntarily agree to not disclose that information.  And the odds of that are clearly zero, given the fact we're only talking about this because of a leak from a much smaller group of people.  It also doesn't make sense because there's no benefit to holding back a playable game: releasing it only after a successor game was launching would make the original game competition for the new game, rather than an interest builder.  And finally, the backlash that would ensue when people found out that a playable version of the game was withheld for no credible reason would be enormous.  No rational person would sign up for that without some good reason, particularly someone volunteering to attempt to acquire that game for the very community they would be poisoning.

Sure, people do strange things for all sorts of reasons, but people are not *that* unpredictable most of the time.  Most of the time when people do things that some consider inexplicable, there's a valid reason behind that, just one those people refuse to accept as valid.  But that doesn't change the fact that in this case this sequence of events is extremely unlikely even if it doesn't violate a law of physics for someone's brain cells to generate this decision.