http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297553
:(
This sucks....wish I could
I think we have been very lucky with our Community reps in CoH over the years and he was one of the best. It's sad to see him go but I'm sure we will see him again :)
If all goes extremely well, and he hasn't taken a new job by the time the new structure to support CoH is in place, there's nothing saying he can't be re-hired. Unless he doesn't want to.
Gawd..... did NOT see that coming...
I am keeping the hope that CoH will be relaunched but I know it will take time. I really thought Zwill would be with us when the servers fell. I'm feeling lost and sad.
This is just my guess but a few days ago the Devs fell really silent after the AMA and post regarding refunds. The lack of even acknowledging the fact that there was no coffee talk furthers my suspicions that any remaining Dev has been issued a gag order. If its not a NC Soft approved post then they are no longer allowed to talk to us. Again this is just what I'm feeling/guessing. I think they are trying to break us. Please don't let them.
:(
Quote from: Angelus Animi on September 21, 2012, 10:24:35 PMThis is just my guess but a few days ago the Devs fell really silent after the AMA and post regarding refunds. The lack of even acknowledging the fact that there was no coffee talk furthers my suspicions that any remaining Dev has been issued a gag order. If its not a NC Soft approved post then they are no longer allowed to talk to us. Again this is just what I'm feeling/guessing. I think they are trying to break us. Please don't let them.
I don't think so. If talks are still on and NC is the slightest bit interested in selling, then they should want us to continue our support, because anything we do will generate interest in the IP.
QUICK! SOMEONE GET ZWILL A WAKIE!
Quote from: TimtheEnchanter on September 21, 2012, 10:33:37 PM
I don't think so. If talks are still on and NC is the slightest bit interested in selling, then they should want us to continue our support, because anything we do will generate interest in the IP.
Like I said its just a guess... forgive me I don't seem to be thinking straight at all.
Sorry to see you go, Zwill, and best of luck (I know you're lurking on here... my Cockroach sense is tingling). You've got thousands of men, women, mutant weirdos, robots, psychic friends, gods, demons, wizards, smelly aliens, disembodied brains, catgirls, bronies, steam-powered doppelgangers, swamp monsters, They Who Cannot Be Named, power-crazed maniacs, and an amoeba the size of Space Mountain who'll all be happy to give you a reference!
See ya on the Internets...
C.C.
P.S. To everyone else... if you've business to do on the game Forums, better get to it. I have a feeling they'll go away sooner rather than later.
You know, what really brings this game together for me is the sense of community. It's almost like a family.
Quote from: jacknomind on September 21, 2012, 11:09:32 PM
You know, what really brings this game together for me is the sense of community. It's almost like a family.
It
is a family.
He's definitely a good one. I hope the ends up at a company that cares as much about him as he's cared about our community. If I don't hear anything now and then, I'll ping him and see how he's doing and if he's on to something else we can share and bug him about. :)
Quote from: jacknomind on September 21, 2012, 11:09:32 PMYou know, what really brings this game together for me is the sense of community. It's almost like a family.
Moreso than family in my case. My blood family only ever convenes for funerals.
First thank you for your years of service....a very well crafted message our very clever zwil. Even with the big meanies standing right over your shoulder the whole time....even when they want you to rip hope away.....you rock dude. Stay strong everyone zwil is now a private citizen just like us and he is taking a nice little vacation...until the dust settles.
" I've made the decision to spend some time focusing on family and the job hunt, mostly family"
For those of you unfamiliar with the business and political world, this is company-mandated-speak for "I've been fired."
I have the distinct impression from this that NCSoft decided that rather than squashing us as ordered, he was encouraging us as much as he could without doing so in a way that was so overt they could smack him with something punitive.
Please remember the initial announcement was that the boards would be closing Sept 1. We made enough fuss they kept the boards open and gave Andy another 3 weeks worth of paychecks. However I expect the boards to be closed soon.
Probably we'd better post to all threads to remind people to come here.
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on September 21, 2012, 11:50:31 PM
" I've made the decision to spend some time focusing on family and the job hunt, mostly family"
For those of you unfamiliar with the business and political world, this is company-mandated-speak for "I've been fired."
I have the distinct impression from this that NCSoft decided that rather than squashing us as ordered, he was encouraging us as much as he could without doing so in a way that was so overt they could smack him with something punitive.
Please remember the initial announcement was that the boards would be closing Sept 1. We made enough fuss they kept the boards open and gave Andy another 3 weeks worth of paychecks. However I expect the boards to be closed soon.
Probably we'd better post to all threads to remind people to come here.
Yeah, you're probably right. Unfortunate as it is, there's always something to hope for.
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on September 21, 2012, 11:50:31 PM" I've made the decision to spend some time focusing on family and the job hunt, mostly family"
For those of you unfamiliar with the business and political world, this is company-mandated-speak for "I've been fired."
I have the distinct impression from this that NCSoft decided that rather than squashing us as ordered, he was encouraging us as much as he could without doing so in a way that was so overt they could smack him with something punitive.
Please remember the initial announcement was that the boards would be closing Sept 1. We made enough fuss they kept the boards open and gave Andy another 3 weeks worth of paychecks. However I expect the boards to be closed soon.
Probably we'd better post to all threads to remind people to come here.
Hopefully that doesn't mean that these 3 weeks were some kind of extended life support while other avenues were explored, and now that all options have been exhausted, the plug is getting pulled... :(
We haven't heard anything, so maintain the positive energy and keep those torches burning. They're gonna have to take this thing from us with prise bars and wild dogs.
I read it the same way as VV....and zwil gets real points for class and cleverness...because even the midst of being fired, most likely for giving us subtle messages of support...he managed one more.
Zwil you ARE a hero :'(
Damn I just put the captain planet song.in my own brain.......ahhhhhhhh
It's code but I'm not deciphering it well
QuoteMy time has finally come.
This will be my final official communication as a member of Paragon Studios and a representative of NCsoft. I've made the decision to spend some time focusing on family and the job hunt, mostly family . While I love what I do, it often times results in long hours (especially in the weeks leading up to the announcement) and I feel like it's important that I spend some additional time with the wife and kiddos before I jump into my next great adventure.
I've got all of the squishy, touchy, feely stuff out of the way on the other thread, but I just want to reiterate how much being a part of this Community has meant to me. You guys and gals are amazing, inside and out. Much like the team here at Paragon, I have, and hope to someday again, walk through fire with all of you.
This isn't goodbye. I'm staying in gaming. I love building amazing online Communities around games and don't see myself doing anything aside from this. The social experience is why I play online games, and this is where my passion lies.
So until next time...
I've just highlighted some relevant bits. It looks like some people knew a while before... or were fed a line. But I wonder if tehre's something positive coming out of here too
Yep, I saw the context there.. and the 'weeks ahead' part was a little bit of a blow. Been digesting that for a bit now.
Quote from: Paindancer on September 22, 2012, 12:24:35 AM
Yep, I saw the context there.. and the 'weeks ahead' part was a little bit of a blow. Been digesting that for a bit now.
I'm pretty sure you guys are misinterpreting that to mean that he somehow knew what was going to happen. I'm more than confident that he meant that he was hard at work on i24, just like the rest of the crew otherwise I'd have expected to see the word "preparing" in that first bold line.
Very very possible. Chewing on, does not mean decided upon. ;)
Zwill doesn't need a rez. He has simply "pulled a Maelstrom" and ported out.
There's a high probability that Zwillinger was working either unpaid or underpaid for the past two weeks, simply because he didn't have anything better to do until CoH shut down. The fact that he left to concentrate on his job search and providing for his family may be evidence of that. As much as he likes us players, he can't make a living off of it (wouldn't it be cool if we could?). :(
I hope the best for him, the job market is *really* tough right now in Northern California.
Quote from: TheManga on September 22, 2012, 01:40:59 AM
There's a high probability that Zwillinger was working either unpaid or underpaid for the past two weeks, simply because he didn't have anything better to do until CoH shut down.
He was being paid. He had referred to himself IIRC, as an "NCSoft employee" rather than a "Paragon Studios employee" after the announcement and the closure of the studio. IIRC he also referred to plural "NCSoft employees" in posts about what was being continued until Nov. 30.
At least our noise got him 3 more weeks of pay.
Kind of hard to keep spirits up when the primary contact we had is gone. I'll feign happiness for him, I guess.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAKVJIZHLdo
Very sad to see him go, but also supportive of him in his future endeavors :) Still hoping WHEN we #SaveCoH that he can be a part of our lives again. Zwill to me represents what a CM should be like. You can tell through his words and more importantly his actions that he truly cared for this community of dysfunctional heroes :)
Zwill will always be a hero in my book!
(Just finished the Zwillion Hero March on Virtue...it was my first march, but felt it important to do it to commemorate such a wonderful person!)
Zwill was a true blue hero to this community. He will be missed, but not every hero can wear the cape forever.
/me smiles sadly.
If he ever decides to suit back up...we'll be here, ready to welcome him with open arms.
Yeah I'd like to read all sorts of things in what he was saying, positive and negative. I think that's just us pattern seeking mammals trying to see something we really want to see. When you are trying to be hopeful and stay positive when everything you know for sure is mostly negative you try to find anything to hold on too.
We take apart his words in hopes of finding a hint of good news when in reality most likely there isn't more to what he said. Even though I know this I still read peoples attempt to read things into it because I'm dying to hear some positive news too.
If we do hear anything definitively positive it probably won't be for a very long time. I would think that a decision to buy or sell a game would take at least several weeks if not months of negotiations and and legal wrangling and no one outside of those directly involved with it will know anything about it until an official announcement is made.
Even though I check this board several times a day hoping for some good news I know I'm probably going to be waiting a very long time before I hear anything. If I hear anything at all.
I try to stay positive but objective as that seems to me to be the best mindset no matter what the outcome is.
This has taught me one thing. I most likely will never play or at least get as involved in a MMO as much as I did with COH, that is run by a large corporation. The MMO community is slowly learning a very important lesson when really good games come to abrupt end or are made virtually unplayable due to the action of a company whose first allegiance is to the bottom line or to the investors and the players don't even figure into their concerns.
I'm not a business man or an economist but I understand the need for a profit margin. However there is more than one business model a company can follow. I'm hoping events like this will lead to a paradigm shift that has the creative forces and players being able to have far greater input into the games. We had that with Paragon Studios but apparently not with NC Soft.
Conjecture - nature of the human beast.
Is it possible he got fired? Yes, it is... probably not a surprise. I would wager it was more "laid off" than "fired", but the end result is the same. He's gone. It's my hope there is/was some type of severance package.
He is a good guy. A future company will be lucky to have him. I've no doubt he'll land on his feet.
Wishing him the best!
I'd like to think the world hasn't changed so much in five years, that all honor and good is gone from businesses and employees, that no communication can be trusted.
Sometimes a difficult personal decision is simply that.
Good luck Andy, I hope to meet you in person on some future project.
There was a march through Perez in Zwill's honor tonight. The Kraken was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Quote from: TimtheEnchanter on September 22, 2012, 04:58:24 AM
There was a march through Perez in Zwill's honor tonight. The Kraken was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It just wanted to show its support for Zwill! D: You monsters!
Quote from: DrakeGrimm on September 22, 2012, 05:33:47 AM
It just wanted to show its support for Zwill! D: You monsters!
Poor Kraken, so misunderstood.
I blame Tam.
Quote from: The_Hunter_JLJ on September 22, 2012, 05:39:51 AM
Poor Kraken, so misunderstood.
It wasn't our fault. It made a noise... could've just been a grunt, but it sounded to us like, "U suk heroz, NC rulz. QQ"
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on September 21, 2012, 11:50:31 PM
" I've made the decision to spend some time focusing on family and the job hunt, mostly family"
For those of you unfamiliar with the business and political world, this is company-mandated-speak for "I've been fired."
That is precisely what I thought when I read his post. I found it particularly interesting that it came shortly after he posted about "Dinner's on us" on the official Facebook page.
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on September 21, 2012, 11:50:31 PM
Please remember the initial announcement was that the boards would be closing Sept 1.
This was not in any announcement. At one point Positron and Zwill said they were not sure how long the boards would be up for. But since the forums and topsite are the sole means NCSoft is using to communicate with us (aside from the launcher which is a topsite mirror), I would be a little surprised to see them shut down before the final closure.
Thank you for being a big part of our community, Zwill.
/Salute
Good luck, and God Speed.
Quote from: cmgangrel on September 22, 2012, 05:12:51 PM
Agreed... also on top of that, if it was mentioned in the initial announcement, then surely it would have been posted about on the boards as well very very fast.
Once again, more misinformation that might be used elsewhere.... *shakes head*
Were they REALLY planning to close the forums before closure, or is that just a rumor?
Because... with all the talk I've been hearing about how NC just doesn't understand Western culture, if they were going to do THAT, it would mean something even more pathetic... that they don't understand gamer culture. That'd be like kicking everyone out of the funeral home in the middle of the wake. Look at how horrid a reputation SOE has, and they let the SWG forums stay even a couple weeks after shutdown. People need to say goodbye. They need help with their digital bucket lists. They want to hold major farewell events. Could NC really be so daft as to not anticipate that?
Quote from: TimtheEnchanter on September 22, 2012, 07:43:21 PM
That'd be like kicking everyone out of the funeral home in the middle of the wake.
I'm picturing a funeral directory standing the middle of a room yelling, "OK, everyone, last call!"
Quote from: DrakeGrimm on September 21, 2012, 10:34:55 PM
QUICK! SOMEONE GET ZWILL A WAKIE!
Crap, all I've got is two Insights, three blues of different sizes, and one of those Presents from the holidays!
I hope Zwi get's a great job because he deserves bettr than the clowns at NC.
Wow, Zwill has been such an important part and this really hammers home what is happening. I wish he and his family the best of luck for the future.
Quote from: GuyPerfect on September 22, 2012, 07:59:08 PMCrap, all I've got is two Insights, three blues of different sizes, and one of those Presents from the holidays!
Sadly, when I first read this thread title, I was about to jump in with my healer, thinking that he'd gotten killed while AFK in AP33 or something. And then I clicked and my heart sunk. My healer can't fix that one.
When the shutdown was announced, I was at DragonCon, with a connection so crappy I could *barely* access my email and get *some* chat through. I could not get through to the official boards so I never saw official announcements until I got to where I had a better connection.
At some point during that period of Aug 31- Sept 3, someone I had reason trust told me that the official boards would be shut down on Sept 1. I don't have a record of who it was; it was probably an email (now deleted), and it *might* have been War Witch.
Quote from: cmgangrel on September 22, 2012, 09:10:54 PM
Well, according to VV, it was in the original announcement that the forums were going to be closed down on September 1st.
I don't recall reading the sunset date in the original closure notice (I'd look, but blocked here at work). But I
do remember reading on IGN that they had been told by NCsoft that operations would cease on Nov. 30. Nothing about the boards going down, though.
She misremembered or was misinformed by someone else; it doesn't really matter. I just don't want people to think that with Zwill gone, the official forums are going to up and vanish on us.
Quote from: jacknomind on September 22, 2012, 10:12:25 PM
She misremembered or was misinformed by someone else; it doesn't really matter. I just don't want people to think that with Zwill gone, the official forums are going to up and vanish on us.
Just repeating here:
When the shutdown was announced, I was at DragonCon, with a connection so crappy I could *barely* access my email and get *some* chat through. I could not get through to the official boards so I never saw official announcements until I got to where I had a better connection.
At some point during that period of Aug 31- Sept 3, someone I had reason to trust told me that the official boards would be shut down on Sept 1. I don't have a record of who it was; it was probably an email (now deleted), and it *might* have been War Witch. So far as WW knew during those initial days, everyone, including Zwill, had been canned.
While there were lots of developers whose work I enjoyed, Zwillinger was my hero among the devs/OCR folks and my favorite community rep among the many the fora had. Mr. Belford handled a job that would have had me tearing out my hair within minutes with humor, reason, and grace. His thoughtfulness and evenhandedness, sometimes in the face of intense provocation, inspired me.
I can't think of a better commendation of his work than this: A while back, I interviewed to run a clinic in Santa Clara, CA, near Mountain View. (I ended up not getting the job, which turned out to the good for a variety of reasons.) My main concern was the cost of living out there and whether I could find a good, affordable neighborhood. But while I was out on the interview, I thought, "I can just PM Zwillinger and ask about that. I'm sure he'll give good advice." You're really doing your job well when your customers trust you that implicitly.
Quote from: cmgangrel on September 23, 2012, 01:58:24 AM
I honestly believe that we will get warning concerning the removal of the forums and the closure of the game.
If NCSoft is considering drawing everyone down (Not just Zwillinger, but fewer and fewer rednames commenting now on the boards) to the point where only the server staff is there to shut it off on November 30th, then anything is possible, including nothing.
I believe - not certain, so don't go quoting this as authoritative or anything - that we're down to two moderators on the boards and the folks running servers.
And black pebble.. he's been posting a lot recently, but really noone else has.
Well, they're able to post, but not still officially on the payroll.
And we know that Cryptic just picked up a few devs for STO, but we don't know who. I'd think if they're over at Cryptic now, they wouldn't be posting on NCsoft boards.
I just realized this now.
Something to consider:
Quote from: Paragon City News update, September 18, most recent postBut before we get into the details, we want to personally share with you NCsoft's sincere thanks to all of our fans that have spent time with us during the past eight years. We cannot reiterate how tough it was to make the final decision to close this wonderful chapter in our history. This has been a very special time for all of us, and we want to ensure we close this chapter with the best possible gaming experiences for everyone. To celebrate during the closing, we will host several of the popular events we have enjoyed in the past. Exact details and timing of these events will be shared shortly, as we are still nailing down specifics.
Note the last two sentences - PS or NC (or both) has promised to give us some celebratory treats before the end of the game,
and that they will be posting what these will be shortly. I just checked, and they have not done so yet. If they
don't, then that's false advertising, and we can probably sue them. (
Somebody make a copy of that archive post just in case!)
This doesn't say anything about the
forums, but it does say about the
game: they are planning to give us warning about when the game will be over.
Quote from: eabrace on September 23, 2012, 03:35:40 AM
Well, they're able to post, but not still officially on the payroll.
And we know that Cryptic just picked up a few devs for STO, but we don't know who. I'd think if they're over at Cryptic now, they wouldn't be posting on NCsoft boards.
I guess another thing that may end up going down soon then... AP33. Someone has been restoring it after server restarts until now. Interesting to see if it still happens after the next one.
Quote from: chaparralshrub on September 23, 2012, 03:36:55 AM
Note the last two sentences - PS or NC (or both) has promised to give us some celebratory treats before the end of the game, and that they will be posting what these will be shortly. I just checked, and they have not done so yet. If they don't, then that's false advertising, and we can probably sue them. (Somebody make a copy of that archive post just in case!)
I wish people would stop throwing around potential lawsuits when they don't understand what can and can't be sued over. We can't sue them because a post on their forums falls through; there is no guarantee there; it's not false advertising if they don't, it's just a community manager's word gone wrong. He's no longer with them, so he cannot guarantee anything.
Quote from: Aggelakis on September 23, 2012, 05:25:52 PM
I wish people would stop throwing around potential lawsuits when they don't understand what can and can't be sued over. We can't sue them because a post on their forums falls through; there is no guarantee there; it's not false advertising if they don't, it's just a community manager's word gone wrong. He's no longer with them, so he cannot guarantee anything.
+1
Quote from: Aggelakis on September 23, 2012, 05:25:52 PM
I wish people would stop throwing around potential lawsuits when they don't understand what can and can't be sued over. We can't sue them because a post on their forums falls through; there is no guarantee there; it's not false advertising if they don't, it's just a community manager's word gone wrong. He's no longer with them, so he cannot guarantee anything.
Also +1. See "Legal Considerations" for more on this.
Please, my fellow Titan-ites,
please don't make me feel like I have to write up a post explaining the time, effort, and expense of civil litigation ...
Quote from: Olantern on September 23, 2012, 05:59:23 PM
Also +1. See "Legal Considerations" for more on this.
Please, my fellow Titan-ites, please don't make me feel like I have to write up a post explaining the time, effort, and expense of civil litigation ...
Indeed. And I like this idea better: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5277.msg52715.html#msg52715 8)
I wish the best for our beloved Community Manager. I'm going to trust that we haven't seen the last of him.
Hats off to you, Andy. See what I did there?
Quote from: TimtheEnchanter on September 21, 2012, 11:39:42 PM
Moreso than family in my case. My blood family only ever convenes for funerals.
Heroes and Villains don't see eye to eye, but we stick together.
Quote from: Paindancer on September 23, 2012, 05:27:51 PM
+1
+1
It is true that anyone can sue anyone for anything. Trust me, unless you just won the lottery, it is going to be expensive, drawn out, and eat your life. And if you had just won the lottery, unless you were motivated by a Stephen-Richter-sized revenge, why would you?
Besides, I dunno about you, but if I had just won the lottery, I would go make NCSoft an offer for the IP that was so juicy they couldn't possibly refuse it.
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on September 23, 2012, 10:42:07 PM
+1
It is true that anyone can sue anyone for anything. Trust me, unless you just won the lottery, it is going to be expensive, drawn out, and eat your life. And if you had just won the lottery, unless you were motivated by a Stephen-Richter-sized revenge, why would you?
Besides, I dunno about you, but if I had just won the lottery, I would go make NCSoft an offer for the IP that was so juicy they couldn't possibly refuse it.
+1 for truth. And with what I had left over I'd go out and buy a buncha books by some lady named Lackey. And make sure Zwill got hired back as community lead.
Quote from: StarRanger4 on September 24, 2012, 06:14:25 AM
+1 for truth. And with what I had left over I'd go out and buy a buncha books by some lady named Lackey. And make sure Zwill got hired back as community lead.
Don't wait to win the lottery; buy the books anyway. You can get them cheap if you shop around in used bookstores if nothing else, and believe me, they are worth a lot more than the new price for hardcover editions. I've got over 6000 books in my library - and Misty's are one of three authors who live on the shelf above my bed, just in case I wanna reread one for the 20th time (and counting) some night. She's also one of the few writers who my mom asks me every time I'm home "anything new"? We started my nieces on them a couple of years ago. Has made gift buying pretty easy.
I'd like to add to Olantern's plea that people not make him write a post on how expensive and time-consuming civil litigation is that it is remarkably unhelpful to take a "NCSoft is the enemy and must be PUNISHED" attitude. Regardless of whether their reasons for shutting down CoH are benign, malign, or indifferent, our only real hope of getting the game to continue is to treat them like human beings who have real reasons for their actions...and trying to work WITH them to help their reasons be achieved most easily by getting what we want out of it.
They're not sitting in glass towers twirling their mustaches in delight at the misery of the fans of CoH. They made a business decision for whatever reasons they made it. The better we understand that decision and its reasons, and the more we're willing to look at them as potential allies in achieving what's best for everybody, the better chance we have of this working out okay.
Quote from: The_Hunter_JLJ on September 24, 2012, 01:30:57 PM
Don't wait to win the lottery; buy the books anyway.
I will, eventually, the bulk buy thing was only semi a joke.
Quote from: StarRanger4 on September 24, 2012, 02:32:08 PM
I will, eventually, the bulk buy thing was only semi a joke.
They're so good I'd give you my duplicate copies just to get you started, but I already gave them away to some poor unsuspecting soul who had to rush out and buy the rest to get "the rest of the story". (evil grin)
Segev, they made a business decision, yes. But it is possible (and I speak only "what I have heard" not "what I have gotten confirmed") that they are making another dog-in-the-manger decision in being unwilling to sell the IP of CoH. This makes no business sense if they are refocusing on the Asian market, where CoH is no competition to them. Not to mention that they have no other game like CoH that could be competition. The only way to get them to turn loose of the IP might be to ratchet up some of the negativity.
For those of you with no money, I recommend the Baen Free Library. There are a fair number of my books on it, and you can download them for all of the common readers plus .rtf and the books are completely free. http://www.baen.com/library/defaulttitles.htm (http://www.baen.com/library/defaulttitles.htm)
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on September 24, 2012, 11:32:56 PM
For those of you with no money, I recommend the Baen Free Library. There are a fair number of my books on it, and you can download them for all of the common readers plus .rtf and the books are completely free. http://www.baen.com/library/defaulttitles.htm (http://www.baen.com/library/defaulttitles.htm)
Not to derail, but:
I love that website. I've bought lots of their books
because of what I was able to read and the full chapter excerpts they usually have.
Also, I've been your fan long before there was a WWW to take advantage of. <sigh> I miss Diane Tregarde. Also the Brainship series (of which it seems I've missed a few titles).
Well there are a number of valid business reasons why NCSoft would discontinue support for CoH and not sell the IP. In fact, part of how they announced it is one good reason - it doesn't fit with their vision. Not saying CoH is a bad thing, or even that it is losing money, just that they need to take resources devoted to making money from CoH in order to accomplish a different objective which is aligned with where the business wants to go. Might or might not be profit, by the way. Maybe their vision includes developing a "loss leader" to get into a Chinese market that they expect will go ka-boom five years from now, or even just allow them to develop the thing that will go ka-boom. In the absence of information, we can't know.
Why might there be a good business reason to not sell it in that case? Probably the first and easiest option is that they wanted to keep their options open with the IP. If they sell it off, that avenue is closed forever to them, and with businesses next quarter is a long time away -"forever" is a scary word when talking about IP.
Why do I still think they might? If we keep the pressure up, and if they get an offer that is sufficiently attractive to deal with the "forever" question, they might see it as a way to open up new options (maybe getting back into the US market someday) instead of shutting down options (losing CoH IP forever).
What is probably making it difficult is I am guessing Paragon/whomever is cash-poor. It makes good business sense TO THEM to get the IP by offering a note payment over 5 years or whatever, since they are confident that they were and would continue to be profitable at some level and the net cash flow would be positive. This might or might not be enough or NCSoft to cut it loose, since from their perspective, it is a very risky bet for which they might not get anything they wanted and fewer options and a big negative downside too.
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on September 24, 2012, 11:32:56 PM
Segev, they made a business decision, yes. But it is possible (and I speak only "what I have heard" not "what I have gotten confirmed") that they are making another dog-in-the-manger decision in being unwilling to sell the IP of CoH. This makes no business sense if they are refocusing on the Asian market, where CoH is no competition to them. Not to mention that they have no other game like CoH that could be competition. The only way to get them to turn loose of the IP might be to ratchet up some of the negativity.
Oh, I agree that it is not a
good business decision. The thing is, if you ratchet up the negativity in a manner that says "and even if you go the way I want you to go, I'm not stopping 'cause you've made me that mad," they have no reason
not to make that "dog in the manger" decision. (I had to look that one up; not often a classical allusion is new to me; thanks for that!)
Also, keep in mind that, while it may appear to be pure spite or laziness on their part to us, they may have additional business concerns. For all that we've had a flat denial of the theory that they're positioning to be bought out, it highlights one possible situation where they'd want the on-paper appearance of having a valuable property even as they allowed it to lose value-in-fact. Business can be weird like that (and it's one of the areas that I question how valuation is assigned. I suspect it has a lot to do with dishonesty and/or failure-to-do-proper-research on the part of the seller/buyer).
"We" (in this case meaning "whoever actually is going to take active part in the negotiations") need to know what those considerations, if any, might be, so that the offer/deal becomes attractive over whatever siren calls may be causing what seems, to us, to be bad business decisions to be motivated.
Quote from: StarRanger4 on September 24, 2012, 02:32:08 PM
I will, eventually, the bulk buy thing was only semi a joke.
Only semi-joking. Because I'm on my 4th and 5th copies of some of the early Valdemar books...they've rather been read and loved just a bit. :)
(And amusingly, I have to replace my copy of Winds of Fate again...because my baby decided that it was one of his favorite books to eat. At least he has good taste in books?)
Quote from: Hyperstrike on September 26, 2012, 03:25:05 PM
Ooh! Ooh!
Can I be the creepy uncle?
Only if your willing to share the position with me.
Two creepy uncles "sharing a position".
That in itself is a little creepy imo.
Quote from: steelrat70 on September 26, 2012, 04:30:09 PM
Two creepy uncles "sharing a position".
That in itself is a little creepy imo.
Then clearly we're well qualified! Heh. heh. heh.
I love you nutballs. XD
I am now picturing a two-headed being with one head being Uncle Fester and the other being Grandpa Munster.
If i see a pic reference from either of these two entitled "juggling" ill be giving it a wide berth ;)
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on September 24, 2012, 11:32:56 PMFor those of you with no money, I recommend the Baen Free Library. There are a fair number of my books on it, and you can download them for all of the common readers plus .rtf and the books are completely free. http://www.baen.com/library/defaulttitles.htm (http://www.baen.com/library/defaulttitles.htm)
There's also http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ which has copies of the various Baen Books CDs. I'd strongly recommend Invasion for any CoH fans who haven't read it.
Quote from: CmdrAdeon on September 26, 2012, 07:34:24 PM
There's also http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ which has copies of the various Baen Books CDs. I'd strongly recommend Invasion for any CoH fans who haven't read it.
You can also check with your local library. I've found a number of VV's books available for my kindle there, which means I've gotten to reread some I only have in "dead tree version" since most of my reading is Kindle now.
But if you can afford them, I've been recommending her books for years and what she's done for us has only increased that willingness to recommend her books :D