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I've been reading through a lot of the news/threads regarding the CoH shutdown and had some random thoughts...

Once it's shut down, what is the game actually worth?  With all due respect to the creators of the game, I don't think people are still fans of the game because of its lore.  In other words, and in my opinion, it's much more about the game and its mechanics than the story and characters in the CoX universe.  The character creation process, the simple/accessible power enhancement & crafting, the art style and physics, the straightforward battle system, the replayability -- these are the things that kept people around.

Again, this isn't to say that the characters & story are bad, just that it's far more about it being an easy game to immerse yourself in to whatever extent you prefer, and that it's not so deep and cumbersome that you can't accomplish anything casually or in a quick session.

My point here is that the IP has very little value once the game closes.  The prospects of a sequel or anything noteworthy happening with the IP after the game closes is extremely remote.  So it does NCSoft no good to hang onto it if there are any interested buyers, UNLESS...

What's the likelihood that Disney/Marvel orchestrated this to create a vacuum in the genre ahead of the Marvel game's release?  The legal issue was resolved years ago, so what I'm asking here is if there's any precedent of something like that -- arranging to have another game snuffed to create demand for the one you have coming out?  The timing is damn near perfect, though it would seem that the only way to orchestrate a stoppage of CoH would be to buy it, unless NCSoft was somehow open to taking a sum of money to close it.  Probably far-fetched, but an interesting thought nonetheless (especially given the community's recent interest in getting Disney to buy it).

Regarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go.  I've got nothing but love for the folks at Paragon, but the decline in revenue made them almost entirely expendable.  If sales were going to continue to skid despite them churning out pretty solid new content on a regular basis, both in volume and quality, then it made sense for NCSoft to cut their losses.

I know a lot of fans look at the revenue and think of CoH as a cash cow of sorts, but that's really not the case.  Their operating costs were upwards of a third of their revenue and climbing, which is a very bad trend, especially within a year of launching a new business model that promised a sustained increase.  The bump from their free-to-play model lasted little more than 6 months.

So if NCSoft was even considering closing it with an interest in selling, there's no question that the property has A LOT more value without Paragon Studios attached.

As for the reports of them having to close CoH prior to trying to sell it...  This could be the case, though I wouldn't get your hopes up.  The only real reason to be optimistic is, as alluded to above, NCSoft stands to gain nothing from the property once the game closes.  A sequel would be a shaky prospect to begin with given the flagging interest in the current game and the IP has no value outside of video games, so from a business standpoint there is no logical reason to sit on something that could be sold for a lot to someone else.

From a buyer's perspective, I might only be interested in the game after it's been shut down for a time because it will likely need a new business model, which is an easier sell as a savior than as a hostage-taker. 

In other words, "We're taking over the game, and a lot of you are going to have to pay (or pay more) if you want to keep playing," doesn't sound as good as, "We saved the game!  It's back!  We don't have the deep pockets our predecessors did and we have an infrastructure to build, so it might cost a bit more -- at least for a while.  But CoH is back!!!"

Given that CoH would almost certainly remain subscription-based, how much would you pay per month if a new owner scaled back development to, say, one issue a year?  The new trend of MMOs having free-to-play models from the start is only sustainable if you're selling a bunch of boxes to start, which would obviously not be the case if CoH were to get a new home.  I guess it's possible that a new owner would want to continue development as before, it's doubtful.  At the very least they'd need a bunch of time to get acclimated.

So if CoH were to continue, it would most likely still require a subscription for certain levels of access and would also most likely not continue to be updated in the manner we're accustomed to.  I'm curious whether players would pay for anything less than what they came to expect from their subscription before...

Would you pay a monthly fee if the game returned as it stands today, with little or no new content?

How about for 1 issue per year?

And what if it were to continue as it was before, with the same level/rate of content releases, but a much more restrictive free-to-play model?  Would you pay $15/month for CoH if not paying meant a greatly-reduced experience (only a handful of character slots globally, no market, inaccessible ATs and/or powersets, or something along those lines)?

The reason I ask is that I wonder how sustainable this game appears to potential buyers/investors.  There would almost certainly be changes to the business model for the game, and I'm curious as to what the player base feels the best/fairest model would be.

Despite its declining numbers, CoH revenue appears to be $9m+ annually, which means the game would likely have a VERY large pricetag.  As a buyer, I like its margins with as little overhead as possible (i.e. the $2m+ Paragon Studios cost them per year), but the more development expected by its players, the less attractive those margins become.  It could be years before a buyer saw a profit.  There's no question that it'd be a risky investment.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on.  I know you guys have discussed a lot of this to death, but I'm just getting caught up and thought I'd throw this out there...

I'd pay subscription for 1 issue a year, but I'd probably be on and off because of work and life (which was the case before NCSoft's announcement). I'd even be willing to have a couple of years without new content if it mean we could still have City... to be honest, I never got around to a lot of the content, so it wouldn't seem like there was no new content... and if the mission architect was expanded, perhaps it could be set up so the players produce more of the new content. I was in an RP villain group for a while before the end, and they were running some interesting stories using Architect. There was even a nightclub, Black Friday.

Would arbitrating player-produced content be inexpensive and feasible?

Quote from: jagre on November 29, 2012, 02:01:25 AM
And what if it were to continue as it was before, with the same level/rate of content releases, but a much more restrictive free-to-play model?  Would you pay $15/month for CoH if not paying meant a greatly-reduced experience (only a handful of character slots globally, no market, inaccessible ATs and/or powersets, or something along those lines)?

You mean City of Heroes: Freedom? Yeah, we already had that.

Quote from: Aggelakis on November 29, 2012, 02:33:38 AM
You mean City of Heroes: Freedom? Yeah, we already had that.

No, some people had that.  Many players had enough time banked to barely feel the limits of going "Freemium."  If you weren't phased by not having end-game content (which amounted to groups of players doing the same couple events over and over), the other 95+% of the game was free.

This is why I said "much more restrictive."  Freedom's been around over a year.  Many players are used to not paying a subscription -- either playing for free based on the access they have or going "a la carte" and just springing for the new stuff they wanted.

If that was no longer possible -- if a new owner made subscriptions mandatory or greatly reduced the access of free accounts -- would people currently not subscribing pay a monthly fee or just quit playing?

A lot of people are clamoring for the game to continue, but there's no question that it would be a very risky venture for a new company to take on unless the pricetag were pretty low.  If a buyer did emerge, I'm wondering how viable it would be for them.  The current model didn't perform, they're losing potential customers to other games because CoH will be shut down, and the aim would have to be to recoup their investment ASAP given the decline in revenue that was occurring under far more ideal circumstances.

Why would someone want to take that on?  If you want potential buyers to take interest, you're far better served discussing how their investment could be successful and pledging to support the game financially than you are making heavy-handed, melodramatic posts about your love for a declining video game and the evil unfairness of the people deciding to cut it loose.

A buyer would have a diminished subscription pool and no new content to sell.  They'd be AT LEAST 2 years away from turning a profit on the game under near-ideal circumstances, and probably much longer than that.  And that's banking on an 8-year-old game that was already losing support and therefore had little hope of being acceptably profitable 2 years out.

I know all about Freedom, Aggelakis.  What I'm interested in is some discussion on how this game's base would support it going forward.

Once it's shut down, what is the game actually worth? 
That is the question there. By definition it can save on having to rewrite everything IF they had plans on using the IP. At the same time they are not exactly losing anything but sure as hell is not gaining anything.

What's the likelihood that Disney/Marvel orchestrated this to create a vacuum in the genre ahead of the Marvel game's release?[/b]  If this was the plan of Disney ad knowing Disney, they probably would of just did a hostile takeover of COX and then put it on the shelf until Marvel gets it's fill. They probably just figured COX was just another small populated game out there on the level of DCUO and CO and with their cash and know how planned on making Marvel smash the competition anyways especially with the Marvel movies coming otu and that have been out. Even if their game tanks, they still get their money worth out of Marvel just from the movies alone.

Regarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go.  Hmmm. I'll get back to you on that. Because if Paragon Studios was dissolved then their work would have went with it...or...that kind of happened anyways. But what I mean is that I doubt they would have transfered the game to another studio which are probably busy already with their own games and projects and if they still had to get personnel to run COX then there would have been no point in dissolving Paragon Studios in the first place. And yeah, while COX seemed to be raking a profit, it wasnt exactly a cash cow. On Disney, I do think it is worth the effort to see if they are interested althoug has big as Disney is, if they were interested they probably would have made an offer by now but just in case they missed it, yeah send them letters, folks. Ya never know. Worse that can happen is they say no. But if they do buy, dont get too much hopes high as viewing them as a savior until it's concrete that they are going for it. Disney is not know either to sale IPs, and dont hesitate on putting things that are not making enough money for them on ice for years. And remember Disney has a bank account that makes NCSoft look like lowly peons and the profits wasnt enough for NCSoft. Lately Disney has been going for more established "guranteed" big money makers and even more so after that John Carter incident. I might have said this before so sorry about the repeat. But if anything a person is to take from this, is to try anyways and hope for the best but be ready for the worse.



As for the reports of them having to close CoH prior to trying to sell it...  It's risky and depends on the seller. Some may look at a closed game and think it's time has passed and would take too much work and pass it buy although they would buy it if it was still running. They could actually see the current condition of the game. It's like buying a car that isnt currently running because the battery is missing. It looks good, was said to be running good before, passed all emissions recently but still it's a risk. On the other hand, it sometiems easier to take an IP and build the buisness around it instead of taking a fully running game and trying to keep it running while restructing the company to fit around a running game. Depends on the buyer. Some may view the game running as a good sign and they can see exactly what they are getting into. On the other hand again, the legal stuff and difficulty of seeling a running game may be a lot of trouble compared to just selling the IP and building up a billing thing around it and making tweaks as they see fit instead of having to actually figure out the code if stuff goes wrong in a running game. Without the game running they could buy the IP and build their own stuff around it. But either way there is no gurantee the game will be the same game as we know it now. Prepare yourselves.



Given that CoH would almost certainly remain subscription-based, how much would you pay per month if a new owner scaled back development to, say, one issue a year?

Well I wouldnt have minded if PS slowed down on the new relaeses. Those releases cost money and I think if they would have scaled back to increase profits I think most of the player base would have understood. Even if an update comes once a year if the game is good, it will stand up on it's own merits. Remember this game was good because this game was good. You can throw updates at a game every single day but that doesnt make it a good game and doesnt mean people will stick around. I'd pay what ever they are asking for if the game is worth it. If they asked $40 a month, and the game is worth it and I woundnt miss that $40 if the game went off the next day, I'd pay it with no hesitation. Even if they charged $15  month and had bunch of stuff on the market. I'd pay if it's worth it and I'd buy a bunch of stuff off the market if the stuff there is worth buying. And sometimes what I feel is worth doesnt mean I'm going to use it. In my current game I bought many pieces off the market and 75% I havent used or really plan on using but I figured a game needs money to run and I help out when I can when it's worth it.

Quote from: jagre on November 29, 2012, 02:01:25 AM
Once it's shut down, what is the game actually worth? 

Not to be rude, but I'm the person that actually has been having ongoing conversations with several Paragon Studios people.  I know a number; I don't think that number is likely to change in the next two or three months after shutdown.  Longer than that, I don't know.  No, I cannot make that number public; doing so would compromise my source.

Quote

What's the likelihood that Disney/Marvel orchestrated this to create a vacuum in the genre ahead of the Marvel game's release? 

None whatsoever. 

Again, I have been given a lot of private information and the answer is "none."  There was no colluding going on.  There is absolutely zero conflict with the two new Marvel teen-to-adult games.  There is no conspiracy on this side of the Atlantic.

Quote

Regarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go. 

That is not a fact, merely your opinion, with no access to the information that I have.  We would appreciate it if you would state it as such, thank you.

City of Heroes literally cannot be run without Paragon Studios.  While it is certainly possible for a slimmed down version of PS (say, a staff of 40 instead of 84) could run and update the game, the facts of the matter are that at this point, the code is modified, retrofitted, and cludged to the point that no one unfamiliar with it can come in and expect to spend less than a year trying to figure out what does what--bug fixes would be nigh-impossible, and updates completely impossible.

Quote
As for the reports of them having to close CoH prior to trying to sell it...

This is verified from not one, but two separate sources, one inside NCSoft, one outside.  No, I cannot tell you my source and neither can Fansy.   We will not risk trouble coming to our sources.

Disney was chosen as the primary target for Team Wildcard not because of any rumors that Disney was interested, but precisely because there were no rumors of the sort, and the four of us decided that we would try for the hardest target first, while people still had energy, were still full of anger and anxiety because the game was closing, and because Disney has the money to do literally anything they care to.  The price for CoH: IP, game code, server code, and customer account information, is about the same price as a mid-to-low level Disney movie.  They gamble with that sort of money on movies all the time.  What would be a dubious risk for another investor is just Tuesday for Disney.  Plus, the buzz that we are audaciously courting Disney may well generate the publicity we need to get Disney's attention.  Nevertheless, we have always known this is a longshot, and we are not billing it as anything else.

We have another crazy target to shoot at if we get no answer from Disney within a reasonable length of time.  Team Wildcard is in this for the long haul.

And all of this is moot. One of us is holding the winning Powerball ticket and is duty-bound to buy the game. My wife is on board. I'm still working on my mom...

Quote from: Kadrok on November 29, 2012, 02:31:08 AM
I'd pay subscription for 1 issue a year, but I'd probably be on and off because of work and life (which was the case before NCSoft's announcement). I'd even be willing to have a couple of years without new content if it mean we could still have City... to be honest, I never got around to a lot of the content, so it wouldn't seem like there was no new content... and if the mission architect was expanded, perhaps it could be set up so the players produce more of the new content. I was in an RP villain group for a while before the end, and they were running some interesting stories using Architect. There was even a nightclub, Black Friday.

Would arbitrating player-produced content be inexpensive and feasible?

As one of the people who worked at Black Friday and mostly did nothing but RP, I'd be happy to pay to play for little to no new content. One of the great things about this game is that it gave you a TON of great tools to use for RP, from AE to the crazy awesome character creator, to the Base BUilding system, which people did amazing things with. Seriously, I pretty much ignored the SSA arcs and most of the new content until the bomb dropped, and then I went "Ho crap, there's so much of the actual GAME I haven't played!"

So, yeah. I'd gladly pay my 15 a month for little new Dev-made content, because I pretty much was anyway.

QuoteNot to be rude, but I'm the person that actually has been having ongoing conversations with several Paragon Studios people.

It was a rhetorical question used to illustrate my opinion that the IP has little value beyond the existing game.  I'm not asking you for a number or to disclose a source.

QuoteThere was no colluding going on.

I'm not saying there was.  The concept of private liquidation is very common in competitive business.  It's essentially one company paying another to dissolve rather than acquiring it outright, usually in cases where there are no worthwhile assets at issue.  I was just wondering, given that Marvel has a game in beta, if anyone was aware of that happening in the gaming industry.

QuoteThat is not a fact, merely your opinion, with no access to the information that I have.  We would appreciate it if you would state it as such, thank you.

With all due respect, I'm wondering why you find it confusing that a post that I specifically titled "CoH Speculation/Conjecture" contains my speculation and conjecture about City of Heroes.  I'm not going to start every sentence with "In my opinion."

QuoteCity of Heroes literally cannot be run without Paragon Studios.

That's a pretty huge overstatement.  They would not need 40 former Paragon Studios employees to decipher code.  They could get the majority of what they need in that department from a very small number of people.  Reassembling a staff of 40 to the tune of what could be 25% of projected annual revenue would be a horrible investment, especially if the purchase price is equal to a mid-range Disney feature.  Even if they somehow reclaimed all of the game's revenue, they'd be as many as 10 years away from turning a profit.

If the IP had value beyond the game, it might be worth it.  But it doesn't.  In other words, without a Marvel or DC brand, another company would be FAR better served developing an entirely new superhero MMO than purchasing CoH and developing a sequel.  The CoH brand carries very little weight at the register.  The number of people who care about the characters and lore to the point of preference is very small in the grand scheme of things.  Beyond character and story, there's nothing proprietary about the game mechanics.

The property is worth substantially more (at 40 employees with a median salary of, say, $30K -- that's $1.2m per year) without Paragon Studios.  That $1.2m could easily end up being as much as 20% of revenue after the game changes hands.  Way, WAY too high.  I love them to death, but the game would be a FAR tougher sell with the studio attached.

QuoteThis is verified from not one, but two separate sources, one inside NCSoft, one outside.  No, I cannot tell you my source and neither can Fansy.   We will not risk trouble coming to our sources.

And here again I am neither asking you for your sources or questioning their veracity.  I am merely sharing my thoughts on those reports.

QuoteWhat would be a dubious risk for another investor is just Tuesday for Disney.

And the reason that's true is because they don't make a habit of doing deals like this one.  I want to preface this by reiterating how much I have enjoyed this game and its lore for the last 8 years, if only to offset the fact that I find myself repeating this again:  The CoH IP has no value outside the ongoing operation of the existing game.  The idea of Disney acquiring it solely as a game certainly has merit.  But if the price is in the ballpark you alluded to, then the existing game will likely never be profitable for the buyer.

To be clear, a mid-to-low level Disney feature would still be tens of millions of dollars.  The potential buyer of CoH would have no reason to expect more than $6 million of annual profit.  The prospects of increasing revenue in a major way are pretty small.  So if the sale price of CoH is more than $20 million, it's VERY risky because the game's shelf life is already perceived as an issue, its revenue is already falling, and its direct competition is about to grow in a major way.

That's a deal Disney might make IF the intellectual property had value.  It doesn't.  At the end of the day, the only thing proprietary in the whole package is the characters, and these characters (as much as I've come to love them) have no real value.  This is not like Disney acquiring the Marvel U, The Muppets, and the Looney Toons.  This would be like Disney paying ten figures for the characters in an obscure cartoon that only 250,000 people ever saw, 80% of whom aren't fans anymore.

I admire your spirit and conviction and I honestly wish you well.  I'm just very curious how you imagine your prospective buyer would turn a profit given the kinds of numbers we're talking about here.

I feel the same way you guys do and I'd add another "I'm really going to miss this game" message to the pile if I thought it was needed.  I just thought it would be good to discuss the reality of how things are and what the future might look like if by chance there was an opportunity to keep it going...

Without compromising any sources, do you have any definitive knowledge the code base even survives at this point?

Quote from: jagre on November 29, 2012, 05:06:52 AM
That's a pretty huge overstatement.  They would not need 40 former Paragon Studios employees to decipher code.  They could get the majority of what they need in that department from a very small number of people.  Reassembling a staff of 40 to the tune of what could be 25% of projected annual revenue would be a horrible investment, especially if the purchase price is equal to a mid-range Disney feature.  Even if they somehow reclaimed all of the game's revenue, they'd be as many as 10 years away from turning a profit.

<facepalm>
Did anyone tell him that VV used to be a programmer?

My uncle studied programming back in the 80s and has been programming for a major insurance company for the past 20 years or so. He's mostly doing SQL stuff, now, but he never really got his head around object-oriented stuff, like Java. If I'm not mistaken, it was established rather soon after Black Friday that CoH was written in C++, which can be a godawful mess to sift through when it's not kludged, even if the original programmer was nice enough to comment the ever-loving piss out of the code.

While the timeframe she cited may have been arbitrary, I'm gonna take her at her word that we're all better off with as many of the Paragon Studios folks on board as we can get. Even they had problems with the code...

Quote from: saipaman on November 29, 2012, 05:36:52 AM
Without compromising any sources, do you have any definitive knowledge the code base even survives at this point?

As long as you are playing the game, the code base survives.

Actually MOST of the code lives ON your computer.  The server (technically mapserver) only holds two things:

The code that allows you to know where every other non-permanent object, NPC and PC is on the map that lives on your computer

and

SOME of the NPC dialogue.  The dialogue was moved before Who Will Die to avoid spoilers.

Everything else is still on your machine.  Basically if you can see it when you run a demorecord, it represents the code on your machine.

Quote from: jagre on November 29, 2012, 05:06:52 AM
I'm not saying there was.  The concept of private liquidation is very common in competitive business.  It's essentially one company paying another to dissolve rather than acquiring it outright, usually in cases where there are no worthwhile assets at issue.  I was just wondering, given that Marvel has a game in beta, if anyone was aware of that happening in the gaming industry.

Except in the case of the Mouse.  The Mouse has a reputation for finding competitors and putting them to work for him.

Quote
That's a pretty huge overstatement.  They would not need 40 former Paragon Studios employees to decipher code.  They could get the majority of what they need in that department from a very small number of people.  Reassembling a staff of 40 to the tune of what could be 25% of projected annual revenue would be a horrible investment, especially if the purchase price is equal to a mid-range Disney feature.  Even if they somehow reclaimed all of the game's revenue, they'd be as many as 10 years away from turning a profit.

Team Wildcard went through a pretty exhaustive cost/benefit analysis.  That isn't my balliwick; it is that of Ammon, who happens to be an extremely highly regarded Internet Marketing Specialist who does work for some pretty lofty corporations.  We put all of that in the pitch package.  It's actually plausible, in the hands of Disney and with minimal work on Disney's part, for the game to payoff and turn a profit within the first year.[/quote]

QuoteIf the IP had value beyond the game, it might be worth it.  But it doesn't.  In other words, without a Marvel or DC brand, another company would be FAR better served developing an entirely new superhero MMO than purchasing CoH and developing a sequel.  The CoH brand carries very little weight at the register.  The number of people who care about the characters and lore to the point of preference is very small in the grand scheme of things.  Beyond character and story, there's nothing proprietary about the game mechanics.

One of the biggest complaints of MMORPG players is "lack of content."  This is one of the things that drives them from new shiny to new shiny.  CoH already comes with a huge backlog of content that the vast majority of non-CoH players (and a fair number of those who quit 10 issues back) have never seen. 

And without a "brand name" to drive it, CoH is actually more attractive to players, and they are legion, who don't want to play the same character as ten thousand other players. 

It's also potentially more attractive to someone like Disney since they can retrofit some of their own properties into it.

QuoteThe property is worth substantially more (at 40 employees with a median salary of, say, $30K -- that's $1.2m per year) without Paragon Studios.  That $1.2m could easily end up being as much as 20% of revenue after the game changes hands.  Way, WAY too high.  I love them to death, but the game would be a FAR tougher sell with the studio attached.

I used to be a commercial programmer.  You would be ill-advised to go into getting a property like CoH without an experienced studio attached--or at least without the ability to re-assemble one after purchase.  I've seen code like this; you can take up to a year just trying to understand it, never mind bug-fixes and updates.

QuoteAnd the reason that's true is because they don't make a habit of doing deals like this one.  I want to preface this by reiterating how much I have enjoyed this game and its lore for the last 8 years, if only to offset the fact that I find myself repeating this again:  The CoH IP has no value outside the ongoing operation of the existing game.  The idea of Disney acquiring it solely as a game certainly has merit.  But if the price is in the ballpark you alluded to, then the existing game will likely never be profitable for the buyer.

I beg to differ.  Disney has already acquired three small gaming studios that I know of.  I think someone cited that on another thread in here. 

QuoteTo be clear, a mid-to-low level Disney feature would still be tens of millions of dollars.  The potential buyer of CoH would have no reason to expect more than $6 million of annual profit.  The prospects of increasing revenue in a major way are pretty small.  So if the sale price of CoH is more than $20 million, it's VERY risky because the game's shelf life is already perceived as an issue, its revenue is already falling, and its direct competition is about to grow in a major way.

Your number is way too high.

QuoteI admire your spirit and conviction and I honestly wish you well.  I'm just very curious how you imagine your prospective buyer would turn a profit given the kinds of numbers we're talking about here.

I feel the same way you guys do and I'd add another "I'm really going to miss this game" message to the pile if I thought it was needed.  I just thought it would be good to discuss the reality of how things are and what the future might look like if by chance there was an opportunity to keep it going...

We can't share the cost-benefit analysis.  It covered a great deal more than you have even guessed at.  I suppose it must be very frustrating to hear, over and over, "Sorry, we can't tell you, you have to trust us," but there are too many proprietary things in the pitch package for us to show it to you.  Suffice it to say, the value is not only just in the "game" itself, it's in a plethora of other applications, and it's potential is far, far higher for a firm like Disney than it is for one like Valve.  In fact, I would say that your arguments hold some water if we were pitching to Valve.  But we aren't.  When you are talking Disney, you are talking about opportunities that just don't exist for someone like Valve.  Which, of course, is another reason why we went there first.

I know I am testy right now and I apologize if I am coming across that way.  We just spent a week and a half writing something that my brain has never been trained in, checking and crosschecking, getting permission, making corrections...and on top of that as of today I have a great big hole in my face where a tooth used to be and it frakking hurts.

if anyone know how to turn a profit from a form of entertainment it would be Dinsney

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on November 29, 2012, 05:42:57 AM
As long as you are playing the game, the code base survives.

Sorta, though without source code it would be extremely difficult to make any changes, fix bugs, etc.

Even with the source code, it would be tough. From what I've heard, it's quite a mess of spaghetti under the hood, especially on the server side.

QuoteActually MOST of the code lives ON your computer.  The server (technically mapserver) only holds two things:

It has a couple other things as well. Mostly backend stuff like communicating with the dbserver. The dbserver is an important missing part as it does all the coordinating of the various mapservers in order for the game to function as a whole. Things like teaming, chat, zoning, mission door assignment, persisting of characters between logins, etc. There's a few other odds and ends like the auction house and mission architect to think about, too, that exist as separate components.

Older clients do have the mission text in them, but they're still missing the "script", as it were, that tells you what order those go in, what type of enemies to spawn for each mission, etc. That's the part that's most at risk if the assets were to be deleted.

We're actually a bit lucky. The client used to not include the full power info. It had the basics, but not the effect breakdowns like damage done and status effects. Those were calculated only on the server side and just the results sent down the wire. That still happens, but when real numbers were added they needed to include the full info in the client so that it could tell you what a power does.

The mapserver itself does have to do most of the same work as the client, like physics, animations, etc. It doesn't just trust the client like some games do. *cough* speedhacks *cough*

Quote from: Codewalker on November 29, 2012, 06:13:16 AM
Sorta, though without source code it would be extremely difficult to make any changes, fix bugs, etc.

Even with the source code, it would be tough. From what I've heard, it's quite a mess of spaghetti under the hood, especially on the server side.

I second that.

Remember some of the stuff that used to be suggested as addatives to the game or fixed or changes that the devs wanted to change but either it was hard, would take a long time, or just wasnt effectively feasible at the time? Most due to the code and the tangle of worms it was and the tiem it would take to figure it out. For many stuff with all that talent, they did figure some stuff out and seems to was getting good at untangling that knotted ball of yarn called the code.

Quote from: JaguarX on November 29, 2012, 06:22:04 AM
I second that.

Remember some of the stuff that used to be suggested as addatives to the game or fixed or changes that the devs wanted to change but either it was hard, would take a long time, or just wasnt effectively feasible at the time? Most due to the code and the tangle of worms it was and the tiem it would take to figure it out. For many stuff with all that talent, they did figure some stuff out and seems to was getting good at untangling that knotted ball of yarn called the code.

I know nothing about code, servers or anything of the sort... but I do recall the devs complaining (multiple of them, on multiple occasions) that they found working with the code to be a nightmare.

Quote from: jagre on November 29, 2012, 05:06:52 AMWith all due respect, I'm wondering why you find it confusing that a post that I specifically titled "CoH Speculation/Conjecture" contains my speculation and conjecture about City of Heroes.  I'm not going to start every sentence with "In my opinion."

Uh-huh ... but look at the following with bolding only of the operative words that are a complete error:

QuoteRegarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go.

See it now?  You see, there is every question about your statement.  We've heard already that Paragon Studios was employing 80 developers, of whom a significant amount were not employed to work on CoH, but were working on new projects and R&D that would not be part of CoH.  Yet despite paying out for all that R&D on other projects, was still turning a fair profit of around $3 million USD per annum, and without new development costs (sacking developers working on new stuff) would have been closer to earning $10million in profit, if you look at labour costs, office costs, etc  (As a manager/director at various times, you short-hand the cost of a member of staff as double their wage, which then includes the benefits, office, travel, phone, etc costs their work generates - in other words, having 60 more devs than the game would need for basic mode, costs around the price of 120 times the average wage of a developer).

As for the value of the IP to Disney, I have four words for you:

Pirates of the Caribbean

You may be too young to remember this, but at one point those words were just about a ride.  A ride.  In the theme park.  No one who had not been to the theme park--or at least, who had not happened to catch the Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color episode where several of the then-new animatronic rides were showcased--had any idea those words meant anything other than some swashbuckling history.

Certainly when someone decided to actually make a movie about that ride, the common consensus was Disney has lost their ever-loving minds.

Several years and three movies later...

Disney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero movie about the Marvel franchise.  The movie rights belong to another studio and did not come with the purchase of Marvel.  Disney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero theme park attraction including the Marvel franchise.  Those rights belong to Universal Studios Theme Parks.

If Disney wants to make a superhero movie or have a superhero attraction in a theme park, Disney will have to find some other superhero franchise to do it with. 

Bur first they might have to do something to make the property more of a household word.  How better than a family-friendly MMORPG?

That's just part of the 31 pages of the pitch package.  We didn't just spend 31 pages waxing eloquent about how wonderful the game is.  We made a carefully thought-out business proposal.  I've said it before, and I will say it again.  No matter what objection you can think up, we very probably already thought of it and countered it.  Whatever promotionsl idea you think you had, we very probably had it too.  This was hard work, some of the hardest I have every done in my life, and I am incredibly proud of Team Wildcard.

Not everything that Disney touches turns to gold. To shamelessly borrow VVs style of post, here, I would point out one other example:

Haunted Mansion

This one had a decent crop of arguably bankable stars in it. This may seem like a counter example, but the point is that they are willing to risk. It may not seem like it, given the culture that surrounds them, but one doesn't have to look very far into their library to see that not everything in it is an "instant classic."

Also, one of my alts was a robot mastermind called Animatronic Lincoln. :)

Quote from: emu265 on November 29, 2012, 06:56:41 AM
I know nothing about code, servers or anything of the sort... but I do recall the devs complaining (multiple of them, on multiple occasions) that they found working with the code to be a nightmare.

This is true for any software that has not been explicitly designed with modularity and future expansion in mind. As they accumulate kludges in their operational lifetime (in some cases there may be a better solution but more expensive in terms of manpower, or the executive meddlers may decide they want a fix NOW, consequences be damned), this eventually becomes true of any software.
Speaking from experience, this can be true for people working with their own old code - let alone for those who are trying to take over a codebase left by a previous team ( a lot depends on the documentation and training they received - or not - from their precedessors)

With regard to the comment here and elsewhere that NCSoft made a reasonable financial decision in shutting down Coh, I strongly disagree.  They didn't make a financial decision, they made a strategy decision for reasons that are opaque to us since NCSoft hasn't really explained them. 

The first thing you do in business to fix a financial problem is to cut costs: layoffs, trim benefits, close facilities, shrink footprint.  You always target your fixed costs which are personnel and facilities.  And since facilties are often locked into lease agreements, personnel reduction/RIFs/layoffs/restructuring are the textbook means to address this.  In fact, if you don't do these things, Wall Street punishes your stock.

In CoH's case, NCSoft did not cancel the secret development project nor did they consolidate servers.  My back of the crumpled napkin estimate is that they could have cut costs by a third by doing these two things.  I actually suspect its higher in the long-term.  NCSoft did none of these things.  Nor did they go to Paragon Studios and say "Brian, you're in trouble - figure out how to cut costs or boost revenues and have the the proposal on our desk in one week". 

Plus, cancelling the secret project and RIFing that team would have been faster and cheaper than shutting down CoH and Paragon entirely.

All of which is why the shutdown announcement shocked everyone.  There were none of the signs you would expect for a financially troubled business organization.  I also strongly suspect that at the first hint of financial issues at Paragon, the community would have stepped up and basically thrown money at the cash shop and probably other looney things like bake sales and fund raisers.  The Save CoH effort shows that had we been given a path to follow, many of us would have taken direct financial action to support our favorite game and community.

(Seriously - just imagine the boards lighting up as soon as server consolidation was announced)

For these reasons, I don't buy that NCSoft made a strict financial decision since they went about this in the way that basically imposed the most financial cost to them.  Perhaps this is all a set-up for NCSoft selling the IP, but I believe they would have gotten more money from selling off the entire product including a fully functioning Paragon Studio (who were about to release Issue 25 which would probably have bumped up income for the new owner shortly after transition and given the player base an excellent reason to stick through the transition (aka customer retention)) in addition to the game itself.  Its basically an "easy DIY MMO - just add servers!" kit.

I'm not involved in the MMO business and I'm not a finance guy, so maybe I'm missing something, but this all seems pretty basic business 101 stuff about how you run a business.

PS to VV - I will now go re-read "By The Sword" as penance for my abuses of the English language and to enjoy thinking about problems that can be solved with magic swords and really smart horses.   ;D 

One thing I discovered recently, while at a game store, I inquired what happened to their CoH Time Cards. I was told they were recalled, back in May! In their place arrived cards that only worked for Aion and Lineage 2. True, some retailers still have the cards on the shelf, but that just means their inventory specialists isn't keeping track of these items, probably due to being in a convenience store of some sort where food expiration is more important than game time cards. What the recall tells me is NcSoft was, at least, prepping to shelve CoH even back then. This makes what they did to Paragon, keeping them out of the loop, all the more heinous.

What we know is that VV and Fansy have both claimed contact with sources who would know, but must remain anonymous, who indicate that NCSoft is up against some sort of legal wall on this. How much this wall forced the shutdown in its entirety vs. how much it "only" forces them to shut it down and close the studio and keep quiet until the game is totally dark is unclear, but whether NCSoft had a choice in closing the game at all or not, they could not be done with it, themselves, without following this path.

This doesn't excuse everything, but it explains a lot, if only by the hand-wavium of "legal concerns." Whatever the spurs of their decisions, they are rational, apparently, if you know what's going on, but they can't tell us for legal reasons. Despite this, hitting them hard for it is good because, frankly, they've not been as forthcoming as they could have been and have made no real effort to mollify their unhappy customers. They've done some good business-practice moves in refunds and such, but their customer response has been ham-handed at best.

When the game goes dark this Saturday, we can expect that we might hear something by Monday. Maybe. Over the next month, we have every reason to wait with baited breath while keeping all of our noise and pressure up everywhere. The game might yet be given defibrillation; they just have to let the heart stop long enough to declare it legally dead before they can pass it on to soembody else. We think, anyway, and VV and Fansy seem sure of this. If you trust them to only be sure after hearing from sources they find incontrovertible, then hope for this, because it seems the most likely course.

Hence the call to action to persuade Mickey Mouse to come swaggering in in his best three-piece suit and drop a suitcase full of money on NCSoft's desk in exchange for the whole kit and kaboodle, and possibly even putting Paragon back together. Because if anybody can do that latter, Disney can.

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on November 29, 2012, 10:46:04 AM
Disney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero movie about the Marvel franchise.  The movie rights belong to another studio and did not come with the purchase of Marvel.  Disney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero theme park attraction including the Marvel franchise.  Those rights belong to Universal Studios Theme Parks.

If Disney wants to make a superhero movie or have a superhero attraction in a theme park, Disney will have to find some other superhero franchise to do it with. 

This is one of the things that surprised me, not knowing the ins and outs of the Marvel buyout by Disney. It certainly raises and eyebrow along with a dose of chin stroking and "Hmm..."ing doesn't it?

To Disney, it might mean this : an entire world of already time served lore and characters just sitting there, off the shelf ready to be paraded (quite literally) before a new audience. No need to put your Disney writing team to work fleshing out the backstories of heroes and villains, no need to even get your Disney designer squad to spend ages inventing their costumes - it's literally ALL there in front of you, a done deal. It fills that Marvel-Universal image rights gap in your portfolio nicely. All you need to do is make one CoH themed film and roll the characters out at the next Disney parade.

Certainly not something to be sniffed at!

And can you imagine the possibilities of an officially-recognized fan club that could contribute players dressed as their characters to march in those parades? You could charge premium admission tickets for the privilege!

Quote from: wildcat4ever on November 29, 2012, 02:51:25 PM
With regard to the comment here and elsewhere that NCSoft made a reasonable financial decision in shutting down Coh, I strongly disagree.  They didn't make a financial decision, they made a strategy decision for reasons that are opaque to us since NCSoft hasn't really explained them.

I agree.  As a business guy, even with only the limited info we have, it's easy to see justifiable reasons for NCSoft to be concerned.  But even though a lot of it can be explained away, there are other aspects that just don't make sense from any perspective. 

If they wanted to end the game, why not do so in a way that minimizes refunds?  Why shut it down so abruptly that you're giving money back, instead of extending things a bit, accepting no future payments, and letting monthlies time out and microtransactions earn adequate value (so you only refund partial long-term subscriptions)?  They only refunded retroactively about a month or so, meaning that the game could have had a natural ending point on New Year's Eve.  The game's abrupt end is a head-scratcher of the first order.

So yeah, there's obviously a lot going on behind the scenes that we're not privy to, and that's fine.  The situation just raises a lot of questions that make for interesting discussion.

Quote from: Turjan on November 29, 2012, 03:29:35 PM
This is one of the things that surprised me, not knowing the ins and outs of the Marvel buyout by Disney. It certainly raises and eyebrow along with a dose of chin stroking and "Hmm..."ing doesn't it?

This probably had nothing to do with Disney.  Marvel had licensed out their character individually, or as packages, and by media type.  In other words, for a while there you couldn't make a Spider-man movie that mentioned the X-men or Avengers.  This was somewhat ironic since the whole concept the the Marvel Universe was that all of their heroes shared a world and Sue Storm could go over and have lunch with Jan from the Avengers and Storm from the X-men.  Or that Beast could go from the X-men to the Avengers and back as each team needed him.

Quote from: wildcat4ever on November 29, 2012, 04:09:12 PM
This probably had nothing to do with Disney.  Marvel had licensed out their character individually, or as packages, and by media type.  In other words, for a while there you couldn't make a Spider-man movie that mentioned the X-men or Avengers.  This was somewhat ironic since the whole concept the the Marvel Universe was that all of their heroes shared a world and Sue Storm could go over and have lunch with Jan from the Avengers and Storm from the X-men.  Or that Beast could go from the X-men to the Avengers and back as each team needed him.

I think Turjan's point is more that, due to this gap in the licensing Disney can do with their Marvel product, CoH could fill that gap. Thus, "Hmmm...."

Not because "omg conspiracy," but because "this is yet another way it's a good buy for Disney."

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on November 29, 2012, 06:03:57 AMIt's actually plausible, in the hands of Disney and with minimal work on Disney's part, for the game to payoff and turn a profit within the first year.

The asking price would have to be very low to the point of being undervalued by NCSoft for a buyer to turn a profit in the first year.  There are dozens of formulas for determining an accurate valuation of a business, but one of the most popular is multiple of adjusted profit, where the value of a profitable business is assessed by determining an annual profit projection and multiplying it by a set number of years (typically 2 or 3 in situations comparable to this one).

Given a projected revenue of under $10m on the year and the adjusted cost of operation by a prospective buyer (in this case a much smaller payroll for starters), the asking price would have to be no greater than $7.5 million to even have a hope of turning a profit in year one, and even then it would be a stretch.  And $7.5 would be a very forgiving valuation given their short-term projected earnings.  They would either have to be very motivated to sell for whatever reason or being very nice to their own financial detriment to price it that low.

Regardless, if the asking price is anywhere in that neighborhood, then I think the prospects for sale would be pretty decent.  Turning a profit in the first year is a lofty goal for any acquisition, but the game's projected shelf life would certainly be an issue.

QuoteI used to be a commercial programmer.  You would be ill-advised to go into getting a property like CoH without an experienced studio attached--or at least without the ability to re-assemble one after purchase.  I've seen code like this; you can take up to a year just trying to understand it, never mind bug-fixes and updates.

I totally agree.  I just don't agree that you'd need a staff of 40 of them.  Pure speculation on my part, but I'd guess that there are a handful of folks there that know their way around the code, and that a prospective buyer could get by with just those few.

QuoteWe can't share the cost-benefit analysis.  It covered a great deal more than you have even guessed at.  I suppose it must be very frustrating to hear, over and over, "Sorry, we can't tell you, you have to trust us,"

I'm not at all frustrated, and appreciate the insight you've shared.  I'm not asking you for any information at all.  I just want to be clear on that -- that this is all speculation on my part.  I'm just sharing my thoughts, not asking you to share anything whatsoever.   :)

QuoteAs for the value of the IP to Disney, I have four words for you:

Pirates of the Caribbean

You may be too young to remember this, but at one point those words were just about a ride.

The concept of pirate life has been a popular staple in fiction since the invention of the pirate.   ;)  And the idea of pirates being in the Caribbean wasn't something they came up with to make a theme park ride.  Leaving aside that there are still actual pirates in the Caribbean, this is a historically-accurate concept that's been around for a few hundred years and used in fiction for pretty much the same amount of time.

They saw an enormous emerging trend in genre films and decided to ride the wave.  Franchise films were booming again after a 10-year cooling period and they saw an angle worth playing.  Saying that the movie is based on the ride is just a roundabout way of saying it was based on the idea of there being pirates in the Caribbean.  "Let's make a pirate movie!" is pretty much how it went.  A couple scripts went nowhere, then they brought in the Pirate Guy, Ted Elliott, who had done 3 pirate/pirate-era/themed flicks in the past.

My point is that this wasn't Disney creating magic.  This was Disney having a general idea, halfheartedly exploring it, then bringing in Bruckheimer to make it work.  "The Mouse" just collected the money.   ;)

QuoteDisney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero movie about the Marvel franchise.  The movie rights belong to another studio and did not come with the purchase of Marvel.

Not exactly.  They DO own Marvel Studios, a very profitable studio making money on Marvel properties as we speak.  The next few movies are being distributed by Paramount, but I think that might be ending with Iron Man 3 or shortly thereafter.  They don't have the rights to Spider-Man or The X-Men, but the rest of the Marvel properties will be fully under the Disney umbrella shortly.

QuoteIf Disney wants to make a superhero movie or have a superhero attraction in a theme park, Disney will have to find some other superhero franchise to do it with.

Not exactly.  There's nothing stopping them from developing something original through Marvel, Kingdom Comics, or Boom Studios, and the one benefit of there never having been a sequel to The Incredibles is that they've got an entire world of undefined, unexplored superheroes to extrapolate if they so chose.  Doesn't mean the CoH crew couldn't have a home there, too, but you'd have to be able to argue that there are characters and concepts there worth paying for.

I don't disagree that it could be an attractive property for them for the right price, but I highly doubt it would have any value to them beyond the game.  They don't need help in that department, and the CoH characters are thinly-veiled placeholders for characters they now own.

Personally, I love the idea of it.  A sort-of sequel to CoH, but replacing the characters and stories with the Marvel U.  Owning the framework of CoH would be the perfect template for it, keeping all the best elements (character creation, streamlined ATs & powersets, enhancement, crafting, the mission system, etc.) but having Marvel locations, contacts/characters, and so on.  It would be fantastic.

Given the history of CoH development and all the things they did right AND wrong, along with the benefit of seeing what hasn't worked in DCUO and Champions -- It's easy to envision what the perfect superhero MMO would be, and Disney would have all the right pieces if they acquired CoH.  Sadly, I just don't see it happening...

Quote from: jagre on November 29, 2012, 02:01:25 AM
(snip)
Regarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go.  I've got nothing but love for the folks at Paragon, but the decline in revenue made them almost entirely expendable.  If sales were going to continue to skid despite them churning out pretty solid new content on a regular basis, both in volume and quality, then it made sense for NCSoft to cut their losses.

I know a lot of fans look at the revenue and think of CoH as a cash cow of sorts, but that's really not the case.  Their operating costs were upwards of a third of their revenue and climbing, which is a very bad trend, especially within a year of launching a new business model that promised a sustained increase.  The bump from their free-to-play model lasted little more than 6 months.
(snip)

I'm missing something here...

What Q2 decline in revenue are you talking about?

Comparing the Q1 and Q2 sales reports, Things look relatively stable Q1 to Q2:   2890 to 2855... a drop of a little over 1%

At that time, the combined NCSoft NA & European markets (the only markets CoH operates in) crumbled:
Q1: 2206+6907 = 10,213, Q2: 5783+699 =  6,482
That's over 30% decline!

So, in Q2, while the NA/Euro market plummetted for NCSoft, CoH was stable. 
In fact, it went from representing around 28% of all NCSoft's North America's sales to a whopping 44%. 


So, am I looking at the wrong resource here?  I'm kinda new to tracking financials.

Quote from: jagre on November 29, 2012, 02:01:25 AM

Once it's shut down, what is the game actually worth? 

I've worked several corporate IT transitions in the past as a PM and dev at IBM, and have sunset more than one tool/company.  So I have some knowledge of how this plays out generally.  VV's right the valuation of the property will not change for a bit.  It's worth less shut down than as a functioning entity due to 'tribal knowledge' in place, but if you're buying it out - you're most likely going to consolidate it anyway in 9 months or less so ... many of those who aren't essential will be used for documentation and then moved to other posts, reassigned or let go.  (Yes, it's evil, I know.  It's how it's done - I'm sorry but that's what happens generally.) 

There are two types of IP of any value to Disney, the functioning assets of the game - i.e., Character creation process, game play mechanics, things which other groups do but don't do well - or that you can't easily replicate on your own.  Any fucntionality which would be unique to CoH.  If you think about it, there really isn't much at CoH which can't be replicated in another manner or that hasn't been replicated by other competitors in the market.  By purchasing CoH you have the existing systems which is great, but you still have to maintain them and improve on them.  It really depends on if the codes new or what is more likely, you've got bandaids and duct tape code where every time there was an improvement or a bug, instead of having the cash or time to do it right - you just slapped a patch on it with the intent to fix it properly 'in the next cycle'.  Truth is, the 'next cycle' might have new priorities so the buggy code you meant to replace becomes well known work-around-production code.  It's a mass of Spaghetti code that has either no comments and documentation or poor documentation and comments to work from.  Everyone 'knows' it's there so they create work-arounds to work around the work around bits, which also, wind up in the production code going forward.

When you buy a company that makes software you expect this code is in there... it always is.  You also expect your probably going to have to decide either to let it ride or replace it.  Most of the time you let it ride and then plan for a complete rebuild at a later time, so the value of this... is pretty much the functioning process, not the code itself. 

So, what's the value of COH's IP?  Pretty limited.  Its really the functional process and the copyrighted characters and concepts.   

If anyone buys it, now that it's shut down they'll have to do a relaunch, and a reopen... so ... you can expect thats your best time to rebuild from the bottom up anyway, which will include copyrighted works of dubious merit, tying in with your existing corporate plans, etc., so the value of the art, visual presentation, copyrighted Characters... not so much.  Any and all would be up on the chopping block to bring the new relaunch to a success.  They have a value but it's severely devalued at this point.

Which brings us to the second major IP value of CoH, which seems to be overlooked by a lot of people and it's probably the most important one of all.

The second IP value is the fan base.  Seriously.  It's us.  Ever play Champions?  It pretty much has a lot of the same features.  Same as DCUO.  Really, both are superhero based MMO's with customizable characters that let you choose your options for powers and play with others or solo.  Regardless of how we feel about them - they're the same in the eyes of the spreadsheet.

Remember the people buying are not probably players - the 'look' the 'feel' of one game will be pretty much the same to them, as opposed to your view of it.  You're not looking at a spreadsheet that has columns comparing features with an X for "Customized Character Creation" and seeing that DCUO, Champions, and CoH all have this, but they are and that's how they'll rank this and assess it.  Now, you and I and most of the gaming world would never put DCUO, Champions or any other Character Creation process against COH, or a lot of the features.  It's like amatuers and professionals in levels of difference here right?  But they will.  And they will do that for every feature and functionality.  They won't have the time to play all 3 games for themselves.  They might ask someone to - and they'll jump on for a couple hours and do a check list assessment on a spreadsheet and send an email out with the numbers.

That's how they'll do this.  That's reality.  That's how it's done. 

But they won't be stupid.  The people who make these decisions, are not generally idiots.  They will look at volumes of players over a 2-4-8 year period if possible.  They'll bring up the articles and analysis of the games markets by genre over the last many years.  And they will see that CoH is the Grand Daddy of this genre of MMO.  It's the oldest and it's been there the longest and yes, it's lost users and it's more than a bit grey in the technology beard... but they will also see over and over reports of the community being 'what makes CoH so special'. 

I don't think you ever read anything without that being mentioned.  So yeah, that gets a special column in the spreadsheet.

They will know that as each new competitor came out, CoH held ground and it wasn't for the technology in the game.  Seldom anywhere will you ever read a rave about the tech in CoH.  (I've looked.)   They'll know that if all of the DCUOs and the Champions have similar features ... something made CoH's work better at holding on to the fan base than the others or it wouldn't have lasted 8 years now would it??  It wouldn't even be marginally profitable after 8 years in the gaming world with the minimal advertising and so on... So, they will then ask, what was it? 

And they look at the column or section which is frequently entitled 'human factors' which is us.

We're the fan base, and then, they get into why CoH's functional processes have valuation - which is because they evolved around us, and our play.  But more importantly they evolved around something which is subjective.  The value only becomes a value to the subjective buyer of the product (once again that's US).

The bottom line and that means, the actual value to a prospective buyer is, "How many fans will come to the 'new' CoH we're buying?".    How many will stay?  How many will call a friend, a buddy, a coworker and say, "Hey check this out...". 

How much work will our marketing people have to make this profitable?  How many people can we expect as our core base?  That's our end of the IP evaluation equation.   That's what will be key to the purchase.  We're are very much the equivalent of Browncoats to the movie Serenity, or Trekies to Star Trek. 

And how many, now that the game has closed - will return if they reopen the doors?   Thats a very very important number.  How many of us, will come back?  How many of us will fight to reopen the doors? 

How many potential Trekkies are they buying?  How many potential Browncoats? 

That, is frankly, the only IP of any real value to them right now - everything else is important to be sure, but we're the trump card.  We're the big value. 

Anything else will need to be replaced, rebuilt, deconstructed, or will move to another job anyway in the next 12-24 months so the actual valuation is pretty much the fanbase itself at this point. 

Quote from: dwturducken on November 29, 2012, 01:06:30 PM
Not everything that Disney touches turns to gold. To shamelessly borrow VVs style of post, here, I would point out one other example:

Haunted Mansion

This one had a decent crop of arguably bankable stars in it. This may seem like a counter example, but the point is that they are willing to risk. It may not seem like it, given the culture that surrounds them, but one doesn't have to look very far into their library to see that not everything in it is an "instant classic."

Also, one of my alts was a robot mastermind called Animatronic Lincoln. :)

true.

Well no entity is perfect.


Yeah I remember Pirates of the Caribbean pre-Depp days. It was a ride that was basically off to the side but good stuff.

When I heard they was making a movie off the ride I was one of the few that told people that movie, if they do it right, will make a lot of money. There wasnt many good adventure pirates movie out in those recent times. Of course many said I lost my mind (they didnt realize that I lost my mind years ago prior to that :p).

Well it's feasible that a Disney movie based off of COX will come out and but unlike Pirates of C. they have stiff competition from DC, Marvel, and where ever the X-Man stuff falls (Marvel I think). Unlike the gaming world a lot of people like Super Heroes, well known super heroes, comic book heroes. There have been inside less known super heros movies made in the past, most didnt do too well, others, brought the character into the mainstream but that was usually due to qualities that was not seen in standard mainstream super heroes. COX, friendly friendly relatively (I guess many cat girls wont make the final cut), but really most of the hero and villian background is no different than many of the mainstream heros and might be viewed as a mere rip off. Statesman-Superman. Manticore-Batman, any claws regen probably will compared to as a rip off of Wolverine. They have to be very careful with Sister Psyche and other psi powers or be compared to as  arip off of Jean Gray even if Disney owns  the rights to those things but they have to do some restructure to make it not seem likea water down version of Justice League. At the same time, I dont think we want to them to switch it over so much that the players of the games and or people familiar with the game do not even reconize it besides the name. Those might have been the reason why the original plan for the movie went into development hell or never came to be, it just might be.  But the same can be said for Resident Evil franchise were many fans felt it moved too much away from the actual game but still did very well (although I know more than my fgair share of people that didnt even know Resident Evil wasa video game and thought it was just another cool zombie movie.). It could go either way but lets not count the chickens before the egg hatch. We have to see if Disney is even interested or not in buying. They may be looking beyond DCUO and CO and looking at how they can make killer money for years to come and that may entail making this game a lot more grindy like on the multi-million dollar player base grind level, a level that most of us seem to not be used to and may be COX in name only. Or they might be ok keeping it relatively small and seeing what happens from there.

Hope for the best but prepare to deal with the worse.

Everyone keeps talking about super hero movies.  And I get that's where some big bucks can be made.  But I honestly don't see them going that route with States, et al, out of the gate. It'd take a big marketing campaign, years of development, etc. to get out the door and to turn a profit.  And let's face it:  It wouldn't be cheap to make.  The special effects would be pricey.

Where I see Disney going with the franchise (is it OK to refer to it as a franchise?) is.. wait for it...  TV.  Think about it:  They have at least four channels that I can see a "Super Hero Show" being appropriate for:  ABC (Saturday cartoons, do they still have those?), Disney Channel, Disney Kids, and ABC Family.  All of them need content.  Cartoons (because I see this as more of a "Justice League" type show) can draw both kids and their parents.  And it's 30 minutes of advertising for THEIR OWN GAME.  Then, the tie ins:  Disney store merchandise (although I seem to recall their having DC items for sale in there a while back), toys, Disney World attractions.  Shoot, the game would then become more of a product supporting the entertainment beast than the other way around.  Mom and Dad want to fight crime along side Jimmy in a family friendly co-operative environment.  There's no grind.  It's casual.  Try it out!  $15 for a month's worth of fun alongside the characters from your favorite show!

They did do "No Ordinary Family," so they're at least open to the prospect of non-known heroes.  I just hope that didn't leave a bad taste in their mouth about super heroes.  And I don't think it did.  Didn't that fanbase try to save that show, too?

I think the idea is that having full possession of the IP and rights would let them fill in gaps that they don't currently have access to in the Marvel rights. Movies are just "dreaming big." :)

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on November 29, 2012, 05:42:57 AM
As long as you are playing the game, the code base survives.

Actually MOST of the code lives ON your computer.  The server (technically mapserver) only holds two things:

The code that allows you to know where every other non-permanent object, NPC and PC is on the map that lives on your computer

and

SOME of the NPC dialogue.  The dialogue was moved before Who Will Die to avoid spoilers.

Everything else is still on your machine.  Basically if you can see it when you run a demorecord, it represents the code on your machine.

Where does the combat resolution take place?

Quote from: saipaman on November 30, 2012, 04:23:32 AM
Where does the combat resolution take place?

Server.  But the client has all the information present; and it's a system that has been picked apart by players for years to understand the intricate details of how it works.  That would probably be the easiest part to recreate if it came down to it.

Still a lot of work, but easier than recreating all the mission content from scratch.

Just as an FYI, Team Wildcard made the deliberate decision NOT to mention movies or television.  Disney has decades more experience in seeing film and video potential than we do, and aside from a very few slips (all of which in the end broke even at worst) they are monumentally better at such things than we are.  We merely pointed out the 8 years worth of story-arcs in the game as evidence of rich content and we'll let them extrapolate from there.  As the old saying goes, "You don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs."  Talking about movie potential could have led to us being taken less seriously.

The only thing where I did mention in the pitch about TV and other media that Disney already run successfully, was in the part about advertising, simply to point out the obvious that they could advertise the heck out of CoH once aquired for basically nothing more than production cost and opportunity cost, making it far cheaper for them, and with a stunningly high retention rate to the game (people who subscribe one month still subbing the next) this would make such advertising incredibly cost-effective for them.

Not said to teach them anything, just a small part of a small section outlining the basic SWOT analysis I contributed to the pitch. :)

Shoot, in the real world, I'm a chemist.  I'm just thinking that IF Disney was going to do anything on film with the IP, it'd be on TV to start.  And that's where my thought process ended. 

From what I've seen, the arguments you've posted, Team Wildcard/Hail Mary has done a stellar job with the proposal.  Thank you for even making the attempt. 

I wonder how a "Build-A-Hero Workshop" would do, either as a stand-alone store, in partnership with "Build-A-Bear," or as a paid attraction in Disney World.

Quote from: jagre on November 29, 2012, 05:45:15 PM
Not exactly.  They DO own Marvel Studios, a very profitable studio making money on Marvel properties as we speak.  The next few movies are being distributed by Paramount, but I think that might be ending with Iron Man 3 or shortly thereafter.  They don't have the rights to Spider-Man or The X-Men, but the rest of the Marvel properties will be fully under the Disney umbrella shortly.

Now this is where you get into an area in which I have some expertise, and this will depend ENTIRELY on what sort of rights Paramount bought.

If it was standard sequel rights for X number of sequels, then you are correct.

However...it might not be.  There's a clause known as "first option rights" or colloquially known as "right of first refusal" where contractually you must offer a company the first chance to refuse optioning the rights for the next project in line.  ONLY if they refuse to buy that option can the property go elsewhere.

I don't know if Paramount has that clause in their movie contracts with Marvel.  If they do, they can (and probably will) keep renewing the option until the heat-death of the universe even if they never make another movie after "Iron Man 3".

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on November 30, 2012, 11:43:45 PM
Now this is where you get into an area in which I have some expertise, and this will depend ENTIRELY on what sort of rights Paramount bought.

If it was standard sequel rights for X number of sequels, then you are correct.

However...it might not be.  There's a clause known as "first option rights" or colloquially known as "right of first refusal" where contractually you must offer a company the first chance to refuse optioning the rights for the next project in line.  ONLY if they refuse to buy that option can the property go elsewhere.

I don't know if Paramount has that clause in their movie contracts with Marvel.  If they do, they can (and probably will) keep renewing the option until the heat-death of the universe even if they never make another movie after "Iron Man 3".

Well I know the "out of house" Sony got anything that had ever started in a spiderman comic so long as they make a movie every x number of year... FF4 and Daredevil not sure where those are at I know Marvel was making a deal daredevil for a bit longer for galactus(Daredevil was expiring and reverting if Fox didn't make a movie greenlit by October), Fox has all the mutants with same deal Sony got

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on November 30, 2012, 04:50:15 AMJust as an FYI, Team Wildcard made the deliberate decision NOT to mention movies or television.  Disney has decades more experience in seeing film and video potential than we do, and aside from a very few slips (all of which in the end broke even at worst) they are monumentally better at such things than we are.  We merely pointed out the 8 years worth of story-arcs in the game as evidence of rich content and we'll let them extrapolate from there.  As the old saying goes, "You don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs."  Talking about movie potential could have led to us being taken less seriously.

I'm curious. I remember over the years that one of the things that kept popping up in the forums as an "I want" thing was being able to get a physical representation of your character, à la Blizzard's deal with Figureprints (http://www.figureprints.com/wow/Gallery.aspx) to produce figurines of characters in WoW. The Paragon Studios staff, when asked, always said that this would be too difficult to do (I presume due to the limited resources available for developing the link to make character and costume data available to FigurePrints). Was something like this as a possible marketing option mentioned, or does this fall under the "don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs" category?

Quote from: srmalloy on December 01, 2012, 11:50:55 AM
I'm curious. I remember over the years that one of the things that kept popping up in the forums as an "I want" thing was being able to get a physical representation of your character, à la Blizzard's deal with Figureprints (http://www.figureprints.com/wow/Gallery.aspx) to produce figurines of characters in WoW. The Paragon Studios staff, when asked, always said that this would be too difficult to do (I presume due to the limited resources available for developing the link to make character and costume data available to FigurePrints). Was something like this as a possible marketing option mentioned, or does this fall under the "don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs" category?

Pretty much, yes.  We just referenced merchandizing in a general way and pointed out how there was so little of it the players would make their own stuff.  When you have someone who has their own branded stores in malls across America you don't need to do anything other than wave vaguely at the sea of opportunity.

I would sooo love to have this feature. Something to keep in mind for Plan Z.

Quote from: Victoria Victrix on December 01, 2012, 12:42:09 PMPretty much, yes.  We just referenced merchandizing in a general way and pointed out how there was so little of it the players would make their own stuff.  When you have someone who has their own branded stores in malls across America you don't need to do anything other than wave vaguely at the sea of opportunity.

That's what I suspected; I'll make sure I couch my letters to merely allude to NCSoft's failure to exploit advertising and merchandizing opportunities, then.

After the shutdown notice I imagined a small company buying CoH with something like this:  $15 a month, annual new issue release with a .5 release mid year consisting of maybe 2-3 new power sets and costume sets.

"When the game goes dark this Saturday, we can expect that we might hear something by Monday."

I don't wish to be contrary, certainly because I have no more information than the rest of you (save my earlier quoted contact.) But I doubt we'll hear any more from NCSoft at all. They're hoping the stink will go away and not follow them back home. As y'all correctly observed, they did none of the things we'd all expect for cost-cutting, nor even any of the things a non-psychotic company would do to assuage the impact. No, it was just, "we're closing the game, please shut up and accept the inevitable, you'll always have a place in our hearts," in that order.

So they want us to go away, and will likely make no further statements to us to give us ammunition for our meme-mill. (They gave me a doozy last night.) We're officially enemies now, and have been ever since we crossed that line from "save CoH" to "anti-NCSoft."

I don't expect to hear anything directly out of NCSoft about CoH ever again.  IF we get a sale, the news will probably come from the buyer via the gaming press.  NCSoft will say nothing except as a footnote in their stockholder report (if that) probably noted as "sale of assets." 

In the Disney pitch (and subsequent others if that one doesn't come through), Team Wildcard has deliberately taken ourselves out of the contact cycle.  We are selling the idea of buying CoH, not CoH itself.  We've put prospective buyers in touch with people who can facilitate that sale, and have negotiated with NCSoft in the past three months.  As such, we properly should be excluded from any negotiations.