I can't think of any game that had a healthier server population that shut its doors. Not even close in fact.
SWG comes to mind as another close second.
Can anyone think of one?
Quote from: cmgangrel on November 29, 2012, 02:58:48 AMsome CoX servers were dead
Normally I'd say [citation needed], but I already know this particular claim is absolutely false.
Paragon virtualised the servers (the new server technology they went on about 2 years ago (I think it was)) so in reality it was all just one server.
Implementation tech aside, I'm refering to the notion of 'server' in the classic sense of an expected population presence of the same folks who have affinity to a specific home server.
i.e., my toons on Virtue don't suddenly show up on Justice.
When I say healthy, I mean there is still a dedicated core of stable population folks who continue the community, even if it gets small. As long as its still large enough to warrant an operational server for that community (again, no matter how its pooled/balanced underneath).
The reason I brought this up is it is just one more aspect of 'why killing this game is without much precedent given its population, revenue and passion'.
I was honestly trying to objectively think of another game that suffered this fate when measured similarly. And also why another company has not yet negotiated for it (current game + retain population + rights to COH2).
CoH has a heartbeat to it that no modern-made MMOs have, and very few classic ones (still) do.
Quote from: cmgangrel on November 29, 2012, 02:58:48 AM.... even before the closure announcement, some CoX servers were dead, whilst others were very active.
Virtue was rockin' the Three Red Dots
every single night right up until August 31.
Quote from: cmgangrel on November 29, 2012, 05:02:08 PM
When i mean dead, they had a very low active population...
I disagree with this definition.
The answer to the OP is NO.
Quote from: cmgangrel on November 30, 2012, 12:53:42 PM
And thank you for just confirming my point.
Almost responded. Thought better of it. Moving on.
/jranger
Tonight, every single US server (other than VIP) was over 60% capacity.
Virtue was at critical capacity with queues to log in.
What kind of game ever got canceled with such a high level of attendance? What server was so dead? The international language servers? Got to admit those are to be expected.
Anyways... its now over. I been crying non stop since the 5 minute mark... a 35 year old man that can count how many times he cried in his life with just one hand... and I'm crying over this...
Watch Evangel's goodbye video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hWfkHa4cBI) again.
That will clear your ducts but good.
I hear ya, Starsman. I just dont get it. Its hard to make any sense out of something that just makes absolutely no sense.
Interestingly enough I listen to Regen Radio (wish I knew about them before) throughout tonight and they're British (I think) so I'm surprised the UK servers didn't have a bigger showing.
I think since the servers being all consolidated under a single farm, everyone that was able to tolerate the US English speakers simply moved to US servers.
Just watch the original game announcement video from 2002 if you have it around Stars.
This was the home on the net for many vets, our little virtual village.
CoH was old enough to have its initials as its URL (www.coh.com still works).
I could just type c-o-h and hit ctrl+enter, I would be home.
My login was my first name, just my first name. For Mr. Fantastic's sake.
It was not just about being able to turn a bazillion ideas of mine into functional characters to play, but about meeting yours.
Any day I logged in I would see some cool hero or villain that someone cooked up.
And I could find a team in a minute, hop in and play with the dreams and creations of others.
It is this culture and this amount of shared creativity that I have not been able find anywhere else on the net for the whole of last decade.
I am sad over a video game. Yeah.
I have lived in this online utopia for 10 years.
Not easy to let go.
Quote from: redgian on December 01, 2012, 08:23:10 AM
Watch Evangel's goodbye video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hWfkHa4cBI) again.
That will clear your ducts but good.
I hadn't seen this, amazing work. And yes, it hit a lot more emotional soft spots than I knew I had. Thanks for the link!
It should be noted that the dots on the server select screen don't represent a static number, they're a percentage of capacity. And they upgraded the servers at least twice that I know of, once before Going Rogue and once before Freedom. That not one but ALL of the US servers got to at least two dots anyway on the final night of the game is astounding, for a game that's supposedly so dead.
Also, for the record - it was pretty active where I was on Protector.
Every server had population at shutdown. I noticed the Euro servers were lowest, but you must remember what time it was for them. North American servers were all consistently yellow, with the exception of Virtue, which was fire-engine red the whole evening.
We did em' proud, Paragon. We all came out for one last hurrah.
I still think they could have saved the game with a heavy server merge. Sure, it would have borked a lot of people's names, but 2-3 servers would have saved the company a ton of money and obviously been the lesser evil. Shutting it down was the easy way out.
If you look at successful F2P games nowadays, most of them only have 1-2 servers, and are none the worse off for it. COX going F2P was, to be brutally honest, sloppy and haphazard, and the poor handling was I believe a huge factor in the game's decline. Too many servers, not enough players to justify those servers, and not enough money coming in to support those servers. If they had only cut the fat and dove 100% into F2P, I truly believe it could have been saved.
Quote from: AkuTenshiiZero on December 01, 2012, 05:06:34 PM[..] could have saved [...] easy way out [...] poor handling [...] the game's decline [...] not enough players [...] not enough money [...] could have been saved
City of Heroes was not performing poorly, and was not shut down for financial reasons.
Quote from: cmgangrel on December 01, 2012, 08:25:51 AM
I think none of the EU servers got above 1 dot over the shutdown, although granted the only way I was able to get updates was via the twitch TV stream when Hitstreak was swapping servers...
And to be fair, the EU servers were always very quiet in comparison to the US servers, with Union being hte only one that could push the server up to 2 dots.
It was the early hours of the morning here, I was the only one of my 6 member SG to be awake, everyone else had gone to bed 5-10 hours before the shutdown.
A general problem with Paragon City was that it was very American, if you want to attract an international audience, you need to work on that from the start in your lore and looks. I also had the idea that it was never really sold and advertised much in continental Europe. I'm form the Netherlands and I've never seen a single add as far as I can remember.
Quote from: RogerWilco on December 03, 2012, 01:34:36 PM
It was the early hours of the morning here, I was the only one of my 6 member SG to be awake, everyone else had gone to bed 5-10 hours before the shutdown.
A general problem with Paragon City was that it was very American, if you want to attract an international audience, you need to work on that from the start in your lore and looks. I also had the idea that it was never really sold and advertised much in continental Europe. I'm form the Netherlands and I've never seen a single add as far as I can remember.
I'm in the U.S. and I've never seen a single ad, either. Problem was they just didn't advertise, period.
Your statement is factually incorrect.
Years ago the game WAS advertised in various ways, and that advertising really did not gain them anything in terms of increased subscriptions. As such, it was not cost-effective, and it was discontinued.
There are other posts in other threads here on these very forums that describe this in far more detail, but suffice it to say, at one time the game WAS advertised in the United States.
Quote from: Citizen Kane on December 03, 2012, 07:08:45 PM
I'm in the U.S. and I've never seen a single ad, either. Problem was they just didn't advertise, period.
I never saw a single ad for it, either. Ever. And here we were, in 2012, some 8 years later, I was still telling avid gamers about the game, having to explain it because
they never heard of it, and then watching them light up and take to the game almost instantaneously after trying it out. "This is so cool" "Wow I love flying!!!" "This character creator is amazing" "Why had I never heard of this game until now?" "For an older game, the graphics are actually pretty good!" "Wow look the lights even start coming on at night in the buildings!" etc etc etc
Quote from: KoA on December 05, 2012, 02:58:26 PM
"Wow look the lights even start coming on at night in the buildings!" etc etc etc
Not to derail, but to this day I think its funny that lights would come on at night in the subducted buildings in old Faultline and such :D
Quote from: KoA on December 05, 2012, 02:58:26 PM
I never saw a single ad for it, either. Ever. And here we were, in 2012, some 8 years later, I was still telling avid gamers about the game, having to explain it because they never heard of it, and then watching them light up and take to the game almost instantaneously after trying it out.
For what it's worth, I saw adds for it in comic books in the lead-up to release and there were banner adds on game websites quite a bit when Going Rogue was released and then again when Freedom hit and it went 'F2P'. There was never quite the saturation of adds I've seen other games go for though.
There was advertising, but I think it completely failed to meet the target, as nearly every loyal CoH player I knew (myself included) came to the game via word-of-mouth (or 'buddy' trial subs, prior to ftp). The thing about CoH, it's unique target sector, is it was 'the game' for people who don't *play* other games. It was friendly for the casual and solo player, and rewarded creativity, patience and loyalty. When colleagues ask why I seem so 'down' these last few days and I (try to) explain about how the game's closure has hit me, the thing I hear over and over: "wow, I'm not that into computer games, but that sounds like it was really fun, how come I never heard of it?"
Maybe i was remiss in my own advocacy, but come on...why *hadn't* they heard about it? Sure, advertising costs, but how hard is it to wheel out a press release to places *other* than game media once in awhile?
Further to servers seeming 'dead', I think the shift in play orientation from street-sweeps to instances and missions made servers and zones seem more 'dead' than they really were; sometimes it felt like I was the only person left in the whole game who liked to mosey at leisure to the mission door, 'arresting' everything in my path for pure shiz n' giggles. Why was everyone in such a *rush*? it's all xp, and knocking snipers off a rooftop for their last hp *never* gets old.
The addition of the plethora of chat channels also reduced the 'liveliness' of the game for me. While I certainly acknowledge they served a purpose, I missed the 'old days' when the Broadcast in zones was filled with oft-hilarious running commentary on anything and everything, complete with running jokes, word games and a smattering of in-character rp. There was probably a chat channel that provided the babble-logue I was missing, but I never found it before the lights went out <;x;>~
Doesn't the TORtanic still have over 20 servers?
Quote from: Golden Girl on December 06, 2012, 08:51:26 PM
Doesn't the TORtanic still have over 20 servers?
They've gone through a few rounds of merging. It's down to 8 servers:
* 3 PVE
* 2 PVP
* 2 RP
* 1 RP-PVP
Quote from: eabrace on December 06, 2012, 10:56:53 PM
They've gone through a few rounds of merging. It's down to 8 servers:
* 3 PVE
* 2 PVP
* 2 RP
* 1 RP-PVP
I'm assuming that those are mega-servers, otherwise that's a catastrophic collapse, even by their standards :P
Quote from: GuyPerfect on December 01, 2012, 05:13:04 PM
City of Heroes was not performing poorly, and was not shut down for financial reasons.
This statement reminds me of one of those logic problems in puzzle magazines - you know, the ones where there's a grid and you have to fill in the columns with ticks and crosses based on the clues given?
Like : "The science teacher was born earlier than the teacher from Examtown and his name is not Jim" kinda thing.
Curiously enough, that's also exactly how I felt about NCsoft's motives in this whole sorry affair...except that particular puzzle was full of misprints and missing half the bleedin' clues of course... ;D
Quote from: Golden Girl on December 06, 2012, 11:12:33 PM
I'm assuming that those are mega-servers, otherwise that's a catastrophic collapse, even by their standards :P
I'm not certain. I didn't log in at all between Aug. 30 and Nov. 30, so I missed a merge or two and haven't caught up on the details.
Quote from: Turjan on December 06, 2012, 11:20:32 PMThis statement reminds me of one of those logic problems in puzzle magazines
The powers designer, who was not part of the environment team, is half again as old as one of the story writers.
Quote from: GuyPerfect on December 07, 2012, 12:28:25 AM
The powers designer, who was not part of the environment team, is half again as old as one of the story writers.
But did off the NCSoft executive with the clipboard in the restroom, oh sorry, wrong game.
Quote from: eabrace on December 06, 2012, 10:56:53 PM
They've gone through a few rounds of merging. It's down to 8 servers:
* 3 PVE
* 2 PVP
* 2 RP
* 1 RP-PVP
Positron tweeted that if we're ever playing on his server (Bastion) should look him up. No idea what server I was on
before the merger, let alone now.