Titan Network
Graveyard => Save Paragon Retirees => Save Paragon City! => Topic started by: Wammo on September 11, 2012, 03:29:53 PM
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I have been reading, reading and reading but still feel there has been no light whatsoever on the prospects for our future. I understand the need for patience but is there even a single ray of light anywhere from which to garner hope? Please understand, I am not trying to be "Debbie Downer" or discourage our community. I am just anxious to hear if NcSoft, Paragon or anyone else has said even a word about our protest, petition or interest in seeing the game continue. Have they even recognized our interest in the continuation of the game?
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I've been checking back here pretty much any spare minute I have. As far as I know, NCSoft has been completely silent thus far. According to someone over on the official forums, they did get an answer regarding a refund for payed subscription time after the shutdown date. (You can have game time in another NCSoft game of your choice, but not a cash refund)
I wish there were more, but I guess we're stuck waiting >.>
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Well, Paragon has said repeatedly that the rally and all our efforts are incredible. Posi said on twitter that no matter what happens we've changed how MMOs will sunset forever.
NCSoft has said nothing, but that's entirely expected. They are in active discussions with Paragon, investors, and who knows who else about the future of the game. They aren't going to comment on it.
The response on the official boards seems very much like a canned, standard response from NCSoft support in this situation. It's their standard practice when they shut down games. Zwillenger has been trying to find out information on refunds and has heard nothing. They didn't even give him the standard response.
For now, no news appears to be good news. Especially with all the media coverage we are getting!
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I know there have been several attempts to contact various officials at NCSoft to discuss the possibilities (not all of them publicly disclosed so I can't share details), but so far no substantive response has been received in any of the various mediums tried.
It's possible they may not want to talk to anyone outside if discussions with Paragon management are still in progress.
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I know there have been several attempts to contact various officials at NCSoft to discuss the possibilities (not all of them publicly disclosed so I can't share details), but so far no substantive response has been received in any of the various mediums tried.
It's possible they may not want to talk to anyone outside if discussions with Paragon management are still in progress.
Exactly. Aside from the fact that these sorts of discussions almost always happen behind closed doors (for several good reasons), they wouldn't want to amplify any negative press by leaking info that may only be a suggestion/idea/etc.
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They say "no news is good news," but in this case, we're better off assuming that no news means we need to continue with our full-court press. If we keep our messages positive, it'll be better to keep up the pressure than to back off now.
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I know these talks are usually hush-hush...but...when should we begin panicking?
End of October? Mid-November? November 30th?
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i think we are just starting week 3 of the crisis and i believe nov 30th was about 12 weeks away from the closure announcement
lets just keep up our efforts, i think i personally would start getting worried around nov 1st if we still have not heard from ncsoft regarding the matter since that will be 8 of the 12 weeks have passed
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when should we begin panicking?
I'm panicking right now by doing every damned thing they ask us to on this forum! Turn your fear into action, Heroes!
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Ladies and Gentlemen! We are approved for airing on CNN! http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-840174
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Thats good news. Very good news.
It ALWAYS difficult, when a corporation makes a mistake.
They underestimated us. They marginalized us.. and now... they look very bad in the boardroom. They have a PR issue.. so right now they are scrambling to find a solution that lets them save face, and still retain the confidence of their investors, all while mitigating the PR issue at hand.
You can be pretty sure, SOMEONE aint getting a promotion over this.
That said.. the EASIEST solution for them, is for this problem to just go away on its own, and they can attest it to a 'blip on the radar'.
Dont let that happen.
We are making progress, but we still need to keep the pressure on.
IF we get what we want, we need to show them how we use COH on a daily basis. PR like real hero and such are key. My little add to the CNNProducers blurb.. (I started again at the request of my son)... was an intentional human spin, and true.
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Ladies and Gentlemen! We are approved for airing on CNN! http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-840174
:o ;D I love this community and everything we are doing together. Whether our efforts succeed or not, they will be remembered. Thanks to whoever wrote the article! It's hard for to remember who did what these days. :P
I feel a little bit like TonyV is Leonidas right now, except in an alternate universe where the Spartans got surrounded and won anyway ;)
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...AHHH.
it's EFFECTING change! That's the wrong "affect"!
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Ladies and Gentlemen! We are approved for airing on CNN! http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-840174
Great news!
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...AHHH.
it's EFFECTING change! That's the wrong "affect"!
Uuuugh! I have heard, and been corrected both ways. :P
Since it is vetted, I cant edit without undoing the vet. Im seeing what can be done.
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It's "effecting" -- which means "to bring about", in this case -- not "affecting" which means more like "to alter."
Send 'em an email and explain it's a typo we missed.
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Not the end of the world. That's the sort of thing that can be fixed in the final copy edit, and for that matter no worse than some I've heard aired.
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Yeah, I've seen some pretty blatant goofs make it on the air. (Seriously? You're talking about the F-35 and you keep showing F-22 footage?)
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Very cool! It gives me a little bit of hope, which is sorely needed.
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Yeah, I've seen some pretty blatant goofs make it on the air. (Seriously? You're talking about the F-35 and you keep showing F-22 footage?)
The media is convinced the F-22 is the only plane that exists. I'm sure of it.
I also find it hard to blame them, because that's a really nice plane ;)
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This is all wonderful news. Thank you for the update, Ms. Lackey -- and GRATS on the CNN acceptance, PainDancer!
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Ladies and Gentlemen! We are approved for airing on CNN! http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-840174
Sorry if I'm being daft...but does this mean our story WILL be on CNN?!
Holy cow! That is tremendous!! :)
I hope somebody will share the link if/when it is. :)
(I've shared the article on Facebook and asking friends and family to vote that it should be on CNN. :) )
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I know these talks are usually hush-hush...but...when should we begin panicking?
End of October? Mid-November? November 30th?
Dare I say it? SoonTM.
Just kidding. Don't panic, and don't forget your towel.
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I always know where my towel is...
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I always know where my towel is...
Folded and in the closet with the rest of the towels?
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I am so proud to be a member of this community. When November 30th comes around, win or loose, I will know that I did what I could.
That said, mid-november will be my panic time.
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Folded and in the closet with the rest of the towels?
Er... what are these strange words you use? "Folded"... and "closet"?
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SoonTM.
Genius. Well done. 8)
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Er... what are these strange words you use? "Folded"... and "closet"?
Woman code for crumbled up on the floor ;)
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Many of us on Facebook are awaiting the news while sitting on pins and needles. We're hoping for some good news.
While you wait, you may want to find more comfortable seats.
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Woman code for crumbled up on the floor ;)
Oh man.. I am always in trouble when they start using the code words...
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While you wait, you may want to find more comfortable seats.
Invulnerability is clearly one of their powersets. Or maybe regen (ouchies).
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Invulnerability is clearly one of their powersets. Or maybe regen (ouchies).
I thought they had Mental Manipulation.
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this is all fantastic news
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That #SaveCOH hashtag is alive and well. I've had to scale back on relaying information a few times already just due to the sheer volume of traffic it's generating.
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Being said, Felicia Day is an awesome endorsement. Almost 2 million followers! Wish she'd use the hashtag though.
Do you think she'd take the hint if someone tweeted a reply to that (however that works) mentioning the #SaveCoH movement's attempts to raise awareness about the game's pending shutdown and the community's reaction to the same?
That's why I don't use Twitter. I find I can't completely and satisfactorily elucidate any of the thoughts I have in a limited number of charac
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Do you think she'd take the hint if someone tweeted a reply to that (however that works) mentioning the #SaveCoH movement's attempts to raise awareness about the game's pending shutdown and the community's reaction to the same?
That's why I don't use Twitter. I find I can't completely and satisfactorily elucidate any of the thoughts I have in a limited number of charac
??? Huh, you posted before you were done with....what? Oh. :-[ Good one :P
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OMG, y'all are making me tear up between laughter and thrill.
In the end, whether we're successful or not, I am so thankful and so proud to be a part of this community.
GROUP HUG!!!!!!
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OMG, y'all are making me tear up between laughter and thrill.
In the end, whether we're successful or not, I am so thankful and so proud to be a part of this community.
GROUP HUG!!!!!!
Absolutely. Win or lose, we sure can say that we gave it our all. I love this community.
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^^ This.
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This made my day. :) I had emailed Ms. Day (been a big fan of hers since "The Guild" first hooked me) so it's good to know she's aware of it. #NOTlosinghope
Yeah, you and me both. She's one of my personal heroes because of what she's done for independent web productions, and she seems pretty much my ideal of a woman on top of that. I've avoided being a fanboy, though, no sense making an old fool of myself. (lol) Plenty of those around already.
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Yeah, you and me both. She's one of my personal heroes because of what she's done for independent web productions, and she seems pretty much my ideal of a woman on top of that. I've avoided being a fanboy, though, no sense making an old fool of myself. (lol) Plenty of those around already.
*high-fives Hunter*
Yes, I think she's adorable and if I were 20 years younger...
She seems like a good role model. A strong young lady who is not afraid of rolling up her sleeves and getting the job done.
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*high-fives Hunter*
Yes, I think she's adorable and if I were 20 years younger...
She seems like a good role model. A strong young lady who is not afraid of rolling up her sleeves and getting the job done.
(grin) If we were 20 years younger we'd have to step into a PvP zone and settle this mano-a-mano, which I am just sure she'd quite sensibly find amusing and ignore both of us as she should. (wink) Luckily we're both wise enough to leave her as a wistful dream, which is healthier for everyone anyway. Poor lady has too much of that sort of attention already. Some of the comments I've seen on her sites are a bit over the top.
I figure she can't possibly be as cool as she seems anyway. She's an actress, and most of what I know about her comes from the various roles she's played and her blogs, Flogs, and the like, where she's also on camera. She does conventions I know, but again she'd be in "performance mode" most of the time, other than *maybe* the after hours parties or meet and greets. Besides, I gave up on that scene a long time ago, spent too many years running them to enjoy it any more. Still can't help wishing I'd run into someone a little like her along the way. Gaming became cool too late for my generation of gamers. (lol)
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If you reply, remember, "We're heroes. This is what we do." I got the hashtag but realized as soon as I hit "send" that I'd forgotten it. I don't Twitter well. Sorry.
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(grin) If we were 20 years younger we'd have to step into a PvP zone and settle this mano-a-mano, which I am just sure she'd quite sensibly find amusing and ignore both of us as she should. (wink) Luckily we're both wise enough to leave her as a wistful dream, which is healthier for everyone anyway. Poor lady has too much of that sort of attention already. Some of the comments I've seen on her sites are a bit over the top.
I figure she can't possibly be as cool as she seems anyway. She's an actress, and most of what I know about her comes from the various roles she's played and her blogs, Flogs, and the like, where she's also on camera. She does conventions I know, but again she'd be in "performance mode" most of the time, other than *maybe* the after hours parties or meet and greets. Besides, I gave up on that scene a long time ago, spent too many years running them to enjoy it any more. Still can't help wishing I'd run into someone a little like her along the way. Gaming became cool too late for my generation of gamers. (lol)
Haha yeah... I figure that part of it is performing. Well, she's good at what she does. :)
And if we were in a PVP zone, it would be no contest. You'd floor me. I never was good at PVP... tried it once and thought, "Nah... this isn't for me," and quickly rushed back to PVE with my proverbial tail 'tween my legs. ;)
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Haha yeah... I figure that part of it is performing. Well, she's good at what she does. :)
And if we were in a PVP zone, it would be no contest. You'd floor me. I never was good at PVP... tried it once and thought, "Nah... this isn't for me," and quickly rushed back to PVE with my proverbial tail 'tween my legs. ;)
Naw, you'd be safe enough. I *despise* PvP, and only do it when forced to. And usually leave the game which forces me to soon after. I developed a deep disdain for the whole idea of PvP way back playing British Legends and Island of Kesmai on Compuserve. Which should give you an idea how long I've been banging around doing games on the 'net., even if you have to google them to know what I am talking about. (grin). I won't argue with anyone about it, 'cuz everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I've yet to see any MMO improved by the inclusion of PvP. Island of Kesmai had *tolerable* PvP rules, everything since has been downhill. But we're kinda threadjacking and should chastise ourselves and get back on topic. (wink)
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Thanks for all the updates (especially you VV). It is good to hear something even if it is somewhat vanilla in nature. This is a wonderful community and I am so very thankful to be a part of what is going on to save our game!
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Thanks for keeping us posted! Since I understand that NCSoft has never been one to negotiate things, the fact that there are apparently some sort of talks are going on is very heartening.
I would urge everyone reading this to log on and play as much as possible so as to keep the numbers hing and show that the servers are still very active. The last thing we need is for the servers to be ghost towns. Show them that the demand is there.
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Gothica,
Is it still possible to download the game somewhere? I wanted to put it on another computer and am having trouble doing so from the CoH site.
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It takes a while. It took a day to download the beta for me. Let me know if it still can be downloaded.
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Well now you cannot even find a place to download the client...they have taken it down.
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Well now you cannot even find a place to download the client...they have taken it down.
I was still able to go into my NCSoft main account after the links to the client were taken down and get it there. Failing that, you can sign up for Aion (free) in order to get the NCSoft launcher, which will allow you to install any of their games. Actually, I don't think you even have to sign up for Aion to download the launcher, so I'd try that first--if it is no longer available via the account page, that is.
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It should still be available via the account page. The NCSoft launcher for other games should also work. For those mac users that may need to redownload there is a linux launcher floating around somewhere. It's a command line perl script, don't see why it wouldn't work on a mac. Obviously going through the official NCSoft launcher is the preferred method. Lots of ways to still get the game folks, just keep those servers active. 8)
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Launcher isn't working anymore for CoH...any place to still download on Mac?
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It is also quite trivial to copy the game from one computer to another, which it sounded like was the original problem. Easy way to do it is just simply copy the entire City of Heroes directory AND the entire NCsoft directory. Then build a shortcut to NCLauncher.exe, and make it match the properties of the shortcut on the original machine. Fire up the launcher (and do a "repair" if you have to) and you should be all set.
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Both PC and Mac:
http://us.ncsoft.com/en/launcher/ncsoft-launcher.html
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Not sure if this has been reported/picked up on yet, but I was chatting to some people in the SaveCoH global channel earlier today and someone pasted a copy of an email they'd been sent by a GM.
"City of Heroes will be available for at least the next three months. We are working on something special for our VIP and Premium players. As soon as these plans are ready, they will be announced on the website and the forums. Regards,GM Roland"
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Both PC and Mac:
http://us.ncsoft.com/en/launcher/ncsoft-launcher.html
This link no longer works for Mac
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Not sure if this has been reported/picked up on yet, but I was chatting to some people in the SaveCoH global channel earlier today and someone pasted a copy of an email they'd been sent by a GM.
"City of Heroes will be available for at least the next three months. We are working on something special for our VIP and Premium players. As soon as these plans are ready, they will be announced on the website and the forums. Regards,GM Roland"
What an interesting statement. "at least the next 3 months", eh? Counting up on my fingers I think November 30th is just over 2 1/2 months away. I suppose he could have been rounding up... but there's that little phrase "at least". Quite interesting indeed.
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I wonder if the 'something special' is the release of i24. Although obviously my head is all 'squeeeee they're going to keep us alive', because it's nothing if I'm not clinging desperately to straws :D
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One rumour I heard were that they'd be ringing in all of the holiday events (for which the code is already in production) one after the other. The redname Zwillinger was purportedly associated with this rumour. That would definitely be 'something special.'
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I do believe they wanted to do something involving holiday events and also mentioned switching on Double XP and possibly making everyone VIP
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I do believe they wanted to do something involving holiday events and also mentioned switching on Double XP and possibly making everyone VIP
All were mentioned. They aren't actually sure that it will happen though. The holiday events seem to be running (chalet is open I think) but they can definitely only run one of those at a time. Double XP they don't know if they'll do or not, and VIP status has to be approved by NCSoft Austin who is taking their good old time with it clearly.
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I was hanging out with some torch holders at AP yesterday and.. I don't know. I might be reading too much into it, or it might've been like it for a while, but a couple of the NPCs seemed to have had new dialogue added (although, admittedly, at level 50 I wasn't spending much time in AP until the rallies/vigils).
One of them walked past me and said: "Yes, we can hear you. You're shouting so loudly you're hurting my ears."
I like to think it's coded messages from the Devs, but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part ;)
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Then let's shout 'til we're hoarse!
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I was hanging out with some torch holders at AP yesterday and.. I don't know. I might be reading too much into it, or it might've been like it for a while, but a couple of the NPCs seemed to have had new dialogue added (although, admittedly, at level 50 I wasn't spending much time in AP until the rallies/vigils).
One of them walk past me and said: "Yes, we can hear you. You're shouting so loudly you're hurting my ears."
I like to think it's coded messages from the Devs, but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part ;)
You know, I saw some stuff like that at the Virtue rally. I thought maybe I was just on the edge of insanity from stress and lack of sleep but if someone else saw it too....
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Not surprised at NPC dialogue. Devs can make that happen.
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I'm wondering if it is a good sign that Positron hasn't done the Lore AMA yet. I know they didn't have a date set at all but I could have sworn they said they were going to try for yesterday. Correct me if I'm wrong.
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I am getting worn out trying to read the tea leaves. I also took it as a good sign that the AMA didn't appear yesterday. But apparently now Double XP has been turned on! Is that a bad sign? My head hurts. I need a nap.
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But apparently now Double XP has been turned on!
Really? I hadn't seen that mentioned anywhere yet.
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Here (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297287) is the link. I haven't verified it for myself yet.
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ive also been hearing that the ski chalet might be open as well
i think they havent done the lore thing yet because maybe they are getting close to a breakthrough on the business dealings with ncsoft, but who knows
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I'll have to take your word for it (especially with a link to a post on the CoH boards) since the CoH boards are blocked for me at work. Thanks for the heads up. :)
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Just a thought...
If there is a breakthrough with NcSoft...How would we celebrate? What would you do to commemorate such good news?
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I'm not sure yet, but I bet it would require taking a vacation day or two.
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http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/13/blade-and-soul-is-headed-west/
So much for NCSoft focusing on the Eastern market?
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ive also been hearing that the ski chalet might be open as well
i think they havent done the lore thing yet because maybe they are getting close to a breakthrough on the business dealings with ncsoft, but who knows
Last night at least the Ski Chalet was open on Virtue, but not on Protector. Didn't check anywhere else. I'd forgotten how bad I suck at skiing (grin)
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Ski Chalet has been open on Virtue since before the vigil, and at that time Protectors was not open.
My guess is that this is not meant to slight to the other servers and may have in fact been a single Dev trying to cheer up the players. I base this on the fact that last week on Virtue I saw a Paragon Studios employee in Pocket D who was trying to keep our spirits up and spawning all sorts of villains (Hami, LR, Nemi, etc) for the crowd to fight. He may in fact have been the one to open up the Chalet. Either way at the time he off handedly mentioned words to the effect of, "he only had the power to spawn stuff on Virtue". If this is the case then it would explain why only Virtue's Chalet is open.
If more details are needed I drop me a line and I can see if I have the chat logs for that night.
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Eh, no worries anyway, that is why I have characters on all servers. I wondered if it might be that the servers had been flagged to enable the Ski Chalet on the next reboot, and we crashed Virtue when someone was spawning tentacles or something before the Unity Rally Saturday. I operate on the theory that any little things we find like that are meant as fun stuff for the players by devs who care. I've seen former devs say things I was quite surprised to see them speak out about. These guys are the best.
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http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/13/blade-and-soul-is-headed-west/
So much for NCSoft focusing on the Eastern market?
Oh that's interesting. This announcement isn't well timed, considering this was their best cop-out since most people seem to understand that Cities was in fact making money.
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Eh, no worries anyway, that is why I have characters on all servers. I wondered if it might be that the servers had been flagged to enable the Ski Chalet on the next reboot, and we crashed Virtue when someone was spawning tentacles or something before the Unity Rally Saturday. I operate on the theory that any little things we find like that are meant as fun stuff for the players by devs who care. I've seen former devs say things I was quite surprised to see them speak out about. These guys are the best.
No... I think the dev's have an I win button that allows them to open the Chalet whenever they want, but it has to be done manually for each server. And maybe they dont have dev hax chareters on each and every server which is why its only open on some rather than all.
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I worked on those ski and bobsled track badges for years. Can't remember how I ever got them, pure dumb luck and persistence, I think, and IIRC some of them I still never got. A twitch god I am not. But I love the Ski Chalet. No idea why it seems so charming to me, but it has always been one of the spots that just really sold CoH to me.
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Not sure where else to post this: My account was renewing on the 10th of the month on a three month cycle. I was paid through November 10th. Now, my Paragon Points had not renewed for the month, so I went to my account to verify the date, and it now has no date. Not sure what it means, but it almost appears that, at least for the accounts that were VIP on whatever day this new change occurred, those accounts will remain VIP. Some people have said that theirs had expired after Black Friday, and it really isn't telling us anything unless someone's account was due to expire in the next week, but it's a sign of something.
Just not sure what...
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Not sure where else to post this: My account was renewing on the 10th of the month on a three month cycle. I was paid through November 10th. Now, my Paragon Points had not renewed for the month, so I went to my account to verify the date, and it now has no date. Not sure what it means, but it almost appears that, at least for the accounts that were VIP on whatever day this new change occurred, those accounts will remain VIP. Some people have said that theirs had expired after Black Friday, and it really isn't telling us anything unless someone's account was due to expire in the next week, but it's a sign of something.
Just not sure what...
Probably just Zwill getting one step closer to getting VIP for all turned on. I wouldn't read too much into it.
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Probably just Zwill getting one step closer to getting VIP for all turned on. I wouldn't read too much into it.
Yeah, I don't know what to make of it. It all seems random. My account was set to expire the Sunday after Black Friday and its still VIP.
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This is related to the current situation, and it gives some interesting little bits of info about the scrapped CoH2 and oither Paragon pjoects:
http://unsubject.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/city-of-heroes-villains-there-was-no-cohv-2-0-because/
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This is related to the current situation, and it gives some interesting little bits of info about the scrapped CoH2 and oither Paragon pjoects:
http://unsubject.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/city-of-heroes-villains-there-was-no-cohv-2-0-because/
Interesting. I would have loved to see Cities 2. Too bad :(
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The best thing we can do is continue to give NCSoft a black eye, not only in the gaming world but in the business press. In the business press it would be "why would you abandon the Western market with one product that has no real competition, then turn around and say you want to enter the Western market with a product that is fundamentally identical to every other PvP/level grind game out there?" We REALLY need more mundane press penetration, focusing on the social network/community building aspects of City, and tugging on the heartstrings with those sad stories. In the gaming press we need to keep hammering on the "WHY would you invest your time and money in Blade and Soul when this same company has just proven it will yank a game that is in the black out from under the players?"
I detect the ungentle hand of our troll AreEss in the comments on both those articles. Mole? Or just a griefer? There are some people who are just not happy until they pull everyone around them down to their own level of misery.
The plain fact is that CoH was the red-headed stepchild. No attention, no advertising revenue, nothing other than positive reviews in the press. NCSoft starved them, then cut them off. IMHO this is proof positive that they don't understand the Western market and don't care to.
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The best thing we can do is continue to give NCSoft a black eye, not only in the gaming world but in the business press. In the business press it would be "why would you take abandon the Western market with one product that has no real competition, then turn around and say you want to enter the Western market with a product that is fundamentally identical to every other PvP/level grind game out there?" We REALLY need more mundane press penetration, focusing on the social network/community building aspects of City, and tugging on the heartstrings with those sad stories. In the gaming press we need to keep hammering on the "WHY would you invest your time and money in Blade and Soul when this same company has just proven it will yank a game that is in the black out from under the players?"
I detect the ungentle hand of our troll AreEss in the comments on both those articles. Mole? Or just a griefer? There are some people who are just not happy until they pull everyone around them down to their own level of misery.
The plain fact is that CoH was the red-headed stepchild. No attention, no advertising revenue, nothing other than positive reviews in the press. NCSoft starved them, then cut them off. IMHO this is proof positive that they don't understand the Western market and don't care to.
Agreed. There was an idea floating around about trying to get in touch with the Wall Street Journal. I think that might be a good route to take.
Anyone know if someone actually managed to figure out how we do that?
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Agreed. There was an idea floating around about trying to get in touch with the Wall Street Journal. I think that might be a good route to take.
Anyone know if someone actually managed to figure out how we do that?
Tricia Duryee has covered some of Nintendo's business moves at All Things Digital, which is linked to the WSJ, I don't see anything akin to a "digital gaming" section on the WSJ. Here's her email (tricia@allthingsd.com), I'll leave it to somebody more articulate than I to compose the message we want to get across.
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Hearing Tricia makes me think of Tricia Helfer... who's done her fair share of video game voice acting. (and more than voice acting in one of the C&C games IIRC)
Maybe worth a shot if someone wants to contact her!
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Right now I see that absolutly nothing is happening. NC-Soft is ignoring everything what we do and it's good that we have a Plan Z... ???
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Right now I see that absolutly nothing is happening. NC-Soft is ignoring everything what we do
If they are negotiating a sell-off, it's unlikely they'd say anything until everything was signed.
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Right now I see that absolutly nothing is happening. NC-Soft is ignoring everything what we do and it's good that we have a Plan Z... ???
Brian Clayton contacted me to say he had no news for me yet. In delicate business negotiations, "no news" means "They haven't killed us yet."
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We've reached the most painful part of this process. "Hurry up and wait."
We won't get news until there is news. All we can do is continue our campaign to support the game. Spread the word, recruit others, and continue planning new Call to Action Projects. We must now exercise the most difficult Power Set to master...Patience Defense!
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My son is 100% confident that it will be saved.
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My son is 100% confident that it will be saved.
Good enough for me! ;D
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Well I can give you two things OUTSIDE of Paragon Studios.
Baen Books has agreed to put the whole of my webpage letter to fans on THEIR website.
Janis Ian has agreed to post something from me on HER website.
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Wow! I've really fallen in love with the Baen Free Library (and I've bought a bunch of stuff from them because of it), but it's really cool they're backing you.
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Wow! I've really fallen in love with the Baen Free Library (and I've bought a bunch of stuff from them because of it), but it's really cool they're backing you.
Us. There's no "me" and "you" here. They're backing us.
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Us. There's no "me" and "you" here. They're backing us.
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=imageshack.us%2Fa%2Fimg849%2F5601%2Ffblike.png)
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Us. There's no "me" and "you" here. They're backing us.
...I've run out of ways to praise you without sounding like a creepy stalker or something. Just...pat yourself on the back for me, for being awesome, and we'll call it even. >.>
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We've reached the most painful part of this process. "Hurry up and wait."
We won't get news until there is news. All we can do is continue our campaign to support the game. Spread the word, recruit others, and continue planning new Call to Action Projects. We must now exercise the most difficult Power Set to master...Patience Defense!
Channel any airport experience you have into this, it helps >.<
Hey, you can always play the game :)
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We've reached the most painful part of this process. "Hurry up and wait."
We won't get news until there is news. All we can do is continue our campaign to support the game. Spread the word, recruit others, and continue planning new Call to Action Projects. We must now exercise the most difficult Power Set to master...Patience Defense!
Six years in the Navy prepared me for THIS moment! :)
Fortunately, the game still works, if the internet holds up. (issue with my ISP)
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I have not played since my graphics card on this trusty laptop was not enough. Tomorrow I will get another computer and join everyone after the DL of the client. I was the one that bought a computer on Black Friday not knowing what lay in store for me, lol, then abruptly took it back when GW2 wasnt to my liking, but mostly because I learned CoX was setting sail. :o
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I find playing the game to be incredibly helpful. Especially when I'm creating a new character or leveling a lowbie. Something about the act of making progress in the game is reassuring, as if the game has to stay open because "I'm not done yet." Probably some kind of psychological phenomenon, maybe it stems from my frequent use of the game as an escape from RL stress. Whatever the reason, it's effective. Plus it keeps me on the servers, so two birds with one stone and all that :P
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If they are negotiating a sell-off, it's unlikely they'd say anything until everything was signed.
I can't agree more. I know that not hearing anything is probably more demoralizing the longer it goes on, but nobody in a business deal with this much public interest will want to risk anything slipping prematurely and possibly messing up any delicate deals going on. The hardest thing we can do now is play the waiting game, but we have action points to use up on our turns, keep signing petitions, sending letters, posting on any and everything that is covering this story. It may not seem it, but everything that we are doing I believe is being noticed and could be making a difference.
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http://unsubject.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/city-of-heroes-villains-there-was-no-cohv-2-0-because/
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I recall a demonstration I took part in at university many years ago. It involved occupying a campus building, and lining several flights of stairs with students to provide an intimidating gauntlet for our opposition to walk through.
We were all in place, students as far as the eye could see...and a group of suited people came slowly up the stairs, receiving cold, silent, withering stares from every pair of eyes as they ascended to the conference room.
Once they had passed, a student rep appeared on the stairs to congratulate us for the intensity of our 'welcome' ...and added that the opposing group would be along shortly, so could we get ready to repeat the performance?
Yep, that's right - we'd unknowingly welcomed our own side with a battery of cold stares. But the thing is, they didn't take offence because they knew what we were doing was not aimed at them.
And so it is with the current situation with NCSoft I believe.
If there are secret negotiations going on, then any actions on our part are unlikely to compromise them because by definition if a negotiation is in progress, the game's future is undecided. Protests are expected, and if a save plan is on the table, those protests will be remembered as being parallel to the issue at hand.
If however there are no negotiations, no talks, no hope of saving our game, and NCSoft's continuing silence is simply them sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "la-la-la, not listening, can't hear you!" because they want this embarrassing problem to go away as if it never happened...well, then our protests are not parallel to the issue - they ARE the issue, because as far as the decision makers are concerned, the closure is a done deal, so all we have left is our right to let them know what we think of that decision.
A gauntlet of icy stares is quickly forgotten in the warm light of reconciliation...but if there's no light, then the chill will linger, and the memory of that chill will stay.
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I recall a demonstration I took part in at university many years ago. It involved occupying a campus building, and lining several flights of stairs with students to provide an intimidating gauntlet for our opposition to walk through.
We were all in place, students as far as the eye could see...and a group of suited people came slowly up the stairs, receiving cold, silent, withering stares from every pair of eyes as they ascended to the conference room.
Once they had passed, a student rep appeared on the stairs to congratulate us for the intensity of our 'welcome' ...and added that the opposing group would be along shortly, so could we get ready to repeat the performance?
Yep, that's right - we'd unknowingly welcomed our own side with a battery of cold stares. But the thing is, they didn't take offence because they knew what we were doing was not aimed at them.
And so it is with the current situation with NCSoft I believe.
If there are secret negotiations going on, then any actions on our part are unlikely to compromise them because by definition if a negotiation is in progress, the game's future is undecided. Protests are expected, and if a save plan is on the table, those protests will be remembered as being parallel to the issue at hand.
If however there are no negotiations, no talks, no hope of saving our game, and NCSoft's continuing silence is simply them sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "la-la-la, not listening, can't hear you!" because they want this embarrassing problem to go away as if it never happened...well, then our protests are not parallel to the issue - they ARE the issue, because as far as the decision makers are concerned, the closure is a done deal, so all we have left is our right to let them know what we think of that decision.
A gauntlet of icy stares is quickly forgotten in the warm light of reconciliation...but if there's no light, then the chill will linger, and the memory of that chill will stay.
Good points. If there still are negotiations going on, then no news isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, it will be come November. But for now I think it's too soon to tell.
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The fact that there are negotiations happening AT ALL is a positive sign. Right now we have to wait and let things take their course. Meanwhile, we need to keep doing what we're doing. Spread the word, make noise, make it impossible for them to let this die quietly.
But, if we do nothing else, we should remember why we fight. For those of you who haven't recently, get back in there and play. There are Freaks to beat and Nemesis plots to untangle, sappers must still be a primary target and we can always Go. Hunt. Kill, Skuls...
We're not dead yet. And, since we seem to have a bit of time on our hands, let's play!
Who's with me?
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Just now in game on the help channel someone named DJ Kitty said that they were told by Tunnelrat last night that the devs have made progress in negociations with NCSoft. No details at all. Did anybody else see this or see or hear what was said last night?
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Just now in game on the help channel someone named DJ Kitty said that they were told by Tunnelrat last night that the devs have made progress in negociations with NCSoft. No details at all. Did anybody else see this or see or hear what was said last night?
I wish I would have read this earlier...I just teamed with a DJ Kitty this morning.
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This is the first I've heard of any such thing. It would be welcome news, but until we get some kind of confirmation from somewhere, exercise caution.
Keep it up guys! I have never been more proud of our community than these past couple weeks. We are mighty. We are titans. We are heroes. This is what we do.
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Someone mentioned it on Facebook. No screenshot though. It could also theoretically be the same person I suppose or DJ Kitty could have seen it on Facebook. But I'm optimistic that it's true.
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There was a HUGE buzz in the game last night at some point about a dev saying something positive. Chatter on multiple global channels I belong to, but all I ever saw was lots of people trying to confirm what had been said a few minutes before in Virtue AP33. Something was said that got people excited, that's for sure.
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Whohoah... what?
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Right now any news is good news.
To have a buzz like that could either be positive or devastating, depending on whether there is evidence supporting it or not. And we have to be careful about things like like. If people's hopes rise and fall like this then the effect will be devastating on our morale as a whole.
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I was in AP1 when Tunnel Rat popped in quickly to say hi. Unfortunately I do not recall her saying anything relating to "they've made progress with NCsoft" and that could be because I was working on a project *shifty eyes* and missed the announcement. However, I'm cynical so I'm hoping "DJ Kitty" can provide citation or proof.
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I was in AP1 when Tunnel Rat popped in quickly to say hi. Unfortunately I do not recall her saying anything relating to "they've made progress with NCsoft" and that could be because I was working on a project *shifty eyes* and missed the announcement. However, I'm cynical so I'm hoping "DJ Kitty" can provide citation or proof.
Sadly, I was out of game and testing demo edits for the same reason, so I missed this entirely.
Anyone know what time this supposedly happened?
There was a "Unity Rally" costume contest in Pocket D last night, and then there was a dance party in the AP33 atrium afterward.
I guess DJ Kitty isn't connected to the Cape though? Or at least, they don't have anyone who goes by that name AFAIK.
Either way I'm pretty sure there were Capt DJ's online last night until the early hours of the morning. You'd think somebody on the air would've mentioned it but I don't remember hearing anything.
There had troll issues yesterday evening too, so do we know for sure this message even came over the admin channel? Or it was it some douche who came up with a convincing name for their character and managed to fool one or two people, who then picked it up and ran with it?
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Tim, the big buzz I heard was after I had been hearing about griefers for a couple of hours, and I know I had read a post here asking for help in contact a dev or GM before this all started. I was chatting with a friend, reading forums, and keeping 5 COH clients happy and running the whole time, so not too surprised I missed the initial discussion.
I didn't pay a lot of attention at first, when reports started going out that someone with dev powers had showed up to run off the trolls and spawn some GMs and the usual fun. When I started paying attention, it seemed as if someone had passed along a report similar to what DJ Kitty is alleged to have told people, and everyone was asking for more information. It may well be that Tunnelrat or whoever popped in made some offhand comment that was misinterpreted. I'd guess if there IS some positive movement Zwill will say something soon.
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It's certainly interesting timing either way though because this was "Phase 2" of the unity rally. The last time we got a lot of chatter from the devs was during the previous one. So if there was going to be more news, last night would've been the right time for it.
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Tim, the big buzz I heard was after I had been hearing about griefers for a couple of hours, and I know I had read a post here asking for help in contact a dev or GM before this all started. I was chatting with a friend, reading forums, and keeping 5 COH clients happy and running the whole time, so not too surprised I missed the initial discussion.
I didn't pay a lot of attention at first, when reports started going out that someone with dev powers had showed up to run off the trolls and spawn some GMs and the usual fun. When I started paying attention, it seemed as if someone had passed along a report similar to what DJ Kitty is alleged to have told people, and everyone was asking for more information. It may well be that Tunnelrat or whoever popped in made some offhand comment that was misinterpreted. I'd guess if there IS some positive movement Zwill will say something soon.
I wouldn't read too much into it. If there is news that Zwill or any other dev is allowed to release, they will do so. If they aren't formally announcing news, it's either conjecture on their part or misinterpretation on ours. Subtle signs of support, like the re-opening of AP33 on Virtue or comments by Tunnel Rat, are nice but don't say much that we don't already know (that we have the Devs' support).
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Or perhaps all Tunnel Rat said was that they are STILL in talks with NC, and someone interpreted that as meaning there'd been progress. Although, to me that sort of IS progress. But maybe that's just me, thinking with the mind of someone who has always been at the bottom of the eco/political foodchain. If they don't throw you out of the building, that's progress. 8)
Or to quote Matrix Reloaded:
Neo: Well, that didn't go so well.
Morpheus: Are you Certain the Oracle didn't say anything else?
Neo: Yes.
Trinity: Maybe we did something wrong.
Neo: Or didn't do something.
Morpheus: No, what happened, happened and couldn't have happened any other way.
Neo: How do you know?
Morpheus: We are still alive.
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Or perhaps all Tunnel Rat said was that they are STILL in talks with NC, and someone interpreted that as meaning there'd been progress. Although, to me that sort of IS progress. But maybe that's just me, thinking with the mind of someone who has always been at the bottom of the eco/political foodchain. If they don't throw you out of the building, that's progress. 8)
Or to quote Matrix Reloaded:
Neo: Well, that didn't go so well.
Morpheus: Are you Certain the Oracle didn't say anything else?
Neo: Yes.
Trinity: Maybe we did something wrong.
Neo: Or didn't do something.
Morpheus: No, what happened, happened and couldn't have happened any other way.
Neo: How do you know?
Morpheus: We are still alive.
Considering the initial announcement was tantamount to throwing us out of the building, the fact that they've let us back in to talk is great news. IF discussions are still underway, I think it's a good thing.
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That's how I take it, too. I don't really expect to hear anything other than the vague "they're still talking" sort of messages. As someone already said elsewhere, anyone who really knows anything isn't allowed to talk. In an odd sort of way I find the continued silence encouraging.
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The fact that there are negotiations happening AT ALL is a positive sign. Right now we have to wait and let things take their course. Meanwhile, we need to keep doing what we're doing. Spread the word, make noise, make it impossible for them to let this die quietly.
But, if we do nothing else, we should remember why we fight. For those of you who haven't recently, get back in there and play. There are Freaks to beat and Nemesis plots to untangle, sappers must still be a primary target and we can always Go. Hunt. Kill, Skuls...
We're not dead yet. And, since we seem to have a bit of time on our hands, let's play!
Who's with me?
Since the Paragon Devs, at least, have shown themselves to be so nice to us, I feel fairly confident that if nothing positive was happening, they'd tell us. Now, this doesn't mean NCSoft isn't jerking THEM around, but it is grounds for some optimisim.
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http://mecha-eng.com/308/
Independent econ review of what's going on.
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I really hate the weekend, because absolutely nothing, with regards to the NCSoft side, is going to get done. :P
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While Seattle is two hours behind us, it's worth pointing out that Seoul is 14 hours ahead. It's Monday afternoon, there.
If anything comes from our direct emails, and anyone is in a position to say anything, it won't be long tomorrow before something gets out.
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http://mecha-eng.com/308/
Independent econ review of what's going on.
This pretty much mirrors my sentiment on the whole thing, it's good to see somebody with fancy pants and a top hat and monocle say it though.
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Thank you, Horror_Frost, for the link. Good to know that wizards in the financial community agree with us. NCsoft has really dropped the ball and isn't doing much to retrieve it.
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Zwill, from the community digest, so I'm sure most of you've already seen it:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4396775#post4396775
Update: I'm working on some messaging regarding the cessation of player services right now. There's some details that are still being worked out by NCsoft, but I would expect something in the next few days.
This was an update to this post from 9/6:
As a heads up; We still do not have final details surrounding VIP status or the state of player services moving forward. As soon as NCsoft provides an update myself or another of the remaining team will update and hopefully answer any questions you may have.
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Well, I guess that just about sums up any good things we thought we were hearing.
Gotta love Electric_Knight's response though. "Please relay to them that we have a cave troll. "
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Well, I guess that just about sums up any good things we thought we were hearing.
Gotta love Electric_Knight's response though. "Please relay to them that we have a cave troll. "
Not necessarily. It's possible, in fact I'd argue it's probable, that the people working on cessation of player services would be completely different people than those in any negotiations about the future of the product.
Besides, even if the negotiations bear fruit it's possible that CoH will no longer be an NCSoft product. In that case, it's possible that we will have to create new game accounts and that Titan Network will have to collaborate with Paragon Studios to get exported characters back into the game.
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Not necessarily. It's possible, in fact I'd argue it's probable, that the people working on cessation of player services would be completely different people than those in any negotiations about the future of the product.
Besides, even if the negotiations bear fruit it's possible that CoH will no longer be an NCSoft product. In that case, it's possible that we will have to create new game accounts and that Titan Network will have to collaborate with Paragon Studios to get exported characters back into the game.
Agreed. Any potential bad news we hear from this does not necessarily have a single thing to do with any successful deals to keep CoH running.
And, yeah, I don't think NCSoft will have anything to do with our future subscription/player services (as I don't believe NCSoft will simply reconsider and continue backing the game... I just hope they will sell it!).
So, no worries if/when Zwill drops some cold, hard cessation information.
Also, haha, thanks, Tim. I am glad to give people a smile or a laugh. :)
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Agreed. Any potential bad news we hear from this does not necessarily have a single thing to do with any successful deals to keep CoH running.
I'm 99.99% sure that regardless of what happens, NCsoft will be ceasing providing services for City of Heroes players. Right now, NCsoft owns all of the accounts, billing systems, hardware, etc. If the game transfers to someone else, whether or not it stays up and running, we'll have to go through this process. Don't read too much into this yet.
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I have no updates.
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Sometimes, you have to hand it to where my wife heralds from:
Stay calm.
Carry on.
Single biggest thing we can do.
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Not sure if it has been mentioned, but it seems to go very quickly from AP31 to AP33... Was there no video of AP32?
And yes I keep watching it over and over...and crying.
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I wish I would have read this earlier...I just teamed with a DJ Kitty this morning.
I happened to team with DJ Kitty this morning and asked about this. He/She told me that TR had been on a chat channel and had said something good. DJ Kitty wasn't all that chatty or detailed in what they said, so this sounds as if it could just be a round of telephone game and whoknows what was said or what was meant.
But I agree that no news may be good news. If NCSoft had ROFLed at the idea of talks, we'd have heard so by now; if talks are still on-going, then hope still burns...
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Time...
We have seen quite a bit of it pass now and the lack of information is deafening. None of us need be anymore discouraged than we already are but the lack of information is starting to gnaw at the hope I still bear in my heart for the salvation of this game. Can the developers who are supposedly talking with NcSoft give us any reason to believe this thing is going to be pulled out before the clock strikes? Anyone anywhere have anything new at all???
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Well, I guess that just about sums up any good things we thought we were hearing.
Because the entire billing and account system is integrated into the larger PlayNC system there'll have to be work done to remove them, no matter what happens.
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Time...
We have seen quite a bit of it pass now and the lack of information is deafening. None of us need be anymore discouraged than we already are but the lack of information is starting to gnaw at the hope I still bear in my heart for the salvation of this game. Can the developers who are supposedly talking with NcSoft give us any reason to believe this thing is going to be pulled out before the clock strikes? Anyone anywhere have anything new at all???
1.) Any and all talks should be expected to under NDA. Anyone that knows anything can't talk about it.
2.) Start complaining about the length of time when it's at least been a month. The time that has passed so far hasn't actually been that significant when it comes to this sort of thing.
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1.) Any and all talks should be expected to under NDA. Anyone that knows anything can't talk about it.
2.) Start complaining about the length of time when it's at least been a month. The time that has passed so far hasn't actually been that significant when it comes to this sort of thing.
Yeah, this sums it up pretty nicely. What it doesn't mean, however, is that you should start losing faith. It's not over yet, we just gotta wait. Keep morale up! Play the game, keep tweeting, etc.
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Yup we cannot lose steam on our efforts. We need to do our part in and out of game as much as possible and those such as Tony or Andy will undoubtedly inform us as soon as something new hits the front lines. Until then remain strong, continue our current Call to Actions (and brainstorm new ones) and consume large amounts of Grandpa Gerald's Old Tyme Broot Beer! I wonder if anybody remembers that and other advertisements I made up in Broadcast during one of my Costume Contests?
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Time...
We have seen quite a bit of it pass now and the lack of information is deafening. None of us need be anymore discouraged than we already are but the lack of information is starting to gnaw at the hope I still bear in my heart for the salvation of this game. Can the developers who are supposedly talking with NcSoft give us any reason to believe this thing is going to be pulled out before the clock strikes? Anyone anywhere have anything new at all???
I can guarantee that the developers ARE talking with NCSoft. That much I have the solid word of Brian Clayton, the former manager of Paragon Studios, on.
I would suggest we are dealing with three things here. (1) Business negotiations are generally slow, unless fire is applied to the tail of one of the parties. (2) It takes time to raise venture capitalist money, and NCSoft is going to be all about "show me the money." (3) WE are in a hurry to see something settled before Nov 30. NCSoft is in no hurry; they have already cut their expenses by shutting down the studio, and do not have a fire applied to their tail.
Applying fire is our job. We need to make them see that the longer they drag this out, the blacker an eye we can give them in the (Western, anyway) press.
I have two strategies I will make threads for.
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Hmmm. Maybe I'm just not saying it loudly enough.
ACTIVATE YOUR PATIENCE DEFENSE POWER SETS!
...maybe that'll do it... >.>
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DAMN, I shoulda bought Patience when the Paragon store was still open. 8)
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"As the long history of City of Heroes draws to a close...."
"Thank you for your support and patience as we work to smoothly close this chapter with the sunset of the City of Heroes franchise."
Zwill's no amateur; he knows how to write this stuff. The eyes of the Community were on him. He probably spent 48 hours sweating over his keyboard trying to figure out exactly how to word it.
It's over. NCsoft has no intention of being reasonable and never did. We'll probably never know if there actually were "discussions" going on or not. (Smart money's on "not".)
So ends the strange saga of The Most Disgraceful and Contemptuous Closing of a Title in Gaming History. Our descendants will not envy us for having experienced it.
And so we move on to "Plan Z". If NCsoft won't run the World's Most Popular Superpowered MMO, and won't release it to another publisher...
We'll just make a new one!
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From the official forums:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297472
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...well aren't we all ready to just throw in the freakin' towel?
Crying out loud. Thought we were all HEROES around here. Stand your ground!
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It's over. NCsoft has no intention of being reasonable and never did. We'll probably never know if there actually were "discussions" going on or not. (Smart money's on "not".)
As far as I know the negotiations are still on. I am in direct communication with Brian Clayton, and he has not said anything to the contrary. Just because NCSoft is not intending to continue the game it does not follow they are not willing to sell it to someone else. Frankly it is all about the money. If someone else is willing to pay for the IP and code, they would be idiots not to sell. In the past what has happened with games they closed was that no one came forward with enough interest and money for them to sell.
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I'd say that particular post is primarily focused on the refund information that so many people were concerned about. Don't let it distract you. Sure it may look bad, but wait to see if or when Andy posts something to the effect of "As we finally say goodbye tomorrow, November 30th, let us not forget..."
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I'd say that particular post is primarily focused on the refund information that so many people were concerned about. Don't let it distract you. Sure it may look bad, but wait to see if or when Andy posts something to the effect of "As we finally say goodbye tomorrow, November 30th, let us not forget..."
If NCSoft doesn't pick the game back up--and let's be honest, they won't, our goal at this point is to transfer the IP to someone who'll continue using it--then technically a 'as we say good bye' post ALSO isn't a cause for alarm, since NCSoft would technically still be saying good bye. I'm just saying...
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All this says is "neener neener NCSoft might have blinked, but we are not going to keep the game alive." So what? We don't WANT them to keep the game alive only to kill it down the road. We want someone else who loves this game to keep it alive, growing and vibrant.
This is also a psychological ploy on the part of NCSoft to discourage us from keeping up our pressure on them. They WANT us to be defeatist (and they obviously succeeded in your case). If anything, we need to put MORE pressure on them--to sell.
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If someone else is willing to pay for the IP and code, they would be idiots not to sell.
I wouldn't rule that out, ncsoft being idiots that is. There's plenty of evidence for it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up, and this fight is far from over. I just wouldn't plan any strategy that hinges on ncsoft management being intelligent and/or rational.
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I wouldn't rule that out, ncsoft being idiots that is. There's plenty of evidence for it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up, and this fight is far from over. I just wouldn't plan any strategy that hinges on ncsoft management being intelligent and/or rational.
Yeah, not a lot of what they have done is making a lot of sense. Logically, business-wise, etc. "Idiots" might be a strong word, but we should most definitely not count on them doing what's logical. It hasn't really happened yet.
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There are a couple of key points to think about in Zwil's post. First, they offered refunds, not game credit toward one of their other titles. I believe that is the first time they have done that. Something to ponder, though I've no idea if it really means anything.
Second, they sent a friendly face out to make the announcement. Now, granted, that is his job - and it is entirely possible he insisted that he be the one to write that announcement. But I note with a certain disdain that so far whoever at NCsoft is calling the shots has hidden behind Andy Belford. If this is such a smart business move they should man up and put their name on it. (snort)
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There are a couple of key points to think about in Zwil's post. First, they offered refunds, not game credit toward one of their other titles. I believe that is the first time they have done that. Something to ponder, though I've no idea if it really means anything.
Second, they sent a friendly face out to make the announcement. Now, granted, that is his job - and it is entirely possible he insisted that he be the one to write that announcement. But I not with a certain disdain that so far whoever at NCsoft is calling the shots has hidden behind Andy Belford. If this is such a smart business move they should put their name on it. (snort)
Yes, they are hiding behind Zwil. It doesn't take a lot to realize that we absolutely love our developers (we bought them dinner) and they are trying to abate us with money in our pockets. This announcement shows that our pressure has done something and NCsoft is hoping that they can shut us up by giving us our money back. Believe me, they wouldn't give us our money back if they could get away with it. Next thing is to turn up the heat and compel them to sell the IP and code.
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Just rechecked my email.
Political spam, product spam, slacktivist alerts, my order for doll eyes just shipped (don't ask), buy buy buy buy, Publisher's Clearing House (WHAT? Someone wins once in a while!), things from two editors. Nothing from Brian. I'd say the negotiations are still on.
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...
*asks anyway*
...doll eyes? >.>
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Just rechecked my email.
Political spam, product spam, slacktivist alerts, my order for doll eyes just shipped (don't ask), buy buy buy buy, Publisher's Clearing House (WHAT? Someone wins once in a while!), things from two editors. Nothing from Brian. I'd say the negotiations are still on.
Or the negotiations broke down and he's gone on a 3 day bender to drown his sorrows. (wink) Just pointing out the possibilities, ma'am. But I think you're probably right. (lol)
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That's a good point emu. They're giving us some of what we want, to try to appease us. They are on the defensive. More than ever, we need to keep up the pressure, and press the advantage.
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I wouldn't read too much into it. If anything, by giving out the refunds they're covering themselves from any legal action regarding unused subscription time, unused points, etc especially for those who do not want to be given credit for another game. It is a nice gesture, yes.
The rest I'll just bite my tongue on! Keep up the good fight.
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I am thinking about all the little data points we've been seeing. I can't entirely explain why, but I am not disheartened by what we're seeing. Lots of little subtle points. They were relatively polite to TonyV in asking we not email the execs directly, then provided him an email address as asked. They refunded rather than offering game credit. Lots of signs of support from the devs, which they COULD have shut down had they chosen to do so.
This is not looking like a company hell bent on telling their customers to go **** themselves. I speak with some authority, having worked for years for a company which routinely does exactly that. I think whoever said they'd love us to get discouraged and go away is right... so let's not. I think we're inside their head at this point, which is a big step in the right direction.
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They've had ample opportunity to stomp us flat...and haven't. That alone speaks volumes.
(And not to mention the Admin who keeps rebooting AP33!)
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They WANT us to be defeatist (and they obviously succeeded in your case).
Not exactly. And we'll see.
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They've had ample opportunity to stomp us flat...and haven't. That alone speaks volumes.
(And not to mention the Admin who keeps rebooting AP33!)
I think they already know better than to risk creating more rage. If they silenced us, the reaction on the web would be far worse than anything that has happened so far, and it wouldn't just be from people who care about the game.
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...
*asks anyway*
...doll eyes? >.>
*sigh* You asked.
I make Asian Ball Jointed dolls. (Some of them are my Secret World Chronicles/City of Heroes characters. I made a Ghost Widow doll for the last Real World Heroes auction). These are resin, vinyl, or ABS dolls that basically come as the naked doll with no hair or eyes and you customize to suit yourself. I just bought two... >.> <.< >.> ....catgirls...who need eyes.
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Ooh. Nice! Any chance you can post a link to pictures? :)
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Ooh. Nice! Any chance you can post a link to pictures? :)
Well, here's The Seraphym (in SWC)/Seraphic Flame (in CoH)
(https://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h232/victoriavictrix/DSCN0030.jpg)
And here's the Ghost Widow doll
(https://i529.photobucket.com/albums/dd335/helloelsie/DSCN0154.jpg)
Enough thread hijacking.
This is what we know for sure.
As of Friday, Brian Clayton told me he had hoped to have news this week but that negotiations were still going strong. As of a few minutes ago, there was no further word. I assume this means nothing has changed.
NCSoft has blinked. They are giving us our money back.
NCSoft has blinked. They have given us a dedicated email address to send our comments and concerns to.
NCSoft has (through Andy) announced that they are not interested in continuing to support the game and are committed to the Nov 30 shutdown date on the NCSoft side.
This is what we know, anything else is pure conjecture.
Point one: good. In business, no news is generally encouraging.
Point two: VERY good
Point three: VERY good, they are getting a bit shook up by our united front
Point four: Nov 30 shutdown. Well this sucks a little, since I was hoping they would agree to something longer for a smoother transition, should we get a buyer, but it's still doable with a little downtime, depending on whether or not anyone still has the code for the OLD launcher around Paragon, and whether or not the deal will include the original servers.
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Ms. Lackey,
First, thanks for the encouragement and the quasi-inside dope. I continue to be hopeful since I don't think anyone has yet seen this kind of grassroots response in gaming.
Second, the dolls are amazing.
(Still, dolls totally freak me out. Make a doll mastermind powerset in the game and I will run screaming from the monitor...)
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A big YEP to everything VV has said.
Hiya, VV, I'm only just getting to know ya, as it were, and it's looking to be a pleasure.
I've seen a growing defeatist sentiment on the official forums (before these latest announcements). I suppose it is to be expected, but I'm spinning my brain a bit to conjure up some ways to help inspire people a little.
Hopefully some people will come back around to us... While November 30th is far too soon... it is also a good amount of time for people to walk away and then really MISS CoH. Hopefully that'll get some more to join our cause (of course, hopefully things might be well on the way and/or settled by then too, hehe).
Honestly, I was greatly wary of ever seeing the Loregasm post, but, Matt Miller including that disclaimer really erased those fears. Thee two announcements have come and not dented my outlook at all.
:)
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I'm with you Electric-Knight.
I'm going to continue playing City of Heroes (and leaving my "info character" logged in while I sleep) until I cannot anymore. I'm going to continue promoting our forum and Call to Action events over various social media networks. I'm going to hammer out details on getting some on-air time at a local radio station. I'm going to continue being a hero.
I think it's safe to say that one way or another, we'll have a City to protect. It will be a ways down the road, but it's there and waiting for us heroes to start cleaning up the streets. If we want it, we can have it.
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Let me as a newbie to this forum make a few comments.
I've played CoH for over 5 years and enjoyed every moment. The people I've met and made friends with are the reason I still play.
The lack of any answer or comment directly from NCSoft is both unnerving and comforting. Comforting in that it shows things haven't been decided. That means we have good chance to save the game. The lack of comment unnerves me in that it shows that the shutdown was so poorly planned and conceived. It shows some bad management at high levels.
I'm done preaching. THANKS everyone who made, upgraded and expanded the game.
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I created a toon last week and named him Save-CoH. I have had several private messages saying nice name & keep up the fight. I think that it is important to remind people that we may not be winning or loosing the fight but we are still fighting !!!
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I created a toon last week and named him Save-CoH. I have had several private messages saying nice name & keep up the fight. I think that it is important to remind people that we may not be winning or loosing the fight but we are still fighting !!!
I'd like to see people create something like this on every server not only to have that physical presence, but to be there to inform those players who are just learning of the closure or are desiring more information.
On Virtue I have "Save CoH Information" logged in front of City Hall overnight. I always come back to /tells thanking me as well, and in-game emails requesting information. It's a great way to boost our numbers! Here he is again:
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v456/IceGrover/SaveCOH2.jpg)
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Lovely to learn NC-Soft realizes their dismissive, selfish action has created a PR nightmare. I predict they've incinerated their bridges outside of South Korea. If word of this fiasco reaches their own shores, they may well "faceplant." What a heartbreaker. Note to self: if I'm ever in charge of a company, communicate with my customers and treat them like human beings.
Still ticked Jack Emmert sold the City overseas in the first place. Superheroes are American, dag-nabbit!
If When CoH survives this mess, I propose that those who played pivotal roles in this effort, like TonyV and Victoria there... that a couple of those generic statues in the city should be replaced with statues of their mains.
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Honestly, I was greatly wary of ever seeing the Loregasm post, but, Matt Miller including that disclaimer really erased those fears. Thee two announcements have come and not dented my outlook at all.
Not to mention, the lore answers were so vague that it gives them a lot of room to expand on things. It's the details that count for a story. (and those details are usually hammered out about the time something is being made)
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I'd like to see people create something like this on every server not only to have that physical presence, but to be there to inform those players who are just learning of the closure or are desiring more information.
On Virtue I have "Save CoH Information" logged in front of City Hall overnight. I always come back to /tells thanking me as well, and in-game emails requesting information. It's a great way to boost our numbers! Here he is again:
Getting one on Protector, my first server, now...
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This is what we know for sure.
As of Friday, Brian Clayton told me he had hoped to have news this week but that negotiations were still going strong. As of a few minutes ago, there was no further word. I assume this means nothing has changed.
NCSoft has blinked. They are giving us our money back.
NCSoft has blinked. They have given us a dedicated email address to send our comments and concerns to.
NCSoft has (through Andy) announced that they are not interested in continuing to support the game and are committed to the Nov 30 shutdown date on the NCSoft side.
This is what we know, anything else is pure conjecture.
Point one: good. In business, no news is generally encouraging.
Point two: VERY good
Point three: VERY good, they are getting a bit shook up by our united front
Point four: Nov 30 shutdown. Well this sucks a little, since I was hoping they would agree to something longer for a smoother transition, should we get a buyer, but it's still doable with a little downtime, depending on whether or not anyone still has the code for the OLD launcher around Paragon, and whether or not the deal will include the original servers.
Thank you. For your support, for your willingness to actively help, for your wonderful wordsmithing, and for your unflagging enthusiasm. Please know that this Michigander (and Pinniclite) truly appreciates what you're doing.
Now I'm off to raid my wife's collection of your books and start becoming better acquainted with the aforementioned wonderful wordsmithing. :)
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Thank you. For your support, for your willingness to actively help, for your wonderful wordsmithing, and for your unflagging enthusiasm. Please know that this Michigander (and Pinniclite) truly appreciates what you're doing.
Now I'm off to raid my wife's collection of your books and start becoming better acquainted with the aforementioned wonderful wordsmithing. :)
Why is it your wife has the collection?
She's damned good! Have an entire shelf dedicated to her.
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Thank you. For your support, for your willingness to actively help, for your wonderful wordsmithing, and for your unflagging enthusiasm. Please know that this Michigander (and Pinniclite) truly appreciates what you're doing.
Pish-tosh. 60's hippy + 62 years old = herd dog with experience. That's all. It's kinda in the blood.
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Pish-tosh. 60's hippy + 62 years old = herd dog with experience. That's all. It's kinda in the blood.
Hmmph. A tad more than that, I'd say. You're a hero, and you're inspiring a lot of other people to heroism. Not to mention spinning some mighty fine yarns that have given a lot of us many enjoyable hours. Not a bad thing to be able to point to when somebody says, "So, what have you been up to lately?" But, like all of us, you're not doin' it for the applause. (wink)
For now, though, back to the grim necessity of battle. And, of course, the occasional spot of fun to liven things up...
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if the game does get sold i would expect some downtime to work in a new launcher as well as a new system for the paragon market and paragon points stuff
currently paragon points are handled through ncsoft master account, and the launcher to start the game is ncsoft
i mean they could always go back to the older launcher that takes forever to patch since they should still have the code for it, as for setting up a new billing system and stuff for our accounts
i do see the news today as good sign though that our actions are taking notice with ncsoft, and if we do save the game there will prolly be a little bit of downtime in order to remove ncsoft related stuff from the game but otherwise i think we are still heading in the right direction
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Pish-tosh. 60's hippy + 62 years old = herd dog with experience. That's all. It's kinda in the blood.
*snerk* Well, we can use all the herding we can get. We're worse than a buncha cats at times.
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*snerk* Well, we can use all the herding we can get. We're worse than a buncha cats at times.
Good thing my favorite toon is a fire tank, then.
"OK everyone! TO THE DUMPSTERS!"
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Good thing my favorite toon is a fire tank, then.
"OK everyone! TO THE DUMPSTERS!"
Er... somehow, I don't think herding us all together so NCsoft can unleash the AOEs on us is quite the image you really want. (wink)
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It would be really nice if we could get this (or some) thread stickied with the first post in the thread updated periodically on the latest news. It's difficult to scour the forum to get all the different bits of info (including, for example, the info Victoria Victrix has shared about Things Still Happening behind closed doors).
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Pish-tosh. 60's hippy + 62 years old = herd dog with experience. That's all. It's kinda in the blood.
I remember you writing that you got your start playing volunteer rangler at Fantasy Worlds Festival.
Getting a bunch of enthused young volunteers to actually interrupt their con experience with food and sleep?
Talk about some hax-level controller powers here!
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Er... somehow, I don't think herding us all together so NCsoft can unleash the AOEs on us is quite the image you really want. (wink)
Who said NCSoft is the one unleashing the AoEs?
Thus far, we've unleashed some powers that have whomped the length and breadth of the internet...
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I'd like to see people create something like this on every server not only to have that physical presence, but to be there to inform those players who are just learning of the closure or are desiring more information.
On Virtue I have "Save CoH Information" logged in front of City Hall overnight. I always come back to /tells thanking me as well, and in-game emails requesting information. It's a great way to boost our numbers! Here he is again:
(https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v456/IceGrover/SaveCOH2.jpg)
This is great. I'll gladly do one of these, in fact I tried to do something similar (altho not as well) but pardon my stupidity, how do you get it to remain logged in and not time out and get kicked off the server as afk?
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This is great. I'll gladly do one of these, in fact I tried to do something similar (altho not as well) but pardon my stupidity, how do you get it to remain logged in and not time out and get kicked off the server as afk?
You go to the AE buidling. Start ANY ae arc. then instead of actually entring the mission, you walk back out and take up your position once more.
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You go to the AE buidling. Start ANY ae arc. then instead of actually entring the mission, you walk back out and take up your position once more.
Well holy smack...........I never knew that trick! Thanks!!! :)
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Hey VV, I'm really curious. You mentioned earlier, or possibly in another thread, that you were given a lifetime sub for your MA story. With the news of the player refunds, have you heard anything about how they will compensate you for your work?
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I'll admit that my sense of hope and spirits have been low since the announcement. (Things weren't help with my browser crashing each time I tried to sign the petition until I gave up - took it as a sign)
Anyway, reading this thread has given me hope for the first time...
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Don't forget about this http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-840174 Spread the link around, get folks signed up and clicking Recommend.
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Hey VV, I'm really curious. You mentioned earlier, or possibly in another thread, that you were given a lifetime sub for your MA story. With the news of the player refunds, have you heard anything about how they will compensate you for your work?
I have not. Unless I find out that other people (husband) has gotten a refund and I have not gotten any compensation, I will assume I will get a "refund" on the time remaining. If I do not, I'll take some steps.
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Paragon City, and it's ideals, transcend borders. We are men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, of all nationalities, all faiths, all beliefs, and all creeds.
We are something larger than any one nation or people. Remember that, and act accordingly.
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, depending on whether or not anyone still has the code for the OLD launcher around Paragon, and whether or not the deal will include the original servers.
looking through my bookcase prompts this question,
Would one of the old box sets published before everything shifted over to the NCSoft launcher still have the original launcher?
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looking through my bookcase prompts this question,
Would one of the old box sets published before everything shifted over to the NCSoft launcher still have the original launcher?
I have a copy of the collectors edition disk (both CoH and CoV) sitting here.
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The amount of books of yours I've been intending to buy is clearly not enough. And I regret that up until the last few weeks my only exposure to you or your books was one of my crazier exes reading one of them.
I cannot thank you enough for your help. And I certainly cannot thank you enough for the morale boost you've provided. Whether or not we succeed in the end, we've already done the impossible. No reason to stop now.
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looking through my bookcase prompts this question,
Would one of the old box sets published before everything shifted over to the NCSoft launcher still have the original launcher?
Yes it would. It wouldn't do anything. But it'd be there.
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Yes it would. It wouldn't do anything. But it'd be there.
Then might that be an answer for down the road? If the programming exists (and several other VERY big conditions are met) could that be used as a way to reconstruct a way to start the game without the NCSoft launcher?
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Then might that be an answer for down the road? If the programming exists (and several other VERY big conditions are met) could that be used as a way to reconstruct a way to start the game without the NCSoft launcher?
I think that is a question for Codewalker or one of the other experts, but I believe that the path goes: launcher connects to some intermediary server which connects you to specific "shard" server which then allows you to play. So the launcher would need to point to something, and that something would need to point you to a specific "shard" server. Have I got that right?
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I think that is a question for Codewalker or one of the other experts, but I believe that the path goes: launcher connects to some intermediary server which connects you to specific "shard" server which then allows you to play. So the launcher would need to point to something, and that something would need to point you to a specific "shard" server. Have I got that right?
Sounds about right, but I'm no code monkey.
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My real point stands: we find ourselves in this predicament because somebody sold City of Heroes to people who do not care about it or us, or appreciate the merits of its genre, who see it only as a source of money. It's not productive to assign blame, perhaps, but it is still so.
Perhaps.
However, at the time NCSoft we're our Heroes. Cryptic were making their new Marvel MMO (which fell through and ended up becoming CO) and CoH was being phased out. The only (probable) reason CoH existed up to now is NCSoft.
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I have outside news. We got three interviews on a real world radio station in West Virginia. One with TonyV, one with Samuel Hedlund and one with *cough*. If anyone has a place I can move these so everyone can link to them and listen I will be happy to forward them. PM me with an email address and I'll lob them to you.
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Perhaps.
However, at the time NCSoft we're our Heroes. Cryptic were making their new Marvel MMO (which fell through and ended up becoming CO) and CoH was being phased out. The only (probable) reason CoH existed up to now is NCSoft.
Yep, and by the end of all of this, hopefully NCSoft should have a good place within our history, so long as they offer the product for sale and allow things to continue.
While their handling of us and, more importantly, Paragon Studios earns them some serious negativity, I can still get over that if all ends up well and good.
We'll see... regardless, NCSoft was indeed once a hero. I hope they're only currently in the grey area... either that or someone use an alignment token on them now! ;D
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We'll see... regardless, NCSoft was indeed once a hero. I hope they're only currently in the grey area... either that or someone use an alignment token on them now! ;D
*spittakes* Thanks Electric. I really really needed that laugh right now.
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I post this mostly for a bit of levity...
But this was the thread where a bunch of people were "carefully" pouring through each and every word that Zwillinger said, using their tea-leaf-reading skills to divine greater messages there within, right?
I haven't see anyone mention this reply of Zwill's, from last night...
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4398639#post4398639 (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4398639#post4398639)
Newchemicals:
Thanks Z
Hope to see all of the CoH players and devs in some other game universe.
Zwillinger: We'll be around. (https://images.weserv.nl/?url=boards.cityofheroes.com%2Fimages%2Fsmilies%2Fsmile.gif)
I'm not saying that I believe it is speaking to any greater meanings, but I'm honestly surprised that I haven't seen anyone else mention (or maybe I just missed it!).
;)
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You know, I can play tea-leaf reader too....
Posi said something about "closing the chapter on City of Heroes" or something to that effect. I definitely remember the specific word "chapter" being used, and the chorus of woe and gloom....
You know, he did say "chapter" and not "book."
I wish to heck I could pass over a single chapter to my editor and say "Here it is, Betsy, all done! Now pay me my money!"
I am pretty sure her answer would be "Uh, no, you owe us 19 more of those."
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You know, I can play tea-leaf reader too....
Posi said something about "closing the chapter on City of Heroes" or something to that effect. I definitely remember the specific word "chapter" being used, and the chorus of woe and gloom....
You know, he did say "chapter" and not "book."
I wish to heck I could pass over a single chapter to my editor and say "Here it is, Betsy, all done! Now pay me my money!"
I am pretty sure her answer would be "Uh, no, you owe us 19 more of those."
LOL
That'd be sweet... Maybe I could get paid by the verse! ;D
Actually, the use of "chapter" was in the NCSoft refunds and billings announcement that Zwill posted.
I can't recall if Posi used it as well though.
Hehe... I'm picturing Emma Thompson reading the tea leaves for us now...
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You know, he did say "chapter" and not "book."
I wish to heck I could pass over a single chapter to my editor and say "Here it is, Betsy, all done! Now pay me my money!"
I am pretty sure her answer would be "Uh, no, you owe us 19 more of those."
Heh. Though as your editor isn't that at least part of her job description? Thats always the impression I had (though I am outside that industry looking in.)
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Links to the radio interviews
http://savecoh.livecreatively.net/ (http://savecoh.livecreatively.net/)
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It isn't over until the proverbial fat lady sings, tea leaves be damned.
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To get interest from investors, I think that the devs might be pitching CoH2, with CoH1 maintained and updated during the development period of the sequel, with the eventual goal of letting players port their avatars into the new game for a smooth transition that wouldn't break up the community.
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To get interest from investors, I think that the devs might be pitching CoH2, with CoH1 maintained and updated during the development period of the sequel, with the eventual goal of letting players port their avatars into the new game for a smooth transition that wouldn't break up the community.
I was under the impression that was something they wanted to do anyway which NCSoft shot down. But it would certainly be a no-brainer to pitch to investors if at least some design work or thought had already been put into it. They'd be able to very clearly and accurately describe how that would work and probably give an estimated time frame.
I'm actually quite hopeful that we will hear something soon.
Also, kudos to whoever arranged the "real world" radio interviews. That's fantastic news. If we break a little further into the mainstream media NCSoft will absolutely be forced to do something to save face. Which, in my view, could only be positive for us.
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I would certainly love to play more CoH and two years from now complain to Positron at a Pummit, but you said "X" in the Loregasm post!
Then sit down and enjoy bacon waffles for breakfast.
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...I want bacon waffles. :(
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Well, here's The Seraphym (in SWC)/Seraphic Flame (in CoH)
(https://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h232/victoriavictrix/DSCN0030.jpg)
hmm, I think she may be related to one of my toons, Perma(-THO).
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Personally I find it amusing that those dolls all seem to live in a refrigerator.
OH COME ON, don't pretend you don't know what I am talking about!
Anyway, I do not know what the team is pitching, and I just checked into email and no news yet. As soon as I get some I will let you know. I mean, I know what MY plan(s) would be, but if I was a business wizard, I would be doing that.
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Pretty sure I'm the only one of my friends, IRL and on FB, who wants to see Karl Urban redeem the good Judge from that hot mess that was the Stallone movie.
You are not alone. Take solace in that. :)
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While I respectfully disagree that knowingly selling us the Nature Affinity powerset a week before the cancellation notice earns NC-Soft "a good place within our history," I suggest we discuss that some other time.
Quoted from another thread:
"SOMEONE IS ALREADY NEGOTIATING WITH NCSOFT. That entity is a group of former Paragon Studios employees."
"I do not know what the team is pitching, and I just checked into email and no news yet."
V V, This is extremely encouraging. While I'm sure the team finds our demonstrations reassuring, is there any other way we might assist? Suppose, for example, we who have joined the protest movement each pledged a year's membership in advance, contingent upon CoH's continuation. Would something of the sort provide some leverage? There must be something...!
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While I respectfully disagree that knowingly selling us the Nature Affinity powerset a week before the cancellation notice earns NC-Soft "a good place within our history," I suggest we discuss that some other time.
Quoted from another thread:
"SOMEONE IS ALREADY NEGOTIATING WITH NCSOFT. That entity is a group of former Paragon Studios employees."
"I do not know what the team is pitching, and I just checked into email and no news yet."
V V, This is extremely encouraging. While I'm sure the team finds our demonstrations reassuring, is there any other way we might assist? Suppose, for example, we who have joined the protest movement each pledged a year's membership in advance, contingent upon CoH's continuation. Would something of the sort provide some leverage? There must be something...!
I asked Brian about something earlier, I can add that to the queries once I get some sort of reply from him. Since when he does reply, he has not been terse, and he has apologized for not getting to his email because he was busy elsewhere I keep assuming that no news is good news.
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Ms. Lackey,
First, thanks for the encouragement and the quasi-inside dope. I continue to be hopeful since I don't think anyone has yet seen this kind of grassroots response in gaming.
Second, the dolls are amazing.
(Still, dolls totally freak me out. Make a doll mastermind powerset in the game and I will run screaming from the monitor...)
I'd love a clown and doll MM powerset :)
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I'd love a clown and doll MM powerset :)
Still waiting for the option to dress minions however we like.
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Still waiting for the option to dress minions however we like.
Or at least pick colors or out of a number of presets, like "Female Soldiers" or something.
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"I asked Brian about something earlier, I can add that to the queries once I get some sort of reply from him."
Terrific! We're all eager.
On a lighter note, one of my best CoH friends created a redside doll of the Chucky/Talky Tina variety. Ahh... I do so love redside sometimes.
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Good thing my favorite toon is a fire tank, then.
"OK everyone! TO THE DUMPSTERS!"
Ah, the days of filling cargo containers with warwolves. Good times. I still love watching my stone tank run when he's Speed Boosted so he looks like he's doing the Curly Shuffle.
ObTopical, thanks for helping keep the cats herded, Vicki!
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I have outside news. We got three interviews on a real world radio station in West Virginia. One with TonyV, one with Samuel Hedlund and one with *cough*.
Nice job all - thanks for doing it!
Might be a good idea to post this more prominently...
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Is there any real news? The news of the refund is as more confusing then anything else.
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Is there any real news? The news of the refund is as more confusing then anything else.
No real news. That's sort of the point, there won't be real news until the negotiations either succeed or fall apart completely. Suffice to say, we're all rooting for the former, not the latter. :P
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Or at least pick colors or out of a number of presets, like "Female Soldiers" or something.
I'd love that, the Incarnate powers have pretty much proven it's doable. (sadly as much as I want customizable minions, so I can have my own matching strike teams, I don't see it happening because of the resources/performance issues involved in that =/ )
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I always wanted pink robots for my mastermind Lina Moonshine, a simple re-colour option, but well... there are other problems right now...
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Heard from Brian. Status same. NCSoft is not saying no, anyway!
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Heard from Brian. Status same. NCSoft is not saying no, anyway!
And so we keep the torches burning!
Thank you for this breath of hope.
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No Gnus is Good Gnus with Gary Gnu
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=3.bp.blogspot.com%2F_K3TV01Tpz0Y%2FSphYq0ot0jI%2FAAAAAAAAAu8%2F8mIngfYAWws%2Fs320%2Fgnu24.jpg)
Heard from Brian. Status same. NCSoft is not saying no, anyway!
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...I want bacon waffles. :(
I make bacon waffles.
*pours waffle batter in waffle iron.*
*sprinkles bacon bits on waffles*
*closes iron lid*
*waits*
*fends off Pepsiman with stick*
*feeds Bacon waffles to Drake*
Anyway promising indications from the negotiations front anyway.
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And so we keep the torches burning!
Thank you for this breath of hope.
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.fragglerockforever.com%2FCoX%2FshouldTheLightsGoOut.jpg)
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To Victoria Victrix,
I'm one of the administrators of the Save City of Heroes Facebook page. I have to thank you for the news and whatever effort on your part to save the game. I've been doing what I can to keep people updated with information concerning the concert effort to save the game. In our eyes, you are a heroine.
While the news is encouraging, I feel we still have a long ways to go. I'll continue to watch the forums for more news to inform people of updates.
By the way, those are interesting dolls you have. They almost remind me of the puppets in the old Puppetmaster movies. ;)
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I'd love a clown and doll MM powerset :)
I'd settle for a customisable Mercs MM Powerset.
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Surely news is incoming that would give the community hope and perhaps give the employees of Paragon enough reason to hold out a bit longer before considering any new job offers seriously.
This is the tightest drum I have ever seen...are there no leaks anywhere? Surely some detective like hero is among us?!? Someone get the rumor mill going and produce something newsworthy on this thread :-)
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Heard from Brian. Status same. NCSoft is not saying no, anyway!
Thanks for the continued updates (and that thanks goes to the source too!).
Just to keep up with the Zwill Readings...
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4399833#post4399833 (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4399833#post4399833)
To elaborate: The leadership here at Paragon is, and always has been, top notch.
I can assure you that there is no lack of drive or passion from our leadership.
This was in reply yo UberGuy saying:
That leadership is apparently in place. However, they almost certainly cannot publicly share details of what is being negotiated. So far, they have only let out that negotiations are still ongoing.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that such leadership is "all" it will take. A lot of other things have to fall into place - the best leader in the world might not be able to get NCSoft to play ball. But the leadership is in place, and "someone else" is indeed working on saving the game.
Nothing at all might come of it, but people are trying.
Nothing we don't already know, but I just think it is nice to see Zwill publicly chiming in about such things, as limited as he is about what he can say.
I don't think it means anything more than him sharing his strong belief and love for the job PS's leadership have done (and more likely, knowing him, informing people that if things fail, people shouldn't ever blame the leadership of Paragon Studios).
Not sure if we should continue posting Zwill quotes in here, as it's not quite the news we'd been putting in here before. So, I aplogize if it's gettin' a bit old. Just warmed my heart a little and thought it might do the same for others. ;)
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We need a Zwill tracker.
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Indeed... I'm going into CoffeeTalk withdrawal. I'm missing the tangents and hats.
:gonk:
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We need a Zwill tracker.
A Zwillker?
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I hope we haven't seen the last of coffee talk one way or another! The guy was/is a great ambassador for the game
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A Zwillker?
Zwacker?
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Heard from Brian. Status same. NCSoft is not saying no, anyway!
Just a weird thought: would it help perhaps to have a 3rd party involved? I was thinking that perhaps there might be good reasons for NC Soft not to sell to SOE, with them being competitors and all. But Valve is pretty much loaded right now, and Valve is more of a distribution channel, and someone whom NC Soft might want to keep on their good side. So if Valve were waving money at NC Soft it might be a little more incentive for NC Soft to sell, methinks.
I don't know of course, and this would probably be best handled by Brian. I thought I'd toss it out there as an idea. There's a lot of CoHers on Steam, we've got a few big CoH groups there, and a lot of folks are adding sever-specific groups now so they can stay in touch. So a lot of us are already customers of Valve. Might be attractive from Valve's perspective to acquire their own MMORPG and an experienced team along with it, along with some rabidly loyal customers.
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It fell off the main pages some time ago, but a number of CoH players have already sent their messages to Gabe Newell asking for Valve to at least consider the proposition. With its emphasis on non-traditional (read: non-WoW) gameplay and user-generated content of all types--characters, bases, AE--I think CoH is a good fit in Valve's portfolio.
Feel free to contribute your voice here (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=296213&highlight=Valve). :)
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I think Valve is a great idea as well. Valve was the first thing my husband mentioned when this happened. Is there an address we can write a letter to? Or will too much correspondence be annoying.
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I hate Valve. Please GOD don't make me have to have to do business with them again.
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That could end up being the case of leaping out of the frying pan and into the fire. EA has had their eye on Valve, and if they manage to pull out of their current financial mess... ugh.
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That could end up being the case of leaping out of the frying pan and into the fire. EA has had their eye on Valve, and if they manage to pull out of their current financial mess... ugh.
Gabe has been quoted more than once as saying that Valve would disperse, as a company, before they would allow themselves to be bought up by the likes of EA or Activision. >.>
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I don't think that the "Big-Players" are intressted in our beloved game, that's not their style. The game is just to old and it's not such a big franchise for them that a part 2 can working in their minds. It's not a fantasy based game, not have Marvel or DC characters in it and the profit are peanuts for them, so it's not on their radar, I'm sure.
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As I see it, it's perfect for a small distributor, someone for whom the entry fee might require a loan, but the documented profits would be a significant boon to their ledger. Trouble is, the game is likely hemorrhaging players as the days without news from the bargaining table rack up.
Actually, I'm going to add that bit from VV about the negotiations still progressing to my Informant toon, right now.
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I don't think that the "Big-Players" are intressted in our beloved game, that's not their style. The game is just to old and it's not such a big franchise for them that a part 2 can working in their minds. It's not a fantasy based game, not have Marvel or DC characters in it and the profit are peanuts for them, so it's not on their radar, I'm sure.
In a way, it's better than a fantasy game though. Fantasy games are very limited in what you can do for characters. Paragon City will welcome anything as long as it isn't ridiculously vulgar. And CoX has more value to it than just as a game. Half the time it's used like a portal for virtual Cosplay, in that someone sets up a themed event, everyone rolls level 1's with costumes to match, and then attends. The only other games I'm aware of that have ever had that kind of community element to it, are Second Life and Sims Online. CoX provides this kind of experience, while still having all the mechanics of an MMO, which is a very unique thing. Properly cared for, businesses can take advantage of that just like they can with Cons.
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In a way, it's better than a fantasy game though. Fantasy games are very limited in what you can do for characters. Paragon City will welcome anything as long as it isn't ridiculously vulgar. And CoX has more value to it than just as a game. Half the time it's used like a portal for virtual Cosplay,
I'd say a bit more than virtual as far as the cosplay goes.
And then ther is Arf the Puppy, who effectlvy uses a semi silly proof of concept travel power as a key aspect of his charecter. What other MMO can say THAT?
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I'd say a bit more than virtual as far as the cosplay goes.
And then ther is Arf the Puppy, who effectlvy uses a semi silly proof of concept travel power as a key aspect of his charecter. What other MMO can say THAT?
I have the name Pack of Wild Dogs on Virtue for a Beast Mastermind who only uses the wolves, German shepherd vanity pet, and Coyote Travel Power. ;)
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I'd say a bit more than virtual as far as the cosplay goes.
And then ther is Arf the Puppy, who effectlvy uses a semi silly proof of concept travel power as a key aspect of his charecter. What other MMO can say THAT?
Impeccable timing, I just bumped into Arf for the first time within a half hour of reading this post.
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Arf? Never heard of that character. (Or what the heck 'Woofers' is.)
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On Virtue I have "Save CoH Information" logged in front of City Hall overnight. I always come back to /tells thanking me as well, and in-game emails requesting information. It's a great way to boost our numbers! Here he is again:
That ... is extremely clever. Well done, sir or madam.
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Absolutly true, City of Heroes is a lot better then everthing from this fantasy stuff. When I play Everquest for example and I got an elf there and Sony is thinking... "Well we want to concentrate on the PS3 and so we close the servers..." Then I can rebuild my elf in every other game because there are tons from them out there end every game is a little bit the same. With my mastermind Lina Moonshine it's differnet. I have no chance that I can make a similar character in an other game, it's just to special and that's exaclty the point why we love the game so much I think...
For the big publishers this dosn't matter at all. MMORPG have to be fantasy games, every other game isn't intressting for them. In some point... Well they are right with this. Look at "The Secred World" it's differnet and wasn't a big deal with 200.000 sold units, heads was rolling there but to game goes on... so far. Try to go new ways and make different games is something for the smaller companys and I think that we have a much better chance there.
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Entirely unrelated to the "save CoH" effort, the tangent on "better than fantasy" and "CoH can do anything, not just limited to fantasy" in this thread made me ponder: perhaps a Fantasy-like expansion sometime in the future (assuming all goes well and there is a future) would be interesting. We've seen in Marvel comics that a myth/fantasy-esq story arc is not out of place in a comics-verse (see Journey Into Mystery starting with the plot arc Fear Itself; I don't read comics, much, but I enjoyed that one so much I bought a hardbound copy of the first half of it and am looking for the rest in similar format).
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Entirely unrelated to the "save CoH" effort, the tangent on "better than fantasy" and "CoH can do anything, not just limited to fantasy" in this thread made me ponder: perhaps a Fantasy-like expansion sometime in the future (assuming all goes well and there is a future) would be interesting. We've seen in Marvel comics that a myth/fantasy-esq story arc is not out of place in a comics-verse (see Journey Into Mystery starting with the plot arc Fear Itself; I don't read comics, much, but I enjoyed that one so much I bought a hardbound copy of the first half of it and am looking for the rest in similar format).
I22 = Fear Itself, CoX style
At least I think that's when DA got remade.
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I22?
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Issue 22: Death Incarnate which modified the Dark Astoria area.
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Ah. Neat. ^_^
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And then ther is Arf the Puppy, who effectlvy uses a semi silly proof of concept travel power as a key aspect of his charecter. What other MMO can say THAT?
Impeccable timing, I just bumped into Arf for the first time within a half hour of reading this post.
I am the rogue behind Arf the Puppy.
I wanted a character which I could baseline basic emotions on in roleplay. Whiile i was conceptualizing the idea, the Paragon Market updated... with the travel power that defined Arf.
Once again, the studios timed things perfectly. One more reason I love the game.
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Which travel power is this, and why is it "proof of concept?"
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Which travel power is this, and why is it "proof of concept?"
The Coyote Travel Power, and it's proof of four legged model concepts controlled by players.
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The Coyote Travel Power, and it's proof of four legged model concepts controlled by players.
That was never the problem... the problem is making ALL the animations fit with it, especially MA and similar sets - which would take tons of time from the development team.
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Ermm.. Back on topic please?
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Zwillinger is no longer with the company, leaving us without a community manager for the final two months (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4400661#post4400661)
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Zwillinger is no longer with the company, leaving us without a community manager for the final two months (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4400661#post4400661)
This...could get ugly. Does that leave two effective full-time moderators on the main boards? We may have to start doing what we can to keep things tidy ourselves.
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Sadness :(
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Sadness :(
Yeah... that's exactly the way I feel...
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Yes, there is at least one full-time (no-redname) moderator. I don't know if the other redname moderators (HitStreak and Freitag) are officially working or not but I don't think they are.
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Personally I find it amusing that those dolls all seem to live in a refrigerator.
OH COME ON, don't pretend you don't know what I am talking about!
And you'd think Sera, of all people, could manage to keep warm... 8)
Gonna hook up with Max (Schaeffer) and get his take on all this, but I need to give it a few days: Torchlight II dropped yesterday, and he's a tad busy right now.
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I can't fault Zwill his decision, and wish him the very best. He has two adorable boys and, for a short while, they'll get some extra Daddy Time.
Still, I worry about the status of the main forums.
:'(
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Still, I worry about the status of the main forums.
I'm more active here than anywhere, but it may be worth our time to try to put out fires ourselves--if people start getting rowdy, remind them that there's still a chance CoH could be sold, and that potential buyers will be reading our messages and judging our community accordingly. If we can demonstrate that we're more than capable of being prosocial without oversight, that's going to reflect well on the community and CoH.
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I still have hope up until Posi says the same thing.
Then it's game over.
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I still have hope up until Posi says the same thing.
Then it's game over.
It's not game over until I darn well say it is.
Am I understood!? :P
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It's not game over until I darn well say it is.
Am I understood!? :P
Wait, are you saying you're the fat lady? I always imagined you'd be heavier-looking.
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Wait, are you saying you're the fat lady? I always imagined you'd be heavier-looking.
Well, I'm not the fat lady, but I do like to feel pretty now and then. :P
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Welp, Cryptic/PW scooped up some of our people. Good for them!
http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=689581
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Welp, Cryptic/PW scooped up some of our people. Good for them!
http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=689581
If they'd scoop up the whole team and the game itself I'd be happy. 8)
I am glad for them as well as the 38 Studio people. Had friends there.
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Good to know that at least some of our Devs have secured new employment! :)
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Maybe from the inside, they can talk Cryptic into buying. :P
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Cryptic taking us back into the nest would be almost poetic....but maintaining us and champions online...would they keep both
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Cryptic taking us back into the nest would be almost poetic....but maintaining us and champions online...would they keep both
They might, due to the different playstyles, although the engines would merge over time I'd presume.
Alternatively could sick the Paragon boys on Champions to fix it up.
Could even work on a CoH2:Champions to eventually merge them together.
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Once again one of the greatest things about the lore of CoX. So user-friendly. Every character we bring into it somehow fits like a glove. I don't think the CO universe would be much of a problem. 8)
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Once again one of the greatest things about the lore of CoX. So user-friendly. Every character we bring into it somehow fits like a glove. I don't think the CO universe would be much of a problem. 8)
Dang it, Portal Corp! Look at what you've done now! >.>
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Dang it, Portal Corp! Look at what you've done now! >.>
Will the OS be glad to see us for...testing?
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My hero Super Group motto is "Never Give Up! Never Surrender!" We will Save our City!
We've sent letters. Signed the petition. Have posted the link so our fb friends can sign. Are spreading the word to all of our friends. Are willing to donate monies, time, whatever it takes to keep our city alive. Please keep us posted as to what assistance may be needed.
We are Heroes! This is what we do!
Heroes of Infinity/ Ire of Eire
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I think I saw an official announce from Cryptic saying there was no chance of buying out CoH.
It's technically possible they could buy it of course and then do a whole "colliding universes" thing and merge into one game over time. But I can't see PWE wanting two superhero games and it's hard to see where the benefit to them is unless they buy CoH to kill it, but that seems an unnecessary expense since NCSoft seem to be doing fine without PWEs help.
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I know these talks are usually hush-hush...but...when should we begin panicking?
End of October? Mid-November? November 30th?
You choose your level of involvement.
Myself, I'll reserve outrage until two weeks before Nov. 30th if it's still all silence (I don't believe in "Hail Mary" business decisions... especially from a deliberative proceeding). Earlier if NCSoft says officially "there is nothing for you to do" in a Press Release or other official channel.
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I am a pessimist. A pessimist obsessively plans for every awful outcome she can think of.
To that end I have put Tony V directly in touch with my Secret Guy-Who-Knows-Everyone Friend.
I don't know what the end of this road will be, but I assure you, there will be no falling off a cliff until every damn plan we can think of has been tried and has failed.
Bear in mind. Pessimists are more often pleasantly surprised than optimists.
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I am a pessimist. A pessimist obsessively plans for every awful outcome she can think of.
To that end I have put Tony V directly in touch with my Secret Guy-Who-Knows-Everyone Friend.
I don't know what the end of this road will be, but I assure you, there will be no falling off a cliff until every damn plan we can think of has been tried and has failed.
I just wanted to say (with my first Titan post!) thank you, thank you and thank you again for all that you've been doing to try to keep the game alive! Really, this is a game for writers, artists, for people with creative streaks, and no other MMO even tries to do what it does by letting players become anyone or anything in a world with so many intersecting genres that any concept can make sense and come to life within it. We're not just trying to save our favorite game, we're trying to save a uniquely 21st-century form of creative expression unlike anything that's existed before or even anything else that exists right now. If that aspect can survive somehow, and it looks like everyone's doing everything possible to make it happen, then I think the essence of what made CoH so amazing and unique will live on with it. Anyway, thank you again!
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That's right. I always plan for the worst and hope to be pleasantly surprised. :)
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I am a pessimist. A pessimist obsessively plans for every awful outcome she can think of.
To that end I have put Tony V directly in touch with my Secret Guy-Who-Knows-Everyone Friend.
I don't know what the end of this road will be, but I assure you, there will be no falling off a cliff until every damn plan we can think of has been tried and has failed.
I woke up this morning with a gut feeling that we would get some good news today. That didn't happen. In fact, I took the news of Zwill's departure as a punch to the gut and I even resubscribed to another MMO that some of my friends play today thinking it is over. Seriously though, if you pull something off, I swear I will buy every book you have ever written, and I don't even read much.
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I am a pessimist. A pessimist obsessively plans for every awful outcome she can think of.
To that end I have put Tony V directly in touch with my Secret Guy-Who-Knows-Everyone Friend.
I don't know what the end of this road will be, but I assure you, there will be no falling off a cliff until every damn plan we can think of has been tried and has failed.
Bear in mind. Pessimists are more often pleasantly surprised than optimists.
You have my axe. /LOTR
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You have my axe. /LOTR
And my Pyronic Radial Final Judgement.
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I am a pessimist. A pessimist obsessively plans for every awful outcome she can think of.
To that end I have put Tony V directly in touch with my Secret Guy-Who-Knows-Everyone Friend.
I don't know what the end of this road will be, but I assure you, there will be no falling off a cliff until every damn plan we can think of has been tried and has failed.
Bear in mind. Pessimists are more often pleasantly surprised than optimists.
Pessimist here too. I never expect something good to come, especially when it involves big business. Every year I seem to ignore more and more of the entertainment media, not to mention the news.
I seem to be a pessimist who likes kicking his own arse though, because I'll still fight against impossible odds. I guess "see a fairytale ending actually happen" must be somewhere in my subconscious bucket list.
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I am a pessimist. A pessimist obsessively plans for every awful outcome she can think of.
To that end I have put Tony V directly in touch with my Secret Guy-Who-Knows-Everyone Friend.
I don't know what the end of this road will be, but I assure you, there will be no falling off a cliff until every damn plan we can think of has been tried and has failed.
Bear in mind. Pessimists are more often pleasantly surprised than optimists.
I would be a pessimist if I hadn't learned that the presumption of the worst tends to make me quit before trying. Something about not wanting to throw effort after a doomed goal. Instead, I strive to be pragmatic; plan for the worst, hope for the best.
I wish TonyV all the luck he can get from your secret-guy-who-knows-everyone friend. I hope to be able to help out, myself, in some way. But I lack those sorts of connections. So I shall simply work at building them and make myself and what skills and limited contacts I do have available, should they ever be useful.
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i consider myself more of an optimist, however i still expect and prepare for every possible outcome
if i had to rate on a scale im prolly 65% optimist and 35% pessimist
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My instinct still tells me that something will come to save the game. But having Zwill leave was a hard blow. Still NCSoft clearing up and settling all financial loose ends with players DOES give me hope. It means NCSoft is separating themselves from the game itself.
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I guess I would call myself an optimist. How could I not be with a family motto of "While I breathe, I hope".
Having been out of work for 7 weeks in this rotten economy, I still have hope that there is something out there for me.
Even if it is doing contract work in the Middle East.
As long as I am still breathing, I will continue to have hope of a positive outcome.
I may not be able to do much more than cheer on those that are actually doing the work of saving the universe, but I will still hope for the best and lend my moron (and morale) support.
And no, I won't wear a cheerleader outfit. (Unless the compensation is of a sufficient quantity/quality) :P
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The pessimist's credo is "Always expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed." There's some value in that, as long as it doesn't shade over from pessimism to defeatism. The two are different things.
As for the snippets of intelligence we're getting (e.g., there are negotiations, Zwill is leaving, NCSoft is making arrangements for refund/credit etc.)--keep in mind that NCSoft may not yet know its own mind, and its agents may not be acting with perfect internal coordination. The billing department may be on a different page from the sales and acquisitions department and such, simply because someone higher up hasn't thought to pass all the appropriate memos around to all interested departments as circumstances change. (Keep in mind also that management has no particular reason to ensure that we are getting some sort of coherent picture of what's happening, and that's assuming that there is a coherent picture at this point.)
In short, if NCSoft doesn't yet know its own mind, we can't possibly know its mind, especially in view of the incomplete information that we're receiving. And if there are negotiations, and if things are changing from day to day re credits and how long the boards were supposed to stay open versus how long they have stayed open, those are excellent indications that NCSoft doesn't know its own mind. And that's certainly a better situation for us to be in than if NCSoft were absolutely resolved to kill this game no matter what. (if there are negotiations, that isn't the case.)
Given all this, I don't think it's at all incongruous to expect the worst, as a pessimist does, while hoping for the best, as an optimist does. But whether pessimist or optimist, we should all be careful not to impose a grand explanation of what's happening on the relatively few facts that we have, since there may not be a grand explanation.
Respectfully submitted.
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"Plan for the worst, hope for the best, and make do with what you get."
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On another thread here on Titan there was a mention of the Shutdown being moved up to September 30th. Can anyone here confirm where this might have come from OR (Preferably) crush this rumor where it stands?
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On another thread here on Titan there was a mention of the Shutdown being moved up to September 30th. Can anyone here confirm where this might have come from OR (Preferably) crush this rumor where it stands?
Yes, please. I haven't heard anything about a Sept 30 shut down until today, and I can't find any new announcements anywhere.
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On another thread here on Titan there was a mention of the Shutdown being moved up to September 30th. Can anyone here confirm where this might have come from OR (Preferably) crush this rumor where it stands?
It was someone theorizing that since the end of the quarter is Sept 30th that their opinion is that they'll shut it down then, rather than overlap into a new fiscal quarter.
IE it was pulled out of their hat and you should pay it no mind. :D
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It's also contingent on NCSoft having been/being bought out by another company, in which case CoH is more valuable to them dead than alive (hence their reason for closing it).
Eabrace has flatly denied that NCSoft has been bought out in this thread (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5283.0.html).
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First, let me begin with my usual call for information...anything new? Anything to be leaked? Anything to give the community new hope after so much bad news last week?
Second, well, I will ask that question after we get some kind of answer to the first :-)
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It was someone theorizing that since the end of the quarter is Sept 30th that their opinion is that they'll shut it down then, rather than overlap into a new fiscal quarter.
IE it was pulled out of their hat and you should pay it no mind. :D
Even that conjecture was tenuous at best. They already eliminated the majority of expenses related to the game (dev team). A few colo servers for a couple months doesn't cost them much. Certainly not enough to affect the bottom line in buyout talks.
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Also, do NCsoft maintain their own server farm, or do they rent capacity from a dedicated server provider? If it's the latter, they may be under contractual obligation to continue paying for the servers for a specific length of notice time (3 months sounds about right). If that is the case it literally costs them nothing to keep the game live until Nov 30, but they'd get hit by penalty if they pulled out early.
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I know the datacenter is in Dallas, but I have no idea if it's an NCSoft facility specifically, or if it's collocated servers.
My money is on colo, since NC's closest office is in Austin, and as far as I know they don't have dedicated staff at the Dallas center.
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I know the datacenter is in Dallas, but I have no idea if it's an NCSoft facility specifically, or if it's collocated servers.
My money is on colo, since NC's closest office is in Austin, and as far as I know they don't have dedicated staff at the Dallas center.
It is a colo. I have a cage in the same colo.
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Early in my research efforts to find people and contacts involved in this, I discovered that NCSoft also has actual offices in Dallas. Weirdly, the primary article on it was the web site of the company that did the decorating thereof; they were very proud of the CoH monster that they had bursting through one of the walls.
I think the Dallas offices are primarily associated, therefore, with Paragon Studios.
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Are the talks still going on? Do we at least know that much???
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Are the talks still going on? Do we at least know that much???
If the talks broke down, I'm pretty sure we'd know in short order. We have people who are in touch with them.
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If the talks broke down, I'm pretty sure we'd know in short order. We have people who are in touch with them.
Yeah, except for the bleeding of players who've grown disillusioned, discourgaed, or just disinterested, we're kind of in a Overgrazing wildebeast mode: No Gnus are actually GOOD gnus, cause at least they haven flat out rejected the proposals.
Yet.
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Still NCSoft clearing up and settling all financial loose ends with players DOES give me hope. It means NCSoft is separating themselves from the game itself.
A company that posts a loss doesn't turn around and give money back. They don't have to. They know they stand to take a major PR hit from this and they're looking for ways to generate good will and preserve their reputation. We have to let them know we don't want our money back, we want to keep our game.
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Too bad we don't have a figure that represents how many people are actually getting something back. I know I'm not personally and can't imagine there's a substantial amount of people that are. Also, don't read that as there are none.
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Brian touched base with me last night and said he is getting in touch with TonyV.
No news on the negotiations other than that they have not ended.
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Brian touched base with me last night and said he is getting in touch with TonyV.
No news on the negotiations other than that they have not ended[/i].
That is welcome news, thank you Ms. Lackey.
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No news is good news, as they say.
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A company that posts a loss doesn't turn around and give money back. They don't have to.
Incorrect. They are legally required to return funds that cannot be used for the purpose intended, to wit PREPAID subscriptions that extend past the nov 30th date. The refund of unusable Paragon Points is... in a legal gray area, but they have chosen to refund at least some of those as well. I find the decision of just about the week prior to the 'official' annoucment interesting. My personal conjecture is that this represents the timeframe between when the command was given at the chief executive level and when the axe fell in Mountain View.
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I am a pessimist. A pessimist obsessively plans for every awful outcome she can think of.
To that end I have put Tony V directly in touch with my Secret Guy-Who-Knows-Everyone Friend.
I don't know what the end of this road will be, but I assure you, there will be no falling off a cliff until every damn plan we can think of has been tried and has failed.
Bear in mind. Pessimists are more often pleasantly surprised than optimists.
My learned life motto: Expect nothing from life and everything is a gift.
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It is a colo. I have a cage in the same colo.
So how much to test some archiving equipment in said colo?
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It is a colo. I have a cage in the same colo.
Ya know, the company I used to work for kept the keys to their cage on top --
Oh, did I say that out loud?
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I know the datacenter is in Dallas, but I have no idea if it's an NCSoft facility specifically, or if it's collocated servers.
Hmmm, I have a lot of friends in Dallas... and I think I can still squeeze into my ninja gi ...
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Hmmm, I have a lot of friends in Dallas... and I think I can still squeeze into my ninja gi ...
Tempting, but I would argue against it. At this point if ANYTHING remotely happens to the servers, the top management will spin it as vindictive children breaking their toys to keep from having to share. And they will say to HELL with the nov 30 and never bring the CoH servers back up.
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Tempting, but I would argue against it. At this point if ANYTHING remotely happens to the servers, the top management will spin it as vindictive children breaking their toys to keep from having to share. And they will say to HELL with the nov 30 and never bring the CoH servers back up.
Which sets off a chain reaction of...things best left unsaid.
Suffice to say, keeping things "Blue Side" is still our best bet. For now.
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Brian touched base with me last night and said he is getting in touch with TonyV.
No news on the negotiations other than that they have not ended.
Getting in touch with Tony is a good sign, I'd think. Thanks again VV.
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Brian touched base with me last night and said he is getting in touch with TonyV.
No news on the negotiations other than that they have not ended.
Thanks again for the continued updates.
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Getting in touch with Tony is a good sign, I'd think. Thanks again VV.
Could mean any of several things, most good. I'm sure we'll find out at the opportune moment.
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Too bad we don't have a figure that represents how many people are actually getting something back. I know I'm not personally and can't imagine there's a substantial amount of people that are. Also, don't read that as there are none.
I don't know what anyone would consider substantial, but refunds for unused time was one of the first issues that came up after the announcement. I think the number may actually be a little higher than we might anticipate just due to the fact that this came so much out of the blue and there was no reason for people to think twice about renewing subscriptions. I am one of those who will be getting something back as I renewed for a year in February.
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One of my accounts auto renewed for a year on August 2, so I'll be getting almost a full refund.
Anecdotally, most of my SG are either 6 months or 12 months auto renew.
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my account auto renewed aug 25th (6 days before the announcement), i was only on 3 month plan which will expire on nov 25th so i am not sure if i would be able to get a refund
im not *too* worried about it though at least it allowed me to stay VIP till the end
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I was very nearly in that boat. I upped my sub from monthly to three months a week before the announcement. I flipped a coin to decided if I wanted to go with the three month or the six month -- three month won out.
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The irony of this for me is I know I'm not getting any sort of refund, despite having 1000 paragon points sat spare for powersets (I was saving them for a Staff weapon pack and Bio armour :( ) and my subscription was on a month by month basis - I'd never set it to fully auto renew for more than a month simply because I wanted to be prepared to drop it if Games Workshop or Forge World produced something shiny at unexpected notice that I rather fancied.
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Are we still getting our monthly Paragon Points allotments? Because I just had a bunch of points appear in my account and a reward token for September. Weird.
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Yes, that appears to be an automated system, which makes sense.
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I read a link this morning posted by Titan on twitter stating NC was refusing to sell the IP and denied having a PR problem in all of this. Is that true? Are we now banging our head against the wall? Is hope lost?
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http://gamespeopleplay.smackjeeves.com/comics/1587704/fool-me-six-times/
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Which sets off a chain reaction of...things best left unsaid.
Suffice to say, keeping things "Blue Side" is still our best bet. For now.
drat, who wants these official looking name badges?
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I read a link this morning posted by Titan on twitter stating NC was refusing to sell the IP and denied having a PR problem in all of this. Is that true? Are we now banging our head against the wall? Is hope lost?
I just went through all of Titan's twitters from the 22nd of Sept to now. No such mention made.
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Tempting, but I would argue against it. At this point if ANYTHING remotely happens to the servers, the top management will spin it as vindictive children breaking their toys to keep from having to share. And they will say to HELL with the nov 30 and never bring the CoH servers back up.
Laf, if I *were* going to do something red-side, I sure wouldn't have said anything on a public forum! ;) I mean, sure, it was cathartic to consider it for a moment...
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I think we've all had Reside thoughts. As long as we don't actually act, s'all good. :P
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http://youtu.be/PX1OSD_jPEI
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I just went through all of Titan's twitters from the 22nd of Sept to now. No such mention made.
Click the link above...it was the link posted on the Titan twitter
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Wammo, that's a link to a gaming-related cartoon site with a related topic (and expressing a thought many of us here have had, I'm sure), only. I suspect it was posted on the twitter feed as evidence that the wider gaming community may be having similar reservations about NCSoft. That kind of wider buzz would (presumably) be meaningful pressure to most management teams.
That said, the detail in the CoH-related panel of the comic particularly is doubtless the cartoonists impression of the situation, not necessarily a fully informed report of current events.
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Just bumping this up so folks just coming in can find it.
As long as I'm here: City of Networking. http://tinyurl.com/CityofNetworking (a Google Doc)
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Well something I was at least hoping we could accomplish in the back of my mind now has a good chance at becoming a reality. I've been watching the petition slowly climb roughly 20-50 signatures per day in the past week or so, and dangabbit, wanted to see it hit 20k. Well, we just had a spike of about 300 today, and are now less than 70 sigs away from it.
Hopefully that landmark can incite a couple of story recaps from the newsmedia.
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I think we should start planning some kind of video project, Tim, for those last seventy signatures. Whatcha think? *griiiiin*
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I have very little doubt that we're going to reach it. Not with the amount of new coverage we just got. We're getting signatures by people who don't even play the game now, and never have, but WANT to, after seeing the amazing things this community can do together. They want the game to survive so they can jump on board and experience what all the fuss is about, what brought us all together. It's truly mind-blowing.
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Brian touched base with me last night and said he is getting in touch with TonyV.
I can neither confirm nor deny this...
I'm not being coy, really. The thing is, I don't know how much leeway Brian has in being able to talk to people. If he's under some kind of NDA or severance package and I talked to him, even if it was just him saying, "We really appreciate the hard work everyone is doing!", it could get him into hot water and complicate any talks he might be in with NCsoft. If I haven't heard from Brian and denied this and then if he calls me tomorrow, next time the question comes up and I don't deny it again, that's as good as admitting that it's true to most people.
I will say that I have talked to Paragon Studios staff in various capacities. I won't name any names, but everyone I've talked to has expressed sincere gratitude to the community and to our efforts, and has told me that those efforts are making a huge difference. Anything past that, I need everyone to not infer that I'm getting from any former Paragon Studios staffers, it's just me saying stuff I can't back up but that I hope you'll put some measure of faith in. That would include stuff like: I'm still optimistic that we're not dead yet. I'm hopeful that NCsoft has not made a final decision to kill off City of Heroes forever. And we can't give up yet, there's still more battle to be fought.
I know that trusting a random Internet stranger who keeps saying, "I can't say anything about that..." is probably more than a bit flustering. Believe me, I wish I could spill everything I know (with sources!) and everything I'm speculating (with reasons!), but I can't. Not yet. Maybe some day I'll write a tell-all book, but don't look for it on store shelves anytime soon. Really, by the time I could write it, hopefully all of the NDAs and severance agreements will be over and done with and you'll be able to get all of the answers you want straight from the mouths of the horses themselves. I do think that as some of these severance packages start running out, we'll start getting some more communication, so I promise, things won't be so secretive forever.
In the meantime, we're going to be holding some more events and I have a Call to Action coming up (*ahem* you New Yorkers out there (http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/), get ready!). These aren't just bread and circuses, they are really having a positive effect on our own morale, generating publicity, and winning over people we really need to our cause.
So if you're wondering, "What can I do?", there are three main things.
First, keep playing the game. Keep engaged with your supergroups. Are they smaller? You leaving will only make it worse. Keep showing up for the ones that remain. Keep running those task forces, those incarnate trials, those PuGs and coalition events. When we schedule something, show up if you can. Aside from being fun, it also generates great publicity. Don't get discouraged. Or if you do (as we all do sometimes), don't stay there long before dusting yourself off and continuing to have at it.
Second, if you have talents such as being a video wiz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC3tseY-ic0), musically inclined (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZVYbay3IY), artistically inclined (http://gamespeopleplay.smackjeeves.com/comics/1587704/fool-me-six-times/), comically inclined (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297048), ...whatever your talent is, if you can spare some of it for our cause, please do!
Third, stay tuned in. Things really may change on a day-by-day basis. You never know when that one thing that you can really help us out with will come along. Plus, the more you stay engaged with us, the less attrition from our player base we suffer. Even if the game does shut down on November 30, we can continue to fight and work on alternatives. But if people get to where they just don't care any more, that will be when our movement really does meet its match.
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In the meantime, we're going to be holding some more events and I have a Call to Action coming up (*ahem* you New Yorkers out there (http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/), get ready![/b]). These aren't just bread and circuses, they are really having a positive effect on our own morale, generating publicity, and winning over people we really need to our cause.
Oh, really? Something within range of my land vehicle? And I don't think I have anything on that weekend!
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I do know a little about the business world (just enough to be dangerous!) And I know that in times like this companies can and do slap some VERY serious penalties for breaking the keep silent rule. The general rule of thumb is "Shut up and say NOTHING or we'll make you pay for it!"
But the silence itself is a hopeful sign. It means something IS going on in the background.
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Thanks Tony, much appreciated! :D
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But the silence itself is a hopeful sign. It means something IS going on in the background.
That's the problem, though. We don't know if that something is something even remotely acceptable. Just a something.
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Well I just spent $20 of my own money on an Express Mail letter to Dr Yoon attempting to convince her that (a) City is now an evolving work of art and deserves to be preserved and (b) one of the things it has evolved into is a US version of Maple Story (Nexxon's 2-D MEGA hit). Should be on her desk Friday. Well, assuming it gets that far.
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I think the timing of some of the NC Soft 'sunset' announcements have been interesting. We should all have been feeling good about buying the Devs dinner and giving them a lovely time, and the same night they post a sunset timetable and FAQ, which throws everyone into zomgdepressed mode.
Might we worth preparing ourselves for more official announcements time to hit as our spirits start to lift.
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Okay, I'm not quite up on who's who in the CoH saga - who's Yoon?
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Okay, I'm not quite up on who's who in the CoH saga - who's Yoon?
Dr Songyee Yoon, the head of NCSoft West in Seattle. Married to Kim, head of NCSoft.
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Well I just spent $20 of my own money on an Express Mail letter to Dr Yoon attempting to convince her that (a) City is now an evolving work of art and deserves to be preserved and (b) one of the things it has evolved into is a US version of Maple Story (Nexxon's 2-D MEGA hit). Should be on her desk Friday. Well, assuming it gets that far.
As always, thank you for all your contributions, VV. Many hugs to you! Many hugs!
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Dr Songyee Yoon, the head of NCSoft West in Seattle. Married to Kim, head of NCSoft.
Ah, gotcha, thanks.
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I'm concentrating on her because I am hoping a successful woman might be inclined to listen to another successful woman.
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Hey, whatever works, right? I don't really "get" people, so all I can understand appealing to.. well, someone's self-interest. So, I dunno, good luck?
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So if you're wondering, "What can I do?", there are three main things.
First, keep playing the game. Keep engaged with your supergroups. Are they smaller? You leaving will only make it worse. Keep showing up for the ones that remain. Keep running those task forces, those incarnate trials, those PuGs and coalition events. When we schedule something, show up if you can. Aside from being fun, it also generates great publicity. Don't get discouraged. Or if you do (as we all do sometimes), don't stay there long before dusting yourself off and continuing to have at it.
Second, if you have talents such as being a video wiz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC3tseY-ic0), musically inclined (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZVYbay3IY), artistically inclined (http://gamespeopleplay.smackjeeves.com/comics/1587704/fool-me-six-times/), comically inclined (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297048), ...whatever your talent is, if you can spare some of it for our cause, please do!
Third, stay tuned in. Things really may change on a day-by-day basis. You never know when that one thing that you can really help us out with will come along. Plus, the more you stay engaged with us, the less attrition from our player base we suffer. Even if the game does shut down on November 30, we can continue to fight and work on alternatives. But if people get to where they just don't care any more, that will be when our movement really does meet its match.
I'm doing my damnest but I'm the last of my SG with any will to log in everyone else is pretty much soul crushed at this point and I think that's all that's fueling me going. So I'd like to add? Support your SGmates, your friends, anyone you played with try to keep going even if it's just get the SG together for one last screencap of you all. Then get that posted up all over the web. I'm glad the Titan group here is doing stuff and I'll do what I can ya know it's just hard to keep going in the face of what we're facing. Then again? If any game ever deserves the playerbase to step up for it. It's COH.
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If you get discouraged, do what I do. Log onto Virtue and stop by AP33. That always lifts my spirits, for several reasons. (lol)
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http://img.sbs.co.kr/vobos/sdf/upload/aboutus/photo/c4ce9908-a6ab-4a26-9454-e7f4e18ae803.jpg
Dr Yoon is pretty hot IMO.
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http://img.sbs.co.kr/vobos/sdf/upload/aboutus/photo/c4ce9908-a6ab-4a26-9454-e7f4e18ae803.jpg
Dr Yoon is pretty hot IMO.
Welcome to the forums, Dr. Yoon.
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Hey, it took a lot of digging to find out who she was. I never suspected someone quite so young in the position she has. However, having lived in Korea for some time, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.
VV, did you send a USPS international mail order to her? I will not spend the extra money to send a travelers check....
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Hey, it took a lot of digging to find out who she was. I never suspected someone quite so young in the position she has. However, having lived in Korea for some time, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.
Also got her Ph.D. from MIT at a very young age.
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Welcome to the forums, Dr. Yoon.
So you don't think sending flowers would help I take it?
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So you don't think sending flowers would help I take it?
Oh, I'm a fan of all forms of flattery, bribery, and general buttering-up-ery. I say have at it. I just had a nice laugh at onefrigidwitch's first post here.
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I thought she'd be like, in her 40s or 50s and kinda old looking or something. One of those typical board room super-sharks smokin 5 100bills rolled up cigar shaped each day and what not. Frankly, I wonder what she is really like, and who actually was instrumental in all these ncsoft shutdowns. :/
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Call to Action: Send D. Yoon flowers!!!
not entirely serious
or am I :o
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^like
Wheels are turning, now...
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...I actually like this idea. Get flower shops to send her flowers with cards stating "We are heroes. This is what we do."
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and if she is allergic to said flowers this could be construed as malicious
add...little stuffed animals and cards may be a different story :)
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and if she is allergic to said flowers this could be construed as malicious
If she's allergic, she can give them to her support staff.
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Quick! Someone show TonyV!
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and if she is allergic to said flowers this could be construed as malicious
Just don't send any scarlet carsons.
And if it's going to be construed as anything, I think it'd be... well, let's just say it wouldn't go over very well if she calls hubby and says, "Why are all these geeks suddenly hitting on me?"
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and if she is allergic to said flowers this could be construed as malicious
Look, we can sit here and be timid and worry about that, or we can actually do stuff. I for one am not going to be content to sit on my duff doing nothing.
We could also tie this in with another idea someone had, and have some of the cards invite her to come play with us. >.>
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I really like both ideas actually. The only thing with an invite is that the FAQ said you couldn't create new accounts.
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I really like both ideas actually. The only thing with an invite is that the FAQ said you couldn't create new accounts.
Like I said in the other thread...yeah, that's kind of a bummer. Guess they'd have to just. You know. Fix that or something. *shifty eyes*
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The least expensive, appropriate arrangement I could find using my phone is called"Pretty Please" on the Teleflora website. I have no idea if Teleflora is in Korea, but it seems like it was when I visited 15 years ago. It may have been FTD. It's odd, the little familiar things that catch your eye in a foreign country.
Also, the jealousy point is a valid one. Mix it up. There are three people whose office addresses we have.
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Sign the card on the flowers with our character name:
"I normally keep Paragon City quite safe
Day upon days; hour upon hours.
But I had to pause for a moment,
To send to you these friendship-based flowers."
--- Soundtrack, Virtue Server
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These are all great ideas. HEY TONY! I THINK WE GOT A NEW CALL TO ACTION FOR YOU! XD
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Couple of tips, don't use red wrapping or ink unless you want to make an entirely different kind of message.
Now, where's that post about Korean customs....
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Couple of tips, don't use red wrapping or ink unless you want to make an entirely different kind of message.
Now, where's that post about Korean customs....
Okay, red is bad. Associated with Death, or what?
Sounds like finding that post is a real good idea Quinch.
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Yeah, a little research to make sure Korean flower customs won't make this send the wrong message is advised. Once we settle on a kind of flower that is appropriate to send, I think it might be good to have people send one flower each. Those who want to invest in bouquets can, but floods of single-flower gifts will send a pretty poignant message.
I, unfortunately, don't know Korean customs. I know in Japan, red is even more associated with romance than in America, due to the idea of the "red thread of Fate" that binds together destined lovers.
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I'm not sure how to find it - it was on the CoH forums, one or both links went to export.gov; I don't have it in my history on this computer, though I could pull it up tomorrow morning if nobody else fishes it out in the meantime.
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Does this help? It's not exactly specific, but it's more than I knew before.
http://www.vayama.com/etiquette/south-korea/
I also found out that it's bad luck to write the person's name in red.
"In Korean culture, writing a name in red ink often means that someone has died or is about to die."
This will definitely send a wrong message.
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Interesting. So red wrappings are considered acceptable, but red ink is offensive. *ponders*
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"In Korean culture, writing a name in red ink often means that someone has died or is about to die."
Well.... TECHNICALLY that would be accurate....
...but I doubt anyone has ever used that to convey the death of a game. 8)
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Well, we could put "City of Heroes" in red, but that might also be misinterpreted.
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Well, we could put "City of Heroes" in red, but that might also be misinterpreted.
Do they play with this in Korean mafia movies? Like... send someone a business letter in red ink to say, "Either finish those TPS reports, or IKILLJOO!!!"
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Second, if you have talents such as being a video wiz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC3tseY-ic0), musically inclined (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZVYbay3IY), artistically inclined (http://gamespeopleplay.smackjeeves.com/comics/1587704/fool-me-six-times/), comically inclined (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297048), ...whatever your talent is, if you can spare some of it for our cause, please do!
Unfortunately, I'm mainly an audio guy, but I do have an idea. I have to talk with someone tonight, but I may be able to bring a couple true CoH "characters" back and have them enter the fray. :)
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In the meantime, we're going to be holding some more events and I have a Call to Action coming up (*ahem* you New Yorkers out there (http://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/), get ready!). These aren't just bread and circuses, they are really having a positive effect on our own morale, generating publicity, and winning over people we really need to our cause.
Well, I wasn't planning on going, but perhaps I should...
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/me walks into the thread and sets down a portable stereo, cranking the volume up.
/me punches play and walks out as OminousVoice's cut of "Rise of the Heroes" plays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKPWrX85U8
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...we all know the feeling, VV. We do. Here. I hope this helps.
/me hugs VV.
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I realized myself after another fit of uncontrollable sobbing (what, did you think I was immune? happens at least twice a night) that the reason I am heartbroken by this is that I have never, ever had a creation taken from me. In even the worst deals, eventually the book has gone out of print, the rights revert, and I can take it back again. I can make it live again in e-book format. I can write sequels. Even when I kill characters, they can come back. That won't happen when CoH goes dark, and it's been emotionally devastating.
This I think characterizes a bit the worst part of the Publisher/Developer or Publisher/Author relationship is the fact that IP can be bought and sold away from the creator.. at all.
The crux of our current problem is summed up entirely there, that we the fans, and Paragon Studios have our collective works taken from us, not because of lack of money brought in by the fans, not because of lack of interest in the IP by customers, not because of lack of dedicated hands to do the work to write for the IP or lack of dedicated hands to do the work of building the virtual house the IP resides in, but because the Publisher doesn't want it to happen.
I think it's one of the major reasons holding back storytelling in a medium such as video games or television shows and helps to keep video games from being a true art form, is this. I'm going to dub it the Firefly effect until a better name is chosen.
These words really hit hard to me, as somebody who is an amateur co-author of sorts of my own personal use game settings. I've had it suggested from friends before that I should try to publish my works, but I never will, because I'd prefer poverty from the possibility that Amazon.com or EA or Wizards of the Coast or somebody could take my work and just sort of bury it or completely redefine it without my consent. That and I don't frankly think that what I've written is really all that great or all that original.
It might sound selfish or weird, but it's sort of great, to me, to hear that you've never had a book, as a known and published author, that was completely taken out of your hands forever. I know that's probably in no way on topic and probably doesn't really help you feel any better about the current topic, so I'll leave what I've said at that.
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I realized myself after another fit of uncontrollable sobbing (what, did you think I was immune? happens at least twice a night) that the reason I am heartbroken by this is that I have never, ever had a creation taken from me. In even the worst deals, eventually the book has gone out of print, the rights revert, and I can take it back again. I can make it live again in e-book format. I can write sequels. Even when I kill characters, they can come back. That won't happen when CoH goes dark, and it's been emotionally devastating.
Well that's not entirely true. You can still write about your CoH characters if you want, even if you can't sell them (though technically you can, it's just that if NC wanted, they could do spinoffs and not pay you any royalties).
And possibly tabletop RP in the near future. Someone's working on that, but I can't remember where I read it.
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Well that's not entirely true. You can still write about your CoH characters if you want, even if you can't sell them (though technically you can, it's just that if NC wanted, they could do spinoffs and not pay you any royalties).
And possibly tabletop RP in the near future. Someone's working on that, but I can't remember where I read it.
As to the first....it's not remotely the same as the immersive experience of the game; merely writing about them is viscerally different. It's also not remotely the same as the cooperative RP, where what someone else does can completely change the gameplan for my characters. There are no great surprises and there is nothing unexpected about what happens when I write for them alone. On the contrary, it is all completely thought out and planned in advance once I start on the actual prose.
As to the second....Tim, I live in rural Oklahoma. We have been trying and failing to get a tabletop group together for the last 10+ years.
Enough, I don't want to start a pity-party for myself here, just trying to articulate what I think a lot of other people are feeling, but are unable to explain why they feel it.
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Well, if you ever move to Seattle, I promise to include you in my gaming group. :)
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
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Maybe we should try doing one over Skype someday? Or Google's video conference program... whatever its name is.
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Maybe we should try doing one over Skype someday?
I can suggest OpenRPG for a good virtual tabletop.
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Well, if you ever move to Seattle, I promise to include you in my gaming group. :)
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Suuuuuuure. I live in the same complex as you and never get an invite..... 8)
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Maybe we should try doing one over Skype someday? Or Google's video conference program... whatever its name is.
+1 for awesome idea.
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I can suggest OpenRPG for a good virtual tabletop.
Roll20.
Browser-based, so no silly faffing about setting up the server and connecting to it, drag-drop mapping, character tokens, on-screen dynamic dice (optional), and integrated voice and video chat, as well as text chat.
It's my current go-to virtual tabletop for one of my weekly pen and paper games that one player can't physically attend.
Oh, and the functionality I mentioned there is free, no download (maybe a standard browser plugin), no install required. Just go to roll20.net and sign up.
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Roll20.
+1
It's awesome.
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As to the first....it's not remotely the same as the immersive experience of the game; merely writing about them is viscerally different. It's also not remotely the same as the cooperative RP, where what someone else does can completely change the gameplan for my characters. There are no great surprises and there is nothing unexpected about what happens when I write for them alone. On the contrary, it is all completely thought out and planned in advance once I start on the actual prose.
As to the second....Tim, I live in rural Oklahoma. We have been trying and failing to get a tabletop group together for the last 10+ years.
Enough, I don't want to start a pity-party for myself here, just trying to articulate what I think a lot of other people are feeling, but are unable to explain why they feel it.
Well if you're up for a weekly drive to the DFW area... :D
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A bit off-topic, which by admin standards, is actually on-topic 8)
20000 signatures.
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As to the second....Tim, I live in rural Oklahoma. We have been trying and failing to get a tabletop group together for the last 10+ years.
It's already been said, but Skype. My gaming group is in North Jersey, New York City... and one player in the middle of Virginia. Heck, it's useful when a nasty storm gets in the way of a scheduled gaming night. The instant messaging in it is very useful for passing notes to the GM too.
Now, scheduling a game that everyone can make or making sure the GM isn't running out of story ideas... that's something else entirely.
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How would that work on not-exactly-broadband? :'(
I live in very rural Oklahoma, on a wireless-tower connection which allows me to run City, but with noticeable lag, and sometimes unplayable lag. :gonk: There is no prospect of increasing our bandwidth and there is no other option. We tried the Google Hangout the other day and the only way I could run it without disconnects was to turn all the cameras and video off. :'(
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How would that work on not-exactly-broadband? :'(
I live in very rural Oklahoma, on a wireless-tower connection which allows me to run City, but with noticeable lag, and sometimes unplayable lag. :gonk: There is no prospect of increasing our bandwidth and there is no other option. We tried the Google Hangout the other day and the only way I could run it without disconnects was to turn all the cameras and video off. :'(
There's always the option of an IRC game - I have a husband who's just dying to run Pathfinder with dedicated people, and I know an IRC server set up for gaming...
And you can use Hangout without a camera - if it gets voice through, then it's good enough.
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Come now, Ms. Lackey... you need to keep a stiff upper lip! We're not done yet...not by a long shot!
Those shoes you were going to use on people who shared this same sentiment just a few days ago...those shoes need to have you standing tall!
Maybe there are some clouds on our horizon... but clouds can make things darker...but they can also block out glaring sunlight, allowing us to see in better definition. :)
Not only is the proverbial fat lady NOT singing... but she's not even clearing her throat.
We keep on keeping on...being what we were born to be.
Heroes.
And I'm proud to be a hero alongside each and every one of you!
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How would that work on not-exactly-broadband? :'(
I live in very rural Oklahoma, on a wireless-tower connection which allows me to run City, but with noticeable lag, and sometimes unplayable lag. :gonk: There is no prospect of increasing our bandwidth and there is no other option. We tried the Google Hangout the other day and the only way I could run it without disconnects was to turn all the cameras and video off. :'(
Skype voice chat should work alright on that presuming 'not exactly broadband' is 'DSL' and not '28.8 modem and we have a bandwidth cap per month of the tune of 2GB of data' sort of thing. This is presuming you don't try to run screen share or virtual web camera or actual web camera, etc, and just use it for text and chat.
OpenRPG (http://www.rpgobjects.com/index.php?c=orpg&m=getorpg) worked fine for me on Windows ME way back in the day, and I know personally it runs alright now on XP, Windows 7 64 Bit, Vista and Mac. I've had it work for a friend on Linux, briefly before said friend had to quit due to time constraints, if you use that as a virtual table top.
Personally I don't even run Skype for games, as I'm terminally shy and find I can't really RP very well 'in person', but I know that some folks absolutely need that personal 'I'm there with my voice' feeling.
I've never run the other program the guys are talking about so they'll have to help you with any technical issues that pop up with that, sorry.
I can help you find legal resources for whatever game you're looking into, if you want.
I've personally ran D&D 3.5, AD&D (though ages ago in middle school so I don't remember it so well), Shadowrun 4th/20th Anniversary Edition, Star Wars 2nd Revised/SAGA (WotC version, not the West End Games version), Hero System 6th, Mutants and Masterminds 3rd, new WoD (Vampire, Mage, Werewolf lines mostly only though), if you need help finding character sheets or resources or even just 'where to buy' for any of that.
If you're looking for a "City of Heroes" game the obvious choices I can think of are Hero System 6th and Mutants and Masterminds. I find the latter is easier to get into but is too heavily constrained by balance to allow for a large variety of strengths and weaknesses (you can build almost anything but a lot of it is mechanically similar), and the former is more robust but comes with a steeper learning curve (it's not actually so hard, it's just that the books themselves are very stupidly organized, I guess, in my point of view).
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How would that work on not-exactly-broadband? :'(
I live in very rural Oklahoma, on a wireless-tower connection which allows me to run City, but with noticeable lag, and sometimes unplayable lag. :gonk: There is no prospect of increasing our bandwidth and there is no other option. We tried the Google Hangout the other day and the only way I could run it without disconnects was to turn all the cameras and video off. :'(
We used to run games with the players split between Blacksburg VA and Seattle WA by logging onto a MUD and RPing at each other. At first used the honor system for rolling dice, then someone wrote up a dice macro.
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How would that work on not-exactly-broadband? :'(
I live in very rural Oklahoma, on a wireless-tower connection which allows me to run City, but with noticeable lag, and sometimes unplayable lag. :gonk: There is no prospect of increasing our bandwidth and there is no other option. We tried the Google Hangout the other day and the only way I could run it without disconnects was to turn all the cameras and video off. :'(
Assuming tabletop just plain can't work out, IRC is my preferred online mode of gaming. It's pure text, and it's lower-tech than some chat programs, but its format has worked very well for me and my online group of friends. I'm even in a 2e Mutants and Masterminds game that runs every Friday via that medium. (We typically use an OOC channel for all mechanical discussion and OOC chatter, while using an IC channel for describing everything that happens in-game. It winds up reading like something between a stageplay script and prose.)
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Assuming tabletop just plain can't work out, IRC is my preferred online mode of gaming. It's pure text, and it's lower-tech than some chat programs, but its format has worked very well for me and my online group of friends. I'm even in a 2e Mutants and Masterminds game that runs every Friday via that medium. (We typically use an OOC channel for all mechanical discussion and OOC chatter, while using an IC channel for describing everything that happens in-game. It winds up reading like something between a stageplay script and prose.)
The server I'm thinking of is Darkmyst, which is set up for gaming purposes already. It's even got multisided dice commands programmed into it.
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We used to run games with the players split between Blacksburg VA and Seattle WA by logging onto a MUD and RPing at each other. At first used the honor system for rolling dice, then someone wrote up a dice macro.
I've been seriously pondering starting a CoH themed MUD.
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I've been seriously pondering starting a CoH themed MUD.
That might be low-level enough that you could get away with copying the IP and nobody would care.
Well, the names, anyhow, would be tough to copy the art.
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Side note: I know that pidgin instant messenger had (and probably still has) a dice rolling plugin available for it, which you can then use in any of the IM systems that it supports (that is if i am remembering correctly at 4:47am >.> )
AIM chat rooms can use "//roll-diceX-sidesY", without the quotes, and with X and Y being the dice and sides you need. I might have sides and dice mixed up, it might be //roll-sidesX-diceY.
I believe though it can only roll 1-15 dice and 1-100 sides at a time though, but that should be enough for most things aside from like.. Shadowrun or World of Darkness.
AIM doesn't automatically throw in calculations like OpenRPG does (You can't have [1d20+5] => [6,5] = (11) with it auto calculating) and it has no map feature (obviously).
But it's good for if you're playing a game that doesn't particularly need a map.
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That might be low-level enough that you could get away with copying the IP and nobody would care.
Well, the names, anyhow, would be tough to copy the art.
It might be 'illegal' in the same way that someone selling a picture they drew of Charizard to their friend in middle school for 50 cents is illegal, but I'm doubting that NCSoft will realistically be able to or care to shut it down if it's a tiny MUD between all of a handful of friends.
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I've informed my husband that he needs to chime in on this thread. ;) I only GM White Wolf and Star Wars (West End version.) He's the Pathfinder/D&D guy.
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What kind of White Wolf? (Crud, just about to go to bed. I'll have to be sure to check this thread tomorrow!)
I am a big Exalted fan, and I've always liked oWoD Changeling despite its...well, I'll be honest, incomplete mechanics. oWoD Mage is fun, too. Never did get a chance to play V:tM. Nor have I done anything with nWoD. (I do own Innocents and Changeling: the Lost; the latter I was determined not to like because of its lack of anything I liked from Dreaming, but it's...got potential, I'll admit. Harks to the fair folk of Exalted in some ways, which are my favorite splat. I've also been tempted to try to run a game that merges Innocents and Abyssals. >_> <_< Because there's a Deathlord just BUILT for that...)
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I've informed my husband that he needs to chime in on this thread. ;) I only GM White Wolf and Star Wars (West End version.) He's the Pathfinder/D&D guy.
I've been wanting to try SW for an eternity. And of what little I got to play of World of Darkness, I absolutely loved.
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What kind of White Wolf? (Crud, just about to go to bed. I'll have to be sure to check this thread tomorrow!)
I am a big Exalted fan, and I've always liked oWoD Changeling despite its...well, I'll be honest, incomplete mechanics. oWoD Mage is fun, too. Never did get a chance to play V:tM. Nor have I done anything with nWoD. (I do own Innocents and Changeling: the Lost; the latter I was determined not to like because of its lack of anything I liked from Dreaming, but it's...got potential, I'll admit. Harks to the fair folk of Exalted in some ways, which are my favorite splat. I've also been tempted to try to run a game that merges Innocents and Abyssals. >_> <_< Because there's a Deathlord just BUILT for that...)
This is my two cents, and you may disregard it, but I prefer nWoD due to the games being mostly balanced between each other and having the same mechanics throughout. That is, elements from one, do not necessarily invalidate or overwrite elements from another.
Some people though consider this the blackest of heresy and consider these possibilities to be points against the system, though. So, grain of salt and all that.
I find that the more invested you are in the oWoD metagame being 100% set in stone canon, or if you don't mind your players being pawns that can never truly get anything done who absolutely has to differ to the will of their superiors will majorly determine whether or not you prefer oWoD to nWoD. A lot of people believe the 'you are alone, and you are screwed' vibe of oWoD fit it better than the 'there are mysteries and you can solve them' vibe the new has more of, and didn't mind their players being semi-passive observers of the metastory (which in itself sort of prevented crossover teams) as it unfolded around them. Because they really liked the metastory. I personally felt the opposite and that if I wasn't capable of getting things done on the scale that the NPCs were, that I didn't feel like the 'main character' of the story, but I felt like the scenery of another person's story as it played it. Again, your mileage may vary.
I've been wanting to try SW for an eternity. And of what little I got to play of World of Darkness, I absolutely loved.
My problem with the Star Wars d20 games was there was a sort of severe lack of real.. progression to be had with your character.
I mean, I guess finding loot wasn't a thing in the movies and everybody sort of started out with most of everything they were going to ever have (I mean there's no scene where Han Solo trades in his blaster for a +1 blaster), but the lack of equipment or 'things' to have sort of slowed the enthusiasm for the game down after players got enough experience to finalize their original concept.
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I ran a oWoD Demon game off and on for a few years in college, it was a hit. House-ruled a fair amount, but I'm yet to experience a game that didn't involve house-ruling at one point or another. Can't say I've ever really been interested in the nWoD though. Mechanical improvements aside it just doesn't have the same character to it; the setting feels too generic to me. It's my purely subjective opinion at any rate. But then I was also fortunate enough to game with people that were willing to take liberties with the various metaplots as they needed and avoid railroading the game. Actually, I was in one Werewolf game that was regularly railroaded; it got dull fast.
I always suspected a lot of the "You're a helpless pawn in a grander scheme than you can imagine," schtick came from GM's complaining about powergaming players, which is why I've always been of the opinion to slap said players when they do that. That would be hard to do over Skype though. I ran a brief Vampire Anarchs game just so I wouldn't have to come up with Elders overhead for the players. Heck, I ran my Demon game explicitly saying at the start, "Be ambitious! Do what you want! Just be prepared for the consequences of your actions." Again, the players loved it.
The one-off Mage game I played was fun, and the metaplot never came up. I played a Professor Farnsworth-esque Etherite who had a robotic familiar named Welder. It was totally worth it. Wouldn't mind playing old-school Mage again one of these days.
That all said I do think they got better at it by the time they made Exalted. The metaplot there is essentially, "Ok, this is how the stage is set before you show up. Go nuts!" But it's late, I'm tired, and my ramblings may not be coherent, so I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead and sleep.
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Regarding the CoH MUD,
It might be 'illegal' in the same way that someone selling a picture they drew of Charizard to their friend in middle school for 50 cents is illegal, but I'm doubting that NCSoft will realistically be able to or care to shut it down if it's a tiny MUD between all of a handful of friends.
That is probably correct. It's arguably more in the line of out-of-game RP stories shared among friends (which NCSoft wisely hasn't even considered touching) than an MMO based on the same IP as the original (which it probably would go after).
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This discussion of PnP RPG's over the internet is interesting, especially since I keep trying to convince my CoH channel-mates to start one (I keep wanting to try a Dresden Files RPG set in Anchorage) ...
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Regarding the CoH MUD,
That is probably correct. It's arguably more in the line of out-of-game RP stories shared among friends (which NCSoft wisely hasn't even considered touching) than an MMO based on the same IP as the original (which it probably would go after).
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This discussion of PnP RPG's over the internet is interesting, especially since I keep trying to convince my CoH channel-mates to start one (I keep wanting to try a Dresden Files RPG set in Anchorage) ...
/me shows up on Olantern's digital doorstep, dice in hand.
Where do I put my duster? >.>
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I ran a oWoD Demon game off and on for a few years in college, it was a hit. House-ruled a fair amount, but I'm yet to experience a game that didn't involve house-ruling at one point or another. Can't say I've ever really been interested in the nWoD though. Mechanical improvements aside it just doesn't have the same character to it; the setting feels too generic to me. It's my purely subjective opinion at any rate. But then I was also fortunate enough to game with people that were willing to take liberties with the various metaplots as they needed and avoid railroading the game. Actually, I was in one Werewolf game that was regularly railroaded; it got dull fast.
I always suspected a lot of the "You're a helpless pawn in a grander scheme than you can imagine," schtick came from GM's complaining about powergaming players, which is why I've always been of the opinion to slap said players when they do that. That would be hard to do over Skype though. I ran a brief Vampire Anarchs game just so I wouldn't have to come up with Elders overhead for the players. Heck, I ran my Demon game explicitly saying at the start, "Be ambitious! Do what you want! Just be prepared for the consequences of your actions." Again, the players loved it.
The one-off Mage game I played was fun, and the metaplot never came up. I played a Professor Farnsworth-esque Etherite who had a robotic familiar named Welder. It was totally worth it. Wouldn't mind playing old-school Mage again one of these days.
That all said I do think they got better at it by the time they made Exalted. The metaplot there is essentially, "Ok, this is how the stage is set before you show up. Go nuts!" But it's late, I'm tired, and my ramblings may not be coherent, so I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead and sleep.
They deliberately built Requiem and the other New WOD games without a metaplot or linking to anything overarching. The WW people in control at the time wanted to make the game impossible or at least very difficult to play on a large scale. There was a change in management, and the management at the time was extremely unfond of certain large gaming groups...and wanted to actively discourage them. So yeah, there's a reason that most of the NWOD games are less suited to a larger scale and are more generic. Personally, I can't stand any of them except Lost...and Lost was written after *another* change in WW management strategy. :) Geist looks interesting, but I can never find a decent game.
That said, OWOD Mage is perhaps my favorite LARP game when the ST is a good one. (When you have a bad ST...it sucks. Badly.) I have...um...extensive experience in running all venues of the Old WOD. Very extensive. In the "Lead Venue ST for a game of several hundred people" extensive sort of way. And in the "still mad at WW for not giving me partial author credit in the Revised Tremere Clanbook" way. So does my husband. I will say that OWOD is a much more fun game when you have active engagement in the metaplot, and intelligent, responsive people running the top levels of said metaplot. I much prefer LARP for my OWOD games, because it's a setting that is much more interesting when you have people actively playing everything from Elder to Neonate, or Apprentice to Primus. (You also don't get as much of the "you are alone and screwed" vibe as you do of the "you are in WAY above your head...but you're going to do your best..Oh, and those guys over there? They're manipulating the heck out of you." vibe.)
(I am going to have to disagree with whoever liked Changeling. But I had some very...unfortunate...experiences with OWOD Changeling players. Like the guy who sent me an application for a Satyr Setting writer...with a link to pictures of him in full Satyr costume. With *ahem* prosthetics. Yes, I mean the NSFW kind. No, he didn't get the job.)
And now we have COMPLETELY hijacked this thread. We should probably move this conversation somewhere else or something.
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Please do drop a link for where it gets moved to. My love of Changeling has more to do with liking the core conceits than... well, honestly, I wouldn't have ever thought of that problem, SithRose. Ugh. My Sluaugh would have mocked such a creature and my Sidhe would have made a point of ignoring or kicking it out for being uncouth. And my Sidhe is generally NOT prone to anything but friendliness towards commoners. ^^; (For a Sidhe, he's even a little shy)
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Please do drop a link for where it gets moved to. My love of Changeling has more to do with liking the core conceits than... well, honestly, I wouldn't have ever thought of that problem, SithRose. Ugh. My Sluaugh would have mocked such a creature and my Sidhe would have made a point of ignoring or kicking it out for being uncouth. And my Sidhe is generally NOT prone to anything but friendliness towards commoners. ^^; (For a Sidhe, he's even a little shy)
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5389.0.html
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As to the second....Tim, I live in rural Oklahoma. We have been trying and failing to get a tabletop group together for the last 10+ years.
I always forget you're a fellow Okie. I live in Norman, and getting a gaming group together here isn't much easier - our core group has been on hiatus for about 5 years. It's hard when adult things like full-time careers, kids and their activities, etc. all get in the way. :-[ It's just hard to find a night where we can all get the time free.
The non-bandwidth issue presents a big hurdle for a skype-rpg group. Any chance you've got a compatriot a bit closer to Tulsa with decent broadband that could host you on gaming nights? Or maybe string up some homemade yagi antennae and relay a wireless signal from somewhere? I read an article years ago abotu a dude in California who lived on the other side of a mountain from a town. He climbed up the mountain and hung an antennae made from pringles cans, washers, and allthread, and bounced a wireless signal 8 miles to his house.
This discussion of PnP RPG's over the internet is interesting, especially since I keep trying to convince my CoH channel-mates to start one (I keep wanting to try a Dresden Files RPG set in Anchorage) ...
I keep meaning to pick up a copy of that. Years ago in college, Jim ran our gaming group. Gawd, he's an awesome GM, it's fun to watch him think on the fly. Anyway, Fred Hicks, one of the guys responsible for the Dresden RPG, would drive down from Stillwater to join our group. Heh, I'd kill to talk them into running a game together. My first scrapper on CoH was an import from Jim's original Dresden campaign. It'd be fun to dust him off again.
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Me, I'm looking forward to getting my copy of this (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcdream/better-angels-a-hell-of-a-roleplaying-game-by-greg) and running it for my group.
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Just wondering if there have been any developments to the ongoing negotiations that can be publicized.
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Arctic Force, the most recent news is Thor's Assassin's blog post about the Dev Dinner.
Here's the discussion here on titan:
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5387.0.html
Here's the original blog post:
http://thorsassassin.com/2012/09/28/paragon-community-dinner-and-hope/
If there's anything more recent than that, I don't know of it. I expect that if negotiations break down, we'll find out. I expect that if they keep going well, we won't hear anything other than 'it's going well' until the ink is dry. It's even harder to wait for news than it was to wait for Staff Fighting to be released!
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Hail, Heroes!
I do bring news on multiple scales; but the most important of all? You have been heard and other Countries are listening. Not just listening, but networking, replying, and across FourSquare in Korea Save COH is the number 2 topic just under Gangnam Style.
Secondly:
Rhett & Link have a solution to our issue and it compliments their current Super Note contest. Stay tuned for that as details will be revealed, and after an exchange of emails we've come up with an amazing publicity plan that will sky rocket this cause into the far reaches of even Real Life.
Thirdly:
After a long discussion with the good guys over at Penny Arcade we have a comic to be read, and support untold.
Fourth:
There are Good Team supporters everywhere who are coming forth from therir silences and readying for an event that will shake the foundation of the Internet, and who else to lead the charge than avid gamers known across the globe. You'll hear more about this as well, or maybe read about it in the Sunday paper and if not in the U.S then may perhaps see it on the cover a morning magazine. Just maybe.
Fifth:
Be ready for my ultimate song, it's almost finished. One that will be mouthed on the lips of the greatest good guys. It's coming, and it may just rival this storm and pierce NCsoft's resilience.
Be ready, Good Team.
Never surrender your fight, for you know what you're doing is right.
Singing always of Happiness,
Fansy The ''Famous'' Bard
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Woot! Thanks for the updates, Fansy! That's really something to look forward to!
You never cease to amaze! O.O
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O_O .... I don't know if I can even fully wrap my mind around everything I just read there.
"Holy freakin' cow..."
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Fansy, I went out to buy a hat just so I can say 'My hat is off to you good sir.'
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Hail, Heroes!
I do bring news on multiple scales; but the most important of all? You have been heard and other Countries are listening. Not just listening, but networking, replying, and across FourSquare in Korea Save COH is the number 2 topic just under Gangnam Style.
Secondly:
Rhett & Link have a solution to our issue and it compliments their current Super Note contest. Stay tuned for that as details will be revealed, and after an exchange of emails we've come up with an amazing publicity plan that will sky rocket this cause into the far reaches of even Real Life.
Thirdly:
After a long discussion with the good guys over at Penny Arcade we have a comic to be read, and support untold.
Fourth:
There are Good Team supporters everywhere who are coming forth from therir silences and readying for an event that will shake the foundation of the Internet, and who else to lead the charge than avid gamers known across the globe. You'll hear more about this as well, or maybe read about it in the Sunday paper and if not in the U.S then may perhaps see it on the cover a morning magazine. Just maybe.
Fifth:
Be ready for my ultimate song, it's almost finished. One that will be mouthed on the lips of the greatest good guys. It's coming, and it may just rival this storm and pierce NCsoft's resilience.
Be ready, Good Team.
Never surrender your fight, for you know what you're doing is right.
Singing always of Happiness,
Fansy The ''Famous'' Bard
...Fansy. Words fail...but I'm-a give it a shot anyway.
I have one real talent, and that is bending the written word to my will. Others around here *cough*VV*cough* are better at it, of course, but I'm no slouch. I tell stories through that medium, which makes me less scribe and more bard, I suppose, so bearing that in mind:
There is no greater cause, no greater purpose, and no greater destiny for a bard than to spread the word of heroic deeds in song and story. Their purpose is two-fold: to entertain and uplift those around them, and to spread information. In modern culture, the value and weight of entertainment is often scoffed at, citing that we didn't need television, movies, or comic books through out history. Of course we didn't: we had the bards.
I am honored to count you among them, Fansy. You are truly a Bard, in all the greatest definitions of the word. Those here have worked tirelessly to support our cause and spread the word, but you have set the world aflame with your words. Things I never expected to see have come to pass through your efforts, Sir Bard, and I am humbled to have you stand with us. To learn that you have yet more in store for us uplifts me and re-affirms my own convictions.
We will stand tall. We will persevere. We will fight stronger, fight harder, and fight longer, emboldened by your efforts. Others will join our fight, recognizing once and for all that this is more than a group of 'children' fighting to save 'some silly game,' but a community of heroes fighting to save their city yet again after eight years of tireless effort.
We are Bards. This is what we do.
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@Fansy
That's some awesome news!
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I..don't have to sing, do I?
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Fansy, you have literally put tears of gratitude in my eyes.
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Wow...you've really gotten me jazzed up, Fansy! That's just the kind of song that'll put the fight back in even the most trampled of heroes!
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Fansy you have my thanks. The community simply continues to push forward, I love it.
Time to celebrate a little. I'll get the vahzilok burgers going.
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Fansy, your ambiguity intrigues me. I am quite excited. thanks again :)
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Fancy you have more then earned your cape...you are a bard incarnate...and the wind beneath our wings. You ARE a hero. Thank you for all that you do, you and VV, and Tony v, and Tim the enchanter, and so many others. Hope burns bright..we will survive
/e holdtorch
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Fancy you have more then earned your cape...you are a bard incarnate...and the wind beneath our wings. You ARE a hero. Thank you for all that you do, you and VV, and Tony v, and Tim the enchanter, and so many others. Hope burns bright..we will survive
/e holdtorch
/me quietly starts referring to the Omega Slot as the Fansy Slot, while re-reading Fansy's post with "I Am The Doctor" playing in the background
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D-QPDGhCtM
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An official response has been posted. Find a quiet place and read it as soon as you can.
http://us.ncsoft.com/en/news/response-to-city-of-heroes-player-and-fan-suggestions.html
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Fansy, you have literally put tears of gratitude in my eyes.
This.
And Son is finally cracking a smile.
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An official response has been posted. Find a quiet place and read it as soon as you can.
http://us.ncsoft.com/en/news/response-to-city-of-heroes-player-and-fan-suggestions.html
Well. I would dearly love to know how that came about.
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Well. I would dearly love to know how that came about.
As would we all.
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This gives us almost no information. We need to hear from the other side of the table on this. Maybe tomorrow we'll learn something from Hit Streak and Co.?
I did not wake up this morning, and for the first time dare to hope, just to have it dashed like this. I don't know about any of the rest of you...BUT I AM NOT DONE, HERE.
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This seems awfully sudden. There are two months remaining in the game's life cycle, but they're 'exhausted all options?'
Nonsense, I say.
To me this reads more of them trying to get us to shut up.
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This seems awfully sudden. There are two months remaining in the game's life cycle, but they're 'exhausted all options?'
Nonsense, I say.
To me this reads more of them trying to get us to shut up.
Then we start getting louder.
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I did not wake up this morning, and for the first time dare to hope, just to have it dashed like this. I don't know about any of the rest of you...BUT I AM NOT DONE, HERE.
Assuming this holds up--and hearing from other involved parties is definitely a point of interest--this only changes the plans we'd put into motion and the timescale under which we work.
I tend to become overly rational while processing emotions. I apologize in advance if I come off as cold or dismissive.
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I did not wake up this morning, and for the first time dare to hope, just to have it dashed like this. I don't know about any of the rest of you...BUT I AM NOT DONE, HERE.
/signed.
Nothing's over until we decide it is.
(Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?)
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The PR spin machine, possibly? After all, if all that Fansy is saying is correct, now would be the time for their damage control to kick in.
In the words of Sandy the squirrel it's time to double, nay triple our efforts!
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This seems awfully sudden. There are two months remaining in the game's life cycle, but they're 'exhausted all options?'
Nonsense, I say.
To me this reads more of them trying to get us to shut up.
I completely agree. We're creating a problem for them and they'd much rather have us go away. How can they possibly pretend to be powerless in this situation? They hold each and every card, whatever decision they make is on their heads 100%. Don't fall for it. Push harder and make them come up with something.
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...someone make sure that link gets to Hit Streak.
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Oh, I do not doubt that efforts to save the game will continue. It is not yet Nov. 30. And even then, nothing is over; not until NCSoft does something other than keep the IP and do nothing with it.
We should be patient until the end of the week. If silence is all there is beyond that message, then it may be time to tighten the metaphorical screws. But we still need to maintain a unified front with those who represent what was Paragon Studios if at all possible. We should wait to see what we hear, and, if it sounds like they're still up for the effort, we support them. If they have given up, then we pursue other options. Above all, even as we ramp up the enthusiasm to try to push things back towards game-salvation, we must remember the carrot as well as the stick. There must be something left for NCSoft to gain, so we should be reasoned and purposeful with each move we make. Do not allow this to fracture us, nor make any of us desperate!
Resolve means willingness to do what is necessary...and that includes govern ourselves so that our actions hit not with the scattered noise of a million separate rain drops, but the single impact of one massive drop in exactly the right place. (http://what-if.xkcd.com/12/)
((And please tell me the "Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" thing was a deliberate joke. >_> ))
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I read the response.
I read the same standard spin we have been getting for over a month. That's not a response. That's repackaging. I don't think we're going to hush up now or stop.
We push. We keep pushing. We made noise. We got them to break the silence. We got people's attention. The one thing I have noticed is that our efforts aren't just being noticed here or on MMO news sites...they're being noticed on other MMOs.
Why? Simple. Hope. The same situation could come up for any other MMO in the market. This seems to be the first time a community has gotten its act sorted and made enough noise to get noticed. And we have to continue to push. I've been told by other people that we've been noticed. I've read the posts on the WoW forums, on LoL and even seen them cropping up on wargaming forums. This is essentially the first test. If a community can turn things around then it gives all of them hope for when their hour is up.
We're no longer just fighting for ourselves. We're fighting for them. We're fighting for the memory of the other MMOs that faded into silence and died with a whimper.
It's as TonyV put it. We're heroes. This is what we do.
8 years. 8 years we've been protecting our city. Did they really think they could just pull the plug on this without us reacting? We've survived every single 'big' release that's come about and held a relatively stable playerbase throughout. We've some of the strongest roleplayers, number crunchers and artistic types around. The community is that varied. And for that I am proud of it.
Yes, I am listening to I Am The Doctor (http://youtu.be/5D-QPDGhCtM).
I was also listening to Overtaken (http://youtu.be/mnTZj-LuQws) from the One Piece OST.
Why? Because this is music that seems to embody the element of survival. No, not survival.
Defiance.
This is our city. Come take it.
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Yeah, until we hear from other parties, I certainly hold their "exhausted efforts" highly in question.
We're certainly not done. Whether or not we are done with Plan A, so far, I'm certainly not informed enough yet.
Not the news I wanted to hear, for certain... but yeah, no where near done putting effort into whatever we need to do.
I desperately want to hear from a representative of Paragon Studios though. I really hope they can speak up about things, at least a little bit.
*attempts to wait patiently for more information*
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Dear NCSoft: We're still here. We're still fighting for our city.
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Oh, I do not doubt that efforts to save the game will continue. It is not yet Nov. 30. And even then, nothing is over; not until NCSoft does something other than keep the IP and do nothing with it.
We should be patient until the end of the week. If silence is all there is beyond that message, then it may be time to tighten the metaphorical screws. But we still need to maintain a unified front with those who represent what was Paragon Studios if at all possible. We should wait to see what we hear, and, if it sounds like they're still up for the effort, we support them. If they have given up, then we pursue other options. Above all, even as we ramp up the enthusiasm to try to push things back towards game-salvation, we must remember the carrot as well as the stick. There must be something left for NCSoft to gain, so we should be reasoned and purposeful with each move we make. Do not allow this to fracture us, nor make any of us desperate!
Resolve means willingness to do what is necessary...and that includes govern ourselves so that our actions hit not with the scattered noise of a million separate rain drops, but the single impact of one massive drop in exactly the right place. (http://what-if.xkcd.com/12/)
((And please tell me the "Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" thing was a deliberate joke. >_> ))
It's a quote from a movie. Yes, it's a joke. :P
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Don't let this put you in a state of denial, either. They did explicitly mention that efforts to sell the IP et al had failed. This IS new information. It is BAD from our perspective.
It doesn't mean they are right. It doesn't mean that a sale cannot happen. It does mean we need to recognize that there are, in fact, severe obstacles that need to be overcome, and we do not know what they are.
It's a quote from a movie. Yes, it's a joke.
Oh, good. ^^;
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At the risk of upsetting everyone, it could be very simple. The Paragon management could have made an offer, and NCSoft counter with what they need. These two numbers could have been so far apart that negotiations were impossible. The game is still worth a certain amount to NCSoft as a loss of profits and a subsequent tax deduction. If the offer wasn't even close to that deduction amount, then that could have sealed it.
Now, this said, if someone else comes forward and offers more, then they'll reconsider I'm sure.
**All of this is only opinion and isn't stated as any insider information**
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At the risk of upsetting everyone, it could be very simple. The Paragon management could have made an offer, and NCSoft counter with what they need. These two numbers could have been so far apart that negotiations were impossible. The game is still worth a certain amount to NCSoft as a loss of profits and a subsequent tax deduction. If the offer wasn't even close to that deduction amount, then that could have sealed it.
Now, this said, if someone else comes forward and offers more, then they'll reconsider I'm sure.
**All of this is only opinion and isn't stated as any insider information**
We can't know unless we hear from Brian Clayton or one of the others involved in said negotiations. So, you know. >.>; No offense, but not going to put much stock in speculation, one way or the other, good or bad right now until we hear from them.
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We can't know unless we hear from Brian Clayton or one of the others involved in said negotiations. So, you know. >.>; No offense, but not going to put much stock in speculation, one way or the other, good or bad right now until we hear from them.
That's the most rational approach, I think: await confirmation.
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Considering I do not trust NCSoft, I believe that this is a ploy to try and deflate us. So now we must stand tall and keep our eyes on the prize.
We are Heroes - This is what we do
/em hold torch
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I should be doing work but I paused for a 5 min break to check up here. I look at this? I think about the hold the line group with Mass Effect 3. EA and Bioware unleashed their PR people on us as well. I turely think there's something fishy here given their history of being shady such as with Tabula Rasa? This isn't over we keep going, I'm not angry. I'm amused we got them to say anything we keep it blue side and dial up the heat.
This is just an attempt to break moral when I think about it.
/em Hold Torch.
Don't drink the NCSOFT-aid kiddos! Keep it up!
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As has been mentioned, even if it's true and negotiations with Paragon ultimately fell through, that doesn't mean that things are over. It just means that we have to approach the problem from a different angle. We move on to Plan 'x'.
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(Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?)
Japanese.
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Japanese.
Forget it, he's rolling. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8lT1o0sDwI) (Possibly NSFW language.)
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Japanese.
"Forget it, he's rolling."
:)
Edit: Beat me to it, and with a link, even.
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As has been mentioned, even if it's true and negotiations with Paragon ultimately fell through, that doesn't mean that things are over. It just means that we have to approach the problem from a different angle. We move on to Plan 'x'.
...can we at least hit up plans B-W first? >.>;
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...not feeling much of an 'ouch' really. Mostly a bemused "...really? you're going to try that?" here.
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That's the most rational approach, I think: await confirmation.
Absolutely.
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I didn't even bother reading the whole thing, but you guys can think about it, if you want. 8)
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...can we at least hit up plans B-W first? >.>;
I was going for a variable, because I didn't know if we were on plan B yet. o_o I thought plan A was trying to rescue Paragon before some staffers moved elsewhere. I think Cryptic has already hired some at the very least.
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I also want to say...
Way to go, everyone involved with the SaveCoH movement! Thank you!
We may not have gotten the words we wished to hear today, but we positively created the situation for NCSoft to actually deliver us a response.
I doubt we're done trying to change the minds of the people behind these decisions.
Again though, let's wait and see what more we hear from other parties that would have been involved in these "exhausted" efforts.
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I didn't even bother reading the whole thing, but you guys can think about it, if you want. 8)
Assuming that's a response to me, I was noting that "candidate" literally had a quote of that NCSoft response and the line "Ouch!" as his very first Titan Networks post.
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Remember your Mohandas Gandhi
First they ignore you.
They laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
This straddling stages 2&3 here.
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It was, and your point is why I didn't give it any attention. If it's not a troll (unicorn?), it's at least someone who didn't bother doing the reading. :)
I'm not changing my opinion until I see something here from VV, Tony, or Brian, unless someone with an established connection to the devs chimes in. All of this is what they want, otherwise, assuming it is misinformation. The only thing I did like was the nuclear graphic that followed the first post. That made me snicker.
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It sounds like complete rubbish. "Exhausted ALL"....??
Sounds to me like they're saying "How do we politely tell them to shut the heck up?"
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Remember your Mohandas Gandhi
First they ignore you.
They laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
This straddling stages 2&3 here.
Now we need to avoid Step 5. You know. The one where they shoot you with a revolver at close range. (that's a joke, I seriously doubt NCSoft is evil enough to hire HITMEN to kill us.)
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If it's not a unicorn (unicorn?), it's at least someone who didn't bother doing the reading. :)
(https://i727.photobucket.com/albums/ww272/ft5512/trollicorn2.png)
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((And please tell me the "Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" thing was a deliberate joke. >_> ))
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7vtWB4owdE <- (language warning for anyone who's sensitive to that sort of thing)
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I'm not normally one to start speculating on such things...but a guy with only one post on the Titan Networks, and it's this, after said link had been given and commented on for a page or so worth of "let's wait and see..."
Interesting.
VERY interesting, if one thinks about it deeper still...
I feel like I should point out that several other first time posters have popped up after that announcement, though most were of the positive variety.
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(https://i727.photobucket.com/albums/ww272/ft5512/trollicorn2.png)
/me dies laughing hysterically
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I feel like I should point out that several other first time posters have popped up after that announcement, though most were of the positive variety.
Oh, certainly.
It's the specific format: Quote the bit, then sting it with "Ouch!"
The "Ouch!" is something that somebody who's been invested in the effort might be expected to say. But this person hasn't been, at least not on this board, which makes this a strange place for him to express his hurt over that official statement. Add that he posted it in its entirety, to ensure it would be seen, while clearly not having read the thread prior to his own post...
What's more interesting is, if this is a significant observation, that it implies those who are saying it's a ploy may well be more right than I was willing to consider.
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I'm not giving up...in the immortal words of John Paul Jones. "We have not yet begun to fight"
We are Heroes...but we are Villains too.
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I'm not giving up...in the immortal words of John Paul Jones. "We have not yet begun to fight"
We are Heroes...but we are Villains too.
Hey Primey don't forget about the Children of Pretoria we're here too. :)
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I refuse to buy what they're (NCSoft) is selling, and I mean that in several ways, but I am going to wait til after tomorrows TwitchTV broadcast to see what the step will be before doing or saying anything to rash. But my hopes are NOT dashed, I'm standing tall with the rest of the heroes, and villians, this is where all they're stuff is stored after all, awaiting our next orders in our fight.
The fact that this is coming right after Fansy has lighted fires all over the internet (& the world) has not been lost to me. This may be a ploy to get is to be quiet, but I think as has been stated earlier, that this may be the time to start getting louder.
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We could re-focus the message to be "Get back to the bargaining table!" in some way. Tell them we're not willing to accept "exhausted" as an answer.
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Is there a way to record the Twitch broadcast? I missed the last one and have yet to find it even with all the buffs I can throw on my Google-fu.
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I'm not changing my opinion until I see something here from VV, Tony, or Brian, unless someone with an established connection to the devs chimes in. All of this is what they want, otherwise, assuming it is misinformation. The only thing I did like was the nuclear graphic that followed the first post. That made me snicker.
Wait... You didn't bother following the link? That message was posted by Hit_Streak on the Official Forums. That is just as official as a Twichtv broadcast. I should think that Hit_Streak has an established connection here.
I for one doubt that NCsoft corporate will do anything other than what they have stated. Of course they are lying through their PR-reps about seriously looking into other ways to keep the game running. It is second nature for them.
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We could re-focus the message to be "Get back to the bargaining table!" in some way. Tell them we're not willing to accept "exhausted" as an answer.
Well, we did send flowers and invites to play...perhaps now we should send small packets of coffee and invitations back to the table?
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Is there a way to record the Twitch broadcast? I missed the last one and have yet to find it even with all the buffs I can throw on my Google-fu.
Go to the http://www.twitch.tv/paragonstudios
Under the black video box, there is a link to "Videos". Click it.
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Is there any information on how much they wanted ?
When they started this I looked at revenues and kept coming up with numbers in the 40 mil range. Is there some oddity of the Korean tax system that allows them to write off full value and carry this forward as well ? (They are running at a loss currently)
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Wait... You didn't bother following the link? That message was posted by Hit_Streak on the Official Forums. That is just as official as a Twichtv broadcast. I should think that Hit_Streak has an established connection here.
I for one doubt that NCsoft corporate will do anything other than what they have stated. Of course they are lying through their PR-reps about seriously looking into other ways to keep the game running. It is second nature for them.
indeed, there is considering the whole annoucement is fake, and the "meaning" (especially the "exhausted all" part) is fake. Sure we can trust everybody from NCSoft to back up the annoucement, but everybody from NCSoft or former Paragon Studio surely are under the order to follow company policy, and that means siding with what PR says or does. If the press release states they exhausted everything, they can't announce otherwise, it's their contract.
Now coming to them with proof that they didn't exhaust every possibility is the only viable way to go. That means more than just videos and events. We need business now. That's what they said.
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indeed, there is considering the whole annoucement is fake, and the "meaning" (especially the "exhausted all" part) is fake. Sure we can trust everybody from NCSoft to back up the annoucement, but everybody from NCSoft or former Paragon Studio surely are under the order to follow company policy, and that means siding with what PR says or does. If the press release states they exhausted everything, they can't announce otherwise, it's their contract.
Now coming to them with proof that they didn't exhaust every possibility is the only viable way to go. That means more than just videos and events. We need business now. That's what they said.
That's an important point. They seem to have already fired Zwil, Hitstreak more than likely realizes that deviating AT ALL from the PR will get him booted as well.
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indeed, there is considering the whole annoucement is fake, and the "meaning" (especially the "exhausted all" part) is fake. Sure we can trust everybody from NCSoft to back up the annoucement, but everybody from NCSoft or former Paragon Studio surely are under the order to follow company policy, and that means siding with what PR says or does. If the press release states they exhausted everything, they can't announce otherwise, it's their contract.
Now coming to them with proof that they didn't exhaust every possibility is the only viable way to go. That means more than just videos and events. We need business now. That's what they said.
HEH
Exhaust every possibility ? Didn't we have people say that they approached ncsoft with legitimate offers and weren't even acknowledged ?
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Go to the http://www.twitch.tv/paragonstudios
Under the black video box, there is a link to "Videos". Click it.
OK, thanks. I had done that, but I think it must have been that evening or the next morning. I guess I'll go watch that, and then I'll just have to pt up with the spoilers on here after tomorrow's. I have an appointment that I can't miss that will keep me from watching it live.
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Careful. "Legitimate offers" to the offerer may not be so legitimate to the offeree.
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HEH
Exhaust every possibility ? Didn't we have people say that they approached ncsoft with legitimate offers and weren't even acknowledged ?
What's a legitimate offer? I could offer what I have in my collective accounts, but I seriously doubt they'd consider it a legitimate offer. Seriously, the people offering may have been ridiculously low compared to what they needed out of it.
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OK, thanks. I had done that, but I think it must have been that evening or the next morning. I guess I'll go watch that, and then I'll just have to pt up with the spoilers on here after tomorrow's. I have an appointment that I can't miss that will keep me from watching it live.
Currently there are videos from:
Sep 26
Sep 5
Aug 29
Aug 22
Aug 15
Aug 8
There were no broadcasts between Sep 5 and Sep 26.
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I'm not giving up...in the immortal words of John Paul Jones. "We have not yet begun to fight"
We are Heroes...but we are Villains too.
All this announcement does is make me more determined. And slightly blood thirsty.
This will only end with the saving of CoH or the wreckage of NCsoft.
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indeed, there is considering the whole annoucement is fake, and the "meaning" (especially the "exhausted all" part) is fake. Sure we can trust everybody from NCSoft to back up the annoucement, but everybody from NCSoft or former Paragon Studio surely are under the order to follow company policy, and that means siding with what PR says or does. If the press release states they exhausted everything, they can't announce otherwise, it's their contract.
Now coming to them with proof that they didn't exhaust every possibility is the only viable way to go. That means more than just videos and events. We need business now. That's what they said.
Want a hat made out of tin foil? I'm being serious here. You can't prove that for the same reasons no one was talking about the negotiations in the first place. If you are so delusional as to think that anyone that is in the position to know what offers were made or considered would reveal those offers, there is nothing anyone can tell you about the situation that you would believe.
NCsoft probably set a value for the IP and Paragon Studios that equaled its total investment over the last 7 years and likely wouldn't settle for less. It doesn't matter though as the results are the same: The game getting canceled.
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This will only end with the saving of CoH or the wreckage of NCsoft.
Good luck on the latter, as I don't think the former is possible.
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Good luck on the latter, as I don't think the former is possible.
Get on board, or get out of our way.
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Want a hat made out of tin foil? I'm being serious here. You can't prove that for the same reasons no one was talking about the negotiations in the first place. If you are so delusional as to think that anyone that is in the position to know what offers were made or considered would reveal those offers, there is nothing anyone can tell you about the situation that you would believe.
NCsoft probably set a value for the IP and Paragon Studios that equaled its total investment over the last 7 years and likely wouldn't settle for less. It doesn't matter though as the results are the same: The game getting canceled.
Still, I want a FAQ set up with those questions answered:
Did you consider simply closing the studio and putting the game on "retirement" with skeleton crew ?
Not necessarily precising with who or for how much or what terms, but answer with the maximum amount of information, how many IP/license/data buyout offers did you consider ? Did you receive ?
Considering City of Heroes in its current state did not fit in your "future plans", as of August 31.'s annoucement, do you even intend to use the IP in the future ?
If City of Heroes has a special place in NCSoft's heart, do you intend on putting Guild Wars 2 next to it ?
well, the last one may be snarky, but what does it cost them to answer that ?
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That's an important point. They seem to have already fired Zwil, Hitstreak more than likely realizes that deviating AT ALL from the PR will get him booted as well.
Correction - the closure of Paragon Studios notwithstanding, Zwill left so he could focus on his family for a time before beginning the job search in earnest.
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
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Get on board, or get out of our way.
This person had neither voiced direct opposition, nor did they stand in your way. They expressed an opinion, which is the same as what you express. They're saying this isn't some elaborate conspiracy theory designed to take the fight out of their enemy. They're right to put it simply.
NCSoft doesn't fear you guys, they barely even noticed you, if they did at all. The PR statement of "We heard you but..." says two things. One, the offer wasn't high enough to be taken seriously. And second they already knew they were going to upset us, so anything we do won't really be taken all that seriously either. They PLANNED on pissing off what, between 50k and 100k players? Why would 20k people sway them? They're being "polite" in their own way, as polite as a corporation ending a customer relationship is going to be.
Don't jump on someone because they aren't taking this as an epic crusade. If you choose that path, you'll easily cut your numbers in half. There are quite a few signatures on that petition from non-players who did it to support people they knew. Be proud that you stood / stand for something, regardless of the result. It was probable from go that they were going to react this way, even the activists said the chances were slim. All that person did was comment about it.
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Get on board, or get out of our way.
As void hunter said, I'm not "in your way". However, I'm not going to join a fruitless crusade over a video game. Life is too short for that.
If you want to act like a lemming, go for it. I'm not going to get in anyone's way of making a fool of themselves. Any realistic examination of the situation will tell you that NCsoft has made up its mind. You aren't willing or able to go to the limits you would need to really get your way.
- Letter writing isn't going to cut it.
- News reports isn't going to cut it.
- Not buying anything from NCsoft is going to cut it.
What will? There is only one way short of violence that I can see, and you don't have enough money to do it: Buy controlling stock in NCsoft. I'm talking an overwhelming percentage of NCsoft stock, enough to ram through anything you want. For that you likely need to be someone on this list:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/
As I said, not going to happen, especially in 2 months.
That leaves violence, though that isn't very heroic or even moderately sane.
Still, I want a FAQ set up with those questions answered:
Did you consider simply closing the studio and putting the game on "retirement" with skeleton crew ?
Not necessarily precising with who or for how much or what terms, but answer with the maximum amount of information, how many IP/license/data buyout offers did you consider ? Did you receive ?
Considering City of Heroes in its current state did not fit in your "future plans", as of August 31.'s announcement, do you even intend to use the IP in the future ?
If City of Heroes has a special place in NCSoft's heart, do you intend on putting Guild Wars 2 next to it ?
well, the last one may be snarky, but what does it cost them to answer that ?
Given my past experience working with a multi-national company, it would be my understanding the following responses:
You won't get a FAQ.
The bean counters examined the possibility of keeping the servers running, the upper management has decided that it isn't making enough money to keep going.
You will never get answers to "how many offers you dealt with", ever. Well, not unless you were upper management at NCsoft.
I doubt they have any plans for future use of the IP. Yet, they like hoarding IPs "just in case". Like hoarders they have an over-inflated sense of the IP's value and won't hear offers with realistic value for the IP. In this case it is sort of like the players "on the crusade" in that they aren't considering what it would take.
As a guesstimate, I'd say 50,000 subscribers paying $10,000 each (or a 100,000 subscribers paying $5,000 each) would be needed to be taken seriously by NCsoft.
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As void hunter said, I'm not "in your way". However, I'm not going to join a fruitless crusade over a video game. Life is too short for that.
If you want to act like a lemming, go for it. I'm not going to get in anyone's way of making a fool of themselves. Any realistic examination of the situation will tell you that NCsoft has made up its mind. You aren't willing or able to go to the limits you would need to really get your way.
- Letter writing isn't going to cut it.
- News reports isn't going to cut it.
- Not buying anything from NCsoft is going to cut it.
What will? There is only one way short of violence that I can see, and you don't have enough money to do it: Buy controlling stock in NCsoft. I'm talking an overwhelming percentage of NCsoft stock, enough to ram through anything you want. For that you likely need to be someone on this list:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/
As I said, not going to happen, especially in 2 months.
That leaves violence, though that isn't very heroic or even moderately sane.
Given my past experience working with a multi-national company, it would be my understanding the following responses:
You won't get a FAQ.
The bean counters examined the possibility of keeping the servers running, the upper management has decided that it isn't making enough money to keep going.
You will never get answers to "how many offers you dealt with", ever. Well, not unless you were upper management at NCsoft.
I doubt they have any plans for future use of the IP. Yet, they like hoarding IPs "just in case". Like hoarders they have an over-inflated sense of the IP's value and won't hear offers with realistic value for the IP. In this case it is sort of like the players "on the crusade" in that they aren't considering what it would take.
As a guesstimate, I'd say 50,000 subscribers paying $10,000 each (or a 100,000 subscribers paying $5,000 each) would be needed to be taken seriously by NCsoft.
If you aren't going to back us, why are you here? Hmm? Except to spout negativity and attempt to demoralize us, of course.
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If you aren't going to back us, why are you here? Hmm? Except to spout negativity and attempt to demoralize us, of course.
I'd suggest you stop doing/taking whatever is making you paranoid and delusional.
Set some realistic expectations and you'll be happier. If an 11th hour reprieve happens, I'll be pleasantly surprised. On the other hand, I'm not going to get my hopes up, or anyone else's hopes that anything short of a hostile takeover (financially or physically) will accomplish much. I don't want to see anyone else having their hopes dashed so much that they might do something that can't be taken back.
Have you worked for a multi-national company? I have for two: MCI and EDS. The company I was with was traded from the first to the second, and the division I was with was laid off less than a month after the paperwork was done for switching employees over. I know exactly what is happening here.
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I'd suggest you stop doing/taking whatever is making you paranoid and delusional.
@_@..... a snow globe is talking to me.....
Yes... I shall indeed stop taking my prescribed LSD right now.
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@_@..... a snow globe is talking to me.....
Yes... I shall indeed stop taking my prescribed LSD right now.
Haha. At least you can see the humor. :)
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I'd suggest you stop doing/taking whatever is making you paranoid and delusional.
Set some realistic expectations and you'll be happier. If an 11th hour reprieve happens, I'll be pleasantly surprised. On the other hand, I'm not going to get my hopes up, or anyone else's hopes that anything short of a hostile takeover (financially or physically) will accomplish much. I don't want to see anyone else having their hopes dashed so much that they might do something that can't be taken back.
I don't want you to take this as some sort of official reprimand or anything, this is just a personal opinion.
This is a subforum directly dedicated to saving City of Heroes. If you do not want to partake in the saving of the City, you are free to step aside and not do so. However, ragging on people who want to save the City is not helpful or warranted. We've already had this discussion at the beginning; maybe you missed it; we acknowledged that there are people who aren't willing to help save the City, for whatever reason (being a realist, being lazy, being trollish, whatever; I don't care what your reason is). At this point, you seem to be actively trying to get people to give up. While you may not think you are, this is the way you are coming across.
Please stop. I don't want to have to recommend segregating you from the community. You are a good person.
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Haha. At least you can see the humor. :)
If you wish to contribute to an effort which does not require NCSoft's cooperation, then check out the "City Sunset" forum section, which discusses Plan Z. Given your take on the situation, you may find it more interesting than a debate in this thread.
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Larry Dixon: The REAL takeaway from this is "Hey this is starting to hurt, stop it guys!"
Larry Dixon: If the revival efforts meant nothing, NCsoft would not post what amounts to "Elvis has left the building." And that is all that is. They want the negative attention to stop.
Larry Dixon: That is an official attempt at deflection.
Larry Dixon: Or, in political terms, an "Un-Answer."
Larry Dixon: It appears to be a response but actually accomplishes nothing except silence those who weren't very into it. Like I say, what it says is irrelevant; the thing to take notice of is that it was put there at all.
Larry Dixon: And that means time to step it up because the other fighter just staggered.
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Larry Dixon: If the "Save CoH/We love Paragon" etc. efforts were ineffective, we'd never have seen such a statement. The hidden meaning of that note is that it has dawned on somebody that this is developing into "anti-NCsoft," not "Save-CoH," so they issued a mollifying statement with a lot of buttonpushing feel-warm cozy buttons about how special what they just murdered was to them.
Now they reap the mistrust they sowed, they can see the coverage increase, the caution against them and the players taking their money away in droves, and we can look them steely in the eyes and reply "Too bad. It's just business. Isn't it."
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As someone who has been the smartest guy in the room and the dumbest, sometimes at the same time, I would like to just say that no opinion is invalid. Maybe it's the biggest, loudest, most buffoonish dissenter (no, Snow Globe, I don't think you're any of those things; we've seen much more like that than you can possibly muster this past month) who gives us the idea that works. That's both the beauty and the weakness of the committee.
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We're no longer just fighting for ourselves. We're fighting for them. We're fighting for the memory of the other MMOs that faded into silence and died with a whimper.
It's as TonyV put it. We're heroes. This is what we do.
8 years. 8 years we've been protecting our city. Did they really think they could just pull the plug on this without us reacting? We've survived every single 'big' release that's come about and held a relatively stable playerbase throughout. We've some of the strongest roleplayers, number crunchers and artistic types around. The community is that varied. And for that I am proud of it.
Yes, I am listening to I Am The Doctor (http://youtu.be/5D-QPDGhCtM).
I was also listening to Overtaken (http://youtu.be/mnTZj-LuQws) from the One Piece OST.
Why? Because this is music that seems to embody the element of survival. No, not survival.
Defiance.
This is our city. Come take it.
Hello. We're the Heroes.
Basically...
RUN.
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So, once again, I have posted immediately after VV, this time after cautioning everyone to wait for what she had to say.
<facepalm>
Sorry.
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Larry Dixon: If the "Save CoH/We love Paragon" etc. efforts were ineffective, we'd never have seen such a statement. The hidden meaning of that note is that it has dawned on somebody that this is developing into "anti-NCsoft," not "Save-CoH," so they issued a mollifying statement with a lot of buttonpushing feel-warm cozy buttons about how special what they just murdered was to them.
In other words, they are attempting a Muhammed Ali-style response. Attempting to outlast us in terms of the endurance front. Their mistake, considering that to do this involves putting themselves in an apparently losing position in attempt to go on the offensive when one's opponent is tired out. It has, of course, been pointed out that we as a community have not yet gathered our full momentum. I dare say that we've yet to get out of first gear.
The statement they have put out will more than likely end up backfiring, due to some obvious questions - if it was so special, why was it murdered?
Larry Dixon: The REAL takeaway from this is "Hey this is starting to hurt, stop it guys!"
Larry Dixon: If the revival efforts meant nothing, NCsoft would not post what amounts to "Elvis has left the building." And that is all that is. They want the negative attention to stop.
Larry Dixon: That is an official attempt at deflection.
Larry Dixon: Or, in political terms, an "Un-Answer."
Larry Dixon: It appears to be a response but actually accomplishes nothing except silence those who weren't very into it. Like I say, what it says is irrelevant; the thing to take notice of is that it was put there at all.
Larry Dixon: And that means time to step it up because the other fighter just staggered.
*Breaks out the boxing tape* ^_^ (As mentioned elsewhere, this is my "Impending Chaos/Let the Games Begin" face).
The best part of this is that we really haven't been targeting our blows, so much as just keeping them at a constant rhythm. I believe that the time is approaching to start going for the knock-out.
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By all means, do whatever you guys fell you need to (well, within reason I would think). Please, for your own sense of well being remember that you simply can't force something away from someone who owns it. The burden of time is on the players, not the company. Once they started the process, and especially once they make the game dark, time is no longer a factor to them. They can shelve the whole game and every piece of hardware associated with it indefinitely. You have no control over them.
You do however have control over whether or not you give them any more money and whether or not you live with a void where the game used to fill or if you make it whole with something else or a suitable alternative. This is where you have power.
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I have tolerated your antics long enough! <pops void on the head with a giant cartoon hammer>
Actually, the void plug is the City Sunset forum. This is just the usual emotional release before we get back to working our way through the alphabet.
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By all means, do whatever you guys fell you need to (well, within reason I would think). Please, for your own sense of well being remember that you simply can't force something away from someone who owns it. The burden of time is on the players, not the company. Once they started the process, and especially once they make the game dark, time is no longer a factor to them. They can shelve the whole game and every piece of hardware associated with it indefinitely. You have no control over them.
You do however have control over whether or not you give them any more money and whether or not you live with a void where the game used to fill or if you make it whole with something else or a suitable alternative. This is where you have power.
I agree.
But at the same time, I've been having trouble following what is going on. Well 90% have to do with I came in the middle of the full swing of things but I prefer to approach things in a more chess like manner than straight brute strength in these situations.
The way I see it, NCSoft made their move today. Now what chess piece are we going to move?
Remember in the game of chess the point of the game is never to force the opponent (using that term losely here as an opponent in chess can be a friend, rival, random person, or polka dot unicorn) to take back a move but to make moves and leave it to them to regret making said move. Sometimes they may move the piece back to it's prior spot or sometimes they make another move but in the end, spot the mistakes and make it an advantage until checkmate. In simple terms of course, trying to keep it short.
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The statement they have put out will more than likely end up backfiring, due to some obvious questions - if it was so special, why was it murdered?
My thought exactly.
Shut down Paragon Studios without a second's warning, claim the decision was hard, try to make it look like negotiations failed because of someone else's position rather than yours...and then throw out this line to us about how much the game meant to you, and how you want us to toe the line and help you remember it fondly?
Nuh-uh, I don't think so, my corporate chum.
When NCSoft closed Tabula Rasa, there was never a mention of negotiations, nor of selling any IP. They just steamrollered over everyone - including Richard Garriott himself of course, with a fabricated resignation letter which they tried to fob off as being his words.
This time, things are different. They tried the silent approach, but every time they opened their mailbag, every time they checked their email, there we were. On Twitter, in blogs, in the gaming press, even in CNN's iReport - there we were.
And we weren't going away.
This time, it gradually began to dawn on them that City of Heroes is not Tabula Rasa...or Dungeon Runners, Exteel, or Auto Assault either, and giving CoH players the silent approach wasn't working. The more silent they were, the louder we became.
So they caved and issued a statement. A statement intended to say how lovely they were, how hard this decision was, and how with the end looming, and...can't we all just...get along?
Here's the kicker though - they folded because we're the aggrieved party here. In the eyes of observers we're the good guys and they're the bad guys, the cruel corporation with a heart of stone. So we have to keep being the good guys. If we stoop to their level, then history will mark us down as being just as bad as they are. We have an opportunity here, perhaps unprecedented in videogame history - all we have to do is keep doing what we've been doing.
They can wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
...but we won't go away.
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When NCSoft closed Tabula Rasa, there was never a mention of negotiations, nor of selling any IP. They just steamrollered over everyone - including Richard Garriott himself of course, with a fabricated resignation letter which they tried to fob off as being his words.
Let's not beat around the bush here, but call that what it was defined as in court.
They forged a letter.
Why should, or would, we believe anything that admitted forgers say? Why should anyone?
This time, things are different. They tried the silent approach, but every time they opened their mailbag, every time they checked their email, there we were. On Twitter, in blogs, in the gaming press, even in CNN's iReport - there we were.
And we weren't going away.
This time, it gradually began to dawn on them that City of Heroes is not Tabula Rasa...or Dungeon Runners, Exteel, or Auto Assault either, and giving CoH players the silent approach wasn't working. The more silent they were, the louder we became.
So they caved and issued a statement. A statement intended to say how lovely they were, how hard this decision was, and how with the end looming, and...can't we all just...get along?
Here's the kicker though - they folded because we're the aggrieved party here. In the eyes of observers we're the good guys and they're the bad guys, the cruel corporation with a heart of stone. So we have to keep being the good guys. If we stoop to their level, then history will mark us down as being just as bad as they are. We have an opportunity here, perhaps unprecedented in videogame history - all we have to do is keep doing what we've been doing.
They can wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
...but we won't go away.
I think that barring a miracle, the servers will go down on Nov. 30. The big question is whether they will stay down.
Someone who does this better than me needs to figure out who the 800 lb gorilla in the room is. If it happens to be Nexon...perhaps it is time to include Nexon in on the pressure.
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There are different ways to be the 800lb gorilla, but even a 100lb chimp can be deadly.
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There are different ways to be the 800lb gorilla, but even a 100lb chimp can be deadly.
Just don't eat anybody's face, ok?
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Just don't eat anybody's face, ok?
...awwwwwww.
/me puts away face-eating utensils and pouts
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Just don't eat anybody's face, ok?
<like button> :)
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There are different ways to be the 800lb gorilla, but even a 100lb chimp can be deadly.
A swarm of squirrels can be deadly (Helllllo internet!)
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Let's not beat around the bush here, but call that what it was defined as in court.
They forged a letter.
Why should, or would, we believe anything that admitted forgers say? Why should anyone?
I think that barring a miracle, the servers will go down on Nov. 30. The big question is whether they will stay down.
Someone who does this better than me needs to figure out who the 800 lb gorilla in the room is. If it happens to be Nexon...perhaps it is time to include Nexon in on the pressure.
Yes, time to take this to Nexon too.
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Friend of mine in-game just posted the following, which I copy/paste here:
"It was basically a "We feel really bad for setting that puppy on fire. We want you to know that we loved the puppy too. But once we doused in in gasoline and lit it on fire, we just couldn't put it out."
"We even tried waving a fan at it to put the flames out and everything, but sadly all options are exhausted. Now let's please stop trying to put the puppy out, and instead hug and share happy memories of the puppy while it burns to death."
And also please stop mentioning to everyone how we set puppies on fire."
I wanted to respond to them with an "Oh NCSoft, I'm trying hard to see things from your perspective, but try as I might I just can't get my head lodged that far up my ass."
Which I thought was one of the best summations I've yet seen.
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+5 Internets!
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@Atlantea, that deserves to be repeated EVERYWHERE. And it got a "THAT IS AWESOME!" from Larry.
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All credit for that must go to @Vhaillor2003
I saw your high-five and relayed it back to him. He was pleased. :D
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All credit for that must go to @Vhaillor2003
And, now he will be assailed with global friend requests. :)
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Friend of mine in-game just posted the following, which I copy/paste here:
Which I thought was one of the best summations I've yet seen.
Thank you, friend of Atlantea... you just made me erupt in laughter in the middle of class. Professor is displeased, emu does not care.
Brilliant.
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In other words, they are attempting a Muhammed Ali-style response. Attempting to outlast us in terms of the endurance front. Their mistake, considering that to do this involves putting themselves in an apparently losing position in attempt to go on the offensive when one's opponent is tired out. It has, of course, been pointed out that we as a community have not yet gathered our full momentum. I dare say that we've yet to get out of first gear.
The statement they have put out will more than likely end up backfiring, due to some obvious questions - if it was so special, why was it murdered?
*Breaks out the boxing tape* ^_^ (As mentioned elsewhere, this is my "Impending Chaos/Let the Games Begin" face).
The best part of this is that we really haven't been targeting our blows, so much as just keeping them at a constant rhythm. I believe that the time is approaching to start going for the knock-out.
Forget approaching...they've just realized we're not going anywhere...I read this as they're stunned...and we need to go for the k.o. -now-.... >:(
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Holy dick, NCSoft actually SAID SOMETHING? I was beginning to think they'd forgotten how to use language :P
Keep piling it on! :)
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Holy dick, NCSoft actually SAID SOMETHING? I was beginning to think they'd forgotten how to use language :P
Keep piling it on! :)
This!
To paraphrase Victoria, we have made NcSoft stagger, but they aren't on the ropes yet. Punch harder and faster people,don't stop now. It's time for a new wave of masks, this time, printed on red paper.
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At this point, you seem to be actively trying to get people to give up. While you may not think you are, this is the way you are coming across.
Please stop. I don't want to have to recommend segregating you from the community. You are a good person.
My last post in this thread:
I'm not against saving CoH. However I don't expect that NCsoft will be in any shape involved in that effort. I expect them to go out of their way to prevent any use of the IP.
I was here looking for news that anyone else was getting the rights to the IP, yet I found people that are demand "more proof" than one can reasonably expect. They are asking for any official word, and when it it presented to them they claim that it isn't "good enough".
On top of that, I then get insulted for expressing my opinion.
Civility is a two way street. One which you understand, unlike a couple other posters.
Edit:
By all means, do whatever you guys fell you need to (well, within reason I would think). Please, for your own sense of well being remember that you simply can't force something away from someone who owns it. The burden of time is on the players, not the company. Once they started the process, and especially once they make the game dark, time is no longer a factor to them. They can shelve the whole game and every piece of hardware associated with it indefinitely. You have no control over them.
You do however have control over whether or not you give them any more money and whether or not you live with a void where the game used to fill or if you make it whole with something else or a suitable alternative. This is where you have power.
And this was the point of my posts in this thread.
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Friend of mine in-game just posted the following, which I copy/paste here:
Which I thought was one of the best summations I've yet seen.
Thank you friend of Atlantea! LOL, here at work!
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As a guesstimate, I'd say 50,000 subscribers paying $10,000 each (or a 100,000 subscribers paying $5,000 each) would be needed to be taken seriously by NCsoft.
Half a billion dollars? Seriously? That's an outrageously high figure; insulting, even. As an investment, a ~1% annual return might beat short-term Treasuries, but those are liquid.
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Half a billion dollars? Seriously? That's an outrageously high figure; insulting, even. As an investment, a ~1% annual return might beat short-term Treasuries, but those are liquid.
Okay, it seems the previous post wasn't my last. However if you want to continue this discussion via messaging or another thread, let me know.
I've seen 80 million tossed around for the server infrastructure. Add that to their initial purchase and start up costs from taking over from Cryptic, the value of the IP (present and potential), and the investments since the sale that could climb to 150-200 million "on paper" value (a realistic value would be 50-100 million for the game). Add to that NCsoft's reluctance to have a serious competitor buy it and I can easily see NCsoft asking for 500 million just to say that they "tried" to sell the game while still having no intention of doing so.
In reality it is no different than a friend "offering" me a 19" CRT monitor he has barely used for 10 years for $200 because he simply doesn't know the value of an equivalent LCD monitor today. In fact that is a lot like NCsoft with MMOs.
At any rate I'm not going to comment further in this thread.
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I've seen 80 million tossed around for the server infrastructure.
80 million for server infrastructure is beyond absurd. Even if you're including the software and development costs, when I think of the kind of infrastructure I could build for $80 million... Wow, the game would never go down or lag. We'd have multiple redundant datacenters around the globe synchronizing information in real time over dedicated fiber, and enough spare processing power and storage to rent out and make a profit.
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80 million for server infrastructure is beyond absurd. Even if you're including the software and development costs, when I think of the kind of infrastructure I could build for $80 million... Wow, the game would never go down or lag. We'd have multiple redundant datacenters around the globe synchronizing information in real time over dedicated fiber, and enough spare processing power and storage to rent out and make a profit.
...we could completely shift the rendering server side on a budget like that.
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Not to mention... didn't someone say they most likely rented their servers?
Or are we strictly talking about the gear the devs use? Which I imagine comes down to quite a few high end PCs and Macs, some servers, a bunch of licenses for high end 3D design programs, etc...
Either way, 80 million sounds very excessive.
Unless they got Cerebro in their office along with a Danger room to test new content. (Well, a Mission Architect studio then =P)
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$80M is overkill for a game like COH, especially since they consolidated most of the shards onto virtual blades. I think the real figure is significantly below that, in the single digits at the most.
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Add to that NCsoft's reluctance to have a serious competitor buy it and I can easily see NCsoft asking for 500 million just to say that they "tried" to sell the game while still having no intention of doing so.
Ok, that puts us on the same page; it's a price they could quote without ever expecting it to be met.
(Not being an investor or accountant, that's about as far as I can take the discussion, too.)
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I keep seeing people saying that NCSoft is reluctant to have a competitor buy the IP to CoH. I don't believe that for an instant. NCSoft's history of failed MMOs says one thing to me quite clearly - they don't care about competitors, their concern is more about saving face by burying their mistakes.
If an IP is buried, it's dead, forgotten, which means that no-one - not even a competitor - can ever bring it back to life to taunt the company again. Their pursuit of this serial murder of games is almost pathological. It makes me wonder what exactly Mr.Kim is afraid of. But that's a whole different can of psychological worms, as it were.
However, this is the first time I've seen them even talk about negotiations to sell an IP. But now they've stated those negotiations are over as far as they're concerned, I expect them to get back on their old tracks and now consider this a done deal, game (literally) over. That's what they've always done before, and it's always worked before. And that makes them feel comfortable.
But we don't want them to feel comfortable, we want them to stay on the back foot. We want them to accept the fact that we're not going away. We aren't like Tabula Rasa, Exteel, Auto Assault and Dungeon Runners (and Lineage US if you care to add that to the list too).
If they want us to shut up, that means we've got to them. There is a crack, and it's up to us to drive a wedge in there by continuing to do exactly what we've been doing - only more so.
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If they want us to shut up, that means we've got to them. There is a crack, and it's up to us to drive a wedge in there by continuing to do exactly what we've been doing - only more so.
This, QFT
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Thread Necromancy
80 million for server infrastructure is beyond absurd. Even if you're including the software and development costs, when I think of the kind of infrastructure I could build for $80 million... Wow, the game would never go down or lag. We'd have multiple redundant datacenters around the globe synchronizing information in real time over dedicated fiber, and enough spare processing power and storage to rent out and make a profit.
Just to follow up on that, I found a copy of the detailed breakdown of NCSoft's assets. As a publicly held company, all sorts of information is available to potential investors.
As of Dec. 31, 2011, NCSoft's complete server infrastructure was valued at 21,322 million Won. That's approximately $19.3 million USD.
That includes not only the servers that run all of their games, including those in Korea, but the servers that support all of their subsidiaries, development studios, satellite offices, and corporate headquarters. So divide that by how big you think COH is compared to NCSoft's entire lineup.
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Perhaps the currency the 80 million was quoted at is in Won?
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Thread Necromancy
Just to follow up on that, I found a copy of the detailed breakdown of NCSoft's assets. As a publicly held company, all sorts of information is available to potential investors.
As of Dec. 31, 2011, NCSoft's complete server infrastructure was valued at 21,322 million Won. That's approximately $19.3 million USD.
That includes not only the servers that run all of their games, including those in Korea, but the servers that support all of their subsidiaries, development studios, satellite offices, and corporate headquarters. So divide that by how big you think COH is compared to NCSoft's entire lineup.
if ncsofts infrastructure as a whole was only valued at about $20 million, then i would think coh to be only about $2-3 million since quite obviously they put more resources into guild wars
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It's in the last place anybody who values their sanity would look, in the Investor Relations Archive under Auditor reports.
They do contain the auditor's findings, but also include a more detailed breakdown of the balance sheet and income statement than they have in their main section.
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/board/downloadlist.aspx?BID=ir_audit (http://global.ncsoft.com/global/board/downloadlist.aspx?BID=ir_audit)
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if ncsofts infrastructure as a whole was only valued at about $20 million, then i would think coh to be only about $2-3 million since quite obviously they put more resources into guild wars
That's probably pretty close to reality. Which supports the argument that COH doesn't really need huge $$ for a buyout.
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As of Dec. 31, 2011, NCSoft's complete server infrastructure was valued at 21,322 million Won. That's approximately $19.3 million USD.
That includes not only the servers that run all of their games, including those in Korea, but the servers that support all of their subsidiaries, development studios, satellite offices, and corporate headquarters.
But it does not include outsourced or managed servers which many companies now use. IIRC, all the CoH servers, for example, are actually third-party, except perhaps the dev server (Beta and Test), managed and provided by a company that specialize in server provision and management. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Zwill outright stated they were managed servers in another property, not NCsoft's own, in one of his last coffee talks. It stuck in my mind because I found it interesting, as we tend to think (often wrongly) that most companies have their own massive server farms now.
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But it does not include outsourced or managed servers which many companies now use. IIRC, all the CoH servers, for example, are actually third-party, except perhaps the dev server (Beta and Test), managed and provided by a company that specialize in server provision and management. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Zwill outright stated they were managed servers in another property, not NCsoft's own, in one of his last coffee talks. It stuck in my mind because I found it interesting, as we tend to think (often wrongly) that most companies have their own massive server farms now.
Makes me wonder if a contract ended and they chose to not renew. So no more servers so might as well close the game instead of trying to find another Server manager.
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All of the COH servers were owned by NCsoft in their data center in Austin. And most of them were virtual shards, and no longer individual physical shards.
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All of the COH servers were owned by NCsoft in their data center in Austin. And most of them were virtual shards, and no longer individual physical shards.
This is correct in its entirety. The Austin datacenter houses most of their western efforts.
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Then having them here and under ownership. It does seem like the plan is to drop CoH so they can use those Servers for Brest and as... I mean Blade and Soul.
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Then having them here and under ownership. It does seem like the plan is to drop CoH so they can use those Servers for Brest and as... I mean Blade and Soul.
You know, I have SUCH a politically incorrect name for Blade and Soul....given the two main focii of the game's artist (lemonboob and cameltoe)...
Of course "Tits and Bits" works too, and is a tiny, tiny bit less offensive.
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All of the COH servers were owned by NCsoft in their data center in Austin. And most of them were virtual shards, and no longer individual physical shards.
Thanks for that. I guess Zwill must have been referring to them being in a different building. I know he mentioned something about not having direct access to the machines physically, and that they login to them remotely, much as we do.
I'm often surprised that so few games have emulated Google's model - a cluster network that allows the servers to be always on, with no downtime. They can literally update machines from the cluster on the fly, and at the halfway point, switch from the half running the old version to the half running the new, and then finish updating the other half. The idea of single, large-scale server machines just seems so terribly outdated by comparison.
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Sounds like a plan for us. If we ever get that far.
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Thanks for that. I guess Zwill must have been referring to them being in a different building. I know he mentioned something about not having direct access to the machines physically, and that they login to them remotely, much as we do.
I'm often surprised that so few games have emulated Google's model - a cluster network that allows the servers to be always on, with no downtime. They can literally update machines from the cluster on the fly, and at the halfway point, switch from the half running the old version to the half running the new, and then finish updating the other half. The idea of single, large-scale server machines just seems so terribly outdated by comparison.
Zwill and the rest of the Paragon Studios team were just outside San Francisco (in a community MUCH cheaper to live in and rent office space in than the Bay Area proper). When we paid them a visit it was something of an epic drive to get to them, in fact. There was a lot of "you can't get there from here." The servers all live in the NCSoft(core) building in Austin Texas.
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Then having them here and under ownership. It does seem like the plan is to drop CoH so they can use those Servers for Brest and as... I mean Blade and Soul.
I don't think that's the case. My understanding is that the server architecture for COH is very dissimilar to the rest of NCsoft's games. They couldn't be easily repurposed for Aion or B&S.
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I don't think that's the case. My understanding is that the server architecture for COH is very dissimilar to the rest of NCsoft's games. They couldn't be easily repurposed for Aion or B&S.
You are confusing hardware and software. A server is just a computing box. The software for the servers to run CoH is very different from Aion or Boobs and Shame. However, all they have to do is archive the CoH server architecture to a hard drive to save it, wipe the server hard drive, and load new software, and bingo, it has become a Boobs and Shame server.
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You are confusing hardware and software. A server is just a computing box. The software for the servers to run CoH is very different from Aion or Boobs and Shame. However, all they have to do is archive the CoH server architecture to a hard drive to save it, wipe the server hard drive, and load new software, and bingo, it has become a Boobs and Shame server.
No, I'm not confused. The non-COH games run on a dissimilar physical infrastructure than the COH games. All of the NCsoft games are run on architecture unique to each game.
Additionally, NCsoft's migrated most of their non-COH game servers to third parties anyway in the West (Aion/Lineage).
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No, I'm not confused. The non-COH games run on a dissimilar physical infrastructure than the COH games. All of the NCsoft games are run on architecture unique to each game.
Additionally, NCsoft's migrated most of their non-COH game servers to third parties anyway in the West (Aion/Lineage).
You are in fact, confused. If not, perhaps misinformed is a better word. The architecture you speak of has nothing to do with the servers.*
* The lower level code in the server's code base modules may however have architecture dependencies with regard to the platform it was designed for, but for major MMO's in general, as a programmer, this layer is often obscured from the rest of the code in order to prevent dependencies.
For example, MySQL and Oracle are two different database technologies. If I was designing interfaces for other programmers, they shouldn't necessarily have to worry about which database is being used. My interfaces I create are all the same (store(x,y);). All that would be required should a database change occur is a switch for those interfaces to use a different method behind the scenes.
With regard to CoH and other MMO's, the server doesn't (and shouldn't) care what type of CPU's are being used, how much memory there is, or what sort of network infrastructure there is. This is a general statement, of course, in reality if you want to get technical the server would throw a fit or take other courses of action if the OS told it it was out of memory.
Basically, should you care what type of vehical you are in so long as it gets you to point A & B to do your job?
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We'll have to agree to disagree on this, particularly since it's not really germane to the overall discussion.
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You are confusing hardware and software. A server is just a computing box. The software for the servers to run CoH is very different from Aion or Boobs and Shame. However, all they have to do is archive the CoH server architecture to a hard drive to save it, wipe the server hard drive, and load new software, and bingo, it has become a Boobs and Shame server.
This is not exactly true. Servers are not uniform. While low end units use similar hardware to desktops there are ones with radically different hardware that makes the desktop compatible units look like tinker toys. POWER, SPARC, PA-RISC, CELL, you find archetectures here that are completely incompatible with each other.
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Comparatively speaking (to other expenses), servers are dirt cheap, especially since the infrastructure runs on virtual machines. They are, for the most part, a one-off cost that is a fraction of what companies pay in support salaries and such. I really, really believe that repurposing hardware had absolutely zero impact on the decision that NCsoft made. It would be like making a decision to get rid of your car based on your air freshener getting a little stale. We're talking about a few thousands of dollars in projects whose budgets are millions. I'm not saying that it's completely unimportant, but I can pretty much guarantee you that at no time did someone use "...and we can use the infrastructure for City of Heroes on Blade and Soul instead!" as a bullet point to justify killing off a game that was making orders of magnitude more money than that infrastructure costs.
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This is not exactly true. Servers are not uniform. While low end units use similar hardware to desktops there are ones with radically different hardware that makes the desktop compatible units look like tinker toys. POWER, SPARC, PA-RISC, CELL, you find archetectures here that are completely incompatible with each other.
Since most of those are being desupported by just about every major vendor, they're the ones that look like tinker toys. :P
PA-RISC has been dead for years. It was slated to be replaced by Itanium (with HP being the only vendor still using that even), but that's more or less dead in the water due Oracle's announcement that they're pulling Itanium support for all their software. There's a few die-hards still using it, mostly in the US Government, but eventually those systems will be replaced.
SPARC is floundering, despite Oracle being desperate to justify their purchase of Sun and pushing it hard. It's clear they're losing the war to cheaper systems that can be clustered to provide greater performance and comparable reliability.
POWER is probably the only of those still seeing serious development, but you won't find those outside of an extremely high-end OLTP setup in a bank's mainframe, or in Cell/Xenon CPUs on consoles. Even Apple, once the champion of the architecture, has abandoned it.
I'm in the process of migrating a large financial system off PA-RISC onto x86-64 for my day job. Each of our database cluster nodes has 32 cores and 512GB of RAM, hardly what you'd call low-end.
It's possible that B&S or other games use a different architecture for their server farm, but given how commoditized the server market has become, a developer would be foolish to design such a system.
Also, since we have it on pretty good authority that the COH servers are virtualized, they could very likely share the same hardware with Blade & Soul without an issue. The only question is that of available CPU/memory resources, and IOPS on their storage units.
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Since most of those are being desupported by just about every major vendor, they're the ones that look like tinker toys. :P
PA-RISC has been dead for years. It was slated to be replaced by Itanium (with HP being the only vendor still using that even), but that's more or less dead in the water due Oracle's announcement that they're pulling Itanium support for all their software. There's a few die-hards still using it, mostly in the US Government, but eventually those systems will be replaced.
PA-RISC should have been axed instead of Alpha with the HP/Compaq merger, IMHO.
SPARC is floundering, despite Oracle being desperate to justify their purchase of Sun and pushing it hard. It's clear they're losing the war to cheaper systems that can be clustered to provide greater performance and comparable reliability.
Contrary to popular belief, Oracle is not the largest supplier of SPARC machines. Several European and Japanese firms produce them, with the largest vendor of SPARC hardware Fujitsu. Being an open-source platform (several versions of the chips are available under the GPL in fact), there are now more SPARC vendors today than even 5 years ago.
Sun had not been top dog in SPARC since the 90's.
POWER is probably the only of those still seeing serious development, but you won't find those outside of an extremely high-end OLTP setup in a bank's mainframe, or in Cell/Xenon CPUs on consoles. Even Apple, once the champion of the architecture, has abandoned it.
But Microsoft embraced it, and POWER is now at the core of their future development. Ironic. (And Apple never used POWER, they used PowerPC, which was based on a very old form of POWER) Sony has also been migrating to POWER as well, with their CELL architecture.
I'm in the process of migrating a large financial system off PA-RISC onto x86-64 for my day job. Each of our database cluster nodes has 32 cores and 512GB of RAM, hardly what you'd call low-end.
It's possible that B&S or other games use a different architecture for their server farm, but given how commoditized the server market has become, a developer would be foolish to design such a system.
Also, since we have it on pretty good authority that the COH servers are virtualized, they could very likely share the same hardware with Blade & Soul without an issue. The only question is that of available CPU/memory resources, and IOPS on their storage units.
This is quite probable. I was just pointing out that it was not guaranteed to be the same hardware is all.
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PA-RISC should have been axed instead of Alpha with the HP/Compaq merger, IMHO.
I can't say that the end result was necessarily a bad one, though (for everyone except HP anyway). Some of the ex-Alpha team ended up going to AMD and designed the K7, which pioneered many of the fundamentals used by CPUs today. It gave Intel much-needed kick in their complacent butts and the resulting CPU war led to technology improvements coming much faster than they would have otherwise IMO.
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I can't say that the end result was necessarily a bad one, though (for everyone except HP anyway). Some of the ex-Alpha team ended up going to AMD and designed the K7, which pioneered many of the fundamentals used by CPUs today. It gave Intel much-needed kick in their complacent butts and the resulting CPU war led to technology improvements coming much faster than they would have otherwise IMO.
The ex-Alpha team which went to AMD were from the Digital-Compaq merger, not from the Compaq-HP merger. Compaq hired a new team to replace them, and that team eventually went to Intel with the HP-Compaq merger, and the i7 is their baby.
My father worked for Digital, I knew most of the Alpha team.
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Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot about the Compaq acquisition. That was a long time ago...
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Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot about the Compaq acquisition. That was a long time ago...
I could talk for hours about the Alpha, and how Compaq messed it up badly.....
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What didn't Compaq mess up?
I still remember when HP announced they were buying Compaq, thinking what a terrible idea it was.
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Did you know that one of the tricks Digital used to get the Alpha's performance so high is that they tweaked it around the fab machines they used. It was to the point that *only* those fab machines could produce the chip without performance loss.
One of the first thing Compaq did when they took over was sell off those machines.
That's why the Alpha dropped in performance suddenly.
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Do we need to give you two some time alone? :D
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GET A ROOM!
;D
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Hello, I'm Nate, and I'm a Geek.....
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All of the COH servers were owned by NCsoft in their data center in Austin. And most of them were virtual shards, and no longer individual physical shards.
Unless they changed very recently, the servers are located somewhere in the general vicinity of Dallas... or D/FW
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Servers (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Servers) There are fifteen publicly accessible servers and one subscription-only server that run the City of Heroes game. These servers are all physically located in Dallas, Texas, as of November 11th, 2010
I don't believe they were ever moved after that - to anywhere... As for the folks in Austin, to the best of my knowledge/(AFAIK) - That's where the Customer Service, Support, and GM's were located. I'm also fairly certain - they had the ability to access the servers in Dallas - from Austin. (Which, I'm guessing = would explain someone recently mentioning them being *Co-located*, IDK if that's actually the case or not? And. I'm pretty damn sure that they were virtual servers not separate hardware )
Aka, "D/FW" = the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex - is HUGE = meaning they could be in any of several smaller cities, subdivisions, little townships & unincorporated areas that effectively *Got Ate* by the Metroplex over the years! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas%E2%80%93Fort_Worth_metroplex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas%E2%80%93Fort_Worth_metroplex)
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I'm not 100% certain where the info on the wiki page comes from. The last hop on a backbone network is indeed a Level3 Communications NOC in Dallas, however there's several other hops inside the 64.25.32.0 network, which is part of NCSoft's address range. Based on the variance in ping times, it may very well be going over a private link to Austin.
There's also currently a "NOC Administrator - 3rd Shift (http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH05/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=NCSOFT&cws=1&rid=1257)" job opening in Austin that mentions game servers.
Their BGP announce (http://bgptables.merit.edu/assum.php?z=&as=30588) indicates that they're multihomed and are receiving service from TINET (http://www.inteliquent.com/) as well. So if someone in a different part of the country could do a traceroute it might shed some additional light.
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I'm not 100% certain where the info on the wiki page comes from.
There used to be a lot more knowledge base support articles about City, and the one the server page links to (which apparently no longer exists even though City is supported through Nov 30) specifically said the servers were in Austin, after having been consolidated from their CA/VA hosting locations.
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There used to be a lot more knowledge base support articles about City, and the one the server page links to (which apparently no longer exists even though City is supported through Nov 30) specifically said the servers were in Austin, after having been consolidated from their CA/VA hosting locations.
Austin or Dallas? Unfortunately archive.org doesn't seem to have any knowledge of that page.
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Dallas, sorry, LOL
However, I'm almost positive in recent months there have been dev comments about the servers in Austin. Specifically Zwill on livestreams, when talking about updates/maintenances.
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Unless they changed very recently, the servers are located somewhere in the general vicinity of Dallas... or D/FW
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Servers (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Servers)
I don't believe they were ever moved after that - to anywhere... As for the folks in Austin, to the best of my knowledge/(AFAIK) - That's where the Customer Service, Support, and GM's were located. I'm also fairly certain - they had the ability to access the servers in Dallas - from Austin. (Which, I'm guessing = would explain someone recently mentioning them being *Co-located*, IDK if that's actually the case or not? And. I'm pretty damn sure that they were virtual servers not separate hardware )
Aka, "D/FW" = the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex - is HUGE = meaning they could be in any of several smaller cities, subdivisions, little townships & unincorporated areas that effectively *Got Ate* by the Metroplex over the years! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas%E2%80%93Fort_Worth_metroplex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas%E2%80%93Fort_Worth_metroplex)
I live in the area and yeah, the Metroplex is a big place. We also have a lot of colo companies here too. I know a few NOC-monkeys. Whether any of them could shed light on where the servers are IDK. But then, does it really matter?
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D/FW *is* really big in the number of smaller cities included (Richardson and Denton being two I know off-hand).
Austin is just over 200 miles away. Not exactly co-located even if they're in the same state.
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The COH servers are in Austin.
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D/FW *is* really big in the number of smaller cities included (Richardson and Denton being two I know off-hand).
Yeah, several counties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas%E2%80%93Fort_Worth_metroplex#Metroplex_counties) big.
Austin is just over 200 miles away. Not exactly co-located even if they're in the same state.
There's a whole lot of open space between the metroplex and Austin.
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Did you know that one of the tricks Digital used to get the Alpha's performance so high is that they tweaked it around the fab machines they used. It was to the point that *only* those fab machines could produce the chip without performance loss.
One of the first thing Compaq did when they took over was sell off those machines.
That's why the Alpha dropped in performance suddenly.
Why do you think AMD's having so many problems right now?
AMD's architecture isn't quite as "tight" as Intel's. So there's some performance losses.
They got around this with LOTS of manual tweaking in their design process and during fab.
With Bulldozer, they went to an almost completely computer-designed layout.
It helped bring yields up, but their processor efficiency took a DISTINCT nosedive.
Oh yeah. Hi. I'm Chuck. And I'm a huge, flaming geek.