New efforts!

[Tyger42]

While that would be awesome, I'm not getting my hopes up on that... Just having our City back will be more than enough for me

While I don't expect it, I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see Posi pitching in in at least a volunteer community relations capacity.

[Aggelakis]

I don't see Posi volunteering for community relations. He's not good at it, and he doesn't like it. (NOTE: That doesn't mean he doesn't like interacting with the community.) If anybody, I'd easily see Zwilly volunteering a little here or there. Him and CuppaJo were the best CMs the City had.

[PSI-on]

Would be kind of neat if they wanted to take some of their own time, couple of boring weekends or something, to hop in and finish i24, as far as I know it was practically finished, just needed a little player testing and finalizing, that and the powersets that weren't released yet, BUT were in the coding, like bio armor...you know....if they wanted....cause we love them <3

While that would be awesome, I'm not getting my hopes up on that... Just having our City back will be more than enough for me

[LaughingAlex]

While that would be awesome, I'm not getting my hopes up on that... Just having our City back will be more than enough for me

Odds are getting the city back alone may, depending on circumstances, lead to some of them developing the game again.  It really depends though.  If the game was say open sourced after the deal it'd be a possible guarantee, as then they'd be able to work on it on their own time if they wanted.  It really depends though.

[LaughingAlex]

Would be kind of neat if they wanted to take some of their own time, couple of boring weekends or something, to hop in and finish i24, as far as I know it was practically finished, just needed a little player testing and finalizing, that and the powersets that weren't released yet, BUT were in the coding, like bio armor...you know....if they wanted....cause we love them <3

I liked the whole idea of the absorb mechanic.  It's actually my favorite CO effect, in that you had flat damage removal or likewise extra health bars.  Only the mechanics in that game were badly done due to being in FRONT of mitigation layers making them generally suck(PFF was the only one that was fixed).  Besides bio armor we coulda had particle-shields later if they got around to it.

[Nightmarer]

I don't see Posi volunteering for community relations. He's not good at it, and he doesn't like it. (NOTE: That doesn't mean he doesn't like interacting with the community.) If anybody, I'd easily see Zwilly volunteering a little here or there. Him and CuppaJo were the best CMs the City had.

And Bridger, you guys missed a great CM while US/Eu forums were split.-

[JKPhage]

I don't see Posi volunteering for community relations. He's not good at it, and he doesn't like it. (NOTE: That doesn't mean he doesn't like interacting with the community.) If anybody, I'd easily see Zwilly volunteering a little here or there. Him and CuppaJo were the best CMs the City had.

Lighthouse was pretty awesome too, but Zwilly definitely shined the brightest. I miss that man and his coffee talks almost as much as I miss the game. :(

As for some of the team coming back, sadly most of them have moved on to other positions simply to keep food on the table and support themselves, so unless they are offered better pay to come back by whoever manages to purchase the game then I kind of doubt we'll see a massive return of the old team in an official capacity. I can't imagine that they wouldn't be willing to give the new team some pointers if asked, or that they won't return to play the game and participate in the community, but, odds are, if we get any of the team back it will probably be only a small handful of recognizable names to the community with a few who worked and/or preferred to stay behind the scenes and not make themselves known.

Either way, if we get even 5 people from the old team back, I'd be thrilled just because it will mean an experienced set of minds working with the engine so that we won't be starting from complete scratch. I know a lot of people said they'd be content with just i24 getting finished, but honestly, I'd like to see a little further out get done. i24 was going to give us Martial Manipulation and Martial Assault power sets plus the Sorcery power pool, but icon and pigg diving has also revealed plenty of stuff like Wind Control, Savage Melee, Psionic Melee, Radiation Melee AND Armor, and even a set of origin power pools to compliment sorcery that all had some form of modified travel power, so we could select a travel power pool with slightly more useful tools in it, PLUS following from Sorcery, they'd be customizable. That also leads into wanting the rest of the existing power pools to be customizable, and in my mind, I'd like to see some elemental proliferation of the new sets as well. Wind Blast and Assault so we can make a Dominator with a matching secondary, Storm/Wind Defenders/Corruptors, Wind Blasters, etc., some kind of matched Psionic Armor to go with the Melee, probably something similar to super reflexes but with more psionic and energy resistance thrown in, Radiation control and assault, etc. Basically I don't want them to just buy the game, finish polishing the beta issue and be done with it. There was work started on plenty of amazing stuff and I want to see it all finished. Even if the game is eventually going to go into maintenance mode (though I'd hope that whoever buys it, being COH fans, would want to keep developing for it for a while), I want to at least have pool customization, a complete set of all the powers in development, and the ability to customize all possible powers by the time it gets to that point.

That turned into a wall of text unintentionally, so sorry for the slight derailment. Ultimately I hope that we get at least a few people to come back for the new team and get EVERYTHING in the works finished, and then some!

[Thunder Glove]

Existing power pools were going to be fully customizable in I24, not just Sorcery, including "No FX" options for several powers (including Fly, Hover, Combat Jumping, Super Jumping, Hasten, and Tough), as were Epic/Patron Power Pools.

Before the game went down, I remember recoloring every Pool of my Grav/Elec Dominator to match the color of his main powers, and removing that weird "glitterdust" effect around his hands and feet when flying.

I24 was really the "fix everything" update, and it's a tragedy it never went live (let alone all the other cool stuff we'd almost certainly have by now).

[LaughingAlex]

Lighthouse was pretty awesome too, but Zwilly definitely shined the brightest. I miss that man and his coffee talks almost as much as I miss the game. :(

As for some of the team coming back, sadly most of them have moved on to other positions simply to keep food on the table and support themselves, so unless they are offered better pay to come back by whoever manages to purchase the game then I kind of doubt we'll see a massive return of the old team in an official capacity. I can't imagine that they wouldn't be willing to give the new team some pointers if asked, or that they won't return to play the game and participate in the community, but, odds are, if we get any of the team back it will probably be only a small handful of recognizable names to the community with a few who worked and/or preferred to stay behind the scenes and not make themselves known.

Either way, if we get even 5 people from the old team back, I'd be thrilled just because it will mean an experienced set of minds working with the engine so that we won't be starting from complete scratch. I know a lot of people said they'd be content with just i24 getting finished, but honestly, I'd like to see a little further out get done. i24 was going to give us Martial Manipulation and Martial Assault power sets plus the Sorcery power pool, but icon and pigg diving has also revealed plenty of stuff like Wind Control, Savage Melee, Psionic Melee, Radiation Melee AND Armor, and even a set of origin power pools to compliment sorcery that all had some form of modified travel power, so we could select a travel power pool with slightly more useful tools in it, PLUS following from Sorcery, they'd be customizable. That also leads into wanting the rest of the existing power pools to be customizable, and in my mind, I'd like to see some elemental proliferation of the new sets as well. Wind Blast and Assault so we can make a Dominator with a matching secondary, Storm/Wind Defenders/Corruptors, Wind Blasters, etc., some kind of matched Psionic Armor to go with the Melee, probably something similar to super reflexes but with more psionic and energy resistance thrown in, Radiation control and assault, etc. Basically I don't want them to just buy the game, finish polishing the beta issue and be done with it. There was work started on plenty of amazing stuff and I want to see it all finished. Even if the game is eventually going to go into maintenance mode (though I'd hope that whoever buys it, being COH fans, would want to keep developing for it for a while), I want to at least have pool customization, a complete set of all the powers in development, and the ability to customize all possible powers by the time it gets to that point.

That turned into a wall of text unintentionally, so sorry for the slight derailment. Ultimately I hope that we get at least a few people to come back for the new team and get EVERYTHING in the works finished, and then some!

I wholly second that :).  I was really looking forward to power pool customization though, I had already tried out various colors on my characters.  It was something I'd have greatly appreciated.  Even more-so though I was looking forward to the snipe and tier 9 changes.  Sniper powers were going to become USABLE in combat with a high enough to hit rating, it was a change that not only encouraged them to be powers to take but also encourage people to take the highly under-rated leadership: Tactics power, and also gave blasters a reason to touch on devices again, as they'd have the to-hit to use instant sniping.

[LaughingAlex]

Existing power pools were going to be fully customizable in I24, not just Sorcery, including "No FX" options for several powers (including Fly, Hover, Combat Jumping, Super Jumping, Hasten, and Tough), as were Epic/Patron Power Pools.

Before the game went down, I remember recoloring every Pool of my Grav/Elec Dominator to match the color of his main powers, and removing that weird "glitterdust" effect around his hands and feet when flying.

I24 was really the "fix everything" update, and it's a tragedy it never went live (let alone all the other cool stuff we'd almost certainly have by now).

Definently true about I24 and the fix everything.  I mean sniper attacks becoming usable, tier 9s becoming USABLE, duel pistols across the board getting a buff.  Pool powers getting custom colors.  It was going to be one of the best updates to date and its certainly a tragedy it never went live.  Even more a tragedy we were getting so many new things and the game was shut down.  Thats honestly what hurts me the most about CoH's shut down.  Besides just being the light in the darkness that is so many mmorpgs being unholy trinity grindfest clones the game was getting a large breath of fresh air and that was taken from us.

Heck I think honestly CoH's shutdown really just took away the great example of what a true game is for mmorpgs, and I was left with the feeling mmorpgs are going to continue sucking.  The fact that ESO still abides by the unholy trinity, well, I blame CoH's shutdown for that, as those devs never saw what a non trinity model is, they saw GW2 and the "everyone has a heal" not CoH and "Everyone can do something about the damage very differently without healing".

Edit: Nore would they see the fact that CoH got huge updates regularly.  I mean look at some games now, CO for example has not gotten any significant update in YEARS thanks to it's publisher and shoddy developer practices.

Another Edit: Hopefully before anyone says, I do know GW2 your meant to try and focus more on damage mitigation.  I'm looking at what CEOs and other devs see though if they only play for a few short moments.  I'm looking at the easy newbie mistake they make.

[Scendera]

A lot of people were so hurt by the announcement of the closure that they stopped playing. People deal with grief very differently. I just played as I always did and just had fun. Some were completely crushed by the closure and just drifted away.

That's what it was for me...it was foolish, extremely foolish of me and I've regretted it intensely since...if I had it to do all over again I would have dropped everything else and played every spare minute while I had the chance. I was just too crushed...there were a few halfhearted attempts that weren't really any fun at all right after, and one last run to clean up some goals the last day or two before, but that was it.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Definently true about I24 and the fix everything.  I mean sniper attacks becoming usable, tier 9s becoming USABLE, duel pistols across the board getting a buff.  Pool powers getting custom colors.  It was going to be one of the best updates to date and its certainly a tragedy it never went live.  Even more a tragedy we were getting so many new things and the game was shut down.  Thats honestly what hurts me the most about CoH's shut down.  Besides just being the light in the darkness that is so many mmorpgs being unholy trinity grindfest clones the game was getting a large breath of fresh air and that was taken from us.

Heck I think honestly CoH's shutdown really just took away the great example of what a true game is for mmorpgs, and I was left with the feeling mmorpgs are going to continue sucking.  The fact that ESO still abides by the unholy trinity, well, I blame CoH's shutdown for that, as those devs never saw what a non trinity model is, they saw GW2 and the "everyone has a heal" not CoH and "Everyone can do something about the damage very differently without healing".

Edit: Nore would they see the fact that CoH got huge updates regularly.  I mean look at some games now, CO for example has not gotten any significant update in YEARS thanks to it's publisher and shoddy developer practices.

Another Edit: Hopefully before anyone says, I do know GW2 your meant to try and focus more on damage mitigation.  I'm looking at what CEOs and other devs see though if they only play for a few short moments.  I'm looking at the easy newbie mistake they make.

Oddly enough while i was hugely anticipating the changes/upgrades to powers and power pools, and the new pools/powersets that were coming up, one of the things i was most looking forward to was the addition of LUA scripting to the developer toolset, among other engine upgrades. Not that i would have had access to those tools as a player (barring some elements being added to AE), but because of the increased flexibility and speed when creating new missions, encounters, and live events. *sighs* Here's hoping the deal goes through and the new publishers revive and continue the game through i24 and beyond.

[LaughingAlex]

Oddly enough while i was hugely anticipating the changes/upgrades to powers and power pools, and the new pools/powersets that were coming up, one of the things i was most looking forward to was the addition of LUA scripting to the developer toolset, among other engine upgrades. Not that i would have had access to those tools as a player (barring some elements being added to AE), but because of the increased flexibility and speed when creating new missions, encounters, and live events. *sighs* Here's hoping the deal goes through and the new publishers revive and continue the game through i24 and beyond.

Lua scripting?  Oh man I forgot about that entirely, darn my tendency to be a min/maxer at times!

[Noyjitat]

Well not related to this game directly, but still interesting is that I heard from some of the Earth and Beyond team that brought that game back.

It turns out they didn't contact EA at all. They just made the game and started it. EA said a grand total of nothing - they ignored everything that the reverse engineers had done. I would imagine that since they weren't charging for a game that EA had killed and there was no golden goose to sue - EA decided not to waste money suing.

Two SWG projects, precu and nge. Been going on for many years now and no problems.
PreCU http://www.swgemu.com/forums/index.php
Nge http://www.projectswg.com/forum.php

You can login and play in both of them but the nge project still has time to go.

In a few months it will be 2 years without city of heroes and no visible evidence other than Segs that any form of server work is being performed. Can we come out of the shadows with this issue24 team already? If it really exists or not because we need something to put our hope into other than finding someone to give ncsoft millions of dollars to get the game back. Let's go beyond that! The nge project is setup so anyone with the knowledge or the effort wanting to learn can contribute:
https://github.com/ProjectSWGCore/NGECore2
We can't realistically expect to see our game playable again if only a handful of people are recoding it, make it a community effort!

I gotta say that if two SWG projects have made it this long in the US by a IP that is now owned by Disney. Ncsoft isn't going to give a shit about our "little failed game" as they see it. As far as money goes you can view the swgemu donation page which is publicly viewable and see that they get thousands donated each month to keep the server going.

[HEATSTROKE]

 My biggest concerns are

1) having someone on board who understands the Code
2) having someone in place that could possible assist finishing off Issue 24
3) finishing the artwork for Issue 24
4) finishing the Wind Control, Radiation Armor and Radiation Melee powersets (placeholders are on Icon)
5) possible future development....

[JKPhage]

Existing power pools were going to be fully customizable in I24, not just Sorcery, including "No FX" options for several powers (including Fly, Hover, Combat Jumping, Super Jumping, Hasten, and Tough), as were Epic/Patron Power Pools.

Before the game went down, I remember recoloring every Pool of my Grav/Elec Dominator to match the color of his main powers, and removing that weird "glitterdust" effect around his hands and feet when flying.

I24 was really the "fix everything" update, and it's a tragedy it never went live (let alone all the other cool stuff we'd almost certainly have by now).

Ahh, I didn't poke around on Beta too much myself, other than to check out Sorcery. Some of the patron/epics were already customizable but not fully. I know for a fact because I customized my Leviathan mastery on my current main so he'd have a blue waterspout and matching sharks. The fact that they were planning to give us all that which we'd been wanting for so long is just a further kick in the teeth. I know I'd have loved to have brightly colored effects for travel powers (or none at all) and various side powers. Leadership especially would have been nice with minimal effects so your head wasn't always glowing like a christmas tree.

The upshot is that if the game is aquired, a huge amount of the work is already done, it just needs a pit of polish and it's done, and if the unreleased powersets are as far along as I'd imagine then hopefully they could have the final FX work done and be released as well. I get the feeling Psi Melee might have been only partially done animation-wise from the previews in Icon, but ya never know. Either way, I'm just waiting to see when we get our city back and I'll worry about the rest later. From what Ironwolf has said, these are people who played the game and were passionate enough about it that they want to purchase and revive it, so I can't imagine that they wouldn't want to see the same things that we're all clamoring for, it's just a matter of whether they intend to take it further than that and continue development for the game, or if they're going to be working on a sequel game, perhaps even both! Time will tell, but in the mean time I'm getting plenty excited just knowing that soon enough I'll be back home in Paragon with the rest of you heroes/villains.

[PSI-on]

Definently true about I24 and the fix everything.  I mean sniper attacks becoming usable, tier 9s becoming USABLE, duel pistols across the board getting a buff.  Pool powers getting custom colors.  It was going to be one of the best updates to date and its certainly a tragedy it never went live.  Even more a tragedy we were getting so many new things and the game was shut down.  Thats honestly what hurts me the most about CoH's shut down.  Besides just being the light in the darkness that is so many mmorpgs being unholy trinity grindfest clones the game was getting a large breath of fresh air and that was taken from us.

Heck I think honestly CoH's shutdown really just took away the great example of what a true game is for mmorpgs, and I was left with the feeling mmorpgs are going to continue sucking.  The fact that ESO still abides by the unholy trinity, well, I blame CoH's shutdown for that, as those devs never saw what a non trinity model is, they saw GW2 and the "everyone has a heal" not CoH and "Everyone can do something about the damage very differently without healing".

Edit: Nore would they see the fact that CoH got huge updates regularly.  I mean look at some games now, CO for example has not gotten any significant update in YEARS thanks to it's publisher and shoddy developer practices.

Another Edit: Hopefully before anyone says, I do know GW2 your meant to try and focus more on damage mitigation.  I'm looking at what CEOs and other devs see though if they only play for a few short moments.  I'm looking at the easy newbie mistake they make.

Sorry ya'll, I knew about the change to snipes, changing the looks of power pools, those two new power sets, and another big TF revolving around their version of Hero One which as I recall was supposed to bring the Preatorian story to an end, but what were they going to do to Tier 9's and Dual Pistols? Feel free to just PM this to me if you don't wanna bother everyone else here with it.

[LaughingAlex]

Sorry ya'll, I knew about the change to snipes, changing the looks of power pools, those two new power sets, and another big TF revolving around their version of Hero One which as I recall was supposed to bring the Preatorian story to an end, but what were they going to do to Tier 9's and Dual Pistols? Feel free to just PM this to me if you don't wanna bother everyone else here with it.

Tier 9 blasts were going to lose 20% of there damage....in exchange for lower cooldowns and a removal of the endurance crash.  In other words, the dps was going to be higher and they were no longer going to be obsolete around judgement attacks.  Duel pistols were getting an animation speed increase across ALL powers.

[Goddangit]

I was never a Power User and while I find the discussion of the subtleties of different powers interesting, like my namesake, most of it is lost on me.  What power sets look interesting for building my character or may inspire me to make a character based on that power set -- that's the sort of direction I came at it from.  Yet, I'll tend to shy away from the powers that fit my concept but were functionally useless or weak in play, but I tended toward "role-play" at least in my construction.  I disdained the post 50 content for a long time because of that.  My guy's origins were well-rounded and had nothing to do with a well.  But I relented and played some of it.  Yeah, I could have gone farther and studied the nuts and bolts and made my 50s as strong as I could.  I guess thats never what I was after.  Yeah, I wanted a guy strong enough to smash opponents in missions, but making a detailed study of the systems to squeak out every last hit point was just beyond me.  Hey, if you have the patience for that and want to do it -- more power to you.  I logged in for fun and didn't want to think too hard -- just enjoy the content and crush NPCs.

And so the I-24 and beyond content I miss not having?  Private bases.  The batcave, the fortress of solitude...  I want to be able to use influence to "buy" and customize a private secret hideout.  Especially if I can decorate it with mementos of past adventures.

edit: You know what would have been cool for post 50 content?  Have a mission or set of missions or accolade you reach or something to have them erect a statue of you.  Yeah, it would doubtless have to be restricted to your "world view", but I'd get a kick out of that.  :)

[r00tb0ySlim]

So E3 2014 is fast approaching and it would make sense that any CoH relaunch announcement would occur there.  It appears that plans with NCSoft are in process and won't be finalized (if at all) before E3 2014, so with that being said if this plan eventually goes through does a relaunch announcement wait until E3 2015 to take advantage of the exposure or do they relaunch "when ready"?  This is assuming that "they" are an existing company that registers yearly for E3 and has a marketing budget.  Just curious what you all think.  I believe that a CoH relaunch announcement would be a pretty big deal warranting some pomp & circumstance on the big stage, but I would hate to wait until after E3 2015  >:(