New efforts!

[Risha]

Well you can look at it slightly differently - it isn't a yes or no that we are looking for right now, we are already given a tentitive yes, or the talks would be over. What is happening is the yes, but we want to see this.........on both sides. If you think about it - if NCSoft was not interested in selling it - then the talks would not have gone through to conditions of sale. It would not be sitting in the hands of the last guy working out the final conditions. Personally I am extremely impressed that this has been moving forward this quickly.

The bold comments are direct communications from the team. I have edited them slightly to remove names and such.

Timeline:
March 6 - I get the information and start working on a way to possibly open source CoH.
March 12 - got letter back from Chris Chung - it showed that is WAS possible to buy the game.
March 13 - the team makes its first contact with me and says this: You are an evil, evil man. I'd given up hope after learning of the tax issue. Now here I am now grinning from ear to ear. Likely going to lead to heartbreak, but damned the torpedos. Full speed ahead.
March 21 - Honestly, we had given up hope. Now, you've given us hope, so we're discussing it.
March 28 - We have been reaching out and putting the proposal together. The concern has been the "Golden Handcuffs" option, being shackled to NCSoft again and having the sword of damocles once again hanging over our heads but this time knowing it is there.
April 5 - Made some headway. Now we know who we need to talk to, and a general idea of price. It is very doable.
April 16 - At the end we'll announce it one way or the other. For now it is just this silly business dance in order to reach [Redacted contact] :)
April 18 - Second studio expresses interest in the game
April 21 - investor expresses interest and is passed to the team
May 1 - third studio expresses interest in the game.
May 21 - I ask how the talks are going and if they are making the team jump through hoops: Stupid. Stupid amounts of hoops, as far as I know. I swear, I have no idea how these guys order milk in the morning.
June 19 - Slow but not dead. Oh god no they are not approachable.
Not a big deal, we were focusing on August anyhow.
June 24 - former paragon Dev contacts me and is forwarded to the team
July 3 - Yesterday, we were directed to the man whose signature is needed.
July 3 - after MY reading WAAAY too much into the first message - Er... we're not days away from anything. We're just now in direct contact, which means we're past another hurdle. We still have at least two months of negotiations left ahead of us, at best. This is where the monsters truly do lie.
July 7 - another investor/studio contacts me and is forwarded to the team


That is the basic timeline. I have had people asking for jobs - a contact from a game site and other questions and such but this is the nuts and bolts of what has happened. I have also been able to read into the situation more because of comments on the board (not just in this thread) from members of the team, even before the purchase effort - what they would like to see from the game. This makes it pretty easy for me to see what kind of people they were and what they want. I don't have a further update but this might help tie you over for a while as to what is happening and to understand in business circles - this is incredibly fast.

Wow.  Just wow.  Thank you SO much, Ironwolf.

[Karonax]

Also it would just be weird to have multiple PVP rulesets (its annoying enough splitting the PVP and PVE rulesets as it is). Since the I13 revisions apparently failed to bring more non-PVPers in, and seems almost universally reviled by the PVP community that was there, personally I'd say pushing for them to be reversed in general would be the wisest approach.

I would be 100% okay with this. <3

[Samuraiko]

You have given me an idea for a new alt, CC...a stalker named Blown Capacitor.  She will be the bane of geeks everywhere, be super-slim (no bulging sides or bottoms here, thank you!), super-sneaky, and will hide out in motherboards and LCD monitors.

Edited to add: Her arch-nemesis will be the Multimeter.

Beware, then, the controller you might meet in your travels, the walking techbane, Paragon City's own Pauli effect...

Cluster Flux.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

[energizingion]

Hi Ion. At least one will be playing, and I'll probably bring in my brother again, and now wife (and soon the kids will be allowed to play).

The way I look at it, it will be less of a soloing game for me and more of a family activity rather than all watching something on TV in the evening. More constructive, better for learning to communicate, learning teamwork, etc. I'll definitely have less time to play, not that I played all that much back with the Legion, but I'll definitely make sure to get some playing in to play with She Who Must Be Obeyed and the Progeny Units.

You're married and have kids now?!?  Good grief man!  Making me feel even that much more lonely! hahaha

Nice to see (hear from) you! :)


*waves to Benchy too*

[mrultimate]

Beware, then, the controller you might meet in your travels, the walking techbane, Paragon City's own Pauli effect...

Cluster Flux.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

O.o

[Husk]

If and when the game restarts (prays to random deity) will it be sold as a digital pack,off the shelf or a free download to which you then subscribe?
If they are gonna lump everything together (CoH,cov,going rogue) then perhaps it could be named the Ironwolf edition with a free wolfcloak.
God I don't think I can wait till August lol need mwoar news.....just the thought of logging in and firing up my plant/kin makes me not want to play any of my current games lol.

[FloatingFatMan]

Also it would just be weird to have multiple PVP rulesets (its annoying enough splitting the PVP and PVE rulesets as it is). Since the I13 revisions apparently failed to bring more non-PVPers in, and seems almost universally reviled by the PVP community that was there, personally I'd say pushing for them to be reversed in general would be the wisest approach.

With many of the devtools apparently missing and not even being sure of the source code is there, this just ain't gonna happen.

[OzonePrime]

Beware, then, the controller you might meet in your travels, the walking techbane, Paragon City's own Pauli effect...

Cluster Flux. (too funny!)

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

[MWRuger]

Right near the end I was experimenting with a character resulting from spamming the random button: It seemed every 5th click one evening for some reason was producing something with a cow head and that one energy tail (phoenix or something) in a sickly color. Thus "Flatulent Cow" was born...
Its a weird area and probably more about presentation. I've seen apparently valid kickstarters for what amounts to added content to an in-development game, finishing one in development hell, and expanding to another platform. So you can't apparently raise money to buy it (and the buyout investors already appear to have that covered), but you could probably raise money that way to "finish" it and prep it for relaunch. So for instance it might be possible to have a kickstarter to partially cover:
* Infrastructure (servers, machines / software for development).
* Development / revisions of account system and storefront (the latter needed some serious revision, and if I recall correctly was at least partially out of house).
* Recreation of missing tools for editing the existing environment / codebase.
* Revisions to existing environment / codebase to complete I24 for release.
* Practically anything involving creation / migration to a CoH2. :)

I'm content to let them worry about funding. Buying a closed MMO is pretty simple compared to arranging funding. The process is labyrinthine and still basically boils down to knowing a guy.

Frankly, if I was NCSoft I wouldn't trust a buyer that planned to rely on crowd sourcing for funding ongoing expenses. I suspect that they have, in addition to the potential price, probably budgeted and obtained working capital for the first year at least. If they are smart and lucky, two years.

[Serpine]

Frankly, if I was NCSoft I wouldn't trust a buyer that planned to rely on crowd sourcing for funding ongoing expenses.

I wasn't saying that I think they should use kickstarter, just that within certain parameters that they probably could. :)

[Ironwolf]

For something completely different here I am with 5 of my brother household members from 3 weeks ago:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10152528223044084&set=t.100000561503785&type=3&theater

I am the guy in the middle with the polearm!

[AlienOne]

For something completely different here I am with 5 of my brother household members from 3 weeks ago:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10152528223044084&set=t.100000561503785&type=3&theater

I am the guy in the middle with the polearm!

Says "this content is currently unavailable"....

Probably either because:

1. It's marked "private"
or
2. The number of people going to see it right now are crashing Facebook's servers

[Nitekilla]

....and CO will become a ghost town once more, on the day Open Beta starts.  ;D

Which is why the owners of CO should have bought out CoH.  Tha would have been the smart business move IMHO.

[Goddangit]

Yes, 4 months.

It feels so much longer! I may write up all the other stuff at some point and hand it over to the MMO site that contacted me to post as an article on how other gamers could work to restore their games. I thought building the timeline might help you all and also posting some direct contact messages/emails so you could see what was being done. There is more but I edited them out for now for brevities sake.

You can see why I am very confident that it will happen either now or at least very soon (TM).

I think you have the makings of a book here.  I know I'd buy it and read it.  I sure hope it has a happy ending.  I like happy endings.

[Mindscythe]

Beware, then, the controller you might meet in your travels, the walking techbane, Paragon City's own Pauli effect...

Cluster Flux.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Too funny! *applauds* Nicely done. :)

[Ironwolf]

I will repost the picture once I get home!

It wasn't posted by me - I thought it was an open site.

[Eskreema]

I just wanted to say good luck, we're all counting on you

FPARN1!!!

[CrimsonCapacitor]

Beware, then, the controller you might meet in your travels, the walking techbane, Paragon City's own Pauli effect...

Cluster Flux.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I had started a cadre of themed toons...  Obviously, I am a huge fan of The Flash, and my namesake toon is an homage to him.  My main villain was Cadmium Capacitor, the Praetorian Zoom/Thawne to CC's Flash, as it were.  He was yellow.

Then came Cerulean Capacitor, my Invuln/elec tank.  He was blue. 

After that, it was going to be:  Carnation Capacitor:  Pink and a plant troller of some sort.
Celadon Capacitor - Green, possibly a Defender

And then... others.

[Without_Pause]

Now I'm curious which Dev...... :o

While Positron or War Witch seem obvious, I think somebody in lore would be key.

[mrultimate]

I had started a cadre of themed toons...  Obviously, I am a huge fan of The Flash, and my namesake toon is an homage to him.  My main villain was Cadmium Capacitor, the Praetorian Zoom/Thawne to CC's Flash, as it were.  He was yellow.

Then came Cerulean Capacitor, my Invuln/elec tank.  He was blue. 

After that, it was going to be:  Carnation Capacitor:  Pink and a plant troller of some sort.
Celadon Capacitor - Green, possibly a Defender

And then... others.

All this talk of capacitors reminds me  of the year and a half I worked in a electric motor shop many moons ago.