New efforts!

[Ohioknight]

WAY less creepy than that guy I put on ignore. :)

That may be one of the nicest things anybody's said about me recently :'(

[Ohioknight]

The Dev wasn't looking for a job - he wanted to give a little background on how the game was administered and other stuff from what I was made aware of the conversation.

I don't think it would violate any promise to say that it was Dark Watcher. He didn't ask me to keep it secret or anything.

So while we're waiting developments, are there any "more friends than you would imagine" you can reveal without compromising anybody or anything? (Elon Musk?, David Letterman?, that guy from "Duck Dynasty"?)   

I figure not all of them are actually affiliated with the new studio effort.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

This should be something the community should help you with.   I remember early in the game feeling a lot of frustration over that one until this awesome Tanker offered to help me and my brothers get through it.   Can't remember feeling that much joy over an accomplishment.   :)

Once the game comes back (yeah I said "once"), make a thread and I'll bet you'll get a load of volunteers to help.

i was lucky with the early respec trials. i had made friends with some really good players, followed the forums closely, and my main was a FF/Rad when the trial premiered. Force Field Defenders were almost essential to running it easily back before ED and the Respec Trial being scaled back. i ran it at least a dozen times in the first couple of months. Of course it was stupidly hard if you were playing a badly built hero who really needed to finish the trial, which was something i and others repeatedly pointed out in the forums. Most of the people i played with were the sort who would always try to bring along a couple heroes who really needed to respec; usually some of the random people shouting for help with doing it.

In later days (post easing of difficulty and the addition of IOs) the trial became almost a snooze-fest. The team would wander around the reactor telling jokes and doing stupid hero tricks; enemies would spawn; we would slaughter them and go back to telling dumb jokes while waiting. Especially with my Traps/Dark Defender. i would spend my time between waves seeing how many Trip Mines, Acid Mortars, and Poison Traps i could surround the core with and then watch the glorious carnage as mobs would charge into the traps. The Sky Raiders respec was one of the funniest because Porters would teleport in next to the core and go cartwheeling away in a massive explosion as mortars went *PHOONT* and clouds of gas erupted all around the core. Those were fun times.  ;D

In any event, if/when the game returns i'll be more than happy to run TFs, SFs, and Trials with anyone who wants to do them. Any of them, even the Shadow Shard series.

[LaughingAlex]

So while we're waiting developments, are there any "more friends than you would imagine" you can reveal without compromising anybody or anything? (Elon Musk?, David Letterman?, that guy from "Duck Dynasty"?)   

I figure not all of them are actually affiliated with the new studio effort.

I wouldn't think those three would have anything to do with the effort :).  I heard Rick Ashley though was a CoX player.

[Thirty-Seven]

When I ran Respec Trials heroside, I'd always initiate a game of 20 questions with the team.  Winner got to pick the item next, usually it was stuff to do with CoH, once I picked a small purple inspiration... no one even got close!

[gypsyav]

When I ran Respec Trials heroside, I'd always initiate a game of 20 questions with the team.  Winner got to pick the item next, usually it was stuff to do with CoH, once I picked a small purple inspiration... no one even got close!

I was going to type something witty but for the life of me can't remember what they were called and feel it would be cheating to look it up.

[P51mus]

Those "star ratings" were kinda cool.   I usually gave out high ratings for various people I PuG'ed with who were really good.   Was cool to be doing something in the game and see my "stars" go by.   Gave out a few "1" to people who complained a lot or quit in the middle of a TF or something.

I gave 3 stars to everyone I teamed with that I couldn't notice anything terrible or exceptional about, 4/5 stars for exceptional people, 2 stars for a little derpy but can be dealt with (IE: treat with caution), 1 star for "a rock would be a better use of a team spot".  1 star took either an exceptionally bad attitude and/or being able to doom the entire team by themself, somehow.  Very rare.

Can't quite remember what I used the 0 star rating for.  None of the 0 star ratings in my file have any comments attached, so that's probably where I put people who spammed chat with PL requests.

If you still have your CoH folder, there's a folder with the label of your account name. In it is a playernotes.txt which is where all the ratings were stored.

[Gamerchamp]

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.

Nicely done thank you very much for the timeline Ironwolf it sure is helpful.

[Remaugen]

Its not likely and probably not wanted by anybody involved but in my dreamworld CoH and CoT someday merge to form CoH2 with a solid modern engine, a massive pile of costume parts, and two big cities to run around in. :)

The other day I was thinking of this very thing as I went to sleep, in a half dreaming state I envisioned the two games working together to port characters back and forth with shared content and servers. The concept has very strong appeal, perhaps we might even have CoX access to CoT while CoH2 comes online. What wonderful dreams! Of course it is just that, really no reason at all for such a thing to happen.

I missed a few days on the forums and suddenly find almost sixty pages to slog through to catch up, this thread is on fire!


Are we there yet?   ;D

[primeknight]

Yep.

If Freedom and Virtue were "downtown", we were more like the suburbs over on Liberty... Enough people to get things going (and have an absolute blast doing it-), but never SO many players that it felt over-crowded. I also played on Virtue and Union, but Liberty was my favorite.

Like PK, my mains were there and many of my friends were there. It was always my "home base" no matter what I decided to build elsewhere.

Dude, where do I know you from?!  Wherever/whenever it was obviously it's been too long for my poor memory to handle.  It's awesome to see another fellow Liberty player again :)

I'm putting together a Ritki raid for day one (assuming we get our characters back)  I hope you can make it! :)

[primeknight]

I was a Libertine as well! I played generally from 10 PM to 2 AM on weekedays and Sunday afternoons! @MWRuger was my global.

Ha, I've been reading your posts for months and had no clue you were on Liberty.  I was a Saturday player the last few years.  And years before that I was on most evenings.  But if I was up from 10 - 2, I was going to have a tired day at work. 

Depending on the state of the game I sense a new Liberty Supergroup on the horizon.

[Thirty-Seven]

I was going to type something witty but for the life of me can't remember what they were called and feel it would be cheating to look it up.

They were called Luck... but I would have accepted "small purple" or the like.  IIRC they didn't even get in the ballpark.

[PSI-on]

It was a title.  A couple guys in beta sported it, the aforementioned griefers.  Earned by being punked by Statesman :)

ROFL, I started to think that title sounded familur, discovered it was the name of a badge I had and BAM, at the bottom it referenced the title with you quoted from THIS very forum and linked too. We helped add something new to the wiki, that's so awesome <3

[Aggelakis]

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=imagizer.imageshack.us%2Fa%2Fimg7%2F4703%2Fmodhat2.jpg

You guys managed to post 17 pages while I was at work. A large majority of that was CO-related, *after* I posted my previous request. This is just a reminder to keep the CO talk to our dedicated subforum or to the official CO forum or ... well ... at the very least, not this thread. I'm not pruning this thread as yet, but I will if I have to. Please be courteous of your mods. I don't want to have to click a zillion buttons and send a zillion finger-shake shaming PMs.

I know it's hard. There's a lot of similarities and a TON of differences and everyone likes to discuss all that. But we've got dedicated space for it. :) Please leave it there!

[ike]

could Ironwolf or someone inquire the guys attempting to buy the game, if things go down and we get it, to maybe open up community development?
I've been making a lot of TF2 stuff lately and it would be absolutely fantastic if community members like myself could get a chance to make things like costume parts. if you guys would like them, maybe they would end up in game.
just a thought.

[Minotaur]

I only ever put one person on ignore that wasn't a spammer. That was a guy who kept trying to pick up my character (and my character wasn't even dressed provocatively). He was the type who if I had an ignore button in real life and he was trying to pick me up I'd have used it.

My funniest pickup moment was when a couple of junior rednecks in appropriately macho costumes accosted my male toon in pastel pink/blue bike leathers and said "you'll never get any girls with a costume like that". I decided to have some fun with them and indicated that maybe it wasn't girls I was trying to pick up and they ran a mile.

[Des_Tructive]

So while we're waiting developments, are there any "more friends than you would imagine" you can reveal without compromising anybody or anything? (Elon Musk?, David Letterman?, that guy from "Duck Dynasty"?)   

I figure not all of them are actually affiliated with the new studio effort.

That... is a very interesting question.

[SpectaPhantom]

I would imagine it wouldn't open up to the community like that. I could be wrong though. I would think that would be neat though.

I am against addons in CoH though. I know that's not what you had in mind but reminded me of them. They tend to make games undesirable after only a short period of time.

[FloatingFatMan]

I am against addons in CoH though. I know that's not what you had in mind but reminded me of them. They tend to make games undesirable after only a short period of time.

The only one I can think of that would be of any use would be something that reads a MID's build to help respeccing go a bit faster... Gawd that was a painful process that I avoided like the plague!

[Serpine]

The only one I can think of that would be of any use would be something that reads a MID's build to help respeccing go a bit faster... Gawd that was a painful process that I avoided like the plague!

Ideally something like that wouldn't be an add-on but a new feature: The ability to save and load (for respect) build in a nice general format that MID's or other similar programs could be then modified to support, right from the powers screen.