New efforts!

[ukaserex]

I wouldn't say it's the wasd's position that people admire, but the overall flexibility and movement of the mouse/keyboard on the whole.  It's a true sum of it's parts thing.  Mouse for turning/aiming/camera gives you perfect precision to properly aim or see everything your character should be able to see.  The ws for forward/backpedaling in conjunction with the mouse gives you a good ability to move, but being able to also strafe left/right with the a and d keys combined with the mouse also enables you to in games with projectiles dodge them.  Additionally, it gives you the ability to peak around corners far better and see dangers ahead without exposing yourself or minimizing exposure time.

All to often i'd see players blunder into a mob in CoX that I knew was there far in advance, simply because they still used the primitive, and vastly inferior, forward, backward, turn left, turn right control scheme.  They could not see the danger UNTIL THEY WENT AROUND THE CORNER AND WERE BEING ATTACKED.  A person strafing to the corner however, can see and react far more quickly than someone who does not see them fast enough.  And strafing is easiest when your control scheme supports it and aiming/turning at the same time.

I do see the logic of using esdf in city of, though, to for more buttons.  But I didn't really need it when I played, as I hybridized the numbers/letters near the wasd for my controls.

I still don't have enough sleep, but I think it was ...who was it...it was in game, and I think it was someone in the Sisterhood SG that shared the increased effectiveness as the reason why WASD was better than the arrows.

But, when you've logged literally 1000's of hours using the arrows, the fingers rebel at considering WASD as an alternative. (And I would just stop before going around the corner and then pan around to see it - unless I had Steath and SS going.

[Kaos Arcanna]

So I finally had one of those "City of Heroes comes back" dreams.

It was pretty cool.

Some guy had figured out to get the full game running again, and had even managed to spruce up the character creator. You had the option to play as a human or a demon dog (probably influenced by the fact that I had been playing Doom 3 in preparation for the new one being released soon) or have a demon dog sidekick. The cool thing was that the demon dog sidekick could have his own costume.  ;D

It wasn't going to be cheap. He was charging us $40.00 a month to play, and everyone thought that it was going to be a short term fix because it was only going to be a matter of time before NcSoft shut it down.

But I got to play a Fire/Fire Dominator in my dream for a bit so it was nice while it lasted.  ;D

[TimtheEnchanter]

Not sure if serious.

Are there really that many programmers who aren't touch typists? I can't imagine working in a profession that has you typing that much and not picking it up that ability involuntarily, even if you weren't trying to learn it.

I've heard the same thing numerous times. I think the problem is, a lot of us first experienced keyboards through a computer, not a typewriter. Typewriters have one specific purpose, producing text really fast. And there's the touch-typing system devised to optimize that. But most of us who got involved in computers were not typists, so we learned to operate them, and later on, code, before we learned to type properly. Ever more likely for anyone who first got their start with a text-based operating system.

It's possible to break that habit and learn touch-typing, but after a decade or more, it's VERY hard. I've tried it a couple of times and always end up leaning back into hen-pecking. These days for me it has sort of evolved into a hybrid of the two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hShY6xZWVGE

[Azrael]

I can touch type.  Used it for my thesis on heroes.  ;)

It's very liberating.  Not having to look at the keyboard and all.  I can remember the fff/jjj drills like it was yesterday...

ASDW.  The way to go for me.  R for follow target.  Tab for nearest target.  ?/ for auto run/fly.

Azrael.

[Arcana]

Not sure if serious.

Are there really that many programmers who aren't touch typists? I can't imagine working in a profession that has you typing that much and not picking it up that ability involuntarily, even if you weren't trying to learn it.

The vast majority of all IT people I know are not classical touch typists.  Which is to say, while many of them can type without looking at the keyboard and hunting and pecking, they do not use all their fingers, use the backspace key a lot, and glance down at the keyboard at least periodically, and in this context most importantly in particular have no real sense of "home".

To be honest, even I am not a classic touch typist in that over 75% of the time I'm using only four fingers to type (the index and middle fingers of both hands) except for banging on the space bar with my thumb.  And while I can type in the dark, it does slow me down somewhat.

[pinballdave]

That's more true than you might realize if you came into the game in the middle of its life.

<snip>

Plus, Paragon City was a dangerous place. Sure, the players couldn't really die or even be hurt, but the people we were tasked with helping or rescuing frequently ended up being worse for the wear as a result. The players were not gods (even if some of them, by their own backstory, were, heh).

<snip>

Dangerous indeed! Imagine my poor defender trying to figure out what that giant mushroom was doing in Steel Canyon. That was the day I learned about ambushes and the need to clean up your messes so a level 30+ fungoid doesn't wipe out each and every noob under level 20 wanting to know what it was doing. If that doesn't grab you, the first invasion of the Rularuu from the Shadow Shard certainly got the lowbies attention in Atlas Park.

[Codewalker]

The vast majority of all IT people I know are not classical touch typists.

That was my next question. There's touch typing, and then there's touch typing.

I'd probably be in that group, too, as my style is definitely not the classically taught method. It's closer to a hybrid style and is much more dynamic.

I don't follow rigid rules (this key must always be pressed with this finger), but I do use all 5 fingers on both hands, only rarely use backspace, and never look at the keyboard.

While at rest my hands are generally in a position close to the traditional home position, though I tend to rest halfway between keys in order to have more options available with less movement. While typing, however they wander all over the keyboard, using whichever finger is closest to the letter I want. I often cross sides, using my left index finger to type y in some cases, or my right to type t, depending on the situation. It's very dynamic and the patterns adapt to be more efficient depending on the content that I'm typing. However, I use that style because it works well for me, and I can type with high speed and high accuracy.

I'm sure there are some highly trained classical typists who can outperform me, but for raw wpm and accuracy I could give all but the most dedicated a run for their money.

I did actually start to take typing classes when I was younger, but it did not take long before I rejected the methods out of hand as rigid and inflexible, went back to my own style, and proceeded to break the class record.

I suspect that most self-taught typists use similar intuitive methods, possibly with a variance on accuracy. The muscle memory is almost like its own language in that some words use the fingers differently than others.

[Sinistar]

So I finally had one of those "City of Heroes comes back" dreams.

It was pretty cool.

Some guy had figured out to get the full game running again, and had even managed to spruce up the character creator. You had the option to play as a human or a demon dog (probably influenced by the fact that I had been playing Doom 3 in preparation for the new one being released soon) or have a demon dog sidekick. The cool thing was that the demon dog sidekick could have his own costume.  ;D

It wasn't going to be cheap. He was charging us $40.00 a month to play, and everyone thought that it was going to be a short term fix because it was only going to be a matter of time before NcSoft shut it down.

But I got to play a Fire/Fire Dominator in my dream for a bit so it was nice while it lasted.  ;D

Had one last week where I played a CoH comeback video at a comic con with many ex-COH players in the audience. The video highlighted the features of the game to refresh their memories as well as inform new players as well as some new features including a new temp/perma/accolade style power that one could get that allows one to transform into a giant monster.   I changed into KRONOS TITAN to face Eocahi and Jack at the same time in Croatoa. 

The response from everyone in the crowd: SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

[Tahquitz]

I'm in the Peter Jennings camp.  When typing, the only two fingers that exist on each hand is my index and middle fingers, the other two hang over the keys like tentacles.  Right thumb for space, left thumb for chord keys on the left.

I don't look at the keyboard most times.  I make mistakes, but correct them by feel, not by looking at the keys.

[Tubbius]

PPPS.    Before the game shutdown.  The servers had become a relative ghost town post the 'announcement.'

But I feel there's a core of CoH players who were there at the end...and those that never got the chance would be a surprising number to get the community back on the map.

It starts with stuff like Icon.  Paragon Chat.  It was always going to be a long process to get the game back.  It will take time to rebuild the community.

I would suggest that one reason the servers became "a relative ghost town" at the end is this: people felt as if their efforts to play, to get one more hero to 50, or what-not were simply going to go to waste with an impending deadline.  I know that hit me pretty hard for some time before I kicked things back into gear near the end.

[Lilith]

That's more true than you might realize if you came into the game in the middle of its life.

When the game first launched, you actually got penalized for playing missions over street sweeping. Despite the fact that Cryptic had created this extraordinarily deep back story and lore for Paragon City, the devs at the beginning were very much stuck in the Holy Trinity, "Everyone should level up by killing stuff" mindset that  came from years of Everquest being the 500-pound gorilla of the MMORPG hobby (before WoW showed up and became the five-ton gorilla).

Story missions  took more time, generated less XP per minute, and gave you a miniscule completion bonus that was almost insulting; it was like the XP of three minions. Cryptic was afraid that if missions were too rewarding, that people wouldn't fight crime in the streets and team up together or something, so they made missions so unattractive as potential exploit material that hardly anyone ran them. The story was supposed to be its own reward. They expected people to do the Everquest thing of shouting "Camp at Orc 2 needs Healer!" except that it would be groups in Perez Park or some other challenge zone.

Then they acted surprised when street sweepers were exploiting perching, herding of a hundred enemies into dumpsters, and tanks that were virtually indestructable to rake in thousands of XP at once.

Sometimes, it seemed as if the game succeeded in spite of the devs.

For me, what grabbed me was the stories. The thing the early game did really well was give a new player a sense of being part of something bigger, while settling to make a name for oneself. I never bought into that whole "Statesman is more powerful than I'll ever be? Wah, wah! My ego is bruised!"  crap. My heroes never cared about being the number one hero in the city, as long as they were doing their thing as one hero in a city of heroes.

Plus, Paragon City was a dangerous place. Sure, the players couldn't really die or even be hurt, but the people we were tasked with helping or rescuing frequently ended up being worse for the wear as a result. The players were not gods (even if some of them, by their own backstory, were, heh). I never had a problem with Jack Emmert, personally, and I liked Matt Miller just fine after Cryptic departed, but the one decision Matt made that I really disagreed with was that the Paragon Studios was going to treat every player as if he was the most important person in the game. (WoW has taken much the same approach to escalating player levels in the most recent expansions.) We were already all larger than life unless we deliberately chose otherwise. The game was more interesting when it did NOT cater to the ego of the players, IMO.

Matt's other legacy, for better or worse, was that the lore became malleable. If a dev wanted to tell a story and the lore restricted him, the lore lost. I can understand why they made those decisions but as a player it rankled. Then there was all of the contradictory lore and the fact that some facts as basic as Ms. Liberty's name or the question of who founded Freedom Corp, and why, didn't have clear answers. (I like to imagine that I gave Sean Fish the idea to give Ms. Liberty BOTH names as first and middle, but realistically it was an obvious thing to do, heh.)

Paragon Studios did a lot of things right, but they did a lot of things where the game succeeded despite them as much as because of them.

Still - City of Heroes has a devoted, if dwindling, fan base to this day. Paragon Studios/Cryptic innovated regularly, and much of their game design is unique even by today's standards. Sidekicking, divorcing of loot and gear, "real number" evaluation of power performance, travel powers, the architect, the multiple reward systems that mostly all worked despite there being a half-dozen currencies as a result. It was a unique gameplay experience; one that I think is unlikely to ever be truly reproduced again.

The thing that most attracts me to games is their stories, as a schoolgirl I remember very well how I would NOT give my brother back his starcraft CD because I wanted to finish it :) Even though the game itself was quite repetitive and I ended up using the cheats to speed it up, I stuck with it because the story - and the voiceacting - was amazing, better than stuff on TV and as good as most books. I wanted to be Kerrigan. :)

I did not have much awareness of city of heroes other than what I had seen in it's marketing, and it did not sell itself well to people outside America who aren't part of "comic culture". To me the way it was advertising itself seemed cheesy and childish, and when you're young that's literally the worst thing possible, you want things that are "too old for you" to rebel against... and learn from. I remember roleplaying on Vampire the Masquerade chatrooms and lying that I was 18 in order to not get banned (a lesson I had to learn the hard way on the internet).

Then city of villains came out. It looked much more interesting, a little more grown-up. I remember seeing the advert in a magazine, with it very much bigging up how you could build a base and fill it with traps, seeming rather Dungeon Keeper 2-like, and I loved that idea (it was a bit of false advertising since everyone later found out that was for a barely used PVP mode, but blah, the overall effect of it was good even if the way they got me to play it was rather deceptive)

I really liked City of villains, and after I had completed the story to death, I tried heroes, and found it wasn't all that bad, and quite liked it in the end. But I found that the writing on villains was for the most part better and more interesting.

I stopped playing because they stopped contributing to the villain side. They had started doing that way before "Going Rogue", that seemed to be just the headcap tombstone. A way to push people from villains towards the hero-focused content, rikti war zone, cimerora, and onwards from there right up til the praetoria stuff and on. Going back to that, I played some of it, but I didn't find it had staying power, it seemed like it was part of a push to make the game more of a cash shop by adding more grindy things to the game (When I had returned to the game, and faced with the wall of grind of endless BAF crap, I just said no, the time on this earth that people have to live is more valuable than that, got contacts of my friends, and left again). I've read a few things on this and it's quite interesting, the process of how Cryptic Studios left because NCSoft wouldn't let them buy the game from them so that they'd have self-ownership, and the sort of zombie "paragon studios" thing that popped up after, ditching loyal people like Back Alley Brawler left and right (who is doing a really interesting ask me anything on reddit right now)

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Lore_AMA

"Q) What was the deal with Weaver 1, and for that matter all the orb weavers of Arachnos? Was he/they ever going to be introduced and/or explained? If so, in what capacity? (@Dr. Mechanor)
A) I think they were the product of poor planning. The team that took over for the CoV writers never was given anything to do with them so they were largely ignored (Matt)

I found these from the Television and they're great:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120905022432/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=206535&page=7#post2564776

http://web.archive.org/web/20120905022339/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=206535&page=8#post2567271

I don't blame Dr. Aeon though, it was his job, his living for food/family, but whoever was in charge of the "change of direction" that reassigned people away from writing the less cheesy/mawkish stuff that seemed to later become the norm was really insidious...



(edit: over the years I've seen some more interesting stuff about NCsoft's corporate culture:

http://t-machine.org/index.php/2009/01/16/we-need-to-talk-about-tabula-rasa-when-will-we-talk-about-tabula-rasa/

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/114445/Richard_Garriott_Says_He_Was_Forced_Out_Of_NCsoft_Sues_For_27m.php

http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/12/05/1844208/city-of-heroes-reaches-sunset-ncsoft-paying-the-price
)

[Goddangit]

I learned to type on a combination of an ASR33 teletypewriter and a manual typewriter in typing class.  My pinkies weren't strong enough for the manual, although I did give it a try.  I developed a bizarre typing style.  The last joint on my middle finger of my left hand developed a problem a few years ago which made typing with it painful.  I developed a bizarre crab style employing mainly my index finger and thumb to compensate.  Now that its healed I'm trying to train myself to use the rest of the hand again, but I keep falling into the crab style with the left hand.  I can go surprisingly fast, all things considered, but my error rate is very high.  I also glance at the keyboard from time to time.

[Vee]

I've known standard typing technique since i could reach the typewriter from my moms's chair (she did transcription as a side job when i was little) and touch type well, though for some reason i always only use the left shift. I never look at the keyboard but I have found that over the years of getting used to computers and then using them all the time I have become more reliant on seeing what I type on the screen and am much faster and accurate if I watch what I'm typing than if I close my eyes or look away. So I suppose I'm not really a touch-typist proper anymore, but seeing as I never have any need to transcribe it pretty much amounts to the same thing.

[slickriptide]

I really liked City of villains, and after I had completed the story to death, I tried heroes, and found it wasn't all that bad, and quite liked it in the end. But I found that the writing on villains was for the most part better and more interesting.

I stopped playing because they stopped contributing to the villain side.

City of Villains benefited at first from being a standalone game by devs who had the experience of having made a superhero game already. They'd already made the mistakes in CoH and they knew how to do it better; plus they had a different mindset on what stories to tell since they had to make it about being evil without ever actually taking over the world or toppling Lord Recluse or whatever. Mostly, they did a pretty good job of that.

Once it became clear that CoV was mostly just cannibalizing CoH and the decision was made to merge them, Redside suffered somewhat the same fate as Calvin Scott.

If you came into the game with CoV, you might not be aware that Aurora Borealis was originally called Sister Psyche when CoH first launched. That's because they had this whole back-story about how Shalice had been mortally wounded during the Rikti War and that  Aurora had volunteered to basically allow Shalice move her spirit/mind into Aurora's body while Shalice's body healed. (This "mind-riding" thing of Shalice's had the side effect of making her body grow youthful as well, which allowed her to live more or less forever; she was nearly as old as Marcus Cole in chronological years.)

Calvin Scott was Aurora's husband - a non-super who had married a super. At least, I don't remember him having any superhero past. Anyway, when issue three rolled around, Calvin started handing out a special task force. It seemed that he was tired of being married to two women at the same time, especially when the one in charge didn't consider him to be her husband. He rationalized it to himself and to the heroes that he cajoled into doing his dirty work that Shalice was supressing Aurora, intentionally or no, and that Aurora was in danger of slipping away forever. At the end of it, Shalice was forced back into her own body and "Sister Psyche" and "Aurora Borealis" became two separate people again.

When issue four came in a month or so later, the story was resolved, Sister Psyche and Aurora Borealis were both in the game now, and Calvin Scott's task force was over and done and gone forever.

It was a terrific example of episodic story-telling and it was never done again. The devs may or may not have felt good about how how I-3 turned out but they very definitely felt like it was too much work for something that got thrown away and never re-used.

CoV suffered a similar fate. While there was no question that they would like to have made double the content, the realities of having one team responsible for both sides of the game dictated that they had focus their efforts on stories that would serve both sides equally. That tended to mean that we had a lot of world-threatening catastrophes looming that pretty formulaically meant the good guys saved the world because they were good guys and the bad guys saved the world because you can't rule a world that is burned to a cinder. Either way, they were both saving the world.

Just once, I would liked to see a story where Kefka blew up the world just for the lulz. :-p

[Surelle]

So I finally had one of those "City of Heroes comes back" dreams.

It was pretty cool.

Some guy had figured out to get the full game running again, and had even managed to spruce up the character creator. You had the option to play as a human or a demon dog (probably influenced by the fact that I had been playing Doom 3 in preparation for the new one being released soon) or have a demon dog sidekick. The cool thing was that the demon dog sidekick could have his own costume.  ;D

It wasn't going to be cheap. He was charging us $40.00 a month to play, and everyone thought that it was going to be a short term fix because it was only going to be a matter of time before NcSoft shut it down.

But I got to play a Fire/Fire Dominator in my dream for a bit so it was nice while it lasted.  ;D

Cool dream.   8)

However, people keep forgetting that it isn't just a behemoth amount of code we'd need to wade through and recreate (which would take eons); we'd also need hardware from that time period to run that code on, too.  Parts that old don't grow on trees, and can be hard to keep running.

Blizzard is dealing with these similar hurdles right now, having just shut down Nostalrius (the illegal Vanilla WoW emu that had 800,000 registered accounts) this past April, and subsequently having had hundreds of thousands of Vanilla WoW fans signing petitions and posting on their WoW forums across the EU and US saying they want it back. 

Blizzard has supposedly agreed to meet with the Nostalrius team (which is comprised of 30 people-- ironically, this is twice the amount of devs that work on Everquest 1 and Everquest 2 combined at Daybreak Studios, lol) soon.  Theoretically, Blizzard would have, through Nostalrius, the original vanilla code and the proper hardware to run the job, but if it's a buggy mess, that's not something Blizzard's paying player base would tolerate for long.  However, Blizzard has enough money and devs that they *could* do some bug and stability fixes if they wanted to do it. 

It *is* possible:  Take Jagex, for example.  They're running launch-era Runescape via a separate team of only 5 devs, right alongside their modern-day Runescape (if you could call that modern, ha ha).  They said the trick with the launch-era Runescape idea was to keep costs low to retain some sort of profitability.  Here's a Gamasutra article about the vanilla Runescape re-launch here:  http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MatKemp/20160504/271886/Building_on_the_past_How_RuneScapes_official_legacy_server_avoided_cannibalism_and_became_an_eSport.php

Moreover, Everquest 1 is 17 years old and 20-something expansions strong and still going on some version or another of presumably ancient hardware, so anything is possible.  (Then again, Jagex and Daybreak's idea of profitability versus NCSoft's and Blizzard's ideas of it are obviously quite different, but I digress....)

Blizzard COULD hire the Nostalrius team and use their Vanilla WoW code and servers and run with it, and Blizzard has more money than god to do it with, too, but....they're SO LAZY.  They nerfed every WoW class down to three-button "what color is your damage" affairs during Cataclysm because they just don't want to keep balancing WoW's classes anymore, and they've turned WoW into little more than a phased, forced-solo Facebook game besides. 

I'm willing to bet the real reason they're meeting with the Nostalrius crew is to prevent them from releasing that Vanilla code into the wild, which the Nost team originally said they were doing when they got Blizzard's Cease & Desist notice this April.  However, Blizzard immediately responded and said they wanted to talk to the Nostalrius folks, so the Nost dudes temporarily put off releasing that Vanilla WoW code to their player base until after the meeting.  (They claim to have anti-cheat code, too, but have said they're not releasing that, so that hackers won't be able to study it and figure out how to get around it).  Sure, there are multiple other Vanilla WoW emus out there, but Nostalrius was purportedly the furthest along, and the best, most stable one.  Blizzard definitely doesn't want all the other emus getting ahold of Nostalrius' version of that code.

I strongly suspect that the minute the Nostalrius crew steps through the doors of Blizzard's offices, they're going to be forced by lawyers to sign papers saying they'll never release that code, or they'll be jailed.  And that's gonna be the end of that meeting with Blizzard, lol, oh-- except for the part where the Nostalrius crew hands over that Vanilla code and their hardware....never to be heard from again.

It's almost like certain publishers and developers push their players into emus; when there's a small niche market that might well be able to sustain itself on a shoestring budget, or even when there are hundreds of thousands of people who want something (like original Vanilla WoW), the owners/overlords are too lazy to put all the work into it that it would require to make their players happy, because they don't foresee millions in profit coming from it.  And if that's where Blizzard is heading with their Nostalrius meeting (and, after reading about all sides of this and seeing Blizzard's cagey responses that don't always add up, I do think that's exactly where Nostalrius is headed), then that's a very sorry thing indeed.  It just gives me more respect for Daybreak and Jagex, though.

[Azrael]

It *is* possible:  Take Jagex, for example.  They're running launch-era Runescape via a separate team of only 5 devs, right alongside their modern-day Runescape (if you could call that modern, ha ha).  They said the trick with the launch-era Runescape idea was to keep costs low to retain some sort of profitability.  MassivelyOP.com had an article and interview with Jagex about this recently.  Moreover, Everquest 1 is 17 years old and 20-something expansions strong and still going on some version or another of presumably ancient hardware, so anything is possible.  (Then again, Jagex and Daybreak's idea of profitability versus NCSoft's and Blizzard's ideas of it are obviously quite different, but I digress....)

As with the Star Trek letter writing campaign to bring the series back Pre: Internet.  If a community can organise and mobilise it's efforts anything might be possible.  I've noted the above info' elsewhere.  It had me thinking about CoH pre: buyout from NC.  I recall an interview with Warwitch which said the CoH Crytpic team was down to 15 people with the CoH game in a holding pattern of sorts with nominal development.  With the Paragon studio's team disbanded and all the overheads with developing 2 over unseen games I would have thought a modest team could run a legacy server Issue 23/24 and rake in some decent pocket change revenue.  If the old games above are still running, CoH has hope and deserves it's shot at rebirth in my view.

Blizzard is dealing with these similar hurdles right now, having just shut down Nostalrius (the illegal Vanilla WoW emu that had 800,000 registered accounts) this past April, and subsequently having had hundreds of thousands of Vanilla WoW fans signing petitions and posting on their WoW forums across the EU and US saying they want it back. 

Blizzard has supposedly agreed to meet with the Nostalrius team (which is comprised of 30 people-- ironically, this is twice the amount of devs that work on Everquest 1 and Everquest 2 combined at Daybreak Studios, lol) soon.  Theoretically, Blizzard would have, through Nostalrius, the original vanilla code and the proper hardware to run the job, but if it's a buggy mess, that's not something Blizzard's paying player base would tolerate for long.  However, Blizzard has enough money and devs that they *could* do some bug and stability fixes if they wanted to do it. 

800k for an illegal emu server, eh?  That's some going.  Catch 22 for a corporation.  Do you sue those '30' developers and 'your' player base of 800k people, your 'fans'?  How does that PR work out for Blizzard and the 800k costly law suits?  How do you deal with the flak from a 'shut down' your nearly million strong customer base ('illegal' or not...) or do you view it as part of the eco system that contributes to the WoW machine? 

So the server has been shut down?  They have code they've threatened to release.  And talks with the 'developers' are ongoing.  Interesting 'test case.'

Ironic that an illegal WoW server has 800k players and CoH at most had what?  250-350k legal players max? 

I'm playing WoW at the moment.  I can see why it's been a success.  But I'm more bemused than ever that CoH 'wasn't' or isn't around.  For starters.  The combat in CoH is far superior...as is the character creator...and...(but I'll stop there for now.)

It's almost like certain publishers and developers push their players into emus; when there's a small niche market that might well be able to sustain itself on a shoestring budget, or even when there are hundreds of thousands of people who want something (like original Vanilla WoW), the owners/overlords are too lazy to put all the work into it that it would require to make their players happy, because they don't foresee millions in profit coming from it.  And if that's where Blizzard is heading with their Nostalrius meeting (and, after reading about all sides of this and seeing Blizzard's cagey responses that don't always add up, I do think that's exactly where Nostalrius is headed), then that's a very sorry thing indeed.  It just gives me more respect for Daybreak and Jagex, though.

Well.  It's not 'personal' it's 'corporate', right? :P  Apple has a 'bad' quarter at 10.5 billion and the sharks at Wall Street say the sky is falling.

Er.  'Sure.'

CoH was making about 2 million a quarter.  Nearly ten million a year?  I guess that wasn't enough.  WoW must be raking it in...even with it's what?  8 million?  Subscribers.

But above, we see small teams keeping legacy games alive with a relative profit due to a devoted player base.  Isn't retro supposed to be 'in' at the moment, also?  I'll give credit to the studios still keeping their legacy titles alive.  Progressive attitudes.  So, not all 'corporations' or companies are the same.  Some have vision and some seem rigid.

For me, what's 'moral' and what's 'lawful' aren't always the same thing.  And times change.  People change.  Landscapes change.  Giving people rent ware and then pulling the rug sounds like a nasty, corporate trick to profit from the vulnerable and trade on people's good nature then kick them to the curb when you've got what you wanted from them.  And the publishers then wonder why MMO fans may be fickle or give them the shoulder.  (as in cold...)  NC Soft's MMO games seem largely lacklustre to me.  But they closed down the one 'gem' they had.  Was it business?  Or was it personal.  Old bones, I suppose. 

But I have the client.  I bought 'their' game 3 times!  Coh.  CoV.  Going Rogue.  I gave them subs for the best part of the years CoH was alive.  I think we're entitled to a solo game, a micro-server with Lan '8 man' team capability.  That should have been built into the game as insurance (all MMO games...) should the inevitable happen.  So that the fan base can play the game and their creations.  And the community can still peer to peer with 8 man teams.  Show some good will and match fund the fan base for a Legacy server to cover the running costs.  Keeping 100-150k players 'onside.'  A gesture of humanity.  Of honour.  The latter of which takes many forms.

But no.  Close it down.  Cut it loose.  Kick it to the curb.  100k players treated with little regard.  Coldly.  So don't expect to keep us as customers for your other mediocre games.  After all, it isn't personal, it's business, right? :P

The 'human' aspect of this seems to go adrift.  Communities just torn down.  Doesn't matter as along as corporate profits and shareholders are happy, eh?

I believe legacy copyright needs addressing and fan bases and customers the world over need to push back against our corporate overlords.  And show them the power of the hand.  We can withdraw our custom.  We have power.  We can be vocal.  We can apply pressure.  And with the force multiplier of the internet we only have to align the stars at our command.

Anyways, I enjoyed reading your post, Surelle.  Informative and hopeful.

Nice to see people turn up for the CoH anniversary in Paragon Chat. 

As if The Entire Gaming Populace was made aware of this little chat party in the first place!  And even at that, most people want to play the game the way it was; a lot more would return for a re-launch.
Running old games on a shoestring budget can be sufficiently profitable for a small company, and retro is all the rage in MMO-land.  Not only is Jagex running the original Runescape right alongside the present-day version, but EQ1 is still going 17 years and 20-something expansions later.  And perhaps you've heard of Nostalrius?  :) :)

A post I noted on the Massively site re: the celebration.

Azrael.

[Surelle]

As with the Star Trek letter writing campaign to bring the series back Pre: Internet.  If a community can organise and mobilise it's efforts anything might be possible.  I've noted the above info' elsewhere.  It had me thinking about CoH pre: buyout from NC.  I recall an interview with Warwitch which said the CoH Crytpic team was down to 15 people with the CoH game in a holding pattern of sorts with nominal development.  With the Paragon studio's team disbanded and all the overheads with developing 2 over unseen games I would have thought a modest team could run a legacy server Issue 23/24 and rake in some decent pocket change revenue.  If the old games above are still running, CoH has hope and deserves it's shot at rebirth in my view.

800k for an illegal emu server, eh?  That's some going.  Catch 22 for a corporation.  Do you sue your player base or 'shut down' your nearly million strong customer base ('illegal' or not...) or do you view it as part of the eco system that contributes to the WoW machine?

Ironic that an illegal WoW server has 800k players and CoH at most had what?  250-350k legal players max? 

I'm playing WoW at the moment.  I can see why it's been a success.  But I'm more bemused than ever that CoH 'wasn't' or isn't around.  For starters.  The combat in CoH is far superior...as is the character creator...and...(but I'll stop there for now.)

Well.  It's not 'personal' it's 'corporate', right? :P  Apple has a 'bad' quarter at 10.5 billion and the sharks at Wall Street say the sky is falling.

Er.  'Sure.'

CoH was making about 2 million a quarter.  Nearly ten million a year?  I guess that wasn't enough.  WoW must be raking it in...even with it's what?  8 million?  Subscribers.

But above, we see small teams keeping legacy games alive with a relative profit due to a devoted player base.  Isn't retro supposed to be 'in' at the moment, also?

Anyways, I enjoyed reading your post, Surelle.  Informative and hopeful.

Nice to see people turn up for the CoH anniversary in Paragon Chat. 

Azrael.

It's doubly frustrating for me because I would love an official Vanilla WoW server from Blizzard (well, I'd prefer an original-code progression server that got perma-locked once Lich King launched, actually).  I don't play emus because they're usually littered with key loggers and other malware, they typically run like crap, and their code is hacked to heck, besides the fact that they're illegal. 

In WoW's case I can see both sides of this issue:  Blizzard is still incurring major costs to keep present-day WoW running and even has a new expansion coming out later this year.  WoW is far from abandonware, and to my knowledge it still has over 5 million paying customers worldwide besides, so clearly they don't appreciate WoW emus out there draining their potential player base away.  On the other hand, though, Blizzard basically nuked most everything I previously enjoyed right out of the game (the original classes and skill trees, all the open-world, team-based content, etc.).  Clearly Nostalrius also did so well because it was free, but judging by all the "official nowadays WoW players" commenting in the hundreds of pages of posts on both WoW's official EU and NA forums, a lot of people also played there and would play on an official Vanilla WoW server because they really want pre-Cataclysm WoW.

Of course, this thinking naturally leads to looking across the MMORPG landscape, where no new AAA MMORPGs are in development, but where retro versions of games are all the rage.  EQ1 and EQ2 both have time-locked progression servers, Innova's licensed Lineage 2 Classic EU is running now, besides vanilla Runescape going like gangbusters, Ultima Online still running, etc.  While I understand Blizzard wanting to protect their IP, they need to wake up and smell the coffee.  I linked to that Gamasutra Runescape article because Jagex, who began by simply listening to their player base and starting up one launch-era Runescape server with 5 devs at the helm, has grown that part of the franchise into 7 million "tryers" and 2.5 million subscribers.  I'll bet most modern-day MMOs can't even boast that amount of subs (or equivalent value in cash shop money for the F2Ps)!

Sure, Jagex obviously owns its own IP and code, and they obviously keep better backups than NCSoft purportedly does (or Blizzard, for that matter).  Still, Blizz has Nostalrius if not their own original code and hardware to start with (and I suspect Blizzard may have their old code, they just can't be bothered to do anything with it, but that's another story). 

And it makes me even madder that Cbruce (Back Alley Brawler) just mentioned in his recent Reddit AMA https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4gv8xl/c/d2lkkqd  that not only did Paragon Studios and then Cryptic try to buy CoX, but that "NCSoft seemed to have this 'go big, or go home' attitude about their franchises. They would have rather completely shut down prematurely than let it linger on, even it if was profitable.

In my experience, every publisher will always talk as if they're on the verge of signing a deal even if there's zero chance of that ever happening. It costs them nothing to say that. But when it comes time to writing up contracts and signing paperwork, that's where the process stalls out."

I have to agree with Cbruce's statement, too:  I gave up believing NCSoft will ever allow CoH to get up and running again a long time ago now.  However, it is interesting to see that the real hangup in the original Paragon Studios buyout was actually the account data transfers from one company to the other.  And CBruce also said:

"I know that Matt Miller once confided that Paragon tried to acquire the franchise from NCSoft and go at it on their own, but the big hangup was the liability of active accounts and how all of that got transferred from one owner to another. Like acquiring CoH a year after it had shut down would have been more likely, but by then it would be too late to matter. Pretty sure Cryptic approached NCSoft about re-acquiring City of Heroes when they shuttered Paragon as well. I have no specifics about it, but clearly nothing came of that."

I imagine that most players there at the time of the CoH shutdown would have totally freaked out if Paragon Studios had said they'd lose everything and have to start all over, though, so I can see why Paragon Studios would have given up.  It's probably a different story now for a lot of players, who, after three years, would rather see an empty slate of CoX than no CoX at all, but it's apparent that NCSoft isn't going to release any of the IPs of their dead games to anyone, because they never have, despite all the attempts by professional companies that have been made.

The whole thing is so very frustrating:  It's too bad NCSoft couldn't just take a page or three out of SOE/Daybreak Studios' book, and make deals concerning emus or just look the other way.  It figures *our* overlords would be the most demonic ones of all.   :P

[Codewalker]

However, people keep forgetting that it isn't just a behemoth amount of code we'd need to wade through and recreate (which would take eons); we'd also need hardware from that time period to run that code on, too.  Parts that old don't grow on trees, and can be hard to keep running.

Hardware from 2011 shouldn't be too hard to come by, I don't think.

Plus, Wintel servers are pretty much the definition of commodity. I'd be frankly quite shocked if they managed to write something that was somehow dependent on specific hardware. Especially since word is that at least part of the server infrastructure was virtualized.

[Surelle]

Hardware from 2011 shouldn't be too hard to come by, I don't think.

Plus, Wintel servers are pretty much the definition of commodity. I'd be frankly quite shocked if they managed to write something that was somehow dependent on specific hardware. Especially since word is that at least part of the server infrastructure was virtualized.

I know there were some sort of server upgrades and virtualization done over the years, but were they circa 2011?  I just picture the hardware foundation for CoX being from 2000 or something, from back during the years of development for the game.

[Codewalker]

They were moved to brand new servers hosted in NCSoft's Austin datacenter shortly before the launch of the free-to-play model. The old east and west cost shards were consolidated into a single location onto upgraded hardware.

I confirmed by mapping out the IP addresses after the move was complete that all shards, whether they were previously east or west coast, shared a pool of about 40 mapserver hosts. They didn't ship the old servers (the downtime would have been much longer); they did a data transfer to a new setup instead.

The event that we got this badge for:
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Defender_of_Primal_Earth_Badge

Was put on in order to stress test the new hardware by getting as many people into one place as possible.