New efforts!

[Dev7on]

They can make some grand plan making a CoX/CoT Titan Hybrid (not unheard of having  something like a new start location for the CoT content, but will split the player base alot more with more initial zones if there is a 4th start zone) however, that and everything else is just speculation with the information on hand. I'm not against for CoT just reusing the areas of CoX (heck that what the APR is but with updated graphics and I am very excited just seeing the updated graphic screen shots) but that again begs to leave the question what will happen to the APR project. Again as stated from Nate's initial post where all successor projects will have access to the IP, what stops Valiance Online and other doing the same unless there is a clause preventing the other projects using the actual assist and only reference the lore.

I thought Nate said once they have the IP rights they was going to put the game on Maintenance Mode to reverse engineer the servers then combine CoT and APR with the CoH servers. Even though we'll have a stale Issue 23 but, I think CoT will make alternate updates to CoH. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[MM3squints]

I thought Nate said once they have the IP rights they was going to put the game on Maintenance Mode to reverse engineer the servers then combine CoT and APR with the CoH servers. Even though we'll have a stale Issue 23 but, I think CoT will make alternate updates to CoH. Correct me if I'm wrong.

This is what was stated on the Mask Comes Off Thread

An arrangement is to be made to license the trademarks to the various Plan Z projects, CoT, Valiance and H&V, to create a family connection, and to allow each to drop the "Spiritual" portion of successor. This means they can make references to the original game if desired, and to enable the expansion of partnerships. This could be expanded for any of them, should the desire be there.

An arrangement is also to be made for the Atlas Park Revival project. As part of the informal agreement we have with them, they would be given an official stamp of approval, and the CoT game build would be licensed to them, to create a kind of "CoH 1.5" and migrate people off of the classic game engine before it finally becomes unsuitable (we expect this to happen around when Windows 9 is released, due to binary compatibility). This can be done because both APR and CoT run on Unreal Engine 4.

My interpretation was APR was separate project from CoT because he called APR a COH 1.5 so it can be played on Windows 9 (in this case Windows 10) The part that is ambiguous is here

the CoT game build would be licensed to them, to create a kind of "CoH 1.5" and migrate people off of the classic game engine before it finally becomes unsuitable

[Arcana]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be all doom and gloom, I was just putting some reason on the thought when people say it took another IP X amount of years to come back. CoX unfortunately dose not have that luxury because of all of the other successor project and the timeline when they are supposed to come online and when CoX would come online. I still have hope that CoX will be revived because nothing official was called on the deal. But logically, the longer the deal goes on either CoX will not happen or CoX/APR will happen and potentially take out all other successor projects along the way. The worse kind of Catch-22 for Nate and the general community. Again, all I am saying is speculation with the information on hand.

Ultimately, this is about what the community wants, and if it wants it badly enough.  Consider that SWGEmu has been in continuous development for fourteen years, and at this point they are maybe getting close to completing version 1.0 of the project, which will technically speaking still be not feature-complete for even the base game.

To be specific, "the community" as it existed at shutdown fundamentally no longer exists.  There is a current much smaller community of fans that continue to orbit the remnants of the game.  If the game restarts in any form, the question of whether that game will succeed will depend less on what we happy few think, and more on whether a new community can be forged from the remnants of the old one, with returning players and new players.  It doesn't matter how long it takes, what matters is if enough people will want it when it returns.  I think, under the right conditions, enough people will.  I think what made the game interesting to enough people in 2004 and in 2012 will also make it interesting in 2016 or 2020, because nothing has come along to moot it.  There are newer, shinier games, but that was true in 2012.  There is still no MMO that delivers the experience CoX did, or something you could argue is a "better" version of that experience.  If that's not enough in 2020, honestly it won't be enough tomorrow either.

[MM3squints]

Ultimately, this is about what the community wants, and if it wants it badly enough.  Consider that SWGEmu has been in continuous development for fourteen years, and at this point they are maybe getting close to completing version 1.0 of the project, which will technically speaking still be not feature-complete for even the base game.

To be specific, "the community" as it existed at shutdown fundamentally no longer exists.  There is a current much smaller community of fans that continue to orbit the remnants of the game.  If the game restarts in any form, the question of whether that game will succeed will depend less on what we happy few think, and more on whether a new community can be forged from the remnants of the old one, with returning players and new players.  It doesn't matter how long it takes, what matters is if enough people will want it when it returns.  I think, under the right conditions, enough people will.  I think what made the game interesting to enough people in 2004 and in 2012 will also make it interesting in 2016 or 2020, because nothing has come along to moot it.  There are newer, shinier games, but that was true in 2012.  There is still no MMO that delivers the experience CoX did, or something you could argue is a "better" version of that experience.  If that's not enough in 2020, honestly it won't be enough tomorrow either.

Community in the sense in a core supports that will get these projects off the ground and get people to play from word of mouth. Again the "community" these projects are trying to get business from is small, let alone I assume these projects have little to no money in their war chest to make an effective ad campaign and the only real way they can advertise is through earned media, but that will die down after the initial launch. It's good to dream and sure if the deal fall through, there will be people like Codewalker to improve PC, however, from a financial prospective, either CoX/APR will take over majority of the pie of an already small community or CoX will not happen and the other projects need to fight for the share.

[Arcana]

Community in the sense in a core supports that will get these projects off the ground and get people to play from word of mouth. Again the "community" these projects are trying to get business from is small, let alone I assume these projects have little to no money in their war chest to make an effective ad campaign and the only real way they can advertise is through earned media, but that will die down after the initial launch. It's good to dream and sure if the deal fall through, there will be people like Codewalker to improve PC, however, from a financial prospective, either CoX/APR will take over majority of the pie of an already small community or CoX will not happen and the other projects need to fight for the share.

I'm not sure that's true, or at least necessarily has to be true, because it presumes there's even a big pie to fight over in the first place and that it is a logical strategy to fight over it in the second place.  These projects first have to survive, and second be more than marginally profitable.  The challenge here is that this isn't a slider you can easily shift around.  The strategy for operating a subsistence game is fundamentally different from the strategy for operating a profit-driven one, and if you aren't sure which one you're trying to execute the odds are that you'll fail at both.  You can change over time, sloooowly.  But at the starting gate you have to pick one, or roll the dice and hope you get lucky landing on one by pure chance.

Going profit-oriented is a much higher risk strategy.  It requires directing development resources to implementing a game that can be tuned around profitability.  Whether that is microtransactions permeating the game or a subscription model that implies significant cyclical development roll outs, you have to be able to deliver something worth spending money on continuously.  And if you fail, you can easily burn out and die.  Subsistence models just aim to get enough money to keep the ball rolling, pay the bills, pay a reasonable amount for development, and development itself becomes something that happens if and when funds become available to do it.  It is a far less risky model because it sets easier to reach goals, and it has more control over cash flow vs operating expenses at the low end of development.

If I was trying to launch a successor to CoH, I would probably advocate the subsistence model, at least to start.  Partially because it has the greatest probability of reaching sustainable success, and partially because (if I'm being brutally honest here) I'm probably surrounded by people who aren't business wizards and would likely screw up anything else.  Cash flow is the beginning and end of all small businesses and virtually all big ones too.  You live or die by it, and it is both the easiest business concept to understand and yet also the number one most commonly screwed up one.

Multiple projects can simultaneously survive on subsistence models, because the costs to operate an MMO are trivial these days.  Development costs are sky high, but that's because people are expensive.  Computational resources these days border on zero.  If all of them pick subsistence models, one won't necessarily suck up all the oxygen from the others.  However, if they *don't* all pick subsistence models, then I think the situation becomes less stable.  If one goes subsistence and one goes profit, the most likely scenarios are that either the subsistence one "calibrates" people's expectations to that level and the profit-oriented one withers and dies, or the profit-oriented one succeeds and juggernaut's the other one into the dust by virtue of outspending the subsistence one on game improvements.

[MM3squints]

Running an MMO especially an Superhero can be costly and shouldn't be seen as trivial. All that described (even if the devs would be working for free) has overhead operation cost. From the tech/customer support (unless they are working free), customer rep/community rep (unless they are working free), public relationship/marketing (unless they are working free), some form of financial personnel (unless they are working free), etc, the bare bone in order for an organization to funciton . You can say the devs will do all those, but again that is more than a full time job. Are they going to quit their current jobs an just take the ultimate chance on a project? Even if they had all those check there is the issue of legal (who on the team is a trade lawyer or can rep them if any of the projects get sued?)

The reason why is said it is harder for a Superhero themed MMO is because of because of this factor. What would stop DC Marvel from suing the projects for having their IPs make in their game? Would that stop smaller publishers like Image Comics to not sue the projects if Spawn was in the game? Could they just claim the case ruling with Marvel Vs NCSoft to try protecting them? Not just Marvel/DC what if someone makes a Nintendo character, you think Nintendo won't peruse action against the projects not from monetary, but to shut down the game? How can these projects assure their IPs won't be infringed? These projects cant claim they have a comprehensive community/customer service to enforce the rules (cause that all takes money.) Company like Nintendo has pocket full of cares and none to give when anyone uses their IP (to the point where they even monetize lets play vids) although I'm amazed YouTube channels like Dorkly got away with abusing Nintendo's IPs.

It is not just the development cost that is high. Besides development, staffing, you also need to worry about marketing and advertisement. After earned media dries up, will other organization let the projects advertise for free over people who would pay for the ad space? Will it just by word of mouth and social media? How long could they sustain advertisement with an unknown amount in their war chest? (I will be honest, I don't know if they have this planned, but I would assume it is 0 dollars because all of their funding I would assume is going into development.) With all that going on keep in mind if they decide to do this full time, they still need to get paid to not just sustain the project, but have a roof over their heads. These projects to my knowledge do not have a publisher back them or alternative source of capital besides gofundme, kickstarter, and angels.

Going back to how attractive is bringing CoX back with all the factor I made with the initial CoX angel investor more than wanting a ROI (again unless they are just really nice and don't care) There are many, a lot more variables in play that can determine the success or failures or these projects. Hopefully all of these were taken into consideration. I assume in some form it has because Nate did acquire the initial angel investor, and hopefully they do have roadmap for future revenues. This is why I am still hopeful until the final word is said, however, the more time goes by the less chance it has.

[Paragon Avenger]

Oh great.

It's time for The Weakly Update.

Talks with NCSoft have come to a stand still.  We simply cannot get past this one point.  They will not budge an inch, and we refuse to give in to their demands.  You might be thinking that we could go along to get along and change it in the future once the game is back.  That won't work.  This is too important to just let it go.  Without what we see as the correct outcome, the game will suffer greatly.  No, we will not yeild to this corporate bully.  We will continue to insist that our reasonable requests are met ---for the good of the team ---for the good of the players ---but mostly for the good of the game.  They demand we have lunch at Benihana's; we want Panda Express!

[Arcana]

Running an MMO especially an Superhero can be costly and shouldn't be seen as trivial. All that described (even if the devs would be working for free) has overhead operation cost. From the tech/customer support (unless they are working free), customer rep/community rep (unless they are working free), public relationship/marketing (unless they are working free), some form of financial personnel (unless they are working free), etc, the bare bone in order for an organization to funciton . You can say the devs will do all those, but again that is more than a full time job. Are they going to quit their current jobs an just take the ultimate chance on a project? Even if they had all those check there is the issue of legal (who on the team is a trade lawyer or can rep them if any of the projects get sued?)

The reason why is said it is harder for a Superhero themed MMO is because of because of this factor. What would stop DC Marvel from suing the projects for having their IPs make in their game? Would that stop smaller publishers like Image Comics to not sue the projects if Spawn was in the game? Could they just claim the case ruling with Marvel Vs NCSoft to try protecting them? Not just Marvel/DC what if someone makes a Nintendo character, you think Nintendo won't peruse action against the projects not from monetary, but to shut down the game? How can these projects assure their IPs won't be infringed? These projects cant claim they have a comprehensive community/customer service to enforce the rules (cause that all takes money.) Company like Nintendo has pocket full of cares and none to give when anyone uses their IP (to the point where they even monetize lets play vids) although I'm amazed YouTube channels like Dorkly got away with abusing Nintendo's IPs.

It is not just the development cost that is high. Besides development, staffing, you also need to worry about marketing and advertisement. After earned media dries up, will other organization let the projects advertise for free over people who would pay for the ad space? Will it just by word of mouth and social media? How long could they sustain advertisement with an unknown amount in their war chest? (I will be honest, I don't know if they have this planned, but I would assume it is 0 dollars because all of their funding I would assume is going into development.) With all that going on keep in mind if they decide to do this full time, they still need to get paid to not just sustain the project, but have a roof over their heads. These projects to my knowledge do not have a publisher back them or alternative source of capital besides gofundme, kickstarter, and angels.

Going back to how attractive is bringing CoX back with all the factor I made with the initial CoX angel investor more than wanting a ROI (again unless they are just really nice and don't care) There are many, a lot more variables in play that can determine the success or failures or these projects. Hopefully all of these were taken into consideration. I assume in some form it has because Nate did acquire the initial angel investor, and hopefully they do have roadmap for future revenues. This is why I am still hopeful until the final word is said, however, the more time goes by the less chance it has.

I don't think you are acknowledging my premise that there are at least two different models, and one of them is not the triple-A commercial model you're describing.  It is worth noting that exactly none of the successful community-driven MMOs and MMO clones out there (that I'm aware of) face any of the problems you describe, because none of them (that I'm aware of) implement a business model that requires any of them.

The specific issue of lawsuits is, in this context, mostly a non-issue, because there's zero cost associated with that threat.  For the projects we're talking about, none of them have the capacity to deal with a threat like that and can't budget for it.  If it doesn't happen it costs nothing, and if it does happen it almost certainly kills the project dead, and once again there's no actual cost associated with that in a financial planning sense.

[MM3squints]

I don't think you are acknowledging my premise that there are at least two different models, and one of them is not the triple-A commercial model you're describing.  It is worth noting that exactly none of the successful community-driven MMOs and MMO clones out there (that I'm aware of) face any of the problems you describe, because none of them (that I'm aware of) implement a business model that requires any of them.

The specific issue of lawsuits is, in this context, mostly a non-issue, because there's zero cost associated with that threat.  For the projects we're talking about, none of them have the capacity to deal with a threat like that and can't budget for it.  If it doesn't happen it costs nothing, and if it does happen it almost certainly kills the project dead, and once again there's no actual cost associated with that in a financial planning sense.

I am, but the elephant in the room is there are backers of getting CoX back. these backers are putting in capital in order to see a return on investment. In order to see a return on investment, you need to go to a pro profit model insuring the backers you have all bases checked, you can generate more revenue, you can retain the community happy by having a comprehensive support team to deal with cheaters, bugs, billing issues, and any other issues that may come up in order to retain subs. If you don't acknowledge the fact the angel investors are a factor and will need to see profit, then you are basically writing off the deal is dead, CoX/APR will not come to be and the other projects can run on a smaller scale where they won't have to answer to a financial overlord.

To write off or to say any any organization may face legal liability as not a threat is very scary way of just brushing off potential future complications that can sink an organization. You are not going to CYA when dealing with other IPs? Not only that if people's credit card information is compromised, you are not going to have legal representation in that situation?

[Arcana]

To write off or to say any any organization may face legal liability as not a threat is very scary way of just brushing off potential future complications that can sink an organization. You are not going to CYA when dealing with other IPs? Not only that if people's credit card information is compromised, you are not going to have legal representation in that situation?

If and when it happens, I'd hire an attorney.  And then probably lose and fold up shop.

It is important to make the distinction between community projects and small business concerns and large scale corporations.  I don't even have in-house counsel for my actual business, which is almost certainly larger at the moment than any and all current community efforts combined.  That doesn't mean I don't consider legal issues, it just means I don't currently spend any money on them (beyond conventional liability and other insurances).  None of the current community efforts is likely to have any sort of costs associated with future legal liability, nor would I expect them to, nor would I currently recommend that they do.  This is not legal advice.

In the very specific case of a hypothetical restart of the original game licensed form NCSoft, I'm presuming legal liability would be one of the terms discussed as part of licensing.  We're not privy to the precise legal arrangement settled between NCSoft and Marvel, but it is reasonably to assume based on publicly available documentation from that case that the best Marvel could have extracted from NCSoft was a promise to put a system in place whereby infringing content could be reported and dealt with.  NCSoft did not put any other system in place to either monitor for or eliminate potentially infringing content beyond relatively simplistic content filters.  None of that would cost a new operator a significant amount of money to replicate, as it did not require massive staffing.

Marvel sued for both copyright infringement and trademark infringement, and my recollection of the rulings in that case were that Marvel's trademark infringement case was in most cases sufficiently vague and weak as to be trivially dismissed.  Most of the copyright claims were also sufficiently shaky that they were trivially adjudicated.  It was only in a few very narrow points where their case even made any sort of legal sense to the presiding judge and the feeling was that they would have a tough time proving actual harm in those cases even where technical infringement occurred.  And all of this happened when City of Heroes was a relative novelty and before Marvel actually hired City of Heroes' actual developer to make its own MMO, and before DC launched DCUO.  Suing a licensee of the company you previously lost against and has less resources to compensate you even if you win and after you've already had ample opportunity to launch your own competing commercial ventures is a very unlikely scenario to expend a lot of resources to erect defenses against.  You would be in effect buying asteroid insurance.

For the possible licensing company, legal costs to defend against a potential lawsuit from Marvel of DC would seem to be trivial compared to the legal costs of actually creating the licensing entity in the first place.  For the rest of the community projects, I would be far more concerned about the case of accidental or unauthorized copyright infringement - i.e. where one of your developers or a community contributor steals copyright material and submits it to the project as their own.  That's a far more realistic threat in my opinion.

[MM3squints]

If and when it happens, I'd hire an attorney.  And then probably lose and fold up shop.

By by your first statement when you when you lose and fold up shop, what confidence is there for us, the future consumers of this product to even invest financially (sub or micro transaction), invest time, and invest emotion into the character we are going to create to know this will happen? How will the project restore confidence to keep people without being people thinking time is ticking to a shutdown? That statement is shooting the projects in the foot even before they got out of bed. If that is your assumption why even go on with the efforts of resurrecting CoX or any of the project with the mentality of if they get in legal trouble, they will just bounce and thank the community for their support, but you know, stuff happens. In this case I can say thankfully you don't represent any of the projects because if the projects said what you said in an official statement, that is a poison pill in my eyes and will give me zero confidence to the point I will look for ways to get a Kickstarter Refund..

You can go on with other reasoning or any other jujitsu maneuver, however, everything stops with that sentence.

[Arcana]

And now, an MMO story.

For the past year or so I've been playing Marvel Contest of Champions.  Its a mobile game, which is something I can devote random periods of time to.  Especially great when you're staring that that WebEx screen for an hour watching someone do basically nothing interesting.  Anyway, I have a rather odd problem with MMOs in general.  I'm really not all that interested in becoming as involved with them as I was with City of Heroes.  I would rather just play the game.  This often causes me strange problems.  I've noticed these days a lot of MMO players are people that really, really want to be officers in groups or guilds.  I have no idea why.  I guess it makes them feel important or something.  I would rather not.  So I'm a weird anomaly, apparently. 

I'm generally a pretty good player no matter what I'm playing, and even if I don't really try that hard, just because once you've seen the Matrix, you really can't unsee it.  I see the wheels within wheels, the dev design intent, the game blueprint, the reward system, etc, and I tend to navigate it at least reasonably well.  And my fingers can still push buttons reasonably well.  And people notice.  And they notice I'm not really all that interested in parlaying that ability into asking for anything.  I don't ask for authority, I don't ask for officer, I don't ask for promotions.  I just play.

This seems to be a conundrum for some.  Apparently, a lot of people see me as some kind of project they want to work on.  They assume I'm just new to it all and are just afraid to step forward and take command of things.  They keep trying to encourage me to, I don't know, get out of my shell or something.  They want to give me lessons on how to lead people, how to research the game on the internet, how to improve my play by reading the forums or the wikis or whatever.  Which is great and all, but it isn't easy to explain to them that thanks, but really, I don't need the help.

So the other day I decided to actually try to explain it to someone.  I explained that, yes, I know there are forums and wikis, yes I do read them occasionally (forums are bad in many MMOs, but total cesspools for most mobile MMOs), and no I don't need help learning how to help run a group.  I've been there and done that, and I'm just looking to relax and play now.  I've played dozens of MMOs, and I've even been pretty deeply involved with at least one, even to the point of working with the devs.

So here's the punch line.  As I'm trying to explain this, I get this reply:  what's an MMO?


...


...


Please, please, please, somebody get City of Heroes up and running again.

[Arcana]

By by your first statement when you when you lose and fold up shop, what confidence is there for us, the future consumers of this product to even invest financially (sub or micro transaction), invest time, and invest emotion into the character we are going to create to know this will happen? How will the project restore confidence to keep people without being people thinking time is ticking to a shutdown? That statement is shooting the projects in the foot even before they got out of bed. If that is your assumption why even go on with the efforts of resurrecting CoX or any of the project with the mentality of if they get in legal trouble, they will just bounce and thank the community for their support, but you know, stuff happens. In this case I can say thankfully you don't represent any of the projects because if the projects said what you said in an official statement, that is a poison pill in my eyes and will give me zero confidence to the point I will look for ways to get a Kickstarter Refund..

You can go on with other reasoning or any other jujitsu maneuver, however, everything stops with that sentence.

Then you aren't someone living in reality.  It is possible that there exist deep pockets behind the licensing team, but the other community projects almost certainly don't have access to that level of financial backing.  If Marvel decided to come after them with the same level of legal pursuit they did NCSoft, and I already explained how that was extremely unlikely, they wouldn't have the financial resources to defend themselves.  NCSoft probably spent a sizeable fraction of MWM's entire Kickstarter fundraiser on their defense, something I doubt MWM itself is in a position to do.

People decide to get involved in community projects for all kinds of reasons, and the vast overwhelming majority contribute to projects that are one lawsuit away from being almost instantly destroyed.  These very forums are probably one extremely tenacious lawsuit away from being instantly vaporized.  Does this alter your decision to contribute to it?  Because if you think the Titan Network is capable of spending a quarter of a million dollars defending itself against a persistent deep pocketed corporate interest, I think you are mistaken.

I don't represent any of the ongoing projects, but if I did I would be honest about the risks associated with any enterprise like this.  If it meant losing supporters like yourself that needed false expressions of invulnerability, I would be okay with that.  I would be giving you the courtesy of making an informed decision.  I wouldn't feel comfortable taking your money if you had an expectation of certainty.  I couldn't guarantee delivery of that expectation.

[ivanhedgehog]

By by your first statement when you when you lose and fold up shop, what confidence is there for us, the future consumers of this product to even invest financially (sub or micro transaction), invest time, and invest emotion into the character we are going to create to know this will happen? How will the project restore confidence to keep people without being people thinking time is ticking to a shutdown? That statement is shooting the projects in the foot even before they got out of bed. If that is your assumption why even go on with the efforts of resurrecting CoX or any of the project with the mentality of if they get in legal trouble, they will just bounce and thank the community for their support, but you know, stuff happens. In this case I can say thankfully you don't represent any of the projects because if the projects said what you said in an official statement, that is a poison pill in my eyes and will give me zero confidence to the point I will look for ways to get a Kickstarter Refund..

You can go on with other reasoning or any other jujitsu maneuver, however, everything stops with that sentence.

any business you could start could possibly be sued for any number of things. should you not start any business unless you have millions of $$ of lawsuit insurance? no. If it happens, the only thing you can do is pay a lawyer to file for the lawsuit to be dismissed. If disney decides to go after you with their full legal resources, you cannot possibly afford to fight them. The same could be said for a majority of businesses in the US. It isnt likely to happen so why borrow trouble?

[MM3squints]

 

People decide to get involved in community projects for all kinds of reasons, and the vast overwhelming majority contribute to projects that are one lawsuit away from being almost instantly destroyed.  These very forums are probably one extremely tenacious lawsuit away from being instantly vaporized.  Does this alter your decision to contribute to it?  Because if you think the Titan Network is capable of spending a quarter of a million dollars defending itself against a persistent deep pocketed corporate interest, I think you are mistaken.

The Titan Team has nothing to do with any of the projects, each projects are their own separate entity. Are you stating that the Titan Network has a financial stake in these projects? If not, why would they be subject to defending themselves in any lawsuit? Looking passed the technicality of which company represents what the question would be why I would support a Kickstarter knowing that idea they are one lawsuit away from being instantly vaporized? Did I know they had a staff of lawyers? Did they show any experience in the industry, nope, so why? Because I just wanted to support them, however, if a represented of the projects just came out and said, "hey if we get sued, we are packing our things in." and not even show a way to challenge it even before such incident would to happen, that shows me the creator has no confidence in their product and why then should I? Yes money makes stuff work, however, showing passion for the product is priceless. Even if they went out with a meager law to a nonexistent law team, I would be good with that because they cared enough to try retaining their game (kind of like how Paragon did) But if someone on the team strait up said our plan is to pack it in even before the game is out, why should I support that?

I don't represent any of the ongoing projects, but if I did I would be honest about the risks associated with any enterprise like this.  If it meant losing supporters like yourself that needed false expressions of invulnerability, I would be okay with that.  I would be giving you the courtesy of making an informed decision.  I wouldn't feel comfortable taking your money if you had an expectation of certainty.  I couldn't guarantee delivery of that expectation.

To my knowledge it is not false expression or invulnerability due to Nate securing the initial team to even start this. Do you think I just thought one day, "oh boy CoX is going to come back I can't wait!" Because there are people financially backing this idea and like my other statements before, I am sure they made the checks before investing into the revival of CoX like what I am doing (even more so.) Who would just throw up large sums of money and waste time without knowing what they investing into. These shadowy people even though we don't know who they are, I believe they exist because Nate said he secured their support and I don't have a reason to not trust Nate. That is my bind for the not saying this is dead and believing this is still an ongoing thing. So there is actual logic behind why I do believe this is going on. Going with your last phrase trying clean up your statement, everything has risk including the people who are backing Nate in CoX, but there is a difference between knowing the risk and how you face those risk when they happen (not just roll over and pack it in)

Then you aren't someone living in reality.  It is possible that there exist deep pockets behind the licensing team, but the other community projects almost certainly don't have access to that level of financial backing.  If Marvel decided to come after them with the same level of legal pursuit they did NCSoft, and I already explained how that was extremely unlikely, they wouldn't have the financial resources to defend themselves.  NCSoft probably spent a sizeable fraction of MWM's entire Kickstarter fundraiser on their defense, something I doubt MWM itself is in a position to do.

You may have noticed I have rearrange your statement to have your first paragraph as my one of my last point. So why am I not living in reality? It is possible that there exist deep pockets behind the licensing team? I said this many time and I said it is possible, however, in general if someone is putting skin in the game, you would believe they want to see a ROI. How is that not living in reality? With all I pointed out in the past couple pages, all the risk associated with these projects, I would suddenly just say, "I'm done!" after that your statement? Again if you did represent the project and you said what you said, that shows me you don't have confidence or even willing to fight for your project, so why should I support it.

[MM3squints]

any business you could start could possibly be sued for any number of things. should you not start any business unless you have millions of $$ of lawsuit insurance? no. If it happens, the only thing you can do is pay a lawyer to file for the lawsuit to be dismissed. If disney decides to go after you with their full legal resources, you cannot possibly afford to fight them. The same could be said for a majority of businesses in the US. It isnt likely to happen so why borrow trouble?

Difference is in this sense other IPs can be created in an MMO. This is not a CPG, electronics or another tangle product and I'm sure they won't stamp Captain America on their products without proper authorization knowing the consequences. But in this MMO, the end user can and you need to worry about the legal ramifications even if your organization condone such behavior.

[Arcana]

By by your first statement when you when you lose and fold up shop, what confidence is there for us, the future consumers of this product to even invest financially (sub or micro transaction), invest time, and invest emotion into the character we are going to create to know this will happen? How will the project restore confidence to keep people without being people thinking time is ticking to a shutdown?

I should also point out this question has two answers.  The first one was the one I previously alluded to.  Corporations are legal entities, and legal entities are vulnerable to legal assaults.  The law is an expensive battleground.

But we've also discussed on these forums an alternative dimension to this question, which is this: can something like an MMO survive in a world where its operators themselves are not guaranteed to survive?  And conceptually, it can.  You mentioned poison pills.  Getting back to the question of just what kind of game might someone choose to run, in a subsistence model where the business' primary goal is the survival of the game community itself, there are technical tactics one could use to ensure that the game could survive the annihilation of even the operating entity.  A hypothetical strategy might be to:

1.  Open source all of your server and client code.  This is an option only available to community self-developed projects of course.
2.  Contractually stipulate that players own their own creations within the game, and only grant to the game operator a license to use that data indefinitely to operate the game itself.
3.  Provide for the means to export character data in a manner that would allow it to be reimported into the servers in the event of a catastrophe.  Cryptographically sign data in a matter that allows key-splitted trustees to verify and reimport unaltered data.

That implements a game design that can survive any shut down.  An operating entity can be sued out of existence or self-destruct, but the game can always be legally forked in that circumstances.  A profit-focused game company is unlikely to do this for a variety of reasons, but a survival-focused game might.  It could also specifically be possible to construct defensive poison pills that ensured that any entity that attempted to shut the game down through suing the operators would open Pandora's box and allow anyone else to fork the game by triggering the above three circumstances.

Why play any MMO when we know every single one of them can be shut down at any time for any reason or even no reason, is an interesting question worth pondering.  But maybe it is worth pondering if it is possible to construct an MMO that is assured survival under almost any conditions provided only that at least two people on Earth still want to play it.  I think it is possible.  Once again, I'm not a spokesperson or developer for any successor project, but if I were that would be an angle I would attempt to pursue if I believed the player community itself was sufficiently interested in it.

It isn't possible to create a game company that is impervious to outside forces.  But it might be possible to create an MMO that even its own creators couldn't kill so long as its players were willing to continue playing it.  This strategy has its own risks: unrestricted forking for example.  But it would create a situation where the players, and only the players, ultimately dictated whether the game continued on.  Probably bad business, almost certainly outside the legal limits of any organization that licensed the game server code (but not necessarily the game content IP), but within the limits of bottom-up community development projects.

[MM3squints]

*Too much to Quote so just Pretend I Quoted*

In that instance the project leads (all of them) are knowing they are making a game for passion, not for profit (well you can put it on your resume for your efforts.) This will run the risk of non homogenous gameplay and for the creators to give up some integrity of their game (this can be a good thing, but would the creators allow this even as a last resort) This will work for any new projects, but for CoX/APR, I strongly believe this is a non starter for not just NCSoft to hand over the IP, but the organization that backing Nate.

Why do I play MMO. I never knew what a MMO was until I picked up CoX from a Navy Exchange (it was very prominently displayed with American Flags) CoX honestly is an abnormality in the MMO scene for me. I played Champions, SWTOR, Secret World, Wildstar, Boob and Soul, Rift, but those MMOs just felt like "games" as in once paid for them I got my moneys worth (around 500-1000 hours) and just grew bored with them because they were generally the same formula where you needed to grind for better things and people won't team up with you unless you are in their guild (well the Secret World was some what more interesting with a good story and Boob and Soul has pretty fun PvP, but the grind was the same) CoX was the one game that actually made teaming fun and encourage teaming even when you can solo through everything. For me all other MMOs are just a wash, but CoX being the first MMO and to me atleast the most fun, it ascended the just being a game.

[ivanhedgehog]

Difference is in this sense other IPs can be created in an MMO. This is not a CPG, electronics or another tangle product and I'm sure they won't stamp Captain America on their products without proper authorization knowing the consequences. But in this MMO, the end user can and you need to worry about the legal ramifications even if your organization condone such behavior.

anyone can sue you for any reason, super hero isnt special in that regard. The tolkien estate could sue you for using elves and orcs, disney could sue you for using blasters. Marvel did not invent super heroes, they dont have some sort of blanket over the genre. I have to wonder how many "leggolass's" have been created in wow. You cant base your business model on possible litigation, you could never create anything new if you did.

[MM3squints]

As I stated before there will be imitations on other MMOs like WoW, however they do have a comprehensive customer support in not only reporting trademark violation, but dealing with offenders quickly and enforcing the rules (this requires manpower) Blasters in itself it too generic, however making a specific character like Cyclops will get you into hot water. Before the shutdown CoX made a Psi Melee. There is one famous Psi Melee that comes to mind, but as long you don't use her, they don't have a monopoly on the power itself. It's not basing the business model on possible litigations, however, you need to be prepared for them if they ever do happen.

It's been happening a lot lately specifically with one company that has been on a tear (Nintendo) Then again there are those company that could care less and mocks company enforcing DMCA (Sega) Then again that leaves Sega open for jokes that the fans can make better Sonic games than they can.