New efforts!

[Vee]

I could literally run City of Heroes in my basement today.

So is it bring your own beanbag or do we just show up?

[Tubbius]

So is it bring your own beanbag or do we just show up?

Please leave room for Tubbius.  :)

[Arcana]

So is it bring your own beanbag or do we just show up?

That was a statement about computing power, not a description of my Superbowl party.

[Brigadine]

That was a statement about computing power, not a description of my Superbowl party.

Wouldn't the internet connection be the hardest part?

[bmonkeyhammer]

SoH has come onto the scene just this past November, but is making amazing progress... with one year of dev, using UE4... check out the character creator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ6evQ2g6vU

[RGladden]

SoH has come onto the scene just this past November, but is making amazing progress... with one year of dev, using UE4... check out the character creator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ6evQ2g6vU

Wow.  That's an amazing amount of progress in so short a period of time.  The character creator is off to a great start.  This is how I imagined CoH II might have looked.

[MyriVerse]

Wow.  That's an amazing amount of progress in so short a period of time.  The character creator is off to a great start.  This is how I imagined CoH II might have looked.

Indeed. However, although I love design customization, I have to ask if it might be possible for it to be too complex. Seems like it could take hours.

Beautiful in any regard though.

[Paragon Avenger]

Of my more than 5000 posts,

Think of like the healing badge.  You're just getting started.

Of course, shall we find out if there is a maximum number of posts a single account can make?

[Hagoroth]

At least my Patriots didn't break my heart, and won another SuperBowl  :-\

[Tahquitz]

Dude! Spoilers!  I DVR'd it and I wanted to watch it tomorrow!

...

Kidding, I have zero interest in sports. :P

[Angel Phoenix77]

Dude! Spoilers!  I DVR'd it and I wanted to watch it tomorrow!

...

Kidding, I have zero interest in sports. :P

Darth Vader-esk NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO:D (sorry I cannot paste a picture of this.)

[Hagoroth]

Dude! Spoilers!  I DVR'd it and I wanted to watch it tomorrow!

...

Kidding, I have zero interest in sports. :P

I'd trade it for CoX back.
It's only going to keep me happy till Friday, when I've gone through all my Dolphin/Jets/Bills fan friends who spent all day laughing as we lost for 3 quarters.

[Harpospoke]

SoH has come onto the scene just this past November, but is making amazing progress... with one year of dev, using UE4... check out the character creator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ6evQ2g6vU

Wow...where did these guys come from?   That looks pretty good.

[adarict]

As operating costs to keep an MMO functioning (when done right) continue to fall towards zero, the excuse that the financial burdens of running a massively multiplayer game environment are relevant are increasingly hollow.  I could literally run City of Heroes in my basement today.

Sort of depends though.  If they had a deal like the company I work for, the cost is definitely not trivial.  We use Dell as our datacenter, and we are constantly having to keep track of server usage.  They charge us the monthly fee, even when we do not use the machines.  And when we decide to shut down some of the machines, we had to get it into our contract, because by default, as long as the overall environment is up, we get charged for it, plus a fee for any VMs over a certain number.  IBM handles our other datacenter, and they are just as bad.  I only have direct experience with those two providers.  Maybe others are better.  If NCSoft  (or whatever MMO parent company you want to include) already had their own datacenter, meaning not renting space from another company, then I would agree that the costs are negligible.  Likely they would use it for things OTHER than just one game.

[Solitaire]

Wow...where did these guys come from?   That looks pretty good.

Just image if all the successor teams actual joined together to make a game...

[LadyVamp]

Just image if all the successor teams actual joined together to make a game...

Would be nice if it worked that way but pulling all of those teams together would likely kill the project they're pulled together to work on.  Dueling ideas.  Dueling attitudes.  No projects have ever moved quickly (if at all) when done by a large committee.

It would be like trying to run an obedience school for cats.

[Vee]

Just image if all the successor teams actual joined together to make a game...

Those talks fell apart quickly when no one would agree to be Pidge.

[Kaos Arcanna]

Just image if all the successor teams actual joined together to make a game...

Eh. You're asking people to subjugate their own vision for someone else's-- to a greater or lesser degree-- in order to work together. As much time as the various projects have put into their efforts, I can't see them giving that up-- and at this point it would probably take longer for a product to come out if they worked together than it will with them working separately.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I'd trade it for CoX back.
It's only going to keep me happy till Friday, when I've gone through all my Dolphin/Jets/Bills fan friends who spent all day laughing as we lost for 3 quarters.

That last quarter was pretty nuts.  I am not even that big of a fan of football, but I am a fan of badassery.  And coming back from what seems like a sure loss falls under badassery, if I am not mistaken no other team has been able to come back like that during the super bowl.

SoH has come onto the scene just this past November, but is making amazing progress... with one year of dev, using UE4... check out the character creator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ6evQ2g6vU

Impressive, wasn't this the one using CoH stock pictures as a place holder?  Has come along way quickly.

[Arcana]

Sort of depends though.  If they had a deal like the company I work for, the cost is definitely not trivial.  We use Dell as our datacenter, and we are constantly having to keep track of server usage.  They charge us the monthly fee, even when we do not use the machines.  And when we decide to shut down some of the machines, we had to get it into our contract, because by default, as long as the overall environment is up, we get charged for it, plus a fee for any VMs over a certain number.  IBM handles our other datacenter, and they are just as bad.  I only have direct experience with those two providers.  Maybe others are better.  If NCSoft  (or whatever MMO parent company you want to include) already had their own datacenter, meaning not renting space from another company, then I would agree that the costs are negligible.  Likely they would use it for things OTHER than just one game.

I said I could run it for very low costs.  I did not say I wouldn't charge you lots to do it. :p

What it costs to do and what people charge you to do it are two different things.  And in hosting, those things are practically independent things.

Also, when you run datacenters you start to think completely differently about costs; at least I do.  A $25,000 server sounds like an expensive thing, but I don't see the number 25,000 anymore.  I see the number 730.  That's the monthly lease payment on a $25,000 server (3yr term).  A 2016 $25k server is a behemoth 40 core (two socket) Xeon with 768GB of ram.  It is possible that is more computing power than all of City of Heroes launched with in 2004.  Based on what they could possibly have been running in 2012 vs what you can buy today, it could probably support several hundred simultaneous players running the last server iteration.

Bandwidth is probably a bigger concern than hardware or hosting costs.  But then again, 1gig and 10gig internet is available for thousands of dollars a month.  City of Heroes needs like 20-50k per player, so even a couple thousand players is probably less than 100mb/sec of internet, not including client downloads.  That's hundreds, maybe a couple grand a month of redundant BGP interconnects.

Stuff just keeps getting cheaper if you know what you're doing.  My 200 Terabyte NAS configurations are probably going to become obsolete in 2017, replaced with 300 TB capacity NAS configurations.  For basically peanuts.