The Shot Heard Around Paragon City - SCORE Public Release

[Taceus Jiwede]

Hey guys. I've haven't been keeping up with the news lately. Does this means the private server is permanently gone?

The current one is gone yes, no news for 24 hrs as to the future of it reopening or another taking its place.  I think even the people involved don't have the whole picture yet.

[slickriptide]

At this point, it's murky what the main admin received. There was mention of DMCA, which would be completely irrelevant to something hosted in the UK as I believe the private server was being hosted.

What seems to have happened is that the main guy got some kind of communication that sent him into a panic and he deleted everything without consulting any of the other admins. He did say that he had not slept in 40 hours, which no doubt contributed to a state of mind prone to bad descisions.

Calmer heads prevailed and now they're looking at how to recover the server from backups or something. Supposedly it will be back.

In the meantime, people working with the I24 code have managed to get part of a server (the db server) up and running on a local workstation. One small step  for  a man and all that.

[Nightraptor]

Surely the events of the last few days shows NC$OFT that there is STILL a market out there for this game. 3000 players paying $15 a month is $45000 a month which given today's hardware prices pays for the server in the month of opening. Then add add another 11 months of subscription and there you have nearly $500,000 of revenue. Remove from that say $200,000 for the salary of 2 interns and a senior programmer to manage the server and you are still making $300,000. Every additional subscriber will only add to the revenue.

[Ironwolf]

I suggest whoever is in talks with NCSoft ask if we could pay them a yearly server license to be an "Official" server.

This would not allow you to make money - it would allow you to run the server with NCSoft's approval and they could hold you to standards depending on how many users your capacity holds. This is often how server software is run.

[Vella]

https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/22/city-of-heroes-rogue-server-has-already-been-shut-down-under-threat-of-legal-action/

Read the last update regarding Yuvi.


And apparently there's more Discord drama and we now have a new discord.

[Ironwolf]

Don't panic yet, grab your towel a quietly hang on.

[Vella]

Don't panic yet, grab your towel a quietly hang on.

NCsoft doesn't have to do anything at the rate this is going.

I understand people's reactions to the events of the past week and can also understand the concerns regarding today's news of the server but this is getting really far out there.

Innocuous/Glory to Arachnos is being is being accused of bigotry
He says something about Leandro
Leandro says something about him but deletes the tweet
The discord was removed from the subreddit page and replaced with a new subreddit that requires you to state your preferred pronoun to see channels?
Now people are accusing Leandro of running the new subreddit

[Dev7on]

Now my anxiety is going through the roof.

[Sinistar]

https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/22/city-of-heroes-rogue-server-has-already-been-shut-down-under-threat-of-legal-action/

Read the last update regarding Yuvi.


And apparently there's more Discord drama and we now have a new discord.
[/quote

So someone panicked and actually wiped the server? Hope for data backups

[Ultimate15]

This is insane and I am so confused.

[Vella]

This is insane and I am so confused.

From what I can tell...  Someone contacted the lead dev and claimed that NCsoft was sending a cease and desist and that's what prompted the server shutdown and data wipe.  The discord drama is a separate issue.

So... NCSoft has not done anything in regards to the server.  If the data can be recovered or replaced then we can all resume playing testing.

[Sinistar]

Yep I see this as a delay of a few days or weeks, not years

[Vella]

   I think the only thing that was wiped was the character/mission/npc stuff.  Basically everything that was in the 2nd data dump.  They DID say they would wipe the characters before going official.   ;D

[CG]

Just some musing:

Unless there's an approval from NCSoft (tacit or explicit), there won't be a single server like we had back when the game was running.  Either costs will grow too much, someone will get bored or spooked and kill their server, or they get a letter from NCSoft telling them to C&D.

I feel like the future of CoH will be multiple private servers operating under the radar.  It might be closer to a single person game or a small group of friends.  It's possible that there will be a facility to extract your character from a server, so you can have a backup, and to allow restoration on another server.  Think of it like transhuman sleeving - download your character into a new body somewhere else.

The coding team working on understanding, simplifying and deploying new binaries based on the i24 code is probably the future of the game.  They still need the back end database data, but that's probably coming still.  Once that's released, it's only a matter of time before you can run your own private server on commodity hardware.  It might take some time.

I had a great time playing on the test server this weekend.  I got to play with my friend that introduced me to the game in the first place; we re-rolled our original toons and had a blast.  We got to show our kids and they loved it too.  My daughter made her first character in Icon and was disappointed that the test server was down, but I have hope now that the code's out.  The test server might not have worked out (it might still - the jury's still out on that) but there will be City of Heroes in the future. 

I'm happy to have some real hope going forward.

[Ultimate15]

Just some musing:

Unless there's an approval from NCSoft (tacit or explicit), there won't be a single server like we had back when the game was running.  Either costs will grow too much, someone will get bored or spooked and kill their server, or they get a letter from NCSoft telling them to C&D.

Eh maybe. But I do think it's worth noting that NCSoft didn't even take any action or do anything, based off of what I'm reading. He was sent some type of false alarms / warnings from red herrings and homeboy just deleted everything lol.

This is so nuts. I think things will bounce back in a couple days, but WOW what a ride.

[Vella]

Eh maybe. But I do think it's worth noting that NCSoft didn't even take any action or do anything, based off of what I'm reading. He was sent some type of false alarms / warnings from red herrings and homeboy just deleted everything lol.

This is so nuts. I think things will bounce back in a couple days, but WOW what a ride.

As far as I know NCsoft doesn't even go after Lineage 1/2 servers so I'm not sure if they'd actually go after CoX.  Not much to go off of I know..

I think the only server they've actually gone after was the Tabula Rasa server but that may have been because of the ongoing legal battle with RG at the time.

[Ironwolf]

He got trolled by someone on the internet - who would think it?

Let reality sink in - the code while playable needs work. The coders expected it to take 2 or 3 months to optimize it for modern servers. It was a little taste but really better code means less resources to run it.

It could easily get to where you could rent a server for under a $100 a month.

[Ultimate15]

He got trolled by someone on the internet - who would think it?

Let reality sink in - the code while playable needs work. The coders expected it to take 2 or 3 months to optimize it for modern servers. It was a little taste but really better code means less resources to run it.

It could easily get to where you could rent a server for under a $100 a month.

Yeah maybe this is a blessing in disguise. I didn't get a chance to play on it, but I did hear it was relatively unstable. And, yes, it's looking like NCSoft was NOT involved with this. So, that's good right...?

[Vella]

Yeah maybe this is a blessing in disguise. I didn't get a chance to play on it, but I did hear it was relatively unstable. And, yes, it's looking like NCSoft was NOT involved with this. So, that's good right...?

It wasn't exactly smooth running but it was completely playable.  There was occasional lag and some mapserver errors but it was evident this group was making tremendous progress over the last few days.  The difference between Sunday morning and Sunday night was pretty significant. 

[saipaman]

You might as well ask a Magic 8 Ball as ask us.