Status Update (October 2)

[blue storm]

I do think it bears saying that the goal of efforts to save CoH is to save the game.  The minute this about taking vengeance on NCSoft rather than saving CoH, the fight to save CoH ends.

Indeed, if it's only natural to feel drawn to vengeance, think that we'll lose much more than we can gain if we go this direction !

Edit: Fixed quote tags --TV

[Teege]

Keep the pressure on.

[DrakeGrimm]

Indeed, if it's only natural to feel drawn to vengeance, think that we'll lose much more than we can gain if we go this direction !

Vengeance is only to be taken if everything else fails, and I will not expect TonyV, Titan, or the SaveCoH movement to be associated with or involved in such actions.

[Siberian Spring]

Eat those blues. Keep your endurance up. We still need Tactics and Maneuvers.

[Artillerie]

I have immense respect for TonyV and all the other people who have put so much effort into the plan to in some way save City of Heroes. But (you could hear that coming I guess) I for one have given up, I don't see either the IP or the game being saved. Even if the IP could be bought it is doubtful it would be in the price range for crowd sourcing. I'm not an industry insider I don't *know* how much a successful computer game IP is worth but I'd expect multiple millions.

If it were out of character for NCSoft to just shut something down with little or no warning, then yes you might have had a chance but with NCSoft's track record I was pretty certain from when I heard the announcement that this was the end of things.

And for the record even though I stopped playing (paying for) the game a better part of a year ago CoH was my first real MMO, my online alter-ego is still my 2nd try at a scrapper (my 1st a Fitness free Dark/Dark was deleted shortly before the release of i4 due to being completely gimped), I played from the EU beta and so far all the other games I've played have been rated by the CoH standard and no so far none have quite achieved it... GW2 is close but not quite there.

City of Heroes has helped me keep my mental disfunctionality from doing more damage than it ought, given me an outlet into which I can push the person I should be into something approaching reality. I won't say that CoH has stopped me from ending it all... or trying... but only because that could be laid at the door of any MMO I play (I guess).

But no I never believed CoH could be saved.

And why post this negative view here? Because rather than vowing to RE the server so that Titan et al can bring up 'pirate' versions of the game the annoucement should be looked at as the call to actually get on with a new project. It might not end up as Phoenix City (I don't really care for that name myself). Fan led reanimations of closed MMOs do happen...? I don't know of any myself, but they must happen? Right? ((That is closed MMOs that the fans recreate/reverse engineer to bring up servers for fans to play on and don't get sued by the original owners.))

Fan led recreating of games that are no longer updated... or are abandoned by their devs, or the devs vanish... etc... ((FreeCiv - Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe - Spring Engine (Total Annihilation) - And many others.))

Now those do happen, so maybe instead of concentrating on the dubious legal possibility of recreating copyright material (Tabula Rasa fans failed at that) concentrate on something they cannot prevent!

TL:DR
City of Heroes is Dead - Long live Phoenix City (or similar).

Respectfully - we don't know that it is lost until the final end comes, and that could be for quite some time after the servers go down - if they do.

Also - Yes, people have failed to save games before and NCSoft is a tough nut to crack but how many other situations have been saved by a refusal to give in?

To paraphrase Edmund Burke - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing."

[Knightslayer]

Eat those blues. Keep your endurance up. We still need Tactics and Maneuvers.

*starts handing out the Recovery Serum syringes*

[Vulpy]

But a private server on a single computer with a dozen friends online at a time - and which isn't even online when said friends aren't playing - that's much harder to track down. Basically the LAN-version of CoH.

My SG and I would preserve most of our enjoyment of the game under a setup like this. If NCsoft could somehow repackage this into a reasonably-priced standalone product, we would probably buy it.

As a side note, I'd imagine the host would have access to normally-restricted functions--the sorts of things that might make iTrials easy to complete with only a team of 8, for instance.

[ET3D]

I don't have much hope that NCsoft will change its mind, although it's possible that the value of the IP will get lower will time, which will allow buying it. Still, I'd rather know what the price is now, if possible.

I'm worried that as time passes it will get harder to save the game because fewer people will care about it. When the servers close people will move on to other things. They will be resigned and accept that the game has closed. If some time down the road the game will be revived, a lot of people will have moved to other MMO's or other things in their lives, and even if they would still have a place in their heart for CoH I don't expect that they would go back to it and play the way they did before.

Even now some people are burning bridges by deleting characters, or by not trying to record them, and the game servers are already more empty. I fear that if we don't find a solution soon then the only viable solution will be to create a new, similar game which will be attractive enough to get people back, and that would be a huge undertaking.

[Knightslayer]

I don't have much hope that NCsoft will change its mind, although it's possible that the value of the IP will get lower will time, which will allow buying it. Still, I'd rather know what the price is now, if possible.

I'm worried that as time passes it will get harder to save the game because fewer people will care about it. When the servers close people will move on to other things. They will be resigned and accept that the game has closed. If some time down the road the game will be revived, a lot of people will have moved to other MMO's or other things in their lives, and even if they would still have a place in their heart for CoH I don't expect that they would go back to it and play the way they did before.

Even now some people are burning bridges by deleting characters, or by not trying to record them, and the game servers are already more empty. I fear that if we don't find a solution soon then the only viable solution will be to create a new, similar game which will be attractive enough to get people back, and that would be a huge undertaking.

Even if we do manage to save it, I think it's important to make creating CoH2 a priority - because make no mistake, this whole thing will have already cost the game dearly playerwise..

[Victoria Victrix]

While I have not heard anything directly I think it is fair to assume NCSoft has stopped talking to formerly-known-as-Paragon.  Money could be a big reason.  Time is on our side there. 

1.) The closer we come to Nov 30, the more the CoH brand "degrades" and the less the IP is worth
2.) We can still keep looking for venture capitalists to add to Brian's pool
3.) After Nov 30 the IP severely degrades in value
4.) It is very possible to start pointing out to Nexon that the stock they bought in anticipation of making money is, thanks to NCSoft's poor management, sinking.  Therefore, it is in Nexon's interest to use their controlling interest to pressure NCSoft into reversing their stance.  NOTE: Nexon is Japanese-owned, not Korean.  That might be something we can use.

The time for revenge is not yet.  However, it might be time to make it clear we have a knife in one hand; I'll defer to people with more expertise on that score.

Tony, you may totally use that on your resume.  I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it.

(For those of you only interested in CoH, skip this part and go on to the next poster)

The Secret World Chronicles superhero series is in no way, shape, nor form related to The Secret World MMO.  In fact, we had the name first, and didn't think there was any need to trademark it (which is an expensive proposition at a time when it was just a free podcast).  To this day I am still not sure why the producer decided to take that name for his game, when it already had a perfectly good one.  I've never been contacted by any of them.  My agent has advised to not make an issue of it, since they can't deny us the use of the name (even though they trademarked it) based on the fact that we had it first, but if we went after them in any way, it would become an expensive disaster that we would lose. 

When the book series was finally sold, it was my idea to go to Paragon and say "Hey, the characters here got their start in CoH even though we've completely removed them from anything like CoH for this book, how about if we cross-promote?" because I thought that was a better, more cooperative, and more honest solution to the fact that our characters were birthed in the game than trying to pretend nothing like that had happened and hope Paragon didn't notice.  And because the folks at Paragon are flexible, creative and smart, they loved the idea.

I don't think the loss of CoH is going to matter to SWC one way or the other, when it comes to how well or poorly the books do.  I do think that the loss of CoH is going to make my life much sadder and lonelier (Larry said as much last night).

Would we offer the use of ECHO, SWC-Earth, as the setting for an MMO?  In a heartbeat.  I'd probably have to have some long talks with Russ about how it would be important to the four of us to allow the licensing of the property for a mere token, but I think I could talk him around to it as a great publicity venue.  And we'd obviously have to change the name: maybe to ECHO Earth or something like that.

[P51mus]

All I got out of that press release was, "We're not talking to Brian Clayton any more.  We gave up on negotiating with the one party we decided was worthy of negotiation."  No more, no less.  This is not a sign to give up.

I do think it bears saying that the goal of efforts to save CoH is to save the game.  The minute this about taking vengeance on NCSoft rather than saving CoH, the fight to save CoH ends.

Well, if we can't save CoH, then the fight is about making sure no company ever dares to try and pull something like this ever again.  That is, saving other games.  The blue side, Titan, can do this through our continuing PR efforts.

......any truly red side efforts can be done by unaffiliated and scattered individuals. Anything like that requires less people than the titan effort is using. And there's most likely nothing we can do to stop them.  I have a bit of a morbid curiosity in finding out whatever that will mean.

[eabrace]

Money could be a big reason.

Pure speculation:  My gut says money probably wasn't the issue.  I suspect "terms" may have played a significant part.

[Electric-Knight]

I came here and I am sure I had something more to say...
But I needed to catch up and read through all of these pages...
And now my brain is all mush and I can't quite form the words...

I believe it was to say that... Yeah, we made them take enough notice to make another move (releasing a statement to rather vapidly attempt to save face).
We can say, "Boo... they won't sell... that option is closed." Or we can stand up, keep fighting and force them to keep making more moves until we actually possibly push them into truly offering the game for a reasonable amount to anyone out there that is capable and willing to take it on.
Regardless of anything else... there is zero way, in any reality, that any such path should have been "exhausted" in such a short amount of time.

We can send them some Energy Drinks and tell them to keep trying, we believe in ya! ;)

In all honesty, I believe in us.
Mayhaps it is time to make another big show of our unity and our resolve?
They can tell us that it is over. They can tell us that it is a done deal. They can tell us that it is impossible.
But we can say that it's not over until we quit. And there is NO quit inside of us.
We are fighting for what is right.
And we are fighting for more than just this game and for more than just our wonderful community.
We are fighting for the validity of any and all mmorpgs that provide ongoing enjoyment, support for a community and turn into something more than a few years of investment.
We're fighting for every future passionate player.
We're fighting for every artist, designer and developer that pours themselves into these ongoing collaborations.
We're fighting for the future of mmorpgs and how and what we, as people, believe is right and wrong regarding the life cycles and continuations of these social ventures.
We're fighting for the right of "smaller" business ventures to be freed from larger billion-dollar-corporations that throw away profits that others would love to have.
This is what we do... Because this is what we must do.

[darkhawktman]

Hmmmm... Maybe we should do a fundraiser to send NCSoft a bunch of caffenated beverages or 5 hour energies to help them renew negotiations.

[Vulpy]

Would we offer the use of ECHO, SWC-Earth, as the setting for an MMO?  In a heartbeat.  I'd probably have to have some long talks with Russ about how it would be important to the four of us to allow the licensing of the property for a mere token, but I think I could talk him around to it as a great publicity venue.  And we'd obviously have to change the name: maybe to ECHO Earth or something like that.

I'm intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[Valjean]

Pure speculation:  My gut says money probably wasn't the issue.  I suspect "terms" may have played a significant part.

I agree. We know that there were at least multiple groups of investors. There's something more that NCsoft doesn't want people to know.

[JaguarX]

I agree. We know that there were at least multiple groups of investors. There's something more that NCsoft doesn't want people to know.

Shooting in the pure dark here but would anyone happen to know any of these investor groups?

[downix]

Would we offer the use of ECHO, SWC-Earth, as the setting for an MMO?  In a heartbeat.  I'd probably have to have some long talks with Russ about how it would be important to the four of us to allow the licensing of the property for a mere token, but I think I could talk him around to it as a great publicity venue.  And we'd obviously have to change the name: maybe to ECHO Earth or something like that.

Plan Z discussions just one section down.

[Victoria Victrix]

Plan Z discussions just one section down.

Staying out of Plan Z.  Don't know enough to offer anything constructive and don't want people to think I'm just there to shill my product.

[DrakeGrimm]

Staying out of Plan Z.  Don't know enough to offer anything constructive and don't want people to think I'm just there to shill my product.

A shame, since your input in the lore would be invaluable. That said, I can understand your reasons, and don't think less of you for it. :)