CoH Speculation/Conjecture

[jagre]

I've been reading through a lot of the news/threads regarding the CoH shutdown and had some random thoughts...

Once it's shut down, what is the game actually worth?  With all due respect to the creators of the game, I don't think people are still fans of the game because of its lore.  In other words, and in my opinion, it's much more about the game and its mechanics than the story and characters in the CoX universe.  The character creation process, the simple/accessible power enhancement & crafting, the art style and physics, the straightforward battle system, the replayability -- these are the things that kept people around.

Again, this isn't to say that the characters & story are bad, just that it's far more about it being an easy game to immerse yourself in to whatever extent you prefer, and that it's not so deep and cumbersome that you can't accomplish anything casually or in a quick session.

My point here is that the IP has very little value once the game closes.  The prospects of a sequel or anything noteworthy happening with the IP after the game closes is extremely remote.  So it does NCSoft no good to hang onto it if there are any interested buyers, UNLESS...

What's the likelihood that Disney/Marvel orchestrated this to create a vacuum in the genre ahead of the Marvel game's release?  The legal issue was resolved years ago, so what I'm asking here is if there's any precedent of something like that -- arranging to have another game snuffed to create demand for the one you have coming out?  The timing is damn near perfect, though it would seem that the only way to orchestrate a stoppage of CoH would be to buy it, unless NCSoft was somehow open to taking a sum of money to close it.  Probably far-fetched, but an interesting thought nonetheless (especially given the community's recent interest in getting Disney to buy it).

Regarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go.  I've got nothing but love for the folks at Paragon, but the decline in revenue made them almost entirely expendable.  If sales were going to continue to skid despite them churning out pretty solid new content on a regular basis, both in volume and quality, then it made sense for NCSoft to cut their losses.

I know a lot of fans look at the revenue and think of CoH as a cash cow of sorts, but that's really not the case.  Their operating costs were upwards of a third of their revenue and climbing, which is a very bad trend, especially within a year of launching a new business model that promised a sustained increase.  The bump from their free-to-play model lasted little more than 6 months.

So if NCSoft was even considering closing it with an interest in selling, there's no question that the property has A LOT more value without Paragon Studios attached.

As for the reports of them having to close CoH prior to trying to sell it...  This could be the case, though I wouldn't get your hopes up.  The only real reason to be optimistic is, as alluded to above, NCSoft stands to gain nothing from the property once the game closes.  A sequel would be a shaky prospect to begin with given the flagging interest in the current game and the IP has no value outside of video games, so from a business standpoint there is no logical reason to sit on something that could be sold for a lot to someone else.

From a buyer's perspective, I might only be interested in the game after it's been shut down for a time because it will likely need a new business model, which is an easier sell as a savior than as a hostage-taker. 

In other words, "We're taking over the game, and a lot of you are going to have to pay (or pay more) if you want to keep playing," doesn't sound as good as, "We saved the game!  It's back!  We don't have the deep pockets our predecessors did and we have an infrastructure to build, so it might cost a bit more -- at least for a while.  But CoH is back!!!"

Given that CoH would almost certainly remain subscription-based, how much would you pay per month if a new owner scaled back development to, say, one issue a year?  The new trend of MMOs having free-to-play models from the start is only sustainable if you're selling a bunch of boxes to start, which would obviously not be the case if CoH were to get a new home.  I guess it's possible that a new owner would want to continue development as before, it's doubtful.  At the very least they'd need a bunch of time to get acclimated.

So if CoH were to continue, it would most likely still require a subscription for certain levels of access and would also most likely not continue to be updated in the manner we're accustomed to.  I'm curious whether players would pay for anything less than what they came to expect from their subscription before...

Would you pay a monthly fee if the game returned as it stands today, with little or no new content?

How about for 1 issue per year?

And what if it were to continue as it was before, with the same level/rate of content releases, but a much more restrictive free-to-play model?  Would you pay $15/month for CoH if not paying meant a greatly-reduced experience (only a handful of character slots globally, no market, inaccessible ATs and/or powersets, or something along those lines)?

The reason I ask is that I wonder how sustainable this game appears to potential buyers/investors.  There would almost certainly be changes to the business model for the game, and I'm curious as to what the player base feels the best/fairest model would be.

Despite its declining numbers, CoH revenue appears to be $9m+ annually, which means the game would likely have a VERY large pricetag.  As a buyer, I like its margins with as little overhead as possible (i.e. the $2m+ Paragon Studios cost them per year), but the more development expected by its players, the less attractive those margins become.  It could be years before a buyer saw a profit.  There's no question that it'd be a risky investment.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on.  I know you guys have discussed a lot of this to death, but I'm just getting caught up and thought I'd throw this out there...

[Kadrok]

I'd pay subscription for 1 issue a year, but I'd probably be on and off because of work and life (which was the case before NCSoft's announcement). I'd even be willing to have a couple of years without new content if it mean we could still have City... to be honest, I never got around to a lot of the content, so it wouldn't seem like there was no new content... and if the mission architect was expanded, perhaps it could be set up so the players produce more of the new content. I was in an RP villain group for a while before the end, and they were running some interesting stories using Architect. There was even a nightclub, Black Friday.

Would arbitrating player-produced content be inexpensive and feasible?

[Aggelakis]

And what if it were to continue as it was before, with the same level/rate of content releases, but a much more restrictive free-to-play model?  Would you pay $15/month for CoH if not paying meant a greatly-reduced experience (only a handful of character slots globally, no market, inaccessible ATs and/or powersets, or something along those lines)?

You mean City of Heroes: Freedom? Yeah, we already had that.

[jagre]

You mean City of Heroes: Freedom? Yeah, we already had that.

No, some people had that.  Many players had enough time banked to barely feel the limits of going "Freemium."  If you weren't phased by not having end-game content (which amounted to groups of players doing the same couple events over and over), the other 95+% of the game was free.

This is why I said "much more restrictive."  Freedom's been around over a year.  Many players are used to not paying a subscription -- either playing for free based on the access they have or going "a la carte" and just springing for the new stuff they wanted.

If that was no longer possible -- if a new owner made subscriptions mandatory or greatly reduced the access of free accounts -- would people currently not subscribing pay a monthly fee or just quit playing?

A lot of people are clamoring for the game to continue, but there's no question that it would be a very risky venture for a new company to take on unless the pricetag were pretty low.  If a buyer did emerge, I'm wondering how viable it would be for them.  The current model didn't perform, they're losing potential customers to other games because CoH will be shut down, and the aim would have to be to recoup their investment ASAP given the decline in revenue that was occurring under far more ideal circumstances.

Why would someone want to take that on?  If you want potential buyers to take interest, you're far better served discussing how their investment could be successful and pledging to support the game financially than you are making heavy-handed, melodramatic posts about your love for a declining video game and the evil unfairness of the people deciding to cut it loose.

A buyer would have a diminished subscription pool and no new content to sell.  They'd be AT LEAST 2 years away from turning a profit on the game under near-ideal circumstances, and probably much longer than that.  And that's banking on an 8-year-old game that was already losing support and therefore had little hope of being acceptably profitable 2 years out.

I know all about Freedom, Aggelakis.  What I'm interested in is some discussion on how this game's base would support it going forward.

[JaguarX]

Once it's shut down, what is the game actually worth? 
That is the question there. By definition it can save on having to rewrite everything IF they had plans on using the IP. At the same time they are not exactly losing anything but sure as hell is not gaining anything.

What's the likelihood that Disney/Marvel orchestrated this to create a vacuum in the genre ahead of the Marvel game's release?[/b]  If this was the plan of Disney ad knowing Disney, they probably would of just did a hostile takeover of COX and then put it on the shelf until Marvel gets it's fill. They probably just figured COX was just another small populated game out there on the level of DCUO and CO and with their cash and know how planned on making Marvel smash the competition anyways especially with the Marvel movies coming otu and that have been out. Even if their game tanks, they still get their money worth out of Marvel just from the movies alone.

Regarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go.  Hmmm. I'll get back to you on that. Because if Paragon Studios was dissolved then their work would have went with it...or...that kind of happened anyways. But what I mean is that I doubt they would have transfered the game to another studio which are probably busy already with their own games and projects and if they still had to get personnel to run COX then there would have been no point in dissolving Paragon Studios in the first place. And yeah, while COX seemed to be raking a profit, it wasnt exactly a cash cow. On Disney, I do think it is worth the effort to see if they are interested althoug has big as Disney is, if they were interested they probably would have made an offer by now but just in case they missed it, yeah send them letters, folks. Ya never know. Worse that can happen is they say no. But if they do buy, dont get too much hopes high as viewing them as a savior until it's concrete that they are going for it. Disney is not know either to sale IPs, and dont hesitate on putting things that are not making enough money for them on ice for years. And remember Disney has a bank account that makes NCSoft look like lowly peons and the profits wasnt enough for NCSoft. Lately Disney has been going for more established "guranteed" big money makers and even more so after that John Carter incident. I might have said this before so sorry about the repeat. But if anything a person is to take from this, is to try anyways and hope for the best but be ready for the worse.



As for the reports of them having to close CoH prior to trying to sell it...  It's risky and depends on the seller. Some may look at a closed game and think it's time has passed and would take too much work and pass it buy although they would buy it if it was still running. They could actually see the current condition of the game. It's like buying a car that isnt currently running because the battery is missing. It looks good, was said to be running good before, passed all emissions recently but still it's a risk. On the other hand, it sometiems easier to take an IP and build the buisness around it instead of taking a fully running game and trying to keep it running while restructing the company to fit around a running game. Depends on the buyer. Some may view the game running as a good sign and they can see exactly what they are getting into. On the other hand again, the legal stuff and difficulty of seeling a running game may be a lot of trouble compared to just selling the IP and building up a billing thing around it and making tweaks as they see fit instead of having to actually figure out the code if stuff goes wrong in a running game. Without the game running they could buy the IP and build their own stuff around it. But either way there is no gurantee the game will be the same game as we know it now. Prepare yourselves.



Given that CoH would almost certainly remain subscription-based, how much would you pay per month if a new owner scaled back development to, say, one issue a year?

Well I wouldnt have minded if PS slowed down on the new relaeses. Those releases cost money and I think if they would have scaled back to increase profits I think most of the player base would have understood. Even if an update comes once a year if the game is good, it will stand up on it's own merits. Remember this game was good because this game was good. You can throw updates at a game every single day but that doesnt make it a good game and doesnt mean people will stick around. I'd pay what ever they are asking for if the game is worth it. If they asked $40 a month, and the game is worth it and I woundnt miss that $40 if the game went off the next day, I'd pay it with no hesitation. Even if they charged $15  month and had bunch of stuff on the market. I'd pay if it's worth it and I'd buy a bunch of stuff off the market if the stuff there is worth buying. And sometimes what I feel is worth doesnt mean I'm going to use it. In my current game I bought many pieces off the market and 75% I havent used or really plan on using but I figured a game needs money to run and I help out when I can when it's worth it.

[Victoria Victrix]

Once it's shut down, what is the game actually worth? 

Not to be rude, but I'm the person that actually has been having ongoing conversations with several Paragon Studios people.  I know a number; I don't think that number is likely to change in the next two or three months after shutdown.  Longer than that, I don't know.  No, I cannot make that number public; doing so would compromise my source.

What's the likelihood that Disney/Marvel orchestrated this to create a vacuum in the genre ahead of the Marvel game's release? 

None whatsoever. 

Again, I have been given a lot of private information and the answer is "none."  There was no colluding going on.  There is absolutely zero conflict with the two new Marvel teen-to-adult games.  There is no conspiracy on this side of the Atlantic.

Regarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go. 

That is not a fact, merely your opinion, with no access to the information that I have.  We would appreciate it if you would state it as such, thank you.

City of Heroes literally cannot be run without Paragon Studios.  While it is certainly possible for a slimmed down version of PS (say, a staff of 40 instead of 84) could run and update the game, the facts of the matter are that at this point, the code is modified, retrofitted, and cludged to the point that no one unfamiliar with it can come in and expect to spend less than a year trying to figure out what does what--bug fixes would be nigh-impossible, and updates completely impossible.

As for the reports of them having to close CoH prior to trying to sell it...

This is verified from not one, but two separate sources, one inside NCSoft, one outside.  No, I cannot tell you my source and neither can Fansy.   We will not risk trouble coming to our sources.

Disney was chosen as the primary target for Team Wildcard not because of any rumors that Disney was interested, but precisely because there were no rumors of the sort, and the four of us decided that we would try for the hardest target first, while people still had energy, were still full of anger and anxiety because the game was closing, and because Disney has the money to do literally anything they care to.  The price for CoH: IP, game code, server code, and customer account information, is about the same price as a mid-to-low level Disney movie.  They gamble with that sort of money on movies all the time.  What would be a dubious risk for another investor is just Tuesday for Disney.  Plus, the buzz that we are audaciously courting Disney may well generate the publicity we need to get Disney's attention.  Nevertheless, we have always known this is a longshot, and we are not billing it as anything else.

We have another crazy target to shoot at if we get no answer from Disney within a reasonable length of time.  Team Wildcard is in this for the long haul.

[dwturducken]

And all of this is moot. One of us is holding the winning Powerball ticket and is duty-bound to buy the game. My wife is on board. I'm still working on my mom...

[Blightfight]

I'd pay subscription for 1 issue a year, but I'd probably be on and off because of work and life (which was the case before NCSoft's announcement). I'd even be willing to have a couple of years without new content if it mean we could still have City... to be honest, I never got around to a lot of the content, so it wouldn't seem like there was no new content... and if the mission architect was expanded, perhaps it could be set up so the players produce more of the new content. I was in an RP villain group for a while before the end, and they were running some interesting stories using Architect. There was even a nightclub, Black Friday.

Would arbitrating player-produced content be inexpensive and feasible?

As one of the people who worked at Black Friday and mostly did nothing but RP, I'd be happy to pay to play for little to no new content. One of the great things about this game is that it gave you a TON of great tools to use for RP, from AE to the crazy awesome character creator, to the Base BUilding system, which people did amazing things with. Seriously, I pretty much ignored the SSA arcs and most of the new content until the bomb dropped, and then I went "Ho crap, there's so much of the actual GAME I haven't played!"

So, yeah. I'd gladly pay my 15 a month for little new Dev-made content, because I pretty much was anyway.

[jagre]

Not to be rude, but I'm the person that actually has been having ongoing conversations with several Paragon Studios people.

It was a rhetorical question used to illustrate my opinion that the IP has little value beyond the existing game.  I'm not asking you for a number or to disclose a source.

There was no colluding going on.

I'm not saying there was.  The concept of private liquidation is very common in competitive business.  It's essentially one company paying another to dissolve rather than acquiring it outright, usually in cases where there are no worthwhile assets at issue.  I was just wondering, given that Marvel has a game in beta, if anyone was aware of that happening in the gaming industry.

That is not a fact, merely your opinion, with no access to the information that I have.  We would appreciate it if you would state it as such, thank you.

With all due respect, I'm wondering why you find it confusing that a post that I specifically titled "CoH Speculation/Conjecture" contains my speculation and conjecture about City of Heroes.  I'm not going to start every sentence with "In my opinion."

City of Heroes literally cannot be run without Paragon Studios.

That's a pretty huge overstatement.  They would not need 40 former Paragon Studios employees to decipher code.  They could get the majority of what they need in that department from a very small number of people.  Reassembling a staff of 40 to the tune of what could be 25% of projected annual revenue would be a horrible investment, especially if the purchase price is equal to a mid-range Disney feature.  Even if they somehow reclaimed all of the game's revenue, they'd be as many as 10 years away from turning a profit.

If the IP had value beyond the game, it might be worth it.  But it doesn't.  In other words, without a Marvel or DC brand, another company would be FAR better served developing an entirely new superhero MMO than purchasing CoH and developing a sequel.  The CoH brand carries very little weight at the register.  The number of people who care about the characters and lore to the point of preference is very small in the grand scheme of things.  Beyond character and story, there's nothing proprietary about the game mechanics.

The property is worth substantially more (at 40 employees with a median salary of, say, $30K -- that's $1.2m per year) without Paragon Studios.  That $1.2m could easily end up being as much as 20% of revenue after the game changes hands.  Way, WAY too high.  I love them to death, but the game would be a FAR tougher sell with the studio attached.

This is verified from not one, but two separate sources, one inside NCSoft, one outside.  No, I cannot tell you my source and neither can Fansy.   We will not risk trouble coming to our sources.

And here again I am neither asking you for your sources or questioning their veracity.  I am merely sharing my thoughts on those reports.

What would be a dubious risk for another investor is just Tuesday for Disney.

And the reason that's true is because they don't make a habit of doing deals like this one.  I want to preface this by reiterating how much I have enjoyed this game and its lore for the last 8 years, if only to offset the fact that I find myself repeating this again:  The CoH IP has no value outside the ongoing operation of the existing game.  The idea of Disney acquiring it solely as a game certainly has merit.  But if the price is in the ballpark you alluded to, then the existing game will likely never be profitable for the buyer.

To be clear, a mid-to-low level Disney feature would still be tens of millions of dollars.  The potential buyer of CoH would have no reason to expect more than $6 million of annual profit.  The prospects of increasing revenue in a major way are pretty small.  So if the sale price of CoH is more than $20 million, it's VERY risky because the game's shelf life is already perceived as an issue, its revenue is already falling, and its direct competition is about to grow in a major way.

That's a deal Disney might make IF the intellectual property had value.  It doesn't.  At the end of the day, the only thing proprietary in the whole package is the characters, and these characters (as much as I've come to love them) have no real value.  This is not like Disney acquiring the Marvel U, The Muppets, and the Looney Toons.  This would be like Disney paying ten figures for the characters in an obscure cartoon that only 250,000 people ever saw, 80% of whom aren't fans anymore.

I admire your spirit and conviction and I honestly wish you well.  I'm just very curious how you imagine your prospective buyer would turn a profit given the kinds of numbers we're talking about here.

I feel the same way you guys do and I'd add another "I'm really going to miss this game" message to the pile if I thought it was needed.  I just thought it would be good to discuss the reality of how things are and what the future might look like if by chance there was an opportunity to keep it going...

[saipaman]

Without compromising any sources, do you have any definitive knowledge the code base even survives at this point?

[dwturducken]

That's a pretty huge overstatement.  They would not need 40 former Paragon Studios employees to decipher code.  They could get the majority of what they need in that department from a very small number of people.  Reassembling a staff of 40 to the tune of what could be 25% of projected annual revenue would be a horrible investment, especially if the purchase price is equal to a mid-range Disney feature.  Even if they somehow reclaimed all of the game's revenue, they'd be as many as 10 years away from turning a profit.

<facepalm>
Did anyone tell him that VV used to be a programmer?

My uncle studied programming back in the 80s and has been programming for a major insurance company for the past 20 years or so. He's mostly doing SQL stuff, now, but he never really got his head around object-oriented stuff, like Java. If I'm not mistaken, it was established rather soon after Black Friday that CoH was written in C++, which can be a godawful mess to sift through when it's not kludged, even if the original programmer was nice enough to comment the ever-loving piss out of the code.

While the timeframe she cited may have been arbitrary, I'm gonna take her at her word that we're all better off with as many of the Paragon Studios folks on board as we can get. Even they had problems with the code...

[Victoria Victrix]

Without compromising any sources, do you have any definitive knowledge the code base even survives at this point?

As long as you are playing the game, the code base survives.

Actually MOST of the code lives ON your computer.  The server (technically mapserver) only holds two things:

The code that allows you to know where every other non-permanent object, NPC and PC is on the map that lives on your computer

and

SOME of the NPC dialogue.  The dialogue was moved before Who Will Die to avoid spoilers.

Everything else is still on your machine.  Basically if you can see it when you run a demorecord, it represents the code on your machine.

[Victoria Victrix]

I'm not saying there was.  The concept of private liquidation is very common in competitive business.  It's essentially one company paying another to dissolve rather than acquiring it outright, usually in cases where there are no worthwhile assets at issue.  I was just wondering, given that Marvel has a game in beta, if anyone was aware of that happening in the gaming industry.

Except in the case of the Mouse.  The Mouse has a reputation for finding competitors and putting them to work for him.

That's a pretty huge overstatement.  They would not need 40 former Paragon Studios employees to decipher code.  They could get the majority of what they need in that department from a very small number of people.  Reassembling a staff of 40 to the tune of what could be 25% of projected annual revenue would be a horrible investment, especially if the purchase price is equal to a mid-range Disney feature.  Even if they somehow reclaimed all of the game's revenue, they'd be as many as 10 years away from turning a profit.

Team Wildcard went through a pretty exhaustive cost/benefit analysis.  That isn't my balliwick; it is that of Ammon, who happens to be an extremely highly regarded Internet Marketing Specialist who does work for some pretty lofty corporations.  We put all of that in the pitch package.  It's actually plausible, in the hands of Disney and with minimal work on Disney's part, for the game to payoff and turn a profit within the first year.[/quote]

If the IP had value beyond the game, it might be worth it.  But it doesn't.  In other words, without a Marvel or DC brand, another company would be FAR better served developing an entirely new superhero MMO than purchasing CoH and developing a sequel.  The CoH brand carries very little weight at the register.  The number of people who care about the characters and lore to the point of preference is very small in the grand scheme of things.  Beyond character and story, there's nothing proprietary about the game mechanics.

One of the biggest complaints of MMORPG players is "lack of content."  This is one of the things that drives them from new shiny to new shiny.  CoH already comes with a huge backlog of content that the vast majority of non-CoH players (and a fair number of those who quit 10 issues back) have never seen. 

And without a "brand name" to drive it, CoH is actually more attractive to players, and they are legion, who don't want to play the same character as ten thousand other players. 

It's also potentially more attractive to someone like Disney since they can retrofit some of their own properties into it.

The property is worth substantially more (at 40 employees with a median salary of, say, $30K -- that's $1.2m per year) without Paragon Studios.  That $1.2m could easily end up being as much as 20% of revenue after the game changes hands.  Way, WAY too high.  I love them to death, but the game would be a FAR tougher sell with the studio attached.

I used to be a commercial programmer.  You would be ill-advised to go into getting a property like CoH without an experienced studio attached--or at least without the ability to re-assemble one after purchase.  I've seen code like this; you can take up to a year just trying to understand it, never mind bug-fixes and updates.

And the reason that's true is because they don't make a habit of doing deals like this one.  I want to preface this by reiterating how much I have enjoyed this game and its lore for the last 8 years, if only to offset the fact that I find myself repeating this again:  The CoH IP has no value outside the ongoing operation of the existing game.  The idea of Disney acquiring it solely as a game certainly has merit.  But if the price is in the ballpark you alluded to, then the existing game will likely never be profitable for the buyer.

I beg to differ.  Disney has already acquired three small gaming studios that I know of.  I think someone cited that on another thread in here. 

To be clear, a mid-to-low level Disney feature would still be tens of millions of dollars.  The potential buyer of CoH would have no reason to expect more than $6 million of annual profit.  The prospects of increasing revenue in a major way are pretty small.  So if the sale price of CoH is more than $20 million, it's VERY risky because the game's shelf life is already perceived as an issue, its revenue is already falling, and its direct competition is about to grow in a major way.

Your number is way too high.

I admire your spirit and conviction and I honestly wish you well.  I'm just very curious how you imagine your prospective buyer would turn a profit given the kinds of numbers we're talking about here.

I feel the same way you guys do and I'd add another "I'm really going to miss this game" message to the pile if I thought it was needed.  I just thought it would be good to discuss the reality of how things are and what the future might look like if by chance there was an opportunity to keep it going...

We can't share the cost-benefit analysis.  It covered a great deal more than you have even guessed at.  I suppose it must be very frustrating to hear, over and over, "Sorry, we can't tell you, you have to trust us," but there are too many proprietary things in the pitch package for us to show it to you.  Suffice it to say, the value is not only just in the "game" itself, it's in a plethora of other applications, and it's potential is far, far higher for a firm like Disney than it is for one like Valve.  In fact, I would say that your arguments hold some water if we were pitching to Valve.  But we aren't.  When you are talking Disney, you are talking about opportunities that just don't exist for someone like Valve.  Which, of course, is another reason why we went there first.

I know I am testy right now and I apologize if I am coming across that way.  We just spent a week and a half writing something that my brain has never been trained in, checking and crosschecking, getting permission, making corrections...and on top of that as of today I have a great big hole in my face where a tooth used to be and it frakking hurts.

[JaguarX]

if anyone know how to turn a profit from a form of entertainment it would be Dinsney

[Codewalker]

As long as you are playing the game, the code base survives.

Sorta, though without source code it would be extremely difficult to make any changes, fix bugs, etc.

Even with the source code, it would be tough. From what I've heard, it's quite a mess of spaghetti under the hood, especially on the server side.

Actually MOST of the code lives ON your computer.  The server (technically mapserver) only holds two things:

It has a couple other things as well. Mostly backend stuff like communicating with the dbserver. The dbserver is an important missing part as it does all the coordinating of the various mapservers in order for the game to function as a whole. Things like teaming, chat, zoning, mission door assignment, persisting of characters between logins, etc. There's a few other odds and ends like the auction house and mission architect to think about, too, that exist as separate components.

Older clients do have the mission text in them, but they're still missing the "script", as it were, that tells you what order those go in, what type of enemies to spawn for each mission, etc. That's the part that's most at risk if the assets were to be deleted.

We're actually a bit lucky. The client used to not include the full power info. It had the basics, but not the effect breakdowns like damage done and status effects. Those were calculated only on the server side and just the results sent down the wire. That still happens, but when real numbers were added they needed to include the full info in the client so that it could tell you what a power does.

The mapserver itself does have to do most of the same work as the client, like physics, animations, etc. It doesn't just trust the client like some games do. *cough* speedhacks *cough*

[JaguarX]

Sorta, though without source code it would be extremely difficult to make any changes, fix bugs, etc.

Even with the source code, it would be tough. From what I've heard, it's quite a mess of spaghetti under the hood, especially on the server side.

I second that.

Remember some of the stuff that used to be suggested as addatives to the game or fixed or changes that the devs wanted to change but either it was hard, would take a long time, or just wasnt effectively feasible at the time? Most due to the code and the tangle of worms it was and the tiem it would take to figure it out. For many stuff with all that talent, they did figure some stuff out and seems to was getting good at untangling that knotted ball of yarn called the code.

[emu265]

I second that.

Remember some of the stuff that used to be suggested as addatives to the game or fixed or changes that the devs wanted to change but either it was hard, would take a long time, or just wasnt effectively feasible at the time? Most due to the code and the tangle of worms it was and the tiem it would take to figure it out. For many stuff with all that talent, they did figure some stuff out and seems to was getting good at untangling that knotted ball of yarn called the code.

I know nothing about code, servers or anything of the sort... but I do recall the devs complaining (multiple of them, on multiple occasions) that they found working with the code to be a nightmare.

[Ammon]

With all due respect, I'm wondering why you find it confusing that a post that I specifically titled "CoH Speculation/Conjecture" contains my speculation and conjecture about City of Heroes.  I'm not going to start every sentence with "In my opinion."

Uh-huh ... but look at the following with bolding only of the operative words that are a complete error:

Regarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go.

See it now?  You see, there is every question about your statement.  We've heard already that Paragon Studios was employing 80 developers, of whom a significant amount were not employed to work on CoH, but were working on new projects and R&D that would not be part of CoH.  Yet despite paying out for all that R&D on other projects, was still turning a fair profit of around $3 million USD per annum, and without new development costs (sacking developers working on new stuff) would have been closer to earning $10million in profit, if you look at labour costs, office costs, etc  (As a manager/director at various times, you short-hand the cost of a member of staff as double their wage, which then includes the benefits, office, travel, phone, etc costs their work generates - in other words, having 60 more devs than the game would need for basic mode, costs around the price of 120 times the average wage of a developer).

[Victoria Victrix]

As for the value of the IP to Disney, I have four words for you:

Pirates of the Caribbean

You may be too young to remember this, but at one point those words were just about a ride.  A ride.  In the theme park.  No one who had not been to the theme park--or at least, who had not happened to catch the Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color episode where several of the then-new animatronic rides were showcased--had any idea those words meant anything other than some swashbuckling history.

Certainly when someone decided to actually make a movie about that ride, the common consensus was Disney has lost their ever-loving minds.

Several years and three movies later...

Disney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero movie about the Marvel franchise.  The movie rights belong to another studio and did not come with the purchase of Marvel.  Disney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero theme park attraction including the Marvel franchise.  Those rights belong to Universal Studios Theme Parks.

If Disney wants to make a superhero movie or have a superhero attraction in a theme park, Disney will have to find some other superhero franchise to do it with. 

Bur first they might have to do something to make the property more of a household word.  How better than a family-friendly MMORPG?

That's just part of the 31 pages of the pitch package.  We didn't just spend 31 pages waxing eloquent about how wonderful the game is.  We made a carefully thought-out business proposal.  I've said it before, and I will say it again.  No matter what objection you can think up, we very probably already thought of it and countered it.  Whatever promotionsl idea you think you had, we very probably had it too.  This was hard work, some of the hardest I have every done in my life, and I am incredibly proud of Team Wildcard.

[dwturducken]

Not everything that Disney touches turns to gold. To shamelessly borrow VVs style of post, here, I would point out one other example:

Haunted Mansion

This one had a decent crop of arguably bankable stars in it. This may seem like a counter example, but the point is that they are willing to risk. It may not seem like it, given the culture that surrounds them, but one doesn't have to look very far into their library to see that not everything in it is an "instant classic."

Also, one of my alts was a robot mastermind called Animatronic Lincoln. :)