SomethingAwful's opinion on NCSoft

[The Fifth Horseman]

Warning: It is SomethingAwful. Contains foul language, unicorns, and all manner of things not suitable for children or easily offended adults.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3489336&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=121#post410104111

[Surelle]

Warning: It is SomethingAwful. Contains foul language, unicorns, and all manner of things not suitable for children or easily offended adults.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3489336&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=121#post410104111

Wow!  Whenever I think of Something Awful, I think of Goonswarm in Eve Online.  I can't really picture most of them playing CoH.  I have seen them in other games over the years (most notably Warhammer Online back when it launched, and Aion) but I tend to forget that they play anything but Eve, because Goon's Alliance has about 10,000 people in it.  Goon practically runs that game, and their CEO is (fortunately or unfortunately) also on CCP's Council of Stellar Management. 

But...any port in a storm.  And who can blame anyone for lamenting CoH's death?  It was a wonderful game for sure.

[JWBullfrog]

Just taking a quick look around the internet (as I tend to do) This seems to be the general sentiment of the gaming community. Even if they weren't fans or regular players, most people are wishing CoH a fond farewell and wondering why this happened at all.

What does this mean to us? Simple, the sympathy is out there, we just have to keep working. Write those letters, make more noise, don't let the issue die.

Remember: We didn't quit Paragon City. They had to throw us out.

[Victoria Victrix]

All right, here's a question for you folks.

We know how many MMORPGs have been closed (15).

But how many either STILL stay open even with a handful of players, and how many were REVIVED after shutdown?  That could be a very useful set of numbers for Team Wildcard.

[Hotaru]

Actually, there were tons of Goons back on Victory when the game first launched. I believe they joined forces with Xen of Onslaught and were secretly taking down the Hamidon before the strategy became known to the rest of the server (at least, that's how I heard it). They had multiple SGs, such as "Fellowship of the Goons" etc.

[LadyWizard]

I know Uru Online(Myst MMO) the devs took the rights back from the publisher and run it though no new content that I've seen

[Technerdoc]

Remember that every game NC-Soft closed was closed forever and the Paragon Studios are gone in the wind. Maybe Cryptic is intressted in getting the IP back one day, but we all know that NC-Soft is rather setting their cigars on fire with it then selling it to someone else. First they have to be bankrupt and with this "buisness plan" with closing profitabe games and kicking a hole community into the ass they are not so far away from this I think. When you have a bad reputation then it's very hard to fix this in the gamers head...

[Adelante]

All right, here's a question for you folks.

We know how many MMORPGs have been closed (15).

But how many either STILL stay open even with a handful of players, and how many were REVIVED after shutdown?  That could be a very useful set of numbers for Team Wildcard.

Dark Age of Camelot has  a pretty low subscriber base nowadays and it has been around longer than CoH.

Off the top of my head, the only game that's been shut down and re-opened that I can think of is APB.  You could make an argument for Hellgate:London, but I don't really consider than an MMO. 

[dwturducken]

I don't know that APB really qualifies, anymore. It's a bit like Warburg meets GTA3 meets Mad Max, from my limited time trying to play it.

[ROBOKiTTY]

All right, here's a question for you folks.

We know how many MMORPGs have been closed (15).

But how many either STILL stay open even with a handful of players, and how many were REVIVED after shutdown?  That could be a very useful set of numbers for Team Wildcard.

Ultima Online (UO) has been running since 1997; EverQuest (EQ) since 1999; Asheron's Call (AC) since 1999; Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) and Anarchy Online (AO) since 2001.

DAoC subscriber numbers (latest was <5k): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DAOCSubchart.PNG

Edit: Lineage 1 is still running in Korea with very low player numbers.

APB: All Points Bulletin was shut down in 2010 and revived in 2011.

Myst Online: Uru Live was shut down, revived by GameTap, cancelled and rights transferred, and revived again.

Ryzom was shut down in 2007 and revived in 2008.

[NecrotechMaster]

Dark Age of Camelot has  a pretty low subscriber base nowadays and it has been around longer than CoH.

Off the top of my head, the only game that's been shut down and re-opened that I can think of is APB.  You could make an argument for Hellgate:London, but I don't really consider than an MMO.

i think in its original form hellgate london was not an mmo, it was just a single player/multiplayer game, the multiplayer though was basically one open world server (so i would call it maybe half an MMO)

its revival though is pretty standard MMO, with restrictions on free accounts and such


i also agree that APB was the only MMO i know of which was closed down and then reopened (i think it was only originally open for like <2 months before the first shutdown)

[P51mus]

i think in its original form hellgate london was not an mmo, it was just a single player/multiplayer game, the multiplayer though was basically one open world server (so i would call it maybe half an MMO)

its revival though is pretty standard MMO, with restrictions on free accounts and such


i also agree that APB was the only MMO i know of which was closed down and then reopened (i think it was only originally open for like <2 months before the first shutdown)

Thought they had a two tier system (Premium/ everyone else) even at first launch.  There was a penny arcade comic about it.

[NecrotechMaster]

Thought they had a two tier system (Premium/ everyone else) even at first launch.  There was a penny arcade comic about it.

there might have been, but it didnt really restrict what you could do in game aside from not create a guild (and the stonehenge stuff when that came out, but it wasnt much more than grind grind grind)

i tried the re-release of hellgate: london and there are a LOT more restrictions in place (if your a free player you cant even go past act 1 of the game, you have to buy tickets to get to act 2 and act 3) as well a LOT more microtransactions for everything ranging from special gear, to more storage space

from what i remember of the original, there was almost no restrictions, it was basically the same as single player, but in a multiplayer format aside from the few things i mentioned above (i honestly liked the original incarnation of the game, the re-release was ok, but definitely not as good with the heavy restrictions and a completely revamped skill system)

[Dollhouse]

From that rather amazing thread (read the chest letters...):

https://i.imgur.com/WSSxw.gif

[Knightslayer]

LOL Doll, is the "T" the guy that keeps moving around?  ;D

[Aggelakis]

"T" is the red robot/techsuit guy in flex pose on the right.

[ROBOKiTTY]

I am suprised that you say that Lineage 1 has very low player numbers, looking at the NCsoft financials it was still bringing in a whole lot more money compared to City of Heroes (which if you go by the figures that VV provided in another thread, City of Heroes had 100K active players at time of closure (40% F2P, 20% Premium, 40% subscriber)

Lineage 1
Q1: 43,646 million Won
Q2: 58,449 million Won

City of Heroes
Q1: 2,890 million Won
Q2: 2,855 million Won

That is not a typo...

*IF* Lineage is running in Korea with a small number of players (as you put it), then how on earth is it getting almost 20x the revenue from a game that had subscriptions AND microtransactions

Blarg, I think I got my data mixed up. That sounds more reasonable.

[General Idiot]

The one thing I still find amusing is that the NCSoft financial report people keep throwing around breaks things down two ways - by game, and by location. In both, CoH and the western market respectively are the smaller parts by far. However, one thing it very carefully doesn't do is break the location specific data down further. I'd be interested to know what percentage CoH was of the western operation alone, considering everything I've heard about every other game NCSoft runs aside from Guild Wars is highly unfavorable to say the least.

Also, speaking as one of them, the CoH goons were some of the most awesome people I've ever met playing MMOs.

[Twisted Toon]

Ultima Online (UO) has been running since 1997; EverQuest (EQ) since 1999; Asheron's Call (AC) since 1999; Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) and Anarchy Online (AO) since 2001.

DAoC subscriber numbers (latest was <5k): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DAOCSubchart.PNG

Edit: Lineage 1 is still running in Korea with very low player numbers.

APB: All Points Bulletin was shut down in 2010 and revived in 2011.

Myst Online: Uru Live was shut down, revived by GameTap, cancelled and rights transferred, and revived again.

Ryzom was shut down in 2007 and revived in 2008.

I don't know about the subscriber numbers, but The Realm Online has been running since 1995. It was my First MMO.

[SeaLily]

Oh hey that's me I'm the O.  (we actually lost the NC and gained an extra O somehow at one point and became 'Fucksooft' which was weird)

A lot of people seem to be unaware so I'll just step up and say something.  Somethingawful had a really healthy City of Heroes community unto itself.  It started on Victory, spread to another server when CoV hit(people wanted slots for villains and didn't want to delete any heroes) and then, around the time CoH went F2P, everyone transferred to Virtue to consolidate, since it was the healthiest server(and the most fun to make gimmick character groups on since roleplayers).  Every time I logged on, day or night, mid-day or 4am, there were people hanging out in SA's global channel, including, frequently, Zwillinger.  Who was himself a goon.  These guys made some of the weirdest, funniest characters I'd ever seen.  They were masters of pun and innuendo based characters, and thrust their creations unashamedly into the faces of everyone else.

Sometimes people got upset about this.  That happens, when you're being ridiculous.  Sometimes people would send a torrential flood of hateful, poorly-spelled tells at someone for making a character that doesn't fit the game's canon.  Then they'd post it in the thread over on SA so everyone could share in it's glory.  And then there was the constant sharing of barely-literate people's horrible character bios.  That was always the best part.

But we weren't laughing at the rest of the community to be cruel or mean, we were poking fun at them and encouraging them to continue their ways.  We were glorifying the bizzare.  We loved your terrible backstories and ugly costumes and contrived half-demon half-angel all-brooding dual pistols/trenchcoat guys with daddy issues.  Sometimes y'all hated us.  But that's okay, we expected it, and we still love you for it.  CoH community, you are crazy, strange, and hilarious in ways you might not intend to be, and Somethingawful will miss you.

SA is much more than just Goonswarm, and just as much as any other group of players, they're onboard if CoH gets resurrected in some form.  I know a lot of people think the worst of them, but really their only issue is with people that take games too seriously.  It's a huge community, and though it's a pretty cynical and sarcastic one, it's got a lot of heart too.  They'll miss the game as much as anyone else.

Not everyone on SA might be behind the ideas presented over here on Titan, but we're right with you in terms of feeling the loss.