And the mask comes off.

[Everfreefire]

Do you want to be responsible for the cheer-cloud that would cover the eastern seaboard, causing untold peppiness, and choreographed athletic dancing?

This is why I love this community.

Also, yes. Yes I do. It would be funny.

[hopelives]

If you studied the cheer-science you wouldn't need to ask.

The danger of setting off a cheer-bomb is just too great.

In layman's terms, a cheerleader's natural positive energy could react violently with subspace as (s)he passes through during 'ports, which could lead to a chain reaction, and cheerplosion of epic proportions. 

Do you want to be responsible for the cheer-cloud that would cover the eastern seaboard, causing untold peppiness, and choreographed athletic dancing?

I sure don't.

ROFL! forgive me my temporary insanity, what must I have been thinking,lol  :)

[[EDIT: Fixing quote error. ~Agge]]

[Aggelakis]

Do you want to be responsible for the cheer-cloud that would cover the eastern seaboard, causing untold peppiness, and choreographed athletic dancing?

I sure don't.

......says the person named Pep Rally ...just sayin' ...

[hopelives]

There is another mmo, one that was "retired" named Asheron's Call. The company is Turbine, now part of Warner. Anyway, when they decided they were basically done doing anything more with it, they offered players a one time small fee and you can play it basically 4ever. That was a really nice way to go out. Players & company both happy.

[Stealth Dart]

 :-X

[Stealth Dart]

 :-X

[Arcana]

Porting a program that loads another program and modifies parts of it over to a completely different game engine is like porting a Ferrari from a Navy Battleship to Swedish Meatballs. It's a nonsensical thing to say.

Yeah well if I wrote the spec for the animation system down that would read like porting a Lamborghini from the Love Boat to the Swedish Chef, and yet that one is already in the game client.

[Arcana]

CoH taught us the greatest super power of all is to command attention just by saying "Ah-urrr!" and punching your palm.

I don't specifically recall that custom animation for Fulcrum Shift.

[PseudoCool]

I'd love to say that "I hate to be the downer" here.. but frankly.. I'm a bit.. well.. passably upset here about this:

First off - NCSoft is a company.. their not going to license anything to someone without getting something in return.  This means either an outlay of money on the front end, or a monthly residual from subscriptions.  I'm curious where the new companies involved are coming up with this capital, or where they plan to come up with it when the negotiation is close to being finalized?

Secondly - as much as I want to be happy about this news.. and oh believe me I soooo want to be happy about it.. the reality is, as much as we love and trust MWM and APR.. there shouldn't be a single one of us here who trusts ANYTHING coming from NCSoft.  The mere fact that they have a title sitting on the digital shelf doing nothing for their bottom line yet refuse to sell the whole sheebang without an immense amount of legalese, is just mind blowing.  Yes, yes.. I know the Korean corporate culture thing.. ya ya yadda.  Reality is, the deal is starting to sound like some of the small snippets that NCSoft was attaching to anyone who wanted to buy the IP outright before closing.  To me, that's a laundry list of red flags.

Thirdly - the Hail Mary Team.. you guys have done a great job even getting NCSoft to open it's doors, and your work is commendable to an extreme level that no text on a board could adequately convey.  That being said.. I hope with all I am that you all continue to fight the good fight, and keep the players in mind that have supported you in many ways.  Even guys like me who generally stay away from message boards because.. well.. quite obviously.. what I have to say people generally don't want to hear :)

Lastly.. and this is where I think I have the biggest problem here with all of this:

Your looking at having a series of superhero MMO's launch as "successor" to CoX.  That's awesomesauce.. total awesomesauce.. HOWEVER.. it also means that each of the companies are going to be competing for a rather small gaming market segment of player funded dollars.  This means longer times between updates and expansions, no matter the financial model you use, because your only getting a small segment of the market share.  This is going to eventually cause a lot of friction, and even downright hostility between the companies involved.  We've all seen it before, especially with the various movements of CoH over the early years.  And frankly, I know I don't want to see it again.  I would suggest putting your collective heads together, and at least a couple of you merging over, with the consent of a majority of your player base that's financially supported you obviously, and making a banner under which the teams, like true heroes, work together to achieve a common goal.  In this case.. producing the best game possible, and keeping as many of us "refugee's" under the same digital roof.  Now, it's already been posted that Valiance want's no part of this arrangement, and that's on them frankly.  They've got their little red ball and they can run off with it and do their own thing, that's their right.  But really.. what's the point of taking the player base from CoX (say it was 100K players) and splitting it all up over 2 or 3 different successor games?  Especially if 2 of those games are running on the same engine already?  I think the arguments of the past when CoX was ripped away from us by the "evil monsters of digimon land" need to get laid to rest, and the two of you at least need to get onboard and start pooling resources and talent.. and get this ball rolling down the hill so fast that even superspeed can't keep up!


And that ladies and gents.. is my 2 cents.  Or nickel.. heck.. let's call it a dime for inflation :)

No matter how it goes.. I know where my money's already gone and where I'll be playing.  I have no problems with that funding moving into a joint company that's going to run CoH-I23 and be the successor company with CoH1.5/CoH2.0.. long as I get my kickstarter bene's that is, and get to use shadowmaul on circle of thorns again at least :)

*flips on my little fly toggle and heads back to the top of the world in AP*

PseudoCool

[Cailyn Alaynn]

Whoo. That's a wall of text! Ok, Let's see if I can help out here.

First off! You're not going to hear a whole lot laid out on this topic, due to the nature of business negotiations. But, Think of it like this.
Do you think NCSoft would even talk to someone if there wasn't proof the group could put money on the table?

Secondly (I'm not copying your layout to be an ass, it's just convenient I swear.)
It's not just Korean culture, It's business. Businesses don't just decide "Oh, we're prolly not going to do something with this I.P. again... Eh, we'll give it away." They instead sell it. Which is what NCSoft is doing now. It's good business.

Thirdly ...Well, I'm not technically part of TFHM, so I can't really...say anything here. Uh, moving along?

Lastly!
I honestly don't think this is going to be all that much of a problem in the long run. These games aren't all going to be releasing at the same time, and each one is different. Champions Online, and DCUO certainly didn't cut into CoH's profits; despite many doomsayers doomsaying that CO would be the end of CoH. There are *a lot* of people who play games, and I think finding players for a Super Hero MMO is going to be MUCH easier than back in the day. Love of super heroes isn't limited to geeks anymore.

...If I came off at all as antagonistic; I fully give my most heartfelt apology. I've been moving furniture for the last few hours, and I fear that may have made me a little...Snippy.
If not, Carry on citizens!

[Shard]

Your policy on voice work should be "if you think you can do it right, hit yourself in the forehead with a hammer until you change your mind."

It's actually not that safe for work, but in general, yes.  I was being diplomatic.

[Shard]

First off - NCSoft is a company.. their not going to license anything to someone without getting something in return.  This means either an outlay of money on the front end, or a monthly residual from subscriptions.  I'm curious where the new companies involved are coming up with this capital, or where they plan to come up with it when the negotiation is close to being finalized?

Things are still very preliminary.

Secondly - as much as I want to be happy about this news.. and oh believe me I soooo want to be happy about it.. the reality is, as much as we love and trust MWM and APR.. there shouldn't be a single one of us here who trusts ANYTHING coming from NCSoft.  The mere fact that they have a title sitting on the digital shelf doing nothing for their bottom line yet refuse to sell the whole sheebang without an immense amount of legalese, is just mind blowing.  Yes, yes.. I know the Korean corporate culture thing.. ya ya yadda.  Reality is, the deal is starting to sound like some of the small snippets that NCSoft was attaching to anyone who wanted to buy the IP outright before closing.  To me, that's a laundry list of red flags.

The point I almost never see brought up ( and this is part of my response to 4 as well ) with CoH shuttering is that folks seem to have a hard time grasping that the value and "is it profitable enough" metrics of a property are not goin g to be the same for every operation. If the RoI isn't what's desired, well, that's that.   

Your looking at having a series of superhero MMO's launch as "successor" to CoX.  That's awesomesauce.. total awesomesauce.. HOWEVER.. it also means that each of the companies are going to be competing for a rather small gaming market segment of player funded dollars.  This means longer times between updates and expansions, no matter the financial model you use, because your only getting a small segment of the market share.  This is going to eventually cause a lot of friction, and even downright hostility between the companies involved.  We've all seen it before, especially with the various movements of CoH over the early years.  And frankly, I know I don't want to see it again.  I would suggest putting your collective heads together, and at least a couple of you merging over, with the consent of a majority of your player base that's financially supported you obviously, and making a banner under which the teams, like true heroes, work together to achieve a common goal.  In this case.. producing the best game possible, and keeping as many of us "refugee's" under the same digital roof.  Now, it's already been posted that Valiance want's no part of this arrangement, and that's on them frankly.  They've got their little red ball and they can run off with it and do their own thing, that's their right.  But really.. what's the point of taking the player base from CoX (say it was 100K players) and splitting it all up over 2 or 3 different successor games?  Especially if 2 of those games are running on the same engine already?  I think the arguments of the past when CoX was ripped away from us by the "evil monsters of digimon land" need to get laid to rest, and the two of you at least need to get onboard and start pooling resources and talent.. and get this ball rolling down the hill so fast that even superspeed can't keep up!

Ultimately, it's an individual matter for each product. In the case of the Legacy server, pretty much all the sunk costs have be recovered or written off. It becomes operations and profit. Minimal infrastructure based on the last general design diagram I had for the system would be fairly small, allowing for it to run fairly barebones. Less than the associated meatspace costs.

For everyone else, well, that's personal, but I get the general impression no ones under the delusion of getting fanatically rich or expect to be building the next benchmark franchise.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

For Chandra....I mean Irish_Girl...just because... he he he

Spoiler for Hidden:

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i60.tinypic.com%2F34i1m3o.jpg

Haha, Nice.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

If you want a character creator in Unreal, you have to make one. That means creating the code to run the user interface, and to load appropriate 3D models and textures, skin them to a skeleton, make animations if you want any, etc.

The character creator is part of the code base that's being provided by MWM.

You probably can't even use the GL ripping tool that the revival team is using to get geometry for the zones. It can pull static models, but models for costume pieces are far from static and have already been distorted to skin them to the player skeleton by the time the model is rendered. Reversing that unknown distortion (the exact transformation varies from frame to frame) would be almost as much work as just creating new models.

Not unless you're really sneaky! ;D
Demo's are fantastic; the ability to edit them doubly so. Hint: Ragdoll code.

[ArchPilgrim]

There is another mmo, one that was "retired" named Asheron's Call. The company is Turbine, now part of Warner. Anyway, when they decided they were basically done doing anything more with it, they offered players a one time small fee and you can play it basically 4ever. That was a really nice way to go out. Players & company both happy.

Ah, the memories.  AC was my first MMO, and left there to play Horizons for a goodly while.  (Loved the crafting there, and playing a dragon!). After that City of Heroes.  After that primarily LOTRO, but always came back to CoX.  Just never got over Flying, Radio Missions, Wenty's and Base/IO crafting...

[Pep Rally]

Haha, Nice.

Hey Irish Girl, is there a place I can see your toon's bio/costume?

I have a friend who's half Irish, and I made a toon based on her named Irish Lass.

Spoiler for Hidden:

https://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/POPNDOUGH/IrishLass1.jpg

https://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/POPNDOUGH/Newlass1b.jpg

[Pep Rally]

This is why I love this community.

Also, yes. Yes I do. It would be funny.

It's always funny until the peppiness wears off. Everyone gets all cranky about pulling every muscle in their body because they didn't stretch out properly beforehand.  It's not a pretty sight. The pulled groins alone would fill every hospital emergency room.

[AlienOne]

I was probably a member of all of them.   Always plenty of options to choose from and the teams were full of good players.  (Maybe there is a correlation between knowing about chat channels and being a good player?)

Hahaha, yeah, that's a possibility. People who knew about the "good" channels were mostly people who had been recommended to join them or been told about them from players who observed their skills/contributions in other task forces. I wasn't one of those channel admins who advertised for the channels I ran... Everyone who was there was usually brought in by someone else who was already a member. I prefer when something grows by word of mouth/recommendation than via advertisement, because most of the time, you get a better "quality" crowd....(haha)

[Cailyn Alaynn]

IG's costumes hadn't really been "Irish" themed in...many years.

Her final main costume was somewhat plain, but I liked it. Especially when she was beating people with her sword.
EDIT: Which she usually did while screaming madly, and listening to Motorhead.

Spoiler for Hidden:

https://i1375.photobucket.com/albums/ag457/Cailyn_Alaynn/IG_zps13b390fb.png

[RedWarlock]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this! I was out of town this week and am just catching up here.

I was a big contributor Kickstarter for CoT (never contributing to another K-starter campaign before, but put half of one month's salary into the CoT campaign because I really, really really want to see CoT happen). It is so gratifying to see what you are doing here. At minimum, this shows savvy of the team working on a CoH successor, and is potentially a big step toward possibly linking the intellectual property of the old game to CoT.

I think this also could be a great business move for CoT. If CoH i23 can be playable for a time, this will re-engage many of the larger CoH community in the game, and would be a great roll-out for CoT.  Some have said that If CoH i23 will be shut down after Windows 9 happens, that it might feel painful, like when the game was shut down before, but I think it would be a fantastic transition. We could all play the older version for a time, and reconnect with the community before the launch of CoT. AND, the storyline could continue into CoT. For those who wish they could play I24, maybe some elements of what was envisioned for i24 might be re-imagined as part of the new game in CoT.

I do have some questions (If an FAQ is around, maybe these have already been answered, and if so, sorry for the repeat...):

1.   If I understand correctly, if the proposal is approved, APR would be a maintenance mode game of i23 that couldn't be updated. So, there couldn't be any new content such as additional powers, or new territories or anything added to the game. And after Windows 9, if I understand correctly, i23 would apparently be rendered inoperable. Would this mean that APR would be a short-term project? Would APR still play any role then after Windows 9?

2.   It would seem like having a binary copy of the i23 server could help the CoT team to model aspects of CoT to be similar to the old game. Does having the i23 server give any insights to help build the new game? Might having this proposal succeed help accelerate the development of CoT? And if so, how exactly?

3.   Arcana wrote: "I'm sure downix has his reasons, but I'm not sure announcing a deal in the works to us was the best move prior to the deal actually being finalized." Downix, it seems to me from your description of the process for how the deal was developed that you have exercised a great deal of tact along the way, and chose to come out about it now because the time was appropriate. Did you have the blessing of NC Soft to come forward and talk about this now? Is there a reason you can share about why now was the right time to talk about it? 

Again, I'm very impressed with this because it shows to me that the leadership behind the CoH successors are pulling rabbits out of hats that no one else has been able to make happen up to this point. Whether it is ultimately successful or not, bravo for the effort, and it's very, very exciting news.

If the community can help, please let us know so we can be there!