And the mask comes off.

[Nadia Luma]

I think NC Soft also deserves some Thanks. The hurt they hit us with far greater than any of our in game battles. I'm glad they have at least opened the door to somewhat make better the situation after all this time. It may not be sure thing yet but at least it's hope.

[Arnabas]

For starters, for those who don't know.... I run APR. Nate and I have been in talks for a little while now, and I've got a pretty good handle on what the plan is. I'll try and answer some people's questions as best I can, So poor Nate isn't having to do everything.

CoH Issue 23 is planned to make a return, yes. However, the team will not have the ability to make ANY updates to it. No new content, no new costume pieces, no patching out bugs.

On windows 9, I have no information. Most likely there will be compatability issues with running something as old as CoH. Also, see above...No new content.

Ok....

So correct me if I am wrong (or tell me if I am right), but this is my understanding (if everything works out):

--CoH comes back, frozen at issue 23. Nothing new to ever be added to it. Also, it will be gone again with the arrival of Windows 9, this time never to return.

--When the Coming Storm (Windows 9) arrives, players will have to choose one (or more) successor to continue playing. Each successor will take the IP and go off on their own, effectively as alternate universes that can (but may not) reference the original game. So CoH will die again, but live on in altered form. Analogy: Superman the comic is cancelled, but you can continue on with Christopher Reeve Superman, Brandon Routh Superman, Tom Welling Superman, Henry Cavill Superman, DCAU Superman, or some other iteration, as you prefer.

About right?

[erich]

I think NC Soft also deserves some Thanks. The hurt they hit us with far greater than any of our in game battles. I'm glad they have at least opened the door to somewhat make better the situation after all this time. It may not be sure thing yet but at least it's hope.

Agree 100%. I'm very grateful they have been having these types of discussion to bring our game back to us.

[Dev7on]

Why does NCsoft still want the other half of the IP rights to City of Heroes?

[Cailyn Alaynn]

I think NC Soft also deserves some Thanks. The hurt they hit us with far greater than any of our in game battles. I'm glad they have at least opened the door to somewhat make better the situation after all this time. It may not be sure thing yet but at least it's hope.

The easiest thing for NCSoft to do is nothing. So if this pans out, they deserve a good amount of thanks.

[MM3squints]

I think NC Soft also deserves some Thanks. The hurt they hit us with far greater than any of our in game battles. I'm glad they have at least opened the door to somewhat make better the situation after all this time. It may not be sure thing yet but at least it's hope.

Don't want to sound off saying this, but NC Soft will get my thanks after I'm actually playing the game. My thanks currently is to everyone who organized getting this far

[Mistress Urd]

Thanks for the update, will be pulling for this to happen and hopefully what the future plans hold.

[Fleur_uk]

I'm purely speculating here, but the interpretation I have from downix's post (PLEASE correct me if I've
misinterpreted) is:

1>  *IF* they get that COH-I23 binary, that could be run in maintenance mode on pre Win-9
software environment and server(s). There's no character or account data, so I assume any players
would (by necessity) start from scratch. Nothing has been mentioned about pricing or vet rewards etc.

2> MWM - CoT would be able to be released as COH 1.5

3> Future ? ? ?


So, presuming the first IF becomes fact, I'd say "yes, we can get our game back", but for how long they
are willing to host it, and how long you want to keep your PC at Win 8(?) or earlier, and at what costs,
remain open questions.


Regards,
4

1.  Happy that seems fine as I have newish puter, but had to pay to have win. 7 on it instead of 8.....how does that makes sense, but I refuse to install anything until windows 9 proves worthy ?  Character from scratch is way better than none at all

2.  ? Just want CoH at this point <3

3.  Hoping future will include a way to develop CoH further <3 (((hoping))

Fingers crossed and thanks for explanation for us untechies

[rayvn]

Thank you for all your work on this.  I want CoH to come back and I want CoT and the other games to all be successful.  This gives me a glimmer of hope but I also hope that you and your team have some good attorneys on your side to lock down the rights you do acquire as firmly as possible.

[silvers1]

The inability to make fixes kind of worries me - issues can occur due to windows updates or other changes to the client side.
Issues can also occur due to database...

If anything like this occurs, it could literally shut the entire game down.
Crying shame you couldn't get the I23 source.

[Ohioknight]

OH and MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF ALL

What do we CALL the negotiating team  "Downix and friends"?  Want us to stay with "Team Hail Mary"?
(Mysterions doesn't quite seem appropriate anymore)

And what should we call Big Brother and the Holding Company? "New IP Company" seems kind-of clumsy

_{Typing is hard when you're drunk on Cognac}

[dpawtows]

What do we CALL the negotiating team  "Downix and friends"?  Want us to stay with "Team Hail Mary"?
(Mysterions doesn't quite seem appropriate anymore)

Team Beard?

[Number9]

Ok...since a couple of you are answering questions, yay!

Issue 23 - good. I can work with that. That means that ski chalet will still be open. Very, very good! Love to ski. (not in real life, I'd break my legs)

A migration to APR - did I get the right? First, CoH as we knew it would be up, live, only no character data. All starting from scratch. Better that than nothing. Then, we migrate to APR, which is like a CoH 1.5 because it's on Unreal 4 and can handle Windows 9. No time table for this, because nobody is forcing us to use Win 9.

Then, eventually, one or more of the "spiritual successors" would come out with their respective games, and if they use CoH stuff, they would deal with the new licensing company that would own the rights to CoH. They drop the "spiritual", because they would be the real successors to the game. But - Valiance, MWM, and I guess Heroes and Villains - they are each making their own game, I thought. Who's working on CoH 2.0? Or did I make an inferential leap that has no legs to land with?

I keep reading and I'm just overloaded, so I'm sorry if you've spelled it out in black and white and I just didn't get it.

This is what I got. 

[WolfSoul]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RMoH55T-oI

[BraveStar]

Many, many thanks to the negotiation team and NCsoft!

[bugzee]

The inability to make fixes kind of worries me - issues can occur due to windows updates or other changes to the client side.
Issues can also occur due to database...

If anything like this occurs, it could literally shut the entire game down.
Crying shame you couldn't get the I23 source.

Yes I think that without the source code, its just like reviving the game for a little while so you can say your final goodbyes... But I wonder if the source code is completely off the table, or is it just not part of the current talks?

[Fleur_uk]

The inability to make fixes kind of worries me - issues can occur due to windows updates or other changes to the client side.
Issues can also occur due to database...

If anything like this occurs, it could literally shut the entire game down.
Crying shame you couldn't get the I23 source.

I remember reading somewhere that the community used to help with coding and stuff when we played CoH? Correct me if I am wrong.  Maybe when we finally get the game, and see what there is there are those who are much more cleverminded to sort/fix any faults in the code that would prevent implementing it? Or is it a problem that noone actually has the update, because it wasn't downloaded or patched into the game??  Sorry if that was really neanderthal.

[Black Gold]

Ok....

So correct me if I am wrong (or tell me if I am right), but this is my understanding (if everything works out):

--CoH comes back, frozen at issue 23. Nothing new to ever be added to it. Also, it will be gone again with the arrival of Windows 9, this time never to return.

--When the Coming Storm (Windows 9) arrives, players will have to choose one (or more) successor to continue playing. Each successor will take the IP and go off on their own, effectively as alternate universes that can (but may not) reference the original game. So CoH will die again, but live on in altered form. Analogy: Superman the comic is cancelled, but you can continue on with Christopher Reeve Superman, Brandon Routh Superman, Tom Welling Superman, Henry Cavill Superman, DCAU Superman, or some other iteration, as you prefer.

About right?

This is basically how I interpreted it.  It's not so much getting CoH permanently back. but getting it licensed so that it can be cannibalized to make  the spiritual successors  "less spiritual" and more official by having the ability to directly reference some CoH properties? Unless I read that wrong.....

[FourSpeed]

So, why is it assumed that Windows 9 will be incompatible?  Do they drop support for ancient OpenGL?

To a greater or lesser degree, every version of Windows has been incompatible with prior versions. That's
exactly why they have a "Compatibility Mode" built-in. That said, that mode has historically been pretty
spotty in the past, and when it is the end result is usually frequent BSODs. Not a good thing in a game.

Additionally, assuming the host server itself is not unix based, that would also imply that server would need
to be kept at an appropriate Windows level as they cannot recompile the game for the new environment.


Regards,
4

[WolfSoul]

COH comes back with I23, to be moved onto Unreal4 to both update AND get around whatever problems Windows 9
will cause. That's COH1.5

The successors, all of them, are to be considered COH2, as it were.

Ok....

So correct me if I am wrong (or tell me if I am right), but this is my understanding (if everything works out):

--CoH comes back, frozen at issue 23. Nothing new to ever be added to it. Also, it will be gone again with the arrival of Windows 9, this time never to return.

--When the Coming Storm (Windows 9) arrives, players will have to choose one (or more) successor to continue playing. Each successor will take the IP and go off on their own, effectively as alternate universes that can (but may not) reference the original game. So CoH will die again, but live on in altered form. Analogy: Superman the comic is cancelled, but you can continue on with Christopher Reeve Superman, Brandon Routh Superman, Tom Welling Superman, Henry Cavill Superman, DCAU Superman, or some other iteration, as you prefer.

About right?