And the mask comes off.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

So would this spin off licensing company be a subsidiary of NCSoft?

No.
Ok, well...I'm not in a position to speak officially on that. But, from everything I've heard speaking with Nate...It's highly, highly unlikely.
If so...What's even the point? They'd just re-open Paragon Studios.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

And yet, would it not be the ultimate victory? Mwahahahahaaaa!

He was Emperor of the Americas for like 6 hours, and we still haven't stopped hearing about it. I can't even imagine what it'd be like if he owned the universe...

Shudder to think...

[Harpospoke]

For those who do not know Korean business methods, it is considered highly rude to directly email someone, but to instead get an introduction from a third party business associate. This meant we had to find someone who was not part of NC Soft to formally introduce us to Mr. Yoon. Fortunately, we had two people who could do just that, a former NC West employee and a former co-worker of mine who had started a media company which works with NC Soft on developing properties for the Asian market.

Thanks so much for all the effort.

And...Holy smokes!   No wonder this is so complicated.  Cultural differences really throw a monkey wrench into it.  What we may consider "logical" might be completely out of the question for another culture.  Makes me appreciate the hard work which has gone into this even more.  Looks like a very slow and tedious process.   Hope this works out but that process above makes me cautious.  Maybe I'm reading it differently than everyone else who is celebrating.   Hope SCoRE is still pushing ahead just in case.   

For people worrying about "how long can a CoH 1.0 implementation last".

As long as they can keep the servers stable, honestly, it's almost indefinitely.

There is, currently, NOTHING in the Win9 pipeline that looks to affect anything CoH could do AT ALL.

The biggest hurdle will be building a working game loader/patcher, as a certain amount of the game is primarily client-side stuff that CAN be accessed/worked with/fixed at will.  Just so long as the server and client agree on the acceptable version number.

This is heartening to read.    My fondest hope was to get CoH running with someone who intended to keep it running. 

Since I'm not on the team that would be running CoH's maint. mode, I can't make promises on their behalf. But... I'm pretty sure the i23 server will run in perpetuity.

That sounds even better. 

I can't imagine a scenario where this happens. Too many people who are involved in process are too emotionally invested in it.

I'll say right not, I would fight tooth and nail and then some before I let that happen again. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

And that is a great way to illustrate to everyone just how much you guys are us.

Purchase IP, license engine.

That helps me a lot.  Thanks Downix.

There's a touch of misunderstanding going around, that moving to Unreal means that something about the gameplay will change. That's simply not true.
Is it likely that adjustments to certain things will be made during Beta? Yeah, just like during CoH. The devs would test, and adjust.

Thanks Irish Girl...I was one of those who didn't quite understand this.    Keeping the same gameplay for CoH 1.5 is huge to me....I'm officially very excited about seeing it now.

[TonyV]

A wild TonyV appears! With some good points, no less.

I deliberately stayed out of the conversation for a while because I wanted to give everyone a chance to digest it and see which way the conversation steered.

[Cailyn Alaynn]

I deliberately stayed out of the conversation for a while because I wanted to give everyone a chance to digest it and see which way the conversation steered.

I think it ended up going in a 'People asking a lot of questions that I hopefully answered well' direction. I wish I had answers to give to the questions that are left open, unfortunately even I'm at 'Wait and see' on those.

P.S.: I'm so not good at 'wait and see'!

[AnElfCalledMack]

So would this spin off licensing company be a subsidiary of NCSoft?

From what we've heard, no. It would be formed by the consortium of buyers, and purchase the IP to CoH outright. It would license the server engine for maintenace mode from NCSoft. It would also issue licenses to each of the Plan Z games if their developers wanted/needed them. Part of this is possibly because more than just MWM is involved in this, and it simplifies the process if each interest can just take shares of City of Heroes Inc. based on their contribution to the purchase. Part of it is also that then for NCSoft, it's not another game studio buying their IP - it's just been cut loose to do its own thing, having made the company a reasonable sum in the process.

[Timelord Tom]

This may have already been expressed by someone else, but let me second, or third, or hundredth it...

"The CoH IP would be spun to its own company..." And who, pray tell, would own this company?

Wishing all goes for the best possible future for COH's return AND longevity, but still standing in the skeptics corner.

[Zombie Hustler]

Nemesis Holding Co., a Limited Liability Company.

I like that sound of that. Is it just me? 

[downix]

So would this spin off licensing company be a subsidiary of NCSoft?

A subsidy, no. The specific ownership details are still very much up in the air. I know what my preference would be, but this is an area where we can expect NCSoft to have a lot of say in the particular legal structure. My goal (being very specific here, this is my personal goal) is to have this be a form of trust.

[Tubbius]

I just want to say something. This is partially an expansion of my last post on the previous page. But hear me out.

People on this thread and elsewhere seem to be focussed on the technical aspects and "when can I log in again"?

Issues with the game engine and source code and the like pale into insignificance compared to freeing the IP from NCSoft.

Read the following again:

Old clunky game engine? Incompatibility with Win 9?

DOESN'T MATTER.

It's the IDEAS and the Intellectual Property that is the real heart and soul of City of Heroes - and if THAT part of the deal goes through as described, then that part of the game - the concepts - the background stories - the characters - the NPCS - the visual design...

THAT PART will have been put in the hands of people who actually CARE about it!

Eventually the game engine will HAVE to change, one way or another. But moving it to Unreal Engine - and allowing other games to be part of the City of Heroes story and reference it..

GOOD GOD... That's HUGE.

Do you know what this means? SERIOUSLY? Have you thought it out to the extreme?

I just have. And it boggles my mind.

Imagine not one or two - but perhaps a DOZEN games - all in the same overall universe story-wise.

IF... IF this is not just NCSoft yanking people around again. If they really allow the IP to go. Then game engines don't matter. CODE doesn't matter.

The Story and the World of City of Heroes can live on even if the original game engine is (or has to be) discarded.

City of Heroes?

Imagine WORLD OF HEROES as a FRANCHISE.

Consider it imagined.



Sounds a LOT like the basic relationship between the Star Wars canon and the Expanded Universe, in a way.

[downix]

"The CoH IP would be spun to its own company..." And who, pray tell, would own this company?

There are a lot of options for setting up a company which makes "ownership" a complex and confusing thing. Is it set up as a standard IP Holding Company or as an Active Trust? Just two of the dozens of options on the table. I'd rather put this down when it is more clear what direction things will be going in.

[Hyperstrike]

And even the 2012 version of it would be a monstrocity.

[kribbla]

I'm not directly involved in the talks with NCSoft, but from what I understand the source is completely off the table, and many of the tools required simply don't exist anymore.
This is where Revival comes in. The plan is kind of...to replace CoH with it. CoH 1.5/CoH 2 if you will. Same setting, same stories you've all known and loved. New engine, new updates, new stories for you to, hopefully, come to love.

[MWRuger]

Nate,

Thanks for working on this. I have offered my services to Power_Girl and I'll offer them to you. You need anything I can do, I think you still have my email. But it sounds like you need lawyers more than 2-D computer artists. But if you do, let me know.

Best,

MWRuger

[Cephalic_Disavow]

This is very exciting, I love CoH alot but it needed updated so bad.
Running it on Unreal will definitely lighten the workload and produce minimal lag.
Not to mention those graphics:)

I leave my hope in you guys if this deal goes through.

City invented the superhero MMO genre and was the only one to do it right,
It seems it's departure inspired people enough to want to give us that feeling back.

And for that I thank you guys so much for your efforts, stay strong and patient!
I'll crack a nice glass of wine for CoH 1.5 tonight!

[Scendera]

On the windows 9 topic... It will prolly run the client, if nothing else with some form of Comparability Mode.

This is what seems likeliest to me. Regardless of anything else, it's a major MMO which means it has to have been fairly standards compliant. Generally the older games that didn't play fast and loose with things to try and get something running or squeeze more performance do just fine under compat mode.

[Ankhammon]

P.S.: I'm so not good at 'wait and see'!

You are one of us!!!

[Ankhammon]

I dunno, maybe he's actually tested the classic game client on Windows 9, since there are beta versions of it out there.  But if not, I would be inclined to strongly suspect that the classic game client would work fine on Windows 9, just as it does on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.  To my knowledge, there aren't any binary incompatibilities unless you try to play on a different platform (such as Windows RT), and in my experience, it is highly unusual for Microsoft to do anything to break backwards compatibility to that extent.  I may be wrong and end up eating those words, so as I always ask people, take my secondhand information worth a grain of salt.  But I've seen a lot of posts in here about how once Windows 9 comes out, the classic CoH game client will be toast, and I just don't think that's correct and I encourage people to not worry so much about that.

Wait. Something worked with Windows Vista?

But more importantly, did it work with windows 3.11?

[FloatingFatMan]

I dunno, maybe he's actually tested the classic game client on Windows 9, since there are beta versions of it out there.  But if not, I would be inclined to strongly suspect that the classic game client would work fine on Windows 9, just as it does on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.  To my knowledge, there aren't any binary incompatibilities unless you try to play on a different platform (such as Windows RT), and in my experience, it is highly unusual for Microsoft to do anything to break backwards compatibility to that extent.  I may be wrong and end up eating those words, so as I always ask people, take my secondhand information worth a grain of salt.  But I've seen a lot of posts in here about how once Windows 9 comes out, the classic CoH game client will be toast, and I just don't think that's correct and I encourage people to not worry so much about that.

In fact, it's almost a certainty that the old client will run fine in Windows 9.  It already runs fine in Windows 8/8.1, and 9 is absolutely NOT going to be as different as some people seem to think it is.

[FloatingFatMan]

I think it ended up going in a 'People asking a lot of questions that I hopefully answered well' direction. I wish I had answers to give to the questions that are left open, unfortunately even I'm at 'Wait and see' on those.

P.S.: I'm so not good at 'wait and see'!

The main thing I'm getting from this, with regards to your Atlas Park Revival project and CoH 1.5, is that oh boy, you are REALLY going to need some help!

No one could possibly hope to code CoH 1.5, solo, in any achievable time scale. Not for the kind of end result the player base would expect.