I would like to address some other concerns. One. That Missing Worlds Media is using funds from the Kickstarter for the new holding company purchasing the COH Intellectual Property. This is not so. Funds from the Kickstarter raised for City of Titans are designated for City of Titans. New funds will need to be raised separately at some point for the COH revival should the deal with NCSoft get approved.
That MWM somehow misused their funding to switch game engines from Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4. And that this transition set them back irreparably.
Unreal Engine 3 has zero MMO support. Meaning that MWM would have had to either create their own code for handling the MMO portion of the game, or contract a third party to do so. Such would have taken an unknown amount of time. Unreal Engine 4 on the other hand has built in MMO support. This is why when MWM was offered the chance to upgrade their licenses to the newer version they did so enthusiastically. As this would be one less thing to have to work out.
As to the setbacks...that has to do with the character rig on which our avatars will be built upon. MWM was a little too ambitious with the amount of sockets the character rigs could hold and to how many pieces would make up the rig, and where their seams connected the pieces together would look and work in their game engine. Some of the seams did not move properly once the rig was in motion. Too many sockets used up too many resources leading to instability.
It is my understanding that they are on the third iteration of the character rig. Once all the kinks are worked out progress will proceed. While this sets back the avatar builder somewhat it does not affect other portions of the game such as the background world building, lore, or art assets being created. There are multiple paths all being worked on simultaneously.
Just because other Kickstarter projects have failed does not mean that this project has to fail. As with any project their is a risk of failure. There is also the possibility of success. I prefer to be enthusiastically supportive of City of Titans and why I have contributed to the Kickstarter campaign. If they start a new Kickstarter to revive City Of Heroes, I will contribute to that as well. We can all be naysayers and be negative and say that all of this is a pipe dream and give up our hopes or we can be positive and look to a brighter tomorrow. I prefer to do the latter. Nuff said.
Actually there’s a lot more that can be said on the points you raised (although I admire your ability to gloss over any and all criticism with a stroke of the Rainbow Brite wand):
1) MWM didn’t know Unreal 3 engine wasn’t MMO-tech friendly (at least that reason wasn’t clearly stated when they announced the switch to UE4 which came *after* the Kickstarter campaign had already successfully concluded. If they knew prior to the campaign that UE3 wasn’t the right tool but they went ahead with marketing the campaign as a UE3 tool… (while *also* knowing that they had jumpstarted a renew discussion with NCsoft to buy back the CoH IP) well, that opens up a whole new can of worms. That said, I think your spin on these events very unlikely and/or didn’t happen. What I think is more likely is that the MWM team made the decision to switch to UE4 later (and post Kickstarter award) because the UE team saw they’d gotten $600k cash in the Kickstarter campaign and wanted a piece of that action – so why not make the suggestion to the team to upgrade?
2) MWM isn’t a fully-staffed, self-reliant resource company; it is (or was) a woman-owned, small-business and loosely organized start-up company that is completely dependent on its volunteers to get the job done. How a “company” dependent on volunteers to get one project up and running (CoT) can suddenly think themselves successfully aligned/fully staffed (albeit with part-time volunteers) and resourced to take on a *second* MMO-driven product (even if its CoH revived) using a second and wholly separate fundraising opportunity without publicly acknowledging how they’re going to pay for the pre-negotiated “doable” rate that NCsoft is supposedly comfortable with (but then there goes Warcabbit saying they’ll need fundraising for new servers, networking, etc. on top of producing the money that actually *buys* the IP itself)… that’s not a company with good business sense or a detailed 5-year plan. That’s a bunch of guys flying by the seat of their pants trying to wing this (and maybe take some cash/bonus IT equipment/career development training home on the side, or hopefully get bought out by a bigger game developer/publisher down the road which is another great way to cash in).
3) Like everyone here, I love CoH and I *want* to believe that the IP can be purchased, the engine licensed, and everything will be happy, hunky dorey come login day – but that’s a lot of blind faith to have in one company (let alone a volunteer-based company) and I’m just not that naive (stupid? yes; naive? no...). Opportunities for fiscal mismanagement come fast and often (even when started with the best of intentions) and that’s not cause to always see everything branded “ Save CoH” as only a good thing. In theory, yes it’s great news; in practical execution, those “i”s had better be dotted and every “T” crossed” on the business operations plan before any money ever changes hands.
Bottom line: there’s good reason to be happy if NCsoft is opening the door to discussions again (regardless of whomever they speak to – and it’s sad to think Brian Clayton’s team came so very close only to lose out because they didn’t want to license the engine -- *if* that was the real reason why their negotiations fell apart) but there’s also good reason to be cautious, reasonably skeptical and ask the tough, sobering questions which can still keep these projects on the road to potential future success. This is a publicly funded initiative, after all, so while folks can yell in another thread “YEAH, BUT WHAT DID YOU DO TO HELP?!” the answer is – we helped contribute the money required to make (COT/COH) happen (which you couldn't and still can't do without the fan base's financial support) ---- and now I say to the MWM team – good job getting on getting NCsoft to open this door again; good luck developing not one but two MMO IP’s simultaneously with a part-time volunteer staff, and most importantly --- in the immortal words of RuPaul herself…
“...DON’T F*CK IT UP.”