And the mask comes off.

[Ironwolf]

Again, in point of fact we don't know that.  I practically feel obliged to quote Inigo Montoya here: "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means."

The main thing is we have hope and now you know it isn't a false message - it is a real possibility and if all else fails we have a notion of how to approach NCSoft and the fact that they ARE approachable. I have said in the past once you find out some of what happened and put all the pieces together - NCSoft wasn't the ogre people thought they were.

If you still harbor resentment towards NCSoft look at the type of deal they are willing to make - have you ever heard of something like this? They are willing to set up a holding company - yes in partnership with NCSoft and allow people to License the City of Heroes brand to be official games based off the original.

They are even willing to set up a company to run the Legacy CoH and let it be self sustaining. I can't help but think that NCSoft has realized they do minimal work, they get money back in licensing and likely a cut of the Legacy server profits little. It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed.

[JanessaVR]

The main thing is we have hope and now you know it isn't a false message - it is a real possibility and if all else fails we have a notion of how to approach NCSoft and the fact that they ARE approachable. I have said in the past once you find out some of what happened and put all the pieces together - NCSoft wasn't the ogre people thought they were.

If you still harbor resentment towards NCSoft look at the type of deal they are willing to make - have you ever heard of something like this? They are willing to set up a holding company - yes in partnership with NCSoft and allow people to License the City of Heroes brand to be official games based off the original.

They are even willing to set up a company to run the Legacy CoH and let it be self sustaining. I can't help but think that NCSoft has realized they do minimal work, they get money back in licensing and likely a cut of the Legacy server profits little. It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed.

I know it's not a false message, but from everything you and downix have told us so far, it's also not a fast process.  Who said anything about resentment towards NCSoft?  If anything, this has made me far more positively disposed towards them than I have been for over 2 years now.  That said, the one detail that has shone through these negotiations to date is that they have been prolonged ones, and may continue on for quite some time into the foreseeable future.  In short, we are not "almost there," unless one has a very...extended definition of the word "almost."

[Codewalker]

If you still harbor resentment towards NCSoft look at the type of deal they are willing to make - have you ever heard of something like this? They are willing to set up a holding company - yes in partnership with NCSoft and allow people to License the City of Heroes brand to be official games based off the original.

They are even willing to set up a company to run the Legacy CoH and let it be self sustaining. I can't help but think that NCSoft has realized they do minimal work, they get money back in licensing and likely a cut of the Legacy server profits little. It is a perfect deal with no risk - because they can just close the game again if needed.

All that we know for certain is they are willing to listen to someone pitch an idea for setting up a holding company, letting legacy coh be self sustaining, and sub-licensing the IP.

Whether there is any possibility they'd agree to that kind of thing, or whether an agreement can be reached to do so, that's all up in the air. It's way too premature to be thinking "we're almost there". For all we know they only agreed to listen out of politeness due to the way they were approached.

[Remaugen]

In short, we not "almost there," unless one has a very...extended definition of the word "almost."

You can continue to be the Debbie Downer if you choose. It's just a matter of positive outlook for me, by comparison to where we were last year, or even before this project became public. . .


We really are "Almost There"    


Edit: My gut feeling is we will be playing the legacy I23 image around Halloweenish. No, I have nothing concrete at all to base that on, but I don't think it is unrealistic either. . .

[Power Gamer]

Quit sending out those negative vibs, man! 

[JanessaVR]

Quit sending out those negative vibes, woman! 

You can be as optimistic as you want, but I (and Codewalker) are being the voices of reason here at present.  Our current position is not "almost there," it's "hopefully we can end up getting the game back, but that's likely to be next year, at least, and that's if the deal goes through."

[opprime2828]

Ironwolf:
 
My understanding throughout this entire thread has been that NCSoft wouldn't be setting up a joint holding company and collecting royalties into the future, but would be selling the IP to MWM entirely for a one time fee.  MWM would then set up their OWN holding company to handle the IP. 
 
Am I misunderstanding? If I am that makes me slightly less excited about this deal since it gives NCSoft some serious veto power over future games designed by MWM and any of the successors. 
 
Can you clarify if I misunderstood either your recent post of what is being negotiated? 

[JanessaVR]

Edit: My gut feeling is we will be playing the legacy I23 image around Halloweenish. No, I have nothing concrete at all to base that on, but I don't think it is unrealistic either. . .

Will you bet $100 on that?

[Shard]

There were many different concerns the dev team had to balance with regard to character slots, but I believe the only really important one for a maintenance mode server (or servers) is disk space to hold the character information.  And disk space is not today what it was when CoH released, or even when it shut down.  If they wanted to allow everyone to have a hundred slots per server, I don't think that would be difficult to do.  It would cost more to have more storage online, but it wouldn't likely cost a lot in absolute terms.  There might be hard coded slot limits in the code, but I'm sure CW could just patch those away if I randomly posted that I thought he couldn't do it.

And it may have to do with what "clever" shortcuts they chose to take to save that space as well  - which may not be avoidable.  Wouldn't be the first time I had to curse someone's custom bitpacking scheme.

[Shard]

ARP is 1.5, but they will not be running the legacy game. That is planned to be run by whoever runs the holding company that will own the IP.

Nothing specific is known/declared about who will run the Legacy servers.  That's a common misread.  It's still a negotiation point.

[Remaugen]

Will you bet $100 on that?

No    I have already hedged by adding "ish" to Halloween, because I really don't have any evidence at all, just a gut feeling that:


We're almost there!   

[Shard]

If your database chokes at a few million small records, I'd suggest not using a terrible database. 

Because schema growth is *always* well thought out and rebuilt.

Do recall which version of SQLServer we're dealing with here...

[Codewalker]

2008R2. Why they didn't just call it SQL2010 is beyond me to this day, at least the client components are sane and just call it 10.50.  From my experience with SQL Server in general and given how it's used, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work as-is with 2012 or even 2014 if you wanted.

[JanessaVR]

2008R2. Why they didn't just call it SQL2010 is beyond me to this day, at least the client components are sane and just call it 10.50.  From my experience with SQL Server in general and given how it's used, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work as-is with 2012 or even 2014 if you wanted.

I'm using SQL Server 2012 here at work.  It's mostly an improvement over our previous version - at least as far as my work goes.

[Codewalker]

I'm not a huge fan of the cartoonification of SQL management studio, but the server component is solid enough.

Just remember to turn on MVCC if you do a lot of concurrent read and write transactions. It still defaults to ancient row-level locking for some unfathomable reason. Oh sorry, I mean "Optimistic Concurrency Control" (aka read_committed_snapshot) -- maybe Microsoft doesn't want you to know they didn't invent it, or something... 

[Shard]

So, a question for @Downix - If this, ah, "holding company" comes into being, whose primary purpose is to act as a licensor of the CoX IP and possibly a "publisher" of the I-23 server, would this company be limited in the types of licenses it could grant? That is, would this IP company be able to license a novel, or a CCG, or an action figure, or would it be limited strictly to licensing MMORPG versions of CoX?

Theoretically no, though there may be outstanding agreements that NCSoft could require to still be honored as part of the ownership transfer. For example, let's say in 2009, McFarlane acquired five year exclusive personalities (Iconics, etc ) license.  Frequently these kind of agreements are ended when a rights transfer - but not always. NC Soft could require it be honoured as part of the transfer.  THAT IS JUST AN EXAMPLE!

[downix]

Ironwolf:
 
My understanding throughout this entire thread has been that NCSoft wouldn't be setting up a joint holding company and collecting royalties into the future, but would be selling the IP to MWM entirely for a one time fee.  MWM would then set up their OWN holding company to handle the IP. 
 
Am I misunderstanding? If I am that makes me slightly less excited about this deal since it gives NCSoft some serious veto power over future games designed by MWM and any of the successors. 
 
Can you clarify if I misunderstood either your recent post of what is being negotiated?

Misunderstanding at least one element badly, it would not be MWM buying anything. It would be a small group, independent of any current company, buying the IP and setting up the holding company.

[Shard]

Ironwolf:
 
My understanding throughout this entire thread has been that NCSoft wouldn't be setting up a joint holding company and collecting royalties into the future, but would be selling the IP to MWM entirely for a one time fee.  MWM would then set up their OWN holding company to handle the IP. 

No, MWM will not be the IP holder. The Holding company will be it's own entity, not a subsidiary or other similar child entity of MWM. 

[Shard]

2008R2. Why they didn't just call it SQL2010 is beyond me to this day, at least the client components are sane and just call it 10.50.  From my experience with SQL Server in general and given how it's used, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work as-is with 2012 or even 2014 if you wanted.

Hmm. My info says they didn't move that far or are running it in 2000? compatibility mode..

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

All that we know for certain is they are willing to listen to someone pitch an idea for setting up a holding company, letting legacy coh be self sustaining, and sub-licensing the IP.

Whether there is any possibility they'd agree to that kind of thing, or whether an agreement can be reached to do so, that's all up in the air. It's way too premature to be thinking "we're almost there". For all we know they only agreed to listen out of politeness due to the way they were approached.

"If wishes were horses then beggars would eat."
So, until a deal is signed the only thing that's certain is that NCsoft is willing to listen to proposals. Which is nice and all, but i will definitely continue hedging the bet with CoT, VO, and H&V. At this moment VO seems to be farther along towards being a playable game, and of the other two my experiences with UE4 have been a lot more positive than Hero Engine, but we'll see how that all works out in the end. Until an actual deal is announced i'm going to stay with the estimate that we're at least three months from being able to play CoH again.