And the mask comes off.

[Feign]

I agree that to us money is not our focus - to NCSoft it is the primary focus - make the games people want to buy, period.

And from that they got "Go all in on making Blade and Soul marketable to the Chinese as a FtP Because Chinese gamers are absolutely loaded down with expendable money while they sit back and play foreign MMOs all day long."  Also "Hey this Carbine developer looks legit, exclusively cater entirely to raids!  Everybody who pays money loves raids!  Oh I seem to have lost the bug list, no matter!"

Having focus on your target is great and all, but it isn't all that beneficial when they can't figure out how to hold the gun.

I feel we don't need to find their focus so much as we need to figure out where they're accidentally aiming their money and to be at the target, but also at that place.

[Codewalker]

Also "Hey this Carbine developer looks legit, exclusively cater entirely to raids!  Everybody who pays money loves raids!  Oh I seem to have lost the bug list, no matter!"

More like "Hey this Carbine developer is formed from a bunch of ex-WoW developers who left Blizzard. OMG WOW MAKES MEGA $$$$$$"

They just didn't ask which ones.

[Sinistar]

So, basically, check back in January then?

Yeah ... January...  I'm not sensing anything here in time for Christmas...  Oh well...

In the meantime, GL with the negotiations, Downix, et al.

The way I see it is if NCsoft decides tomorrow to sell off the game, the new team still has to do some things

1. Set up shop somewhere
2. Receive  any and all software and hardware from NCSoft that is needed.
3. Make very well sure that the Ish 23 image is backed up in triplicate and stored off site safe and secure
4. Determine how many servers are coming back, all or some?  Remember there has likely been some attrition to the CoH fanbase in the past 2 years, it is not logical to expect EVERYONE to return on relaunch day, but one can hope. But that is still the question: will ALL the servers come back? Are ALL needed? It might be better to restore HALF of them at first and then if there is enough demand to active the others one by one and let people transfer characters.
5. Set up the account system
6. Set up the payment system and determine subscription prices if any.
7. Set up website, setup forum
8. Set up download links for those that need to redownload the game
9. Create an update for those that DIDN'T uninstall the game that will point the game to the new servers.
10. Final decision to be made about the Sentinel files, partial restore or not used at all.
11. Possibly setup some sales and incentives to help pacify any lingering anger over the loss of characters (there will be some, it is inevitable), and there will be some players that will have a sense of entitlement about having some incentives at relaunch.  Example: the first month of relaunch the celebrant badge is awarded to all toons that log in, and the first month is Double Xp. 
12. Decide whether or not to let people buy the vet rewards all the way up to Tier 9 and unlock all the costume pieces that come with them.  (I want that mecha armor back)
13. Veteran badges, the system was broken before the shutdown. Will it be fixed or the vet badges junked?
14. Hire GM's
15. Test the blazes out of the game before re-launch and do any major repairs needed. I think it was stated that the game image isn't in the best of shape but I can't recall.
16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.
17. Update the Terms of Service as needed.
18. If NCSoft truly sells off the game and will have NO CONTROL at all over its future, that really must be made abundantly clear to everyone. There are some that have some bad feelings towards them which are not entirely unjustified.
19. If any ish 24 elements can be added in, great. If not, that's fine since the game would still be back.

Anyway the above list is just speculation, so who knows?

Hope, Forever Hope.

[Aggelakis]

4. Determine how many servers are coming back, all or some?  Remember there has likely been some attrition to the CoH fanbase in the past 2 years, it is not logical to expect EVERYONE to return on relaunch day, but one can hope. But that is still the question: will ALL the servers come back? Are ALL needed? It might be better to restore HALF of them at first and then if there is enough demand to active the others one by one and let people transfer characters.

With today's technology instead of 2004's technology, I'd say one server is enough. Maybe two if people are REALLY needing "server flavor wars" Almost everything was one giant mega-server already [insert various caveats from CW here], the different servers were all playing with each other on all the mapservers, etc.

[Jorge Firebomb]

Sinistar makes some very good points, though I think he's being a little optimistic about how many people will come back after two years. I'm not convinced that there will be enough demand for more than one server for the game, to be honest. Is this something where they could do some sort of cloud hosting where they could more easily expand capacity if necessary? I honestly think it would be best to fragment the userbase as little as possible, and you would think that modern hardware could handle more load than the original servers did, assuming the code behind the game wouldn't choke on memory limits or something.

Regardless, even if the deal was signed right this second, there would be a decent amount of time before the game would be able to go live. I also hope I'm wrong about how many people would come back, I'd love to see a vibrant community able to fill all the original servers again.

[Sinistar]

Sinistar makes some very good points, though I think he's being a little optimistic about how many people will come back after two years. I'm not convinced that there will be enough demand for more than one server for the game, to be honest. Is this something where they could do some sort of cloud hosting where they could more easily expand capacity if necessary? I honestly think it would be best to fragment the userbase as little as possible, and you would think that modern hardware could handle more load than the original servers did, assuming the code behind the game wouldn't choke on memory limits or something.

Regardless, even if the deal was signed right this second, there would be a decent amount of time before the game would be able to go live. I also hope I'm wrong about how many people would come back, I'd love to see a vibrant community able to fill all the original servers again.

My questions about the servers are indeed based on optimism/hope, with a touch of realism thrown in. 

I would love to see everyone back on relaunch day, whenever that happens.  But reality being what it is, to say there is no attrition to the fan base is unrealistic.  Some will not want to start over again, some have moved on to other life activities and hobbies, some may have hated the game towards the end and were glad of the shutdown (blasphemy!),  and of course the ill will that some will feel towards NCSoft.

Also a valid point was raised by the poster above, with server tech the way it is now one server may well be enough, but then there is the old expression about all the eggs in one basket.  Perhaps two servers?

[Shidan]

My personal wishes are for only one server, or all of them. As otherwise I wouldn't be able to find the people I don't have contact with, and that would be sad. 

[Techbot Alpha]

My personal wish, if APR goes ahead, is for whoever is in charge of environments tears down every freaking skyscraper in Paragon and re-builds them to 1) look like actual buildings with windows in sensible places and obeying the laws of physics, 2) re-organise the road-map of zones, especially Atlas, to actually look like a city, rather than a drunken motorway that stumbled into an urban zone.

[Sinistar]

Here's a nice pic of the sun,  kinda reminds me of Eochai

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/15/tech/nasa-sun-jack-o-lantern/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

[Netzahualcoyotl]

The way I see it is if NCsoft decides tomorrow to sell off the game, the new team still has to do some things

1. Set up shop somewhere
2. Receive  any and all software and hardware from NCSoft that is needed.
3. Make very well sure that the Ish 23 image is backed up in triplicate and stored off site safe and secure
4. Determine how many servers are coming back, all or some?  Remember there has likely been some attrition to the CoH fanbase in the past 2 years, it is not logical to expect EVERYONE to return on relaunch day, but one can hope. But that is still the question: will ALL the servers come back? Are ALL needed? It might be better to restore HALF of them at first and then if there is enough demand to active the others one by one and let people transfer characters.
5. Set up the account system
6. Set up the payment system and determine subscription prices if any.
7. Set up website, setup forum
8. Set up download links for those that need to redownload the game
9. Create an update for those that DIDN'T uninstall the game that will point the game to the new servers.
10. Final decision to be made about the Sentinel files, partial restore or not used at all.
11. Possibly setup some sales and incentives to help pacify any lingering anger over the loss of characters (there will be some, it is inevitable), and there will be some players that will have a sense of entitlement about having some incentives at relaunch.  Example: the first month of relaunch the celebrant badge is awarded to all toons that log in, and the first month is Double Xp. 
12. Decide whether or not to let people buy the vet rewards all the way up to Tier 9 and unlock all the costume pieces that come with them.  (I want that mecha armor back)
13. Veteran badges, the system was broken before the shutdown. Will it be fixed or the vet badges junked?
14. Hire GM's
15. Test the blazes out of the game before re-launch and do any major repairs needed. I think it was stated that the game image isn't in the best of shape but I can't recall.
16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.
17. Update the Terms of Service as needed.
18. If NCSoft truly sells off the game and will have NO CONTROL at all over its future, that really must be made abundantly clear to everyone. There are some that have some bad feelings towards them which are not entirely unjustified.
19. If any ish 24 elements can be added in, great. If not, that's fine since the game would still be back.

Anyway the above list is just speculation, so who knows?

Hope, Forever Hope.

Smart.... most of the bases covered here - hope the f2p model for static I23 comes back.   

[Netzahualcoyotl]

Sinistar makes some very good points, though I think he's being a little optimistic about how many people will come back after two years. I'm not convinced that there will be enough demand for more than one server for the game, to be honest. Is this something where they could do some sort of cloud hosting where they could more easily expand capacity if necessary? I honestly think it would be best to fragment the userbase as little as possible, and you would think that modern hardware could handle more load than the original servers did, assuming the code behind the game wouldn't choke on memory limits or something.

Regardless, even if the deal was signed right this second, there would be a decent amount of time before the game would be able to go live. I also hope I'm wrong about how many people would come back, I'd love to see a vibrant community able to fill all the original servers again.

I've been telling everyone I know on the SWG Basilisk server (swgemu) and I've run across old players interested and people who a:) had never heard of CoX but were intrigued enough by yt clips (and my ott game descriptions) to say they'd try it when it returns and b:) players who had heard of it and had always wanted to try it, but for a myriad of reasons never got around to it before shutdown.... I think we can drum up enough player interest at (re)launch to fill some servers...

[Power Gamer]

Here's a nice pic of the sun,  kinda reminds me of Eochai

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/15/tech/nasa-sun-jack-o-lantern/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Now I so much want to smash his pumpkin stick figure into the ground! 

[darkgob]

16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.

Villains were freely available in the game for years before the shutdown, I'm thinking Praetorians would have ended up the same way given the time.

[Pyromantic]

The way I see it is if NCsoft decides tomorrow to sell off the game, the new team still has to do some things

1. Set up shop somewhere
2. Receive  any and all software and hardware from NCSoft that is needed.
3. Make very well sure that the Ish 23 image is backed up in triplicate and stored off site safe and secure
4. Determine how many servers are coming back, all or some?  Remember there has likely been some attrition to the CoH fanbase in the past 2 years, it is not logical to expect EVERYONE to return on relaunch day, but one can hope. But that is still the question: will ALL the servers come back? Are ALL needed? It might be better to restore HALF of them at first and then if there is enough demand to active the others one by one and let people transfer characters.
5. Set up the account system
6. Set up the payment system and determine subscription prices if any.
7. Set up website, setup forum
8. Set up download links for those that need to redownload the game
9. Create an update for those that DIDN'T uninstall the game that will point the game to the new servers.
10. Final decision to be made about the Sentinel files, partial restore or not used at all.
11. Possibly setup some sales and incentives to help pacify any lingering anger over the loss of characters (there will be some, it is inevitable), and there will be some players that will have a sense of entitlement about having some incentives at relaunch.  Example: the first month of relaunch the celebrant badge is awarded to all toons that log in, and the first month is Double Xp. 
12. Decide whether or not to let people buy the vet rewards all the way up to Tier 9 and unlock all the costume pieces that come with them.  (I want that mecha armor back)
13. Veteran badges, the system was broken before the shutdown. Will it be fixed or the vet badges junked?
14. Hire GM's
15. Test the blazes out of the game before re-launch and do any major repairs needed. I think it was stated that the game image isn't in the best of shape but I can't recall.
16. When one registers their new account, is it going to be hero only and one would need to purchase a Villain code and a Praetorian code or will it just be all three?  Also will key codes from any old CoH packages still work? I have some of my coh boxes and codes still floating around.
17. Update the Terms of Service as needed.
18. If NCSoft truly sells off the game and will have NO CONTROL at all over its future, that really must be made abundantly clear to everyone. There are some that have some bad feelings towards them which are not entirely unjustified.
19. If any ish 24 elements can be added in, great. If not, that's fine since the game would still be back.

Anyway the above list is just speculation, so who knows?

Hope, Forever Hope.

While I expect some things that look a lot like this have to happen, I think it very unlikely that they will all happen after the deal is signed.  It strikes me as very unwise to sign the deal unless the company set up to do so has already established plans and capability for things like backing up the image, setting up servers and putting a pay model into place.  NCSoft has required a show of technical ability from the group and I would expect it comes in the form of several of these tasks.  As such I would expect that some time is required after the deal is signed, but not to the point that they're figuring these things out from scratch.

Granted I don't know much about this subject so I could be completely wrong, but it's what makes sense to me.

[Fridgy Daiere]

Actually, quite a lot of that -- including website (unpublished, of course) -- can be done before the deal ever goes through. That which cannot be physically completed due to lack of actual game servers in hand can be outlined and planned for with the underlying infrastructures in place.

[Sihada]

I wouldn't expect a launch until sometime after the announcement the game was coming back.

I wouldn't expect a launch until 2016, if it happens at all (which is not certain yet).  NCSoft isn't going to hand someone a DVD with a "setup.exe" that they can double-click to start the server.  Once the transfer of the server actually happens, it will take months to get it operational and ready for the earliest alpha testers.

COH isn't going to be under the Christmas tree, this year or next.

[FloatingFatMan]

Actually, quite a lot of that -- including website (unpublished, of course) -- can be done before the deal ever goes through. That which cannot be physically completed due to lack of actual game servers in hand can be outlined and planned for with the underlying infrastructures in place.

I wouldn't expect them to do -anything- that costs money to do, before they get the deal signed.  Otherwise, if it goes south, they've just thrown money away.

Sure, they'll PLAN stuff, but that's as far as they'll go until they get that magic signature.

[chuckv3]

I wouldn't expect a launch until 2016, if it happens at all (which is not certain yet).  NCSoft isn't going to hand someone a DVD with a "setup.exe" that they can double-click to start the server.  Once the transfer of the server actually happens, it will take months to get it operational and ready for the earliest alpha testers.

COH isn't going to be under the Christmas tree, this year or next.

Hopefully It's not THAT bad. Having a server image means it's already installed and was running. They may even be able to run this on a virtual server instead of a physical one. The game had a front-end split bouncing users between 1 account server (authentication), 1 map server and multiple game server. It's likely there was also a back-end split probably to have the database centralized. If they have images for both (or all 3) of those servers, it will take maybe a month of dedicated effort to get it all up and running. You can bet it will be a dedicated effort.

[Sihada]

Hopefully It's not THAT bad. Having a server image means it's already installed and was running. They may even be able to run this on a virtual server instead of a physical one. The game had a front-end split bouncing users between 1 account server (authentication), 1 map server and multiple game server. It's likely there was also a back-end split probably to have the database centralized. If they have images for both (or all 3) of those servers, it will take maybe a month of dedicated effort to get it all up and running. You can bet it will be a dedicated effort.

I have no doubts as to the dedication of the people involved; its the complexity of the task that is the issue.  I think that 30 days from "here's the server(s)" to "ready for players" is overly optimistic.

[BraveStar]

Speaking as a former service tech, I doubt restoring the servers will take that long. We use disk images for a reason - restoring a system from scratch can take days and customers don't like being out of service for even an hour, let alone a week. With a good disk image we can have a system up and running again in a few hours.

The more difficult bits will be writing the new code to handle accounts, etc. How long that takes will depend on the people involved and how much time they have. If it were me, I would have started working on it months ago - as soon as the deal looking like a reasonable possibility. Don't forget that our new devs aren't just doing this as a business - they're fans too and want this game to return just as much as we do.

All that said, speculation really doesn't do us any good - there are just too many variables involved. The game will be up when it's up, but it won't take a year. The best thing we can do is give them time and our support.