My letter wasn't an email. I sent hard copy. In any case, considering that they had announced that they were cancelling CoH at the time, I'd say it was pretty relevant to their business especially if they wanted to keep all of those customers. But... apparently they didn't. *Shrug.*
Who's "they?" The fact that your letter was a hard copy letter actually helps your cause a bit, insofar as letters directly addressed to the CEO care of the business address were almost certainly pre-screened by assistants or secretaries, but it also means the odds the CEO actually saw it were minimal.
Getting back to the question, who's "they?" Your specific complaint or perspective on City of Heroes is relevant to NCSoft in a general vague sense, but relevant to the CEO's work day practically not at all. Its unfortunate, and players refused to accept it, but when the decision makers at NCSoft decided to shutter City of Heroes and Paragon Studios, they collectively did so knowing four things:
1. Many existing City of Heroes players would not approve of the decision
2. Some percentage of City of Heroes players would react sufficiently negatively so as to cost them those customers for all future cross-sell
3. Some percentage of City of Heroes players would react vocally to the decision, denigrating the decision and the company in as many public channels as possible
4. Some percentage of City of Heroes players would demand action be taken to reverse that decision.
So, my question is: what new piece of information did you attempt to communicate to the CEO of NCSoft, that he and/or his officers and employees collectively didn't already know? At the time, I encouraged people to voice their opinions and express their conscience in whatever way they felt was appropriate. But I also stated as a matter of fact that it was unlikely to matter (at least to NCSoft) for the simple reason that nothing any of those players did was lilkely to be new information. Those expressions meant more to the community making them than it did to the target of them. We were not going to engage them in an open discussion of their business practices. Probability zero. We were not going to be able to convince them to change their minds with a novel argument because we did not possess any new information that could change their minds. The only thing we could maybe do is create such a disruption to them that they decided to reverse their decision in order to save the expense of dealing with the situation. But we simply lacked the firepower necessary to accomplish that goal, and in my opinion at no time were there enough City of Heroes players to accomplish that even if every single one of us acted in a coordinated fashion.
If I'm the CEO of NCSoft, you can't send me enough letters to change my mind, assuming I even made the decision in the first place. You certainly can't send me enough letters to question the decision of a subbordinate officer about a business unit that's a round off error on my balance sheets. The only thing you can do is send me enough letters and emails to disrupt my day and make it harder for me to do my job. Which will make me all kinds of happy with you and sympathetic to your cause.
