So... Where to from here?

[Thunder Glove]

As someone else said, why not re-open the Plan Z forums, under a new name?  If there were any one place to talk about all the various Spiritual Successors, why not make this that place?  Put them right under the current City of Heroes board, rather than buried near the bottom.

Maybe you could also work with the various development teams to get information about mechanics, and have equivalents of City of Data and Mids all ready to go for each of the games as they launch.  I'd love to see how they're working out mechanics for the various successors, especially to try to avoid the pitfalls of spaghetti code that CoH fell into.  (Though I suspect eventual spaghetti code is inevitable, especially if the games are running and still around in ten years, which I hope they are)

[Ironwolf]

Make a new section of the site and have it be news on anything superhero based.

Comics, movies, games and even events like various conventions.

[Drauger9]

More concrete news will start trickling out of the successor projects any time now. You're getting restless right before the Golden Age, Tony. And if you're not patient, you'll wander off, and try to be all of these things that TN isn't. (Ever hear of Stratics? No? Well, I guess that's why history tends to repeat itself.)

Or don't be patient. Get started now. The successor projects already post news updates all the time, all three of them. Not to mention tidbits that devs drop on their respective forums. So where's the TN lore wikis? Where's the TN news page? If you've got the energy, momentum, dedication to build the next generic MMO community news site, surely you've got what it takes to build a dedicated community site and hype machine around our community's three games as they work toward launching?

But I don't know. Every comment above seems to be saying, yeah, go get into other things. Move on. OK. Do that. Makes me sad, but I'll admit, I'm that guy who turns out the lights. Maybe that's a hangup. Good luck in your adventures, man.

Captain, it seems like your taking the post as giving up. I myself took it as expanding. Which way to expand (right, left, forward or backward) is what I felt we was talking about.

I personally think it's a good idea, I mean I play more than one game and you better believe when/if COH comes back. It'll be my primary one but I will play many more as well.

So why not expand the community here out ward in more directions? The only concern I have. With anything more than the forums is will Tony and team have the energy to run the expansion?

[Joshex]

As someone else said, why not re-open the Plan Z forums, under a new name?  If there were any one place to talk about all the various Spiritual Successors, why not make this that place?  Put them right under the current City of Heroes board, rather than buried near the bottom.

Maybe you could also work with the various development teams to get information about mechanics, and have equivalents of City of Data and Mids all ready to go for each of the games as they launch.  I'd love to see how they're working out mechanics for the various successors, especially to try to avoid the pitfalls of spaghetti code that CoH fell into.  (Though I suspect eventual spaghetti code is inevitable, especially if the games are running and still around in ten years, which I hope they are)

Spaghetti code... yep, been there done that. just making all the necessary features can end up generating spaghetti code.

However Mids/ City of Data would just need calculations, When project bane goes live I don't see why I wouldn't release the statistical info and calcs saves people the trouble trying to figure them out themselves. "lets see how many more buttons do I have to press to get enough XP to get to the next level?" I've been there several times... or "how much def do I need to tank this boss?"

[therain93]

As someone else said, why not re-open the Plan Z forums, under a new name?  If there were any one place to talk about all the various Spiritual Successors, why not make this that place?  Put them right under the current City of Heroes board, rather than buried near the bottom.

Maybe you could also work with the various development teams to get information about mechanics, and have equivalents of City of Data and Mids all ready to go for each of the games as they launch.  I'd love to see how they're working out mechanics for the various successors, especially to try to avoid the pitfalls of spaghetti code that CoH fell into.  (Though I suspect eventual spaghetti code is inevitable, especially if the games are running and still around in ten years, which I hope they are)

I think re-opening the Plan Z forums is a good idea in general.  Closing those forums, while well-intended to boost those initiatives), further fractured the remaining fan base. 

Generally speaking though, Titan was born from City of Heroes with the express purpose of delivering tools to fill voids and managing content around it (at least that's how I saw it).  With the passing of CoX, naturally that purpose and the passion wane as well.  The question for you, Tony and team, is, what are you passionate about and enjoying now?  If you're digging champions online or some other game, then simply expanding the Titan Network with more focus on that game should be where you go if you so desire and leave ParagonWiki, CIT, CoHFaces a part of TN (although perhaps with slight branding for differentiation from the new content).  If you guys are crazy on board with all of the Plan Z stuff, then integrating the successors into dedicated pockets of Titan Network could begin (e.g. Valiance Online is furthest along, how do you integrate that with possible character builder, etc.).

[TonyV]

Hi all, so I just wanted to touch base again here since it's been a couple of weeks and I've been pondering a bit more on the subject.

First and foremost, thank you very much for the great responses!  I've been reading them all and really taking some of them to heart.  I'm really glad that we still have folks here who are so vested in seeing us continue and stay relevant! 

Second of all, regarding Plan Z, the primary reason we closed those forums is to give each of those projects the chance that they need to host their own communities.  While I don't mind people talking about the successor projects here, what I wanted to avoid was a situation where each of their respective community leaders had to maintain both a presence here and on their own forums to stay in touch with their communities, or worse, where someone either has topics forked both there and here or, worst of all, where someone mistakes the Titan Network as being the official community site for one of the successor projects.  I've actually gotten a few PMs and emails from people commenting on successor projects, obviously thinking that I was directly responsible for one or more of them.  I just mostly wanted to clear that up.  Plus, it really wasn't fair to them, having to compete with the Titan Network in engaging their players and fans.

Third of all, while I haven't ruled out any of the original thoughts, I have come up with an interesting side project that I'd like to explore a bit further.  Nothing may come of it, or some day it might be all the rage, I don't know.  But it's an idea that I've been knocking around in my noggin' for a while now, and for the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to get it from "I have vague, nebulous notions about something that might be cool" to "here's a concrete description of what I had in mind, including all of the rules and mechanics."  I'm not at the point where I want to talk about it publicly yet, because it might turn into a really dumb idea, or I might get so slammed with work or something that I can't follow up in a timely manner, but I just mainly want everyone to not think I'm sitting around on my thumbs.

Anyway, that's about it for the update.  By all means, keep posting and I'll keep reading, and I'll try to let everyone know if my little side project idea comes to the point of fruition where it's worth mentioning--that is, where I think it might actually have an honest chance of existing someday.

[Captain Electric]

If you ever want to open up a community news/hype machine surrounding the successor projects, APR (and maybe SCoRE), and other spandex-laden MMOs, I'd love to contribute. I have the energy but not the time to organize a project like that and cat-herd staff, but I really feel like the idea is RIGHT THERE, staring our community in the face, while we've thrown ideas around for General Gaming Site #143,873. If it wasn't clear, that's what motivated my frustrated post: given the chance to really support the rise of a golden age for the genre, it kind of feels like people would rather do anything else. Which is a very Twilight Zone thing for me to see, after the last few years. I suspect a site like that would involve much more than just forums (i.e. a wiki and a news page with contributing writers), so I won't blame anybody if they don't have time either; but it's frustrating to watch people Just Not Care for the idea. No one else is doing it that I know of; is there a better community than this for it?