It's Your Fault that we can't play City of Heroes Anymore

[Septipheran]

This is an open letter to Nate Downes, TonyV, ArcanaVille, CodeWalker, and whoever those guys are that are making Valiance Online.

My name is Rob. I was TwoHeadedBoy on the official COH forums. I made the Fire/Mental/Mu and Archery/Mental/Mu Blasters that were more survivable than most tanks and farmed at high end speeds. I made the best Warshade build that ever existed. I was really good at this game. I was passionate about this game. I miss it more than just about anything in my life, and honestly, right now, it's the aforementioned's fault.

(Insert proof here. Trust me, my characters were better than your characters. I duoed a LAMBDA with my Warshade and an Ice/Rad Corruptor. We killed the Security Guard in less than a minute.)

Editing to add a screenshot in case any of you think I just twiddled myself and played with Mids all day. My builds existed in the game, plus some. Notice the 54 Nucleo on Essence Drain and the 53 Endo on Inky Aspect. My Warshade was a showcase of all the things you could have possibly wished you had in the game, plus some things that shouldn't have even existed. I literally had two of the three level 54 Nucleo's in the game that were in circulation on this build at one point. I moved one of them only after the Eclipse Hami granting resistance 'exploit' was fixed.

The stat spread on my Warshade. Plus an archive of the thread when I finally made it public, after the shutdown was announced. There was fandom, and the thread obviously doesn't show the tells I got.

Some specs on the build, before you look:

-Perma Eclipse- Harpcapped res to everything w/ 5 targets.

-32.5% Defense to all positions (small purple from the softcap... To EVERYTHING. )

-High end ST DPS (G Well>Blast>Drain>Blast- Enough to solo a lvl 53 AV at the very least, without pets or temps.)

-The best AOE a Human Warshade could hope for- Competing with the best practical spawn clearing speeds that ANY Warshade could hope for if we ever got crashless Quasar.

-The best Crowd Control available to Warshades- Nothing to sneeze at.

-Includes Provoke and t4 Melee Hybrid, for a taunt aura and constant aggro generator.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120911114020/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=296404




This is my Warshade build.

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
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|55C9E0C196080D1520805D4C428A0C495FFC2F5C517E3ABEB 3F61D47FC1E5D9AD9E|
|CEF729133BC9E477E73BE77CF7CCBD7766FCF288FFD9B18D2 1A5950D67F45C6EF29|
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|BB9DF61E5B90E80BB0E9283E0EE43E410FCB6A4D60D3F973B 8E98AF9B4C80FE2499|
|025B3C5837A9D13C1FA0957D042312F0A217CD1B538891B76 5AE12CD67F559F203F|
|97B7E92BFC08ADF641EAC52E8F38AD496C2D7515AA9211600 C315E02DC929475FEE|
|F2E79833FC02ACED874FED0058BF05FFE6BC5CEAAE5406591 96C47A4BE03DC1B25B|
|BC818D8741CBC23B521AE60282D8848EC24790A6C9E200785 2EA7BA2A3595D63EE6|
|55E5367C3459B96AEE6CB5D5D53DC9AA615735D7F18E2DEBE 406B909B6DE206F82F|
|7A5B68E5DD5F56086D65EB0BD8FEC270740A774D0C00E1AC2 385BDBE2D3C81E1A5F|
|62ED3ADE92AFC8D760E71B72986750FC22DCB308F7AC937BD 5C5BD5B17FF36CD6DE|
|5B4A518EB25FBC0A0F844E913A54F9CF571FAD54A4E8C7DC6 E6317FDC04BB33E445|
|F202985A0043529B606DE201B47D0FC947E463D63C219F82D 7A4FF24BFD1E40076F|
|7B31C718D9AD682F3F77547D3B4511974C8FA9C45EF5FECF9 51E47FB36B4DD0EA5D|
|B67F8475429A2CC53A47F9AEA268B248491529BD454A5F913 2BAA33814BF7307BF7|
|BC72770CC5EE5859676D9FE55AD78076F4015BE68ABE3D312 F7D2D74BBF00FD029C|
|E77B9500EB904FFB0AAB87F179DB58B78DA76CE3F7A19DDA3 F76C1ECC5|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

EDIT: Here's a screen shot for posterity. Forgot I had these.




I'm good at playing City of Heroes, I would argue one of the best in the most recent era. I got how it worked from a player's perspective. What I'm not good at though, is making games.

There's a (not modest) hand full of people within this community that are capable of giving us City of Heroes back. Not through legal action. Certainly not through their knockoff crafting skills, complete with their own personal versions of how to make the game we all want back in the first place "better." There are people in this community that could have just given us our game back by now.

Instead of just making a private server, they chose to either a.) make their own games, b.) posture about lore on this board and c.) bellyache about morality and how scared they are about the big bad Korean Grindfest MMO company that literally gives so little of a damn about the COH community that they refused to take our money in maintenance mode.

Let's cut the nonsense. In the time that you have all spent letting this community (which is still thriving, both here and in the Facebook threads) LONG for their game back, whilst you work on your own little projects, you could have made TEN private servers by now. We have all the map data. We literally have every single spec of quest dialogue that we'll ever need archived on ParagonWiki. We don't need new lore developed. We don't need new character creators. We don't need new zones. We need all these people who are clearly capable of putting a game together to PUT OUR GOD DAMN GAME BACK TOGETHER.

Sure, it's illegal to make private servers. It's against teh rules. It's no coincidence that you guys all hated AE farming too. You're cowards. You have no backbone. The difference in this situation though, is that you're all doing the WRONG thing by not appropriately pooling your resources and giving us real City of Heroes back. We know you can do it. You could've done it three times by now, if you're still reading this post. It might be illegal to make private servers. Are you so afraid of having to change IP's and making a new torrent that it's worth all of this unnecessary heartache though? Because, spoiler alert, you're messing up. I literally had to say messing up instead of talking like an adult and saying what I wanted to say to this playerbase with a median age of like 35, because there "might be kids here." That's how boyscouty this community has gotten.

To summarize, you guys need to do the right thing. You have the means to give us our game back. We  want a private server. We just want to play City of Heroes. Stop wasting hours of labor developing new lore, creating new zones, making new games, talking on COHTitan about how much you "secretly knew the whole time" about the direction of the game, how you got to consult on the expansions, how legit and exclusive and cool you were in the old days, etc. Just shut the hell up. Shut the hell up and give us our god damn game back. Because we all know you can.

[Vee]

[Septipheran]

My dude is content to sit here and post memes and talk about how they miss COH on forums instead of actually giving a shit about the game and wanting it back. Not rocking the boat is rocking the boat at this point. Cool meme though.

[Rejolt]

My dude is content to sit here and post memes and talk about how they miss COH on forums instead of actually giving a pancake about the game and wanting it back. Not rocking the boat is rocking the boat at this point. Cool meme though.

Honestly, I just want to give you a hug and buy you a decaffinated drink. Carry on.

Edit: yup, obligatory in before the lock comment.

[Septipheran]

Honestly, I just want to give you a hug and buy you a decaffinated drink. Carry on.

Edit: yup, obligatory in before the lock comment.

If you're just here for the fun, I edited my OP with screens of my main's build so everyone knows not only how much I liked myself but how many hours I spent dedicating my sense of self worth to this game. And I had like, five other characters that I put this much work into. I really liked City of Heroes.

[Rejolt]

If you're just here for the fun, I edited my OP with screens of my main's build so everyone knows not only how much I liked myself but how many hours I spent dedicating my sense of self worth to this game. And I had like, five other characters that I put this much work into. I really liked City of Heroes.

We all did. We express it in different ways.

The odds of a closed mmo turning back on are ever so small. Attacking the biggest names you know in the recovery efforts is understandable and you go right on and rage if it helps you cope. The folks you're attacking have broad shoulders. Attacking them won't change much, however.

I'd rather be constructive for you. Can we help you find a cox alternative while we wait for news or successor project betas?

[Septipheran]

We all did. We express it in different ways.

The odds of a closed mmo turning back on are ever so small. Attacking the biggest names you know in the recovery efforts is understandable and you go right on and rage if it helps you cope. The folks you're attacking have broad shoulders. Attacking them won't change much, however.

I'd rather be constructive for you. Can we help you find a cox alternative while we wait for news or successor project betas?

It bugs me because they're all still active in the community and they're doing things and spending time on projects, making efforts that could literally have just been devoted to getting our game back. They know how to do it. They have all the assets. They're pretending that they're going to buy the rights back now, and stringing us along with a sea of less and less frequent updates. They're wasting time on doing things "by the book" when they could have just gotten things done forever ago by now. NCSoft doesn't care. They don't give a damn if there's COH private servers. Worst case scenario, they do care, and they do nothing about it. WoW is the MMO juggernaut and it has like 50 private servers. That old Star Wars MMO has a private server. NCSoft doesn't even own itself anymore, because another Korean company did Korean stuff and there were business things that happened and all that mumbo jumbo too. The point being that literally no one would care if these people just used their skillsets to make a private server. Instead of wasting everyone's time and stringing everyone along. I am trying to pour the tea into the ocean here.

[Rejolt]

Now those comments I can get behind. Sadly, I don't know how or the cost of a viable private server. I think we have a big enough fan base that all ways (successor projects, IP, legacy server, ICON-plus, etc) are being tried.

[Septipheran]

Now those comments I can get behind. Sadly, I don't know how or the cost of a viable private server. I think we have a big enough fan base that all ways (successor projects, IP, legacy server, ICON-plus, etc) are being tried.

The sad part is, and this is the point of my whole post- I think you may have skimmed and departed before the 'punch line', for which I won't fault you...

Imagine City of Titans. Imagine Valiance Online. Imagine all of the great work and tremendous projects that both of those teams have made.

Now, imagine both of those teams with the resources of ArcanaVille and TonyV and CodeWalker and the whole Titan Network behind them.

Are you REALLY going to tell me that all that knowledge and manpower couldn't have built us a private COH server by now? Do you think that they aren't capable of doing that, based on all of the ground-up work they've done? And all the resources they have readily available to them?

I think we have an ego issue here. I think we have a lot of people who are too worried about their own sense of ability to make COH "better," that they've been missing out on their ability to just bring the game back the whole time. Let's be real. These guys know how to make us a COH private server, in i24 maintenance mode right now. They knew how to do it a month after the game ended, if not before that.

They chose to play by the rules and "not violate intellectual property" and "use their powers for good," and make new games instead. But their sense of morality is derived strictly from the arbitrary standards of the law, not on evaluating their own skillsets, and the feelings of the community, and all the pain the loss of this game is causing us. They care more about their own vanity and not getting in trouble than they do about applying their skills and giving us our game back. And they deserve to be called out for it. Because we all know they can do it when we really think about it.

[Vee]

The law may be an 'arbitrary standard' w/r/t one's sense of morality, but breaking it can still get you sued or jailed.

[Septipheran]

The law may be an 'arbitrary standard' w/r/t one's sense of morality, but breaking it can still get you sued or jailed.

What percentage of MMO private server starters are in prison right now? Because a quick google search tells me all the WoW servers are still going strong, and the company that owns WoW actually cares about that game.

Hypothetically speaking, if the scary MMO police that doesn't exist in the first place aside from sending the occassional boilerplate C&D letter and then never bothering you again because going to trial isn't worth the hassle, why not get a proxy and upload the client to The Pirate Bay? This stuff is so simple it blows my mind. It really just comes down to, stop a.) being so egotistical and b.) stop being so god damn afraid to do the right thing, COH brain trust.

EDIT: I'll do you one better. You guys stop playing Valiance of Titans Online at the Icon Factory, get your act together and just work on real, actual COH, which would be much easier, message me for my number, I'll give you my address when you're done. I'll upload the client to the Pirate Bay myself and take full legal responsibility for it. Literally no one cares. NO ONE CARES. A Korean gaming company under new ownership is not going to pursue legal action against an American hosting a private, not for profit version of a game that literally had such a small audience that they cancelled it while it was profitable resurfacing with a fraction of that audience. They don't care. I'll sit on the hook for you just to prove my point. Just get to work and stop with the nonsense.

[pewlagon]

Here's part of the problem with this. A LOT of people funded both Valliance and Titans. Some of those people have no idea that the games are being made as successor projects. That money was ear marked for those games to be created. To drop everything now and turn what's left into Reverse engineering would be a black eye on the community.

I admire your passion for the game, but the simple fact is NcSoft and Nexon have both pursued private servers in the past and shut them down. I miss City of Heroes more than most here. It helped me with my anxiety and depression. Boy would it ever help me if it were back, but some things take time. There is still an effort underway, as we speak, to aquire the game. While it may seem painfully slow it IS in the works. Railing against those that are supporting ALL efforts just is not the way to go about things.

[Ohioknight]

The sad part is, and this is the point of my whole post- I think you may have skimmed and departed before the 'punch line', for which I won't fault you...

Imagine City of Titans. Imagine Valiance Online. Imagine all of the great work and tremendous projects that both of those teams have made.

Why do people not understand what Valiance is?  They're a game development studio that took a 75% complete fantasy MMO that they'd spent 5 years working on and re-purposed it to be a super-hero MMO.

Then they intend to market it and make money -- like any good professional game development studio.  If they get it to that point it will be their first product release.  These are people trying to, ultimately, earn a living at this.

None of that combines in any sensible way with anybody else's efforts and sure as hell doesn't advance by developing a reverse-engineered server for another company's product.

[Aggelakis]

We'll get right on that. I'm so glad you reminded us. We'd forgotten.

/sarcasm.

[TonyV]

This is an open letter to Nate Downes, TonyV, ArcanaVille, CodeWalker, and whoever those guys are that are making Valiance Online.

My name is Rob. I was TwoHeadedBoy on the official COH forums. I made the Fire/Mental/Mu and Archery/Mental/Mu Blasters that were more survivable than most tanks and farmed at high end speeds. I made the best Warshade build that ever existed. I was really good at this game. I was passionate about this game. I miss it more than just about anything in my life, and honestly, right now, it's the aforementioned's fault.

Hey, I was included in the list, woot!  Okay, I'll reply.

I feel you, man.  I miss it too.  I don't mention this often because I don't want anyone to feel guilty or anything, but consider that I am spending a substantial amount of money each month in maintaining the hosting for these sites.  And it's not just one server; at this point we have four: one hosting the legacy sites (that will be retired shortly), one that we're migrating to in order to implement SSL, one holding our software repository, and one that GuyPerfect and I have been using as a dedicated server for Don't Starve, which I'm hoping at some point to make public.  Also consider that as I'm typing this, we are continuing to make improvements to the site (1 2).  If I thought that this game or its community were really dead, I'd simply stick and archive out there somewhere and be done with it.

In addition, we still have a dedicated crew of Titan Network folks, including Codewalker, Sekoia, GuyPerfect, Eabrace, Aggelakis, and others who on a daily basis respond to PMs, maintain our social network presence, moderate the forums, participate in discussions, and participate in projects related to City of Heroes.  Personally, in addition to the Titan Network, I also cohost the Save CoH Radio show with Rich "Pogoman" Banks, I admin the City of Heroes Facebook group, I do things like attend the upcoming Dawncon event in CO, I even flew up to Virginia to attend a meet-and-greet in person a couple of years ago (and will probably do something like that again soon, since I'm getting a bit restless).  I'm also marginally involved on SCoRE, I regularly communicate with the City of Titans team, I'm working on a little personal project that I'm hoping to talk about in the near future that is CoH community-related, and every once in a great while, I even still communicate with gaming media.  In fact, I have an upcoming editorial for MassivelyOP that I really, really need to work on.

In short, I don't want you feeling like you're alone in your continued dedication to the game.  Trust me, you're one of many.

Instead of just making a private server, they chose to either a.) make their own games, b.) posture about lore on this board and c.) bellyache about morality and how scared they are about the big bad Korean Grindfest MMO company that literally gives so little of a damn about the COH community that they refused to take our money in maintenance mode.

Let me go ahead and acknowledge the elephant in the room.  If a private server is developed, there is a not insignificant chance that NCsoft will take great pains to shut it down, possibly to the point of suing the people who develop it.  Yes, there are ways to legally reverse engineer the game, but if it's not done precisely correctly, one risks putting oneself at risk legally and financially.  Even if one does everything perfectly, there's still a chance that NCsoft will come after them, forcing them to spend an exorbitant amount of money in legal fees even if that person manages to successfully defend a lawsuit.

If someone develops their own game as a "spiritual successor" project, that problem simply goes away.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm convinced that done right, NCsoft couldn't win a lawsuit against reverse engineers, but at the same time, I understand why some folks would rather develop their own project instead.  Also, let's not kid ourselves, City of Heroes started development in 2001. At this point, the technology in the game is almost 15 years old.  Some folks want to play a shiny new version of their beloved game on an engine developed for modern computers, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Let's cut the nonsense. In the time that you have all spent letting this community (which is still thriving, both here and in the Facebook threads) LONG for their game back, whilst you work on your own little projects, you could have made TEN private servers by now.

No, we couldn't. I'm not sure where you got this idea, but just to give you a sense of the complication of the issue, it took Cryptic over three years, from 2001 until 2004, to develop the original game from scratch.  And that was with a full staff of developers working on it as a living, able to instantly communicate with their colleagues in an open environment. The people working on reverse engineering the server are doing so without the server piece, which is VERY hard to do, and large chunks of the thing such as enemy AI will have to be coded from scratch.  And you're expecting all of this to happen in people's off-time.

Anyone who thinks that this is easy, or doable any faster, is more than welcome to try.  Personally, I know that I don't have the skillset to pull it off.  I know people who do, and they're working on it, but again, they're doing so in their free time without any compensation, and it's a pretty long trudge.

You have the means to give us our game back. We  want a private server. We just want to play City of Heroes.

Tell me, how are YOU contributing to this effort?  Where's the documentation you've written on the API?  Where's your analysis of the binary code?  Where's your code that you've put together to provide back-end services to the client?

What's that, you don't know how to code?  It's been almost three years since the shutdown announcement.  Why haven't your learned in that time?  Some people earn college degrees in that time, there's certainly been time enough to pick up coding and hacking skills in that time.  Why don't YOU have the means to give us our games back yet?  I want a private server too, so where is it?  Stop wasting time doing whatever it is you've been doing these past few years, and give us our game back, because I know you can.

Or else check the entitlement at the door and be grateful that people ARE working on it, that stuff is getting done, even if it's not at the pace you personally would like to see.

Look, I know you're frustrated.  I am too.  Most of us are.  But there are helpful, constructive ways to go about making things better, including stuff you dismiss that in reality helps keep the community together.  And there are ways that aren't.  This thread is wholly unconstructive, which is why it was locked.  Not because of any particular sense of "boyscoutiness", but because it can only go downhill from here.