Since there's not really a dedicated "Hello Titan!" thread, and since I wanted to comment on a couple things, I'll go ahead and say my hellos here. :3
So yes, hello. \o
In the form of a lot of earlier posts in this thread, I'll offer up anything I can be helpful with, be it simple photo manipulations and editing, or my limited writing skills. I'd offer more if I could, but that's about all I have at the moment. That and of course my support for this endeavor.
Now I haven't gone through every single thread on the forum, as that'd take me a while since I'm not the fastest reader in the world, and I get distracted/pulled away a lot, but I have read this thread and a couple others in their entirety, such as the Wildstar conversation and A Rescue Mission, which I very much like the idea of. I've been thinking on this whole situation a lot, and it still doesn't make a bunch of sense to me in the manner it's being handled... Games come and go, sure, but I still don't understand the abruptness of this whole thing. Anyway, that's off topic. ON topic though, I just want to say a couple things.
First off, I wanted to say that I probably wouldn't be as enthusiastic to jump on board with this project if it weren't for the amazing community I've been introduced to over the last week. You guys are absolutely amazing, and if you HAVEN'T already, give yourselves a round of applause and a pat on the back. #SaveCOH has gotten around the internet EVERYWHERE it seems now. And you're continuing to spread the word about it. You've gotten casual players and non-players alike to join the cause, brought awareness to the mass media, and have even brought about discussion about how
an online community is exploding out into a massive network through social media. I probably phrased that last part incorrectly, but the link'll explain if you haven't seen the article. Anyway, I've seen groups popping up on Steam, it's all over Raptr, I've even heard about spreading the word into other game forums such as the Blizzard ones, which apparently we've basically been invited to do from what I remember seeing.
The biggest thing that I can think of though that really got me personally on board was the Dinner's On Us Call to Action. That just pulled the words out of my mouth and left me staring at the screen and articles I found. Again, pat on the backs if you haven't... 3 hours to raise OVER 1,000 United States Dollars. And in increments of $5 - $50 no less. I'm not sure that's actually been mentioned, but Tony actually DID set the max donation to $50. That blew me away, and watching Twitter last night, the Devs seemed to have enjoyed it greatly. I'm assuming that little extra over 1k went to buying that cake. xD Awesome touch.
Now... With the compliments and whatnot out of the way... My thoughts on things. Which will be much briefer. >_>
- Get the game ourselves: I've been thinking on where we can go with trying to acquire the IP for CoH. I'm not as well versed in business as I've seen a lot of people on the forum, and I don't have any contacts, but I can at least dig around to find things. And come up with ideas. One idea was actually shot down earlier when I heard that Nexon was a backer for NCSoft. That surprised me a lot, which goes to show how much I actually know, and made me rethink a little. However my other idea still stands in that there are other large publishers that DO have a Western presence. One such publisher being Aeria Games. They've got a large variety of games that I know of, including one that's actually made it to Steam's F2P list. If they're a viable company to talk to/consider, then there's my input for that, hope it helps a little. And I will actually go look at the City Sunset board in a bit. I just wanted to get this typed down.
- Another Studio: Point 1 kinda covered this, but I'll add to it as well. If we were able to get another studio to back the game as a publisher, then it might still be possible that they'd want to hire on the original developers of the game as a subsidiary, or as project leaders for the game in another company. I'm not sure, but it's a thought anyway.
- Reverse Engineering: I've seen a number of different things covering this, ranging from warnings of the legal implications of it, to offers of helping the engineering team. I'll just add my voice to the warning of the legality of it, while stating this: It HAS been done before, and proven to be a still ever popular thing. I actually still play a game that was an online game from SEGA called Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst. There's a HUGE community that revolves around that game, and a group of people actually banded together a long while ago to find ways to keep the game going. This is the SCHTack Servers. They run the game for free, and are constantly adding things and improving aspects of this game, including going through the painstaking process of translating the unshipped portions of the game that were only released in Japan into English. It's a phenomenal project, and I could easily see City of Heroes rising to this stature if the proper precautions were taken. What those are I can't say, but I thought I'd share that bit to show that it is possible to continue a project after it's been killed. I know there are others, but PSOBB is the only one that I know and play myself.
Anyway... I'll be watching for the next CtA. I probably won't be able to join a lot of the trial runs purely because I don't have a high level character, but I'll try and be at any rallies that I hear about. :3
Thank you all for the amazing progress that you HAVE made so far, even if it isn't visibly affecting NCSoft that we know of. It really makes me smile when I say We are Heroes. This is what we do.
