To the Pain...

[Segev]

I don't think "cancels" will get the "shows up on searches relating to NCSoft stocks" bit, though. You've got a good point on the harping maybe being excessive, though.

NCSoft trades down in company realignment, cancelling the "most popular comic book MMO" in existence.

(edit the above to accurately quote the glowing phraseology NCSoft still uses to talk about how great CoH is.)

[emu265]

The movement as a whole needs to remain civil, but individuals are getting frustrated and starting to throw sucker punches.  And that's great.  NCsoft is hurting and still cannot blame us for a coordinated smear campaign.

[Quinch]

How about...

NCSoft trades down from family-friendly and successful City of Heroes to scurrilous and questionable sexually exploitative Blade and Soul.

Heck, with the totaly-not-human-honest children in bathing suits, let's go with borderline pedophiliac for good measure.

[Segev]

Heck, with the totaly-not-human-honest children in bathing suits, let's go with borderline pedophiliac for good measure.

That's really stretching it. You open yourself up to accusations of "protesting too much" if you see it in there. I know you're coming from the comparison, but in truth, the movements and dances and stuff I've seen, when performed by the kids and not trying to look for sexualization, are just kids dancing and moving around. The sexualization is only in the adult-only races or only due to being already overly-voluptuous.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

That's really stretching it. You open yourself up to accusations of "protesting too much" if you see it in there. I know you're coming from the comparison, but in truth, the movements and dances and stuff I've seen, when performed by the kids and not trying to look for sexualization, are just kids dancing and moving around. The sexualization is only in the adult-only races or only due to being already overly-voluptuous.

Except that the Elin race has rendered cameltoe.  It's actually more obvious in the United States release, which covered the midriffs and removed some of the bikini-brief outfits.

Proof's in the pictures.  Left is the original Korean version of the outfit, right is the one slated for release in the United States.


C'mon, if that ain't borderline pedo, what is?

[TimtheEnchanter]

*gets ready to unleash all of the dubious imagery that he has stored up from City of Heroes players *ingame*.

Not to mention as well some of the *very* strange (and down right explicit) talk that I have wandered into whilst jumping into a public arena match....

There's a big difference between manipulating the costume designer to create nudes and whatnot in a way it wasn't intended to be used (kinda like using Spore to create penis civilizations), and what B&S considers to be the gold standard.

[Agent Borealis]

The whole "B&S is soft-core porn" thing reminded me of one of the things Team Ninja said about Dead or Alive's jiggle physics. It seems that both NCSoft and Team Ninja are so intent on marketing their own cultures that they don't realize (or don't care) that other cultures might find parts of it offensive.

Sure, we Americans market our culture worldwide, but we do so with the mindset of "profit over pride." American industries are more than willing to alter how others perceive them in an effort to maximize their profits. NCSoft, it seems, is so proud of Korean culture, that they'd rather stand by and watch their Korean-based games fail, then change their business model to appeal to other cultures.

[TimtheEnchanter]

At least jiggle physics actually makes some sense, since the human body is actually designed to move that way.

[The White Rager]

I agree that we need to diversify - we can't just harp on the Blade and Soul thing eternally. We gotta hit this from more than one angle. There's stockholders, but there's also gamers, and the way to get the gamer community as a whole shunning NCSoft is not to keep yelling about CoH itself (forgive me), but to harp on all the data showing that CoH is the latest in a disturbing trend. We want to paint a picture of NCSoft as the worst possible investment. I see titles designed to catch gamers looking up NCSoft's games (curious and deciding if they like it, or just following up), and then have them reading about their record.

NCSoft to release Blade and Soul in the US....but which of their other games will pay the price in a year? Over time, NCSoft has shown a disturbing willingness to prop one game up by sacrificing another. Now that they've made that move with a successful game, whether anything they make is safe or permanent is a serious question any gamer must ask himself before he invests in a character.

Like that. See?

Ideally, we'll have plenty of hard data (help here would be appreciated). I want to be able to throw scary statistics and percentages in their face. NCSoft represents what percentage of the major gaming industry? What percentage of said industries shutdowns? What is NCSoft's shutdown percentage rate compared to other gaming companies of equal size? Throw in the links so people can verify the data, and we have a scare campaign of serious proportions. Because IT'S ALL TRUE. Truth bites. Blade and Soul is bad but the replacement thing is inference. The fact that NCSoft's shutdown rate is abnormal is, well, fact, truth. Factor in that now, for the first time, they've shut down a SUCCESSFUL GAME, and the message 'is anything NCSoft safe?' gains plenty of oomph. We have to make it personal for them.

[Segev]

A brief video or multi-panel comic with a sequence of five gamers buying a game from a smiling NCSoft salesman. They buy, happy, and walk off. Then we follow the last purchaser - who bought CoH - past a window looking outside where the other four look confused, angry, and obviously lack their purchases. At the door is the smiling NCSoft salesman; the fifth gamer smiles back, and is shocked as the NCSoft person - still smiling - tries to rip the game out of his hands.

Cut to three more gamers, going for the three games NCSoft is putting out next (B&S, and the two other games that are in development), and have the fifth gamer show up in a superhero costume to warn them, pointing at the four despondent gamers outside. "How long until you're next!? Don't let it happen to you! Don't trust NCSoft!"

[Atlantea]

I agree that we need to diversify - we can't just harp on the Blade and Soul thing eternally. We gotta hit this from more than one angle. There's stockholders, but there's also gamers, and the way to get the gamer community as a whole shunning NCSoft is not to keep yelling about CoH itself (forgive me), but to harp on all the data showing that CoH is the latest in a disturbing trend. We want to paint a picture of NCSoft as the worst possible investment. I see titles designed to catch gamers looking up NCSoft's games (curious and deciding if they like it, or just following up), and then have them reading about their record.

NCSoft to release Blade and Soul in the US....but which of their other games will pay the price in a year? Over time, NCSoft has shown a disturbing willingness to prop one game up by sacrificing another. Now that they've made that move with a successful game, whether anything they make is safe or permanent is a serious question any gamer must ask himself before he invests in a character.

Like that. See?

Ideally, we'll have plenty of hard data (help here would be appreciated). I want to be able to throw scary statistics and percentages in their face. NCSoft represents what percentage of the major gaming industry? What percentage of said industries shutdowns? What is NCSoft's shutdown percentage rate compared to other gaming companies of equal size? Throw in the links so people can verify the data, and we have a scare campaign of serious proportions. Because IT'S ALL TRUE. Truth bites. Blade and Soul is bad but the replacement thing is inference. The fact that NCSoft's shutdown rate is abnormal is, well, fact, truth. Factor in that now, for the first time, they've shut down a SUCCESSFUL GAME, and the message 'is anything NCSoft safe?' gains plenty of oomph. We have to make it personal for them.

That is precisely the message I've pushed in both my response to NCSoft's "Please stop hurting us with truthful statements" message from earlier today ---

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151152466134477&notif_t=video_reply

As well as in response to Rae's "Firewall of Silence" article as posted at the EGM site.

http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/the-save-city-of-heroes-campaign-reveals-ncsofts-firewall-of-silence/


Here's the version that I posted at the EGM site in response:

NCSoft is not only doing themselves a disservice by their continued silence. I suggest that in the long run they are poisoning the well of the ENTIRE MMO industry.

When gamers really, truly as a group begin to understand the fact that at ANY time for ANY reason - even a NONSENSICAL reason - a game can be taken away -

When it becomes crystal clear that your characters, your guild, all the work you put in - the achievements you have made, the bases (or housing, or Starbases) you have worked so hard for - that none of it is actually yours and that you don't own ANY of it -

If players of MMOs really, seriously, have the thin veil of illusion of "this is mine" ripped unceremoniously away and that it can go away at any time without so much as an apology or even get an answer to the simplest question -

"WHY?"

Well then. How many MMO players will think to themselves: "What is the point of paying into ANY MMO? For ANY reason?"

What is the backbone of real moneymaking in both subscription and free-to-play games?

Is it the casual gamer who plays the game for a couple of months and then moves on to the next shiny?

Or is it the amount of emotional investment of the long term committed customer that a game can retain?

NCSoft is poisoning the well of the latter in favor of the former. THAT is what they have to answer for. They will manage to lose not only the trust in THEIR brand, but the brand of the ENTIRE MMO industry.

[Mindscythe]

I haven't posted much, because so many others are saying what I feel better than I would, but I felt compelled to try to put things into a form that a PR flack would understand, and hopefully communicate back to his/her higher-ups. This is my response from the thread on the NCsoft Facebook page:

NCsoft: Your latest response was obviously a message crafted by someone skilled at writing specifically for crisis-mode public relations. Unfortunately (for you), there are equally skilled people who are decrypting your messages and revealing them for the hollow shadows that they are. We are City of Heroes patriots: We are educated, we are intelligent, we are dedicated, we are resolute, and we are now perpetually on watch for these shallow attempts at defusing the situation. Because of this, these attempts will not be successful, and will likely have the opposite effect. If you TRULY want to defuse the situation, and make all of this stop, you have two choices open to you: 1) Allow another company to purchase the game (IP, servers, code, everything) and continue operating City of Heroes, or 2) Release the server code as open-source software and allow the community to take up where you refuse to. Anything else is a waste of effort. You have awakened the sleeping giant, and it is not at all pleased.

[Victoria Victrix]

By all means, folks, it is more than time to set up your own websites and start crafting your own stories.  I'm going to use the CCCP site to keep setting out bait for search engines looking for things NCSoft stockholders and potential stockholders will be looking for.  Because THAT is where the PR repair is going to start to get expensive--which is exactly what we want.

Next up:  NCSOFT STOCKS DOWN and a verbatim report from the NCSoft thread, linked implicitly to their policy of canceling a profitable game to offset the losses (and continued losses) in GW2.  I'll pop that one in after Ammon gives us the post about better-tuning-your-story to catch the search engine sharks.

[Lily Barclay]

Just a few things about search engine optimization I know from being a design student. (I know Ammon's will be more inclusive, but these are the big things I've heard that I can think of off the top of my head).

1. Having a video on your page bumps you way up in the search engine list.

2. Linking to other sites also bumps you up higher.

I'm sure there's many other things, but teachers and other people in the industry have stressed these to me, and I made sure my portfolio website had both. 

[Victoria Victrix]

Just so you know why I am not going to open the CCCP site to all posters.

Right now as far as I know you are all a very nice bunch of people on a forum that supports something I am passionately in agreement with.  But I don't know most of you.  And I have very little way of verifying you are what I would consider to be trustworthy to post on a open, public page that is linked to and owned by me.

I could wake up to discover I am being sued by NCSoft because of something you posted, which I would be held responsible for.

I consider myself to be the custodian of this site which is the repository of a lot of hard work in the form of some good-to-excellent CoH fiction.  When this is over I intend to delete all of the anti-NCSOFT stories and let it go back to being that.  I don't know if any of you are hackers, who one day would decide to delete all of that hard work, either because you can, or because you don't happen to like something.

There are people of varying political views, from far right to far left, on here.  We've seen things get heated to the boiling point here over the mere suggestion that we might use pressure on local politicians to further our agenda.  As the person who bought and pays for the site, I don't want to wake up one morning and discover someone posted something on the public page that neither I nor any of the original CCCP members would agree with.

I hope you guys will understand this.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

I hope you guys will understand this.

I won't presume to speak for others, but I'm cool with it.  Honestly, I'd probably be a little more aggressive and careless with words than you'd be comfortable with.  I can totally understand the caution.

[Lily Barclay]

Just so you know why I am not going to open the CCCP site to all posters.

I think that it will be better to have all of this on multiple sites anyway.  If many different people post things on their own sites and blogs and the search engines return many different, separate sites, it will be even more effective.

[Segev]

VV, as a conservative, I fully respect everybody's right to private property, and feel you are being generous and noble in your use of your site. There is no good reason for any of us to expect you to open its controls up to any of us; if we really want something on it, we can ask you and let you put it up (or not) at your discretion. We're all on the same side here, but that doesn't make everything each of us has the natural property of any others.

(I mention my political leaning mostly to emphasize that differing views can lead to agreement in a common cause, despite the normal areas of disagreement in philosophical base.)

[Moonfyire101]

VV baiting is one of my favorite past times. I think the website is a good idea. I also understand what your saying about opening it up to all. I wouldn't either. I like to think we're all a family here but i have seen on a few occasions where sometimes it seems we have a wolf in the group. Anyway, good idea and everyone, keep up the good work and keep the ideas flowing.

[Atlantea]

I've got no problem with VV keeping the keys to the website. I wouldn't know what to do with them anyway! LOL