My point is that all this internet tough guy talk about "woe be to NCSoft if they make me mad!" is just silly. Boycotting them is irrelevant at this stage. Clearly, NCSoft does NOT WANT COH customers in their fold. That's clear or they would have handled this much differently. They don't care about anyone posting on here, your money OR your opinions. Its meaningless to bluster about it, you have no power over their future as they have already divorced you from their future. With extreme prejudice.
Its like a really bad breakup. The wife has dumped you, moved on and has already remarried someone else. They don't want you anymore. You can keep pining away at them, begging to reconsider, but they've already gotten on with their life without you. Get on with your own life, or throw efforts into supporting the Plan Z or whatever comes next. Why isn't there a magazine with 250,000 readers proclaiming support for Plan Z? Why isn't there a fundraising effort underway to support even the marketing of Plan Z? Where's the letter writing campaign in support of the "spiritual successor of COH?" How many of you are sporting banners on your Facebook page saying "Support Plan Z!"
People want to grouse because grousing is the easy part. Boycotting is simply "doing nothing." Its passive. It requires absolutely zero effort to boycott something. That's why its a popular mantra....because its all about nothing. And a magazine boycotting NCSoft is about as effective as the Pope boycotting a Death Metal concert. Who cares, he wasn't going to attend it in the first place, so how is that of any financial impact to the concert? Unless you find a way to get ACTIVE subscribers of NCSoft's top properties to leave EN MASSE it means absolutely nothing. Its just noise. By a bunch of "do-nothings" that are too lazy to "do-something" active in defiance instead.
You want to get NCSoft's attention? Compete with them. LOUDLY. They don't care about the playerbase of COH. They want you to go away. Boycott them? Sure, that's exactly what they want from you...to leave. Competing is the only chance for survival here. Anything else is just words.
I see your point, even agree with it for the most part. Thing is I still won't pay for any game NCSoft has published in the future. Mostly it's because none of their other games interest me, but how they handled CoH has been such a slap in the face that I really think they are a crappy company. I cannot articulate all the D-bag things they did properly, it's close to my bedtime so I can't really articulate period. But they shut down and tore up Paragon Studios in one day, the did it on a busy weekend in order to avoid bad press, and have given a horrible reason of 'we're going a different direction and won't regret this action' as to why they are closing. Now they own CoH and we don't, so they have every right to wipe their butt with it if they so choose. They don't have to take our money, let us play the game, or tell us a damn thing. I know that.
But I don't like it. No one likes it, some just accept it better than others. If NCSoft could give us a good understandable reason for shutting down CoH, that'd probably get 90% of us off the SaveCoH Train. But they haven't, they won't, and because they won't a number of conspiracy theories have cropped up as to why they will not. Some of them are very fun, in fact there should be a consolidated thread on them.
Now, with NCSoft's record of closing MMOs, I don't think I will play another MMO from them. Why? Because I'm a woman and can hold a grudge FOREVER (serious, just ask my 2nd grade boyfriend Tyler). And, because I have spent over $1000 on City of Heroes. At least 5 years of active subscription, bought expansions and extra packs. And I've spent thousands of hours working on my characters. On December 1st I can never play City of Heroes again. All that money, all that work, is gone forever.
In comparison I spent maybe $200 on my Mass Effect games plus DLCs, I can play those anytime I want to. Today, tomorrow, 10 years from now. Those will always work for me because even if Bioware or EA Games says they are going in a different direction, they can't press a magic button that keeps me from playing it.
I think that got off track and might even show that I've been drinking this evening. Anyway. You are right that by competing with them and providing a better product than them will be more effective than boycotting them. Well, that's in the works but until then I'm loudly (and apparently drunkenly) still boycotting NCSoft. Because I think as a customer who has given more than $1000 of her hard earned money (very often my entire entertainment budget for the month was the $15 for my subscription, I was laid off for 6 months a few years ago and couldn't even afford that much and had to suspend my subscription for a time - I have to choose carefully where my money goes) that more is deserved from NCSoft. Not in compensation, just in respect.
So, I will not purchase or play any other NCSoft title. I will not install any of their games, in fact when the final nail is driven into the coffin I'm even looking forward to uninstalling the PlayNC Launcher. Because I do not respect the company, nor do I like them. And should I hear anyone talking about them or their titles I'll happily tell them what NCSoft did to other well-liked games so they think twice about giving them money, too.
Now...how did I run out of rum? Dang it.
