Author Topic: Current position/Update  (Read 47827 times)

epawtows

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 498
  • Mechanical Engineer
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #140 on: November 14, 2012, 03:42:56 AM »
I'm fully prepared to bribe you with baked goods.

People at the Sci-Fi club tell me I bake a mean cheesecake  8)


Colette

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 466
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #141 on: November 14, 2012, 03:44:59 AM »
"I have felt so useless, reading and watching and waiting."

Yup. Same. My skillsets really don't apply, except to give some advice here and there.

"Individually we count for little but in a co-ordinated effort we can exert a great deal of pressure. We just have to keep it going long enough."

I hope you're right.

"ALL OF YOU are going to be part of this plan.  In fact, we are counting on you."

You have my sword....

Victoria Victrix

  • Team Wildcard
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,886
  • If you don't try, you have failed.
    • Mercedes Lackey
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #142 on: November 14, 2012, 06:07:40 AM »
I don't want to get peoples' hopes up too high.  This is a crazy longshot.  It's also requiring every bit of the writing skillset I've spent 62 years acquiring, baking my brain, and probably doing the same for Rae, Quinch, and Ammon too.  But like you, I can't just sit here and NOT try it.  And I am reminded of the joke my friend Ellen Guon told me:

Every day, Moishe would go to the temple and pray.  "Yaweh, please, I'm so poor, please, let me win the lottery!"

This went on for ten years.

And one day when Moishe went to the temple, the sky opened up!  Beams of light shone down on him!  And a mighty voice spoke from on high!

"For crying out loud, Moishe!  FIRST YOU GOTTA BUY A TICKET!"

So...we're buying a ticket.  Maybe the same lousy odds, but by Yaweh, we are buying that ticket.
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

dwturducken

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,152
  • Now available in stereo
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #143 on: November 14, 2012, 01:47:03 PM »
OK, I was going to make this a PM to VV, because saying, "Hey, [celebrity], I had a dream about you" is general a great way to end up on the express bus to Restraining Order Plaza, but I just find this one too hilarious.

I kid you not, I dreamed, last night, that the "super secret plan" was a heist, and you guys needed me to "crack" the security. It made complete sense, in-dream, and there was this complete, Ocean's 11 type plan that started with Mercedes having an appointment with NCSoft management as the "in" to get us in the building.

Apparently, my dreams are directed by Steven Soderberg. Anyway, I had to share it, because it had me sitting up laughing after I woke up. (Which weirded my wife out a little...)
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

Rae

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 644
  • Journo/PR: The Phoenix Project
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #144 on: November 14, 2012, 01:49:44 PM »
Ooh, I hope I was the contortionist?
--
@Vandellia
Virtue - Vandellia / Unseen Scarlet

Twitter: @Skybloopink

Segev

  • Plan Z: Interim Producer
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,573
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #145 on: November 14, 2012, 02:03:58 PM »
Whatever the plan is, you can count on my small army of skeletons and zombies. I won't volunteer my ghasts; gotta keep my bodyguards close. Paladins are SO twitchy with their evil-dar.

dwturducken

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,152
  • Now available in stereo
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #146 on: November 14, 2012, 02:13:13 PM »
There was a Catherine Zeta-Jones from Entrapment type bit, at one point. The context of it is a little fuzzy, at this point, but I believe all the "heist movie tropes" were well represented. :)
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

Rotten Luck

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 766
  • "I'd rather go out a hero than a coward."
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #147 on: November 14, 2012, 02:41:08 PM »
Great now I see myself as the comic relief sidekick.
One way or another... Heroes will fly again!

Triplash

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,248
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #148 on: November 14, 2012, 02:45:53 PM »
Apparently, my dreams are directed by Steven Soderberg.

You could do worse. They could be directed by Michael Bay.

The sun would keep getting in your eyes, VV would transform into a cybernetic fountain pen, and half of Korea would be destroyed in the final battle.

It wouldn't be a very deep dream, but at least it would be entertaining!  :D

Quinch

  • Guest
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #149 on: November 14, 2012, 06:12:17 PM »
I don't want to get peoples' hopes up too high.  This is a crazy longshot.  It's also requiring every bit of the writing skillset I've spent 62 years acquiring, baking my brain, and probably doing the same for Rae, Quinch, and Ammon too.  But like you, I can't just sit here and NOT try it.

Longshot might be underselling it. Crazy, even moreso. Everything we have done so far has been a longshot, from the rally to the emails and capes and cowls and roping the media, given what we're up against, a multicontinental monstrosity of a megacorporation that hasn't treated us with more acknowledgement than one would give to ants in a picnic. The fact that we've been - are, in fact - trying to overcome something of this scale, and not destructively, but constructively... I don't think I've, until now, thought to step back and admire the sheer audacity of what's being prepared.

I'm reminded of a scene in Chrono Trigger. I don't know how many of you played it, or even remember it. It's, by no stretch of imagination an iconic moment, but it's one that's always stuck in my memory. The characters are told that the way ahead, the only way out, the only way of merely not being slowly but surely stomped out of existence is a path that nobody has ever returned alive from.

"Gotta try, right?"

And at that point, everything crystallises. I could never see those three words being spoken with any spark of home. I couldn't even hear them with determination. All I could see is grim, desperate realism, because all around them, the world is dying. Humanity as a whole slowly being extinguished, without escape, without hope, and the only other thing left to do is to push forward - forward into something that has never been accomplished before, something that may very well be impossible to accomplish no matter what - and realizing that the only choices left to take are to struggle, and risk and toil for the sake of a hopelessly improbable victory, or lay down and accept the easy certainty of defeat.

I, honestly, don't expect us to win this. I don't know how many of us really do. But I am willing to struggle, and risk and toil to prove myself wrong, because when time runs out and hope vanishes and determination loses all direction, I'll be able to look back and know that I didn't accept the easy certainty of defeat. I'll know that for years and decades to come, there will be one less "if only" to torment myself with whenever I look back on this game and think how differently things might have gone. And so, here we are, trying to harness forces that are, when you step back and look at it, quite literally beyond our understanding because, well...

Gotta try, right?

The Fifth Horseman

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 961
  • Outside known realities.
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #150 on: November 14, 2012, 06:57:19 PM »
Long shot? Crazy? If it works, it will just be a highly unorthodox approach. :)

Really, what's the worst thing that could happen if we try and fail? We have everything to win and nothing to lose, here - other than what we'd lose if we never tried to begin with. And so, if we can try... why not?

It's not "gotta try" for me. It's "no reason to surrender, so why not give it our best shot?".
Strangely relevant:
« Last Edit: November 14, 2012, 07:16:39 PM by The Fifth Horseman »
We were heroes. We were villains. At the end of the world we all fought as one. It's what we did that defines us.
The end occurred pretty much as we predicted: all servers redlining until midnight... and then no servers to go around.

Somewhere beyond time and space, if you look hard you might find a flash of silver trailing crimson: a lone lost Spartan on his way home.

Colette

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 466
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #151 on: November 14, 2012, 07:02:46 PM »
I gotta pop up and repeat myself -yeah, again!- that this is not the end.

Ideas are bulletproof. Ideas always come back. They mutate and change and resurface. There's no stopping a good idea. CoH is a good idea.

Even should NCSoft do its level best to stomp CoH into the ground, hide the code in a vault and never speak of it again, the good idea will respawn elsewhere, later, better than ever. Then we won't care that CoH is hidden away. All they'll have in their vault is a pile of old code no one cares about anymore, except as a historical footnote.

But the bad karma they earned will endure until NCSoft changes ownership, names, and essentially ceases to exist.

V-Mink

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 54
  • Greenside
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #152 on: November 14, 2012, 07:24:02 PM »
We're really up against an immovable object here.  NCsoft has demonstrated a complete unwillingness to see CoH exist in any form that we recognize.  We don't know why that is, only just this.  Fighting multinational corporations who are beholden solely to their stockholders -- and if NCsoft's stock plummeting is any indication, not even tham, it seems -- and not to the consumer/customer, is always, always a loosing proposition with a rare few exceptions.  We are also fighting against denigration from our so-called "fellow" gamers, who have heaped scorn on our desire to simply keep playing CoH.*

Longshot?  Crazy idea?  The deck was stacked against us from the start.  So whatever it is, it can't make things worse.  And... it just might work.

Waiting patiently for more information from VV and TonyV.  Then, action.


* - I'd like to see how well they'd like it when their modern military FPS du jour gets completely blocked and removed from the Internet.  But, to each their own.  I'm sure Contemporary Conflict 3: The Duty Calls VI: The Coming Storm II: Special Rainbow Part 3: Burgundy Ops: Cunning Hammer DLC is fun for them, and this is all about enjoying our own games of choice.

ETA: No, really, I know it's called FPS.  I was being... ironic, yeah.  That's the ticket!
« Last Edit: November 14, 2012, 07:43:51 PM by V-Mink »

Jordan_Lee

  • Lieutenant
  • ***
  • Posts: 57
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #153 on: November 14, 2012, 07:39:50 PM »
Waiting patiently for more information from VV and TonyV.  Then, action.


Ditto. Though wish they'd just tell us already! I just hope their plan doesn't involve pickles.

Turjan

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 270
  • You cannot kill a dream
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #154 on: November 14, 2012, 08:16:57 PM »
I'm all in favour of crazy plans that are so crazy, it just...might...work! - as long as we keep an eye out for meddling kids. If there's such a thing as the opposite of a patron saint, then that's what meddling kids are when it comes to crazy plan territory ;)

Flashtoo

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 46
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #155 on: November 14, 2012, 08:20:10 PM »
Chrono Trigger was my first great love in gaming, Quinch. Things would be a lot simpler if we could just confront Taek Jin Kim, force him back into his true form as a twelve-foot-tall goat/slug monster, and unload.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2012, 08:31:07 PM by Plangkye »

Mister Bison

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 686
  • *psychotic grin*
Yeeessss....

Rae

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 644
  • Journo/PR: The Phoenix Project
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #157 on: November 14, 2012, 11:09:49 PM »
Secret plan is secret.

In the meantime, can I make my daily plea for some volume raising? Tweet some of the memes ,chat in the FB groups and extra specially comment on articles and blogs.

Twitter users, don't forget to use the hashtags saveCoH, hkstrat (Nc softs pr agency) and Nc soft.  Make sure you're seen and heard.

Pressure the sites who ran the "Nc soft says no" piece copy and pasted to find out what efforts they exhausted, thank the sites who wrote kind articles, put forward concerns you have on the ones who didn't.

Politely, of course.

There's a spreadsheet of all the media articles in the 'thank the media' thread, and even more links on the thread itself.  Make us popular with the gaming sites, interact ,boost their traffic so they did feature us some more.

It'd be such a huge help, and if we support those sites and magazines, they should support us, and put pressure on NC Soft.

If the article you want to see written about CoH/saveCoH doesn't exist yet, open a blog, join a citizen journalist site like nowpublic and get it out there. Show NC Soft we're still here, strong as ever and we won't shut up.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2012, 11:29:29 PM by rae »
--
@Vandellia
Virtue - Vandellia / Unseen Scarlet

Twitter: @Skybloopink

Victoria Victrix

  • Team Wildcard
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,886
  • If you don't try, you have failed.
    • Mercedes Lackey
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #158 on: November 15, 2012, 12:29:30 AM »
I had a long talk with Brian Clayton today, and he was encouraging.  He's going to fact-check us and be the go-to guy if it works.  I have to say I feel much better about trying this since he didn't immediately shoot it down, and in fact said essentially that any longshot is worth pursuing at the moment.

For those of you worried about the Paragon staff, they've managed to get jobs for about 60 of the 80.  However...Brian indicated that if CoH rises from the ashes, he should be able to get the core group together again. 

We promise we'll keep you as updated as possible.  Meanwhile, as Rae said, continue the pressure.  Brian told me that NCSoft is definitely feeling the heat over this, it took them completely by surprise and they are very much not happy about it.
« Last Edit: November 15, 2012, 12:42:30 AM by Victoria Victrix »
I will go down with this ship.  I won't put my hands up in surrender.  There will be no white flag above my door.  I'm in love, and always will be.  Dido

Golden Girl

  • One Liners and Winky Faces
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 2,242
    • Heroes and Villains
Re: Current position/Update
« Reply #159 on: November 15, 2012, 12:32:11 AM »
I had a long talk with Brian Clayton today, and he was encouraging.  He's going to fact-check us and the the go-to guy if it works.  I have to say I feel much better about trying this since he didn't immediately shoot it down, and in fact said essentially that any longshot is worth pursuing at the moment.

For those of you worried about the Paragon staff, they've managed to get jobs for about 60 of the 80.  However...Brian indicated that if CoH rises from the ashes, he should be able to get the core group together again. 

We promise we'll keep you as updated as possible.  Meanwhile, as Rae said, continue the pressure.  Brian told me that NCSoft is definitely feeling the heat over this, it took them completely by surprise and they are very much not happy about it.

Can we repost this on the official CoH forums?
"Heroes and Villains" website - http://www.heroes-and-villains.com
"Heroes and Villains" on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/HeroesAndVillainsMMORPG
"Heroes and Villains" on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Plan_Z_Studios
"Heroes and Villains" teaser trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnjKqNPfFv8
Artwork - http://goldengirlcoh.deviantart.com