Blog vs anonymous source

[blackjak]

The only thing I  ever remember seeing was a banner ad on a game forum. Once. When COH went f2p. I have seen more and bigger ads for flash games, honestly. That probably blew the ad budget, though. Put 'em out...what...$20. 

[Illusionss]

End: I miss City Of Heroes and I miss playing with all of the friendly people I had met through it, but in the end it was just a game. I think people that read and post in this forum need to realize that and move on.

With no snark at all meant, then, this probably isnt the place for you.

It surprised me how many people out there do not understand [or like, whichever] this concept: the concept of Triumphing Over Odds. It surprises so many people that players, who spent literally years invested in paranormal characters - said paranormals spending their entire careers triumphing over odds - are willing to try again to triumph over long odds in creating a new home to assuage their anguish regarding the home they lost.

If you are defeated once, I guess the prevailing conventional wisdom is to say "**** it, I lost and its time to move on."

NO. This is not an acceptable option for many people. A good thing is WORTH FIGHTING FOR. We have at least one new project in development, and it looks really interesting. Now is no time to curl into a fetal ball and start crying "WOE NEVER SHALL WE HAVE IT AGAIN!!!" Be defeated if you want to.

I think I'll pass.

[Noyjitat]

I really don't believe any numbers I see posted in articles. I know from my time playing and looking at the server select screen that many servers went from green light to double yellow or from yellow to red. This began with freedom launch which included a server capacity increase for all servers.

You then take the fact that before freedom we were paying 15$ a month and after that some of us were paying even more. Myself I had 3 accounts all paid with nearly all of the costume packs purchased on 2 of them and all of them purchased on my main. My main had 90ish paragon reward tokens. I know I'm not the only one that dropped hundreds of dollars on booster packs.
For every 15$ spent on the paragon market you might as well consider that an extra subscriber.

It has also been stated my Matt Miller in several article and videos that the games profits were rising and higher than they had been in years.

[Minotaur]

As much as we love pointing at how Tabula Rasa was cut, it was a proven flop of a game by comparison. The only thing bad about what happened there was that NCSoft committed fraud by forging a resignation when there was no such thing.

Errr NO.

My understanding is that TR was pretty much ready to go when NCSoft sabotaged it by insisting on some changes (against the wishes of the developers) that made it more grindy and completely ruined it for the western market, ensuring it could never work. I think there was more annoyance about this than the actual closure.

[MakoMako]

Errr NO.

My understanding is that TR was pretty much ready to go when NCSoft sabotaged it by insisting on some changes (against the wishes of the developers) that made it more grindy and completely ruined it for the western market, ensuring it could never work. I think there was more annoyance about this than the actual closure.

Source for this?

Issue is I don't think I heard anything of the sort until long after we demonized NCSoft over what it's done to City of Heroes.

Furthermore, even if true, it still doesn't apply to the point I marked. The attitude is that NCSoft is cold and harsh, and we long forget that if not for that company, City of Heroes wouldn't have lived long enough for many of us to have even heard of it. And I was pointing out that the attitude that 'we should've seen this coming since Tabula Rasa' doesn't seem to make sense.

After all, they didn't forge the resignation of any Paragon Studios employees, and didn't demand game-crippling features to appeal to a different market. (If they did do the latter, many of us wouldn't be trying to save a game that legitimately collapsed.)

[Quinch]

Source for this?

http://t-machine.org/index.php/2009/01/16/we-need-to-talk-about-tabula-rasa-when-will-we-talk-about-tabula-rasa/

[Minotaur]

[LadyVamp]

It wasn't my intention to start the profitable argument again.  It was my intention to state there is a difference to the stack of cartridges vs running servers.  Even if most of the help system was automated, it still needs to have some staff to take care of it and handle problems that it can't handle.  All of that said, I believe one of two things happened:

• NC didn't know where to take the game next.
• NC got into some kind of financial trouble and couldn't put into coh what it needed.

Of the two, I really think the latter.  Ever since villains came out, I've felt that the game lost direction for a year or two.  Then NC started trying to modernize it after pouring a lot of cash into another project that wouldn't perform like coh did in its golden days.  (Aeon comes to mind)  The updates that were done in recent times took on an increasingly gimmicky feel.

Now, I'm not attacking the devs here.  They did a really great job keeping the game alive as long as they did.  My hat is off to them.  In developing other games, NC probably painted itself in a financial corner and couldn't support all the games.  They took a gamble on which one to cut.  They gambled wrong and an entire division paid the price as well as the community that grew up out of the game.  The community remains strong even to this day as evidenced by the efforts being made to recover the game.  Of course no one likes to admit they made a mistake and that pride could very well be the reason why coh remains offline and might forever.

Now I don't know if my opinion is correct.  I maybe well off base here.  But I do say this to NCSoft's executives.  If I am right and you killed the game by mistake, don't make another mistake by letting pride stand in the way.  Recover the community and their meeting place (aka the game), let it go to the public domain or license it out to another company.  Or think of it this way, it's a profit center you chose to kill off thus limiting your profits.  As an investor, that doesn't make me very happy.  If you have a profit center you're not making profits from then as an investor I have to ask why it is not being used and what needs to be done to make it turn profits.  If it is being retired then I to know what will replace it.  And, I want to know what you're doing about the public relations problem killing the profit center will cause.  I'd ask the same regardless of which one would have been killed.

Lady Vamp aka Flying Snow Mouse
Rodent Consortium SuperGroup
"Making the streets safe for normal people"

[UruzSix]

Furthermore, even if true, it still doesn't apply to the point I marked. The attitude is that NCSoft is cold and harsh, and we long forget that if not for that company, City of Heroes wouldn't have lived long enough for many of us to have even heard of it. And I was pointing out that the attitude that 'we should've seen this coming since Tabula Rasa' doesn't seem to make sense.

The point I was trying to make with Tabula Rasa was using it as an example of NCSoft's standard of abruptly cutting bait if the project fails to meet corporate goals. Compare TR to Age of Conan and Pirates of the Burning Sea, for example. Now, admittedly, they did give City more chances than TR, but in the end we both wound up getting the short end of the stick.

[Illusionss]

I really don't believe any numbers I see posted in articles. I know from my time playing and looking at the server select screen that many servers went from green light to double yellow or from yellow to red. This began with freedom launch which included a server capacity increase for all servers.

You then take the fact that before freedom we were paying 15$ a month and after that some of us were paying even more. Myself I had 3 accounts all paid with nearly all of the costume packs purchased on 2 of them and all of them purchased on my main. My main had 90ish paragon reward tokens. I know I'm not the only one that dropped hundreds of dollars on booster packs.
For every 15$ spent on the paragon market you might as well consider that an extra subscriber.

It has also been stated my Matt Miller in several article and videos that the games profits were rising and higher than they had been in years.

After they switched to F2P, we started getting all sorts of things, faster than we had ever gotten them before. This leads me to believe that the money was rolling in. You don't start putting out more content with less money than ever. More content means there were more resources.

[Ironwolf]

Source for this?

Issue is I don't think I heard anything of the sort until long after we demonized NCSoft over what it's done to City of Heroes.

Furthermore, even if true, it still doesn't apply to the point I marked. The attitude is that NCSoft is cold and harsh, and we long forget that if not for that company, City of Heroes wouldn't have lived long enough for many of us to have even heard of it. And I was pointing out that the attitude that 'we should've seen this coming since Tabula Rasa' doesn't seem to make sense.

After all, they didn't forge the resignation of any Paragon Studios employees, and didn't demand game-crippling features to appeal to a different market. (If they did do the latter, many of us wouldn't be trying to save a game that legitimately collapsed.)

I disagree - without NCSoft, Cryptic would have sold it to someone else. That someone else may have kept discipline and kept Paragon focused on CoH and CoH 2. Perhaps if Valve had bought it or some other entity.

[JaguarX]

I disagree - without NCSoft, Cryptic would have sold it to someone else. That someone else may have kept discipline and kept Paragon focused on CoH and CoH 2. Perhaps if Valve had bought it or some other entity.

The problem with the alternative, is that no telling what would have happened. It's a all a guess with any guess being just as valid and just as reliable as the next. Maybe someone else would have bought it, maybe not, maybe there would have been an issue, since at that time ncsoft did own 50 50 and even if cryptic sold their half to someone else, if they could ncsoft may be still involved. Maybe not. Maybe Valve steam or some other game company would have swooped in and saved the day and COX would have lived happily ever after. Maybe not. Maybe some company liek EA would have swooped in and COX would have been axed ages ago. Maybe not. One thing is for sure though, since NCSoft by definition created Paragon studios and thus that brought a wonderful team together that was like a miracle and perfect storm of talent, and devs that cared about the game, I doubt that even if some other game company bought it, the game would be what we know as COX as we know it and that chemistry that somehow worked with the creation of paragon studios would have happened anywhere else. Maybe the next buyer would have thought someone else other than Matt was best suited for leading COX or maybe Matt would have stayed with NCSoft and be working on another project which that little move with one guy probably would have changed a whole lot in the time line that we know now. On one hand I see where people that say "without NCsoft" on the other hand I see where others come from if ncsoft wasnt involved. It could have went either way. For all we know Nov. 30th was inevitable and even if sold the likes of EA or some other game company that dont give a crap about super hero games would have basically stripped the devs off COX to work on another WoW clone and let COX languish until its a shell of it's former self stuck in in single digit issue with no update no support full of bigs (kind of like how CO is now) until they tire of it and close it Nov 30th 2012 with reason of the game wasnt making money and realignment of company focus. Or we could be going on issue 29 with issue 30 on the horizon and sale exceeding WoW with millions of subscrptions and banners in every Game Stop store.

I think there is a reason, although I dont know, that humans cant see multiple streams of time.

[Twisted Toon]

I think there is a reason, although I dont know, that humans cant see multiple streams of time.

Ever heard of spontaneous combustion? Those are the people that could see multiple time streams. They just couldn't handle the frustration of watching people make stupid decisions and burst into flames.

[JaguarX]

Ever heard of spontaneous combustion? Those are the people that could see multiple time streams. They just couldn't handle the frustration of watching people make stupid decisions and burst into flames.

Given the state of the world today I wonder if any are left. If so think we can find one and have them tell us what would have happened in the other streams of time?

[HarvesterOfEyes]

I think that the blogger of Unsubject makes a very unbiased point...

What's clear to me in all this is no matter how calmly and rationally one approaches a topic it is nearly impossible to write an "unbiased" opinion about a topic that one cares enough about to obtain more than a superficial understanding of. It would be far more effective in promoting a rational discussion to be open and honest about our viewpoints and opinions thus assisting the readers in correcting for them. An opinion which is both unbiased and informed is essentially an oxymoron.

Biased and superficial is also how I view the rest of your post. You make vague reference to "facts" you do not possess (or at very least choose not to substantiate). You make predictions about the future and assert them with certainty which you cannot realistically possess. You also (as others have noted) fail to comprehend the purpose and meaning of this forum even though it's very clearly stated in the title. I doubt you would go to a "Stop Animal Cruelty" forum and tell the people there to give it up. So why is it you're so seemingly thoughtless in the case of "Save Paragon City"?

On the bright side, you've highlighted the issue of bias in a way that I hoped others would see, so kudos for that.

[Segev]

In truth, lack of bias is only useful and good when one does not know much about a subject. One should certainly go into an unknown or incompletely-known situation with as little bias as possible, and as much willingness to take in facts as possible.

But experts cannot be unbiased and be intellectually honest, nor even moral nor ethical.

After all, while one might find going into a debate over a hot-button political issue such as environmentalism to be laudable if one doesn't know the facts. But if one knows the facts, one would hope that the nature of those facts would clearly spell out whether you're for or against it.

Would you find it laudable if a man who knew for a fact that one more car on the road would cause the glaciers to melt and the sea level to rise 100 feet to remain "unbiased" on the issue of whether or not to permit one more car to be built?

Would you find it laudable if a man who knew for a fact that man-made global warming is a hoax to remain "unbiased" in the face of deciding whether to build a power plant in a town that desperately needs one to keep its aging population from dying in the heat waves that come every summer?