Is it too late for COH to get rescued?

[doc7924]

I mean if some company decided they would like to revive the game, does NCSoft still have all the content on the servers saved?

I read a lot of the posts on the official boards before they closed about NCSoft refusing to sell the IP, but were there legitimate offers?

[saipaman]

More importantly, did they have a good version control system and was the software library saved?

I'm sure whatever was on the individual developer machines is long gone.

[Kyriani]

Honestly I don't think NCSoft were ever willing to accept a "legitimate" offer. IF they sell they'd probably want something well beyond the value of the IP simply because they wouldn't want another company to take a game they canceled and turn it into a huge money maker. Their stock holders would flip out.

So IF they'd sell and risk another company showing them up, they'd want something outrageously above the actual value of the IP. In this way they protect themselves. If they sell it for an outrageous sum, they make a ton of money for their share holders and even if the buyer turns it into a hugely successful product, they can still say that product cost that buyer a damn pretty penny and NCSoft got their money's worth for it.

You have to understand that as much as we love COH, it's positively ancient by game standards these days. The IP itself is not as valuable as you might think it is.

[InOnePiece]

Seems to me that if NCSoft were willing to sell they wouldn't talk the game down, as their PR person did in response to the massively article.

[Mister Bison]

Even if they are not currently willing to sell, maybe we'll find a way to make them will.

So no, nothing is impossible.

[Torroes.Prime]

Hey, we're heroes. We always pull off the impossible.

As for the offer question, I've heard mentions of offer being made in the realm of $8m-15m and NCSoft rejecting them out of hand because they would not even consider an offer of less then $80m. Now I will admit I am not an industry insider and I don't have some mythical understanding of it, but $80m seems so far beyond the level of outrageous for the IP that the only thing I can think of was that IS NCsoft was legitimately trying to sell they were trying to sell out EVERYTHING connected to the IP. The Dev Staff, the building lease, the Tech license fees, the Human resources, the utility bills, the Customer database, the staff payroll, the benefits, all of it. I remember reading somewhere that WoW IP was valued at something like $90m 5 or 6 years ago. So for NCsoft to ask for $80m for CoH.... yeah. Like I said, I'm not an industry insider. I have only peripheral expierence with anything on the scale of a MMORPG system so here's the salt.

[houtex]

Galaxy Quest.  Or more to the point, Star Trek.

It's NEVER too late.  Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

[Captain Electric]

Star Trek is only just barely, marginally a good example. I know what you mean when you say it. But those fans were barking up Paramount's tree. Paramount didn't have a crystal ball or anything (in fact they were taking a risk on reviving Star Trek, albeit calculated), but they had the advantage of a better grasp on their market and its audience. They shared cultural knowledge, you know? They all grew up with the same or similarly inspired cultural artifacts.

Science fiction, comic books, western fantasy--NCSoft sees all of this and they don't get it, or us. Paragon Studios offered City of Heroes 2 to NCSoft and I'm sure NCSoft couldn't make heads or tails of it (remember, this is about shareholders too, not just a small group of demonstrably worldly execs). The western super hero ethos is brimming with individuality. Heroes and vigilantes are like establishments within themselves. This concept is basically freaking alien. And then there's grinding. That love affair was always a bit less cherished over here.

America doesn't comprise "the West", of course, but when the tables are turned, American publishers are more than willing to pander. I'm not as sure about publishers in other countries, but over here, they've got no shame, they'll shoehorn crap left and right into a western property; they've been doing it in MMOs for a long time. Even Ultima Online had the Samurai Empire expansion, which I hear elicited a raised eyebrow from Lord British himself (it was after his departure).

It works like a charm. The Japanese and South Korean servers are most of the reason there is still a UO for Americans, Europeans and others to play. American publishers are pretty okay at grokking other cultures pop-cultural artifacts, I mean entertainment-wise, not politics or ethics or whatever (obviously). I say "generally" because those moments when a 30 year-old American man finds out the anime he's really into is for, like, little 10 year-old girls in Japan or something...that stuff happens. But for the most part, when devs throw some Asian stuff in a western MMO, more Asians play it than before it was shoehorned in.

For whatever reason, this doesn't work the other way around. But since there's a large group of young gamers in the west who love to soak up eastern popular culture, it doesn't matter as much anyway. So mostly, eastern publishers don't even try (beyond the bare necessities of localization). But when they do, it makes little or no sense. I don't know why. But the result is, eastern publishers have to hire western studios because eastern studios do not have a good track record for making "western" games. You get some weird crap like, Thor searching for the Holy Grail or something.

NCSoft needed City of Heroes back when NCSoft was much smaller. A lot of people don't realize this, but City of Heroes helped make NCSoft. So did Richard Garriott. He had his hands in other NCSoft properties like Lineage for a while, he came on board and helped them get a foothold in the west, and then they were going to help him out too. Kind of puts the closures of Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes in even greater, shittier perspective, but that's beside the point.

Now that NCSoft is big and they have big britches on, they are not going to let westerners dictate the visionary scope of their franchises. I'm not saying there will never be a City of Heroes 2. I guess I'm saying, you should hope there never is.

The only way there will ever be a decent City of Heroes 2 is if someone purchases the IP and then calls Clayton, Miller or Bianco and says, "Hey, would you like to come do something with this?" (And even then, we may possibly need to start a kickstarter for the sole purpose of bribing them to leave whatever jobs they're working at by that point.  :P)

[OzonePrime]

Galaxy Quest.  Or more to the point, Star Trek.

It's NEVER too late.  Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

Exactly!      Never Give Up! Never Surrender!

[okami]

You get some weird crap like, Thor searching for the Holy Grail or something.

Toss in some Gaiman and you've got the old gods driven out by the one god trying to put the "keystone" deity back in place before something even worse comes through.

[beveri8469]

as worf has stated on numerous occasions on TNG, there are always options.

[Captain Electric]

Right on, but you'd want to give that one to the Norwegians over at Funcom; trust me on this.

Otherwise the tentacles just...wouldn't be as scary.

Funny thing is, Thor searching for the Holy Grail could work. You wouldn't need Gaiman. Give it to Bendis or Slott or Millar or, you know, some writer over at Marvel.

Ask anime fans what they like so much about anime. A lot of people will tell you they like the poses, the way the action is framed, the over-sized weapons, stuff like that. Cool. Over the top, I get it, or at least, I can begin to get it. But, speaking of old gods, you CANNOT (for instance) just sit down with a Lovecraft mythos fan in the same way. It's like asking someone to just tell you what Existentialism is. You can't. Because parts of these things are cultivated inside your headspace, for which others can only be superficially privy.

The super hero thing is like that. It's also as informed by history as it is by fiction. Super heroes are often created by the bad guys. They are replies to questions asked. Would we have ever had Captain America without Nazi Germany? Superman without racketeers and other corruption, and well, just a sense of powerlessness? There is a reason why super hero comic books make some of their best sales during recessions and other economic downfalls.

Maybe a better example would be Spider-Man. In western comics, we understand how Peter Parker is so likable (and pitiable or relatable, depending on who you are) because the best and worst parts of him never changed. His powers are not just servicing the plot as a means to an end ("Look at me, I'm a wimp; BUT NOW I'M A BAD ASS, WITH ALL THE CHICKS AND POWAH"); Amazing Spider-Man readers can attest, some of the best issues in recent years showcased very little action.

Western comics are sometimes more concerned with exploring unintended consequences, redemption, the price of justice. The scene at the beginning of Marvel's Civil War arc, with the school bus and children is obviously not there for our titillation; or the amount of time and sacrifice it took to fix everything undone in the Dark Reign arcs...whether you liked those arcs or not is beside the point--the point is that western comics and heroes, for all of their corny plot holes and cheeseball antics, are also so much more than escapist art and fiction. Without cultural context, really, I'm sure you could emulate all of this, the approach and flitting between super cheese and super drama, but you would butcher the nuance because you wouldn't understand how it's supposed to feel, only how it's supposed to look. You can't just package the super hero "thing" up and give it to people in a way they'll completely understand (no FF jokes please  :P). If you could, super heroes would be a worldwide phenomenon and City of Heroes would still be open.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Does NCSoft still have all the content on the servers saved?

Unknown, but four months after the closure it's highly unlikely.

I read a lot of the posts on the official boards before they closed about NCSoft refusing to sell the IP, but were there legitimate offers?

At least one we know of, from the former Paragon employees.

[SeaLily]

Any company that throws out a game's code in the modern era is staffed by a bunch of dumb people from top to bottom, so(hyperbole about bad decisions aside) odds are that NCsoft's got it somewhere if they need it for whatever reason.  Player data is a lot more iffy, I'd want to think they would hold onto that for at least a few years, just in case, but there's no way of knowing if they have or not.  If nothing else, our purchase information is still tied to our NCsoft accounts, so they'll know what packs we bought, how long we were subscribed(and when we joined the game), and how many paragon points we had purchased/spent total over the game's lifespan.

With that data, if they ever revived the game or sold it off, they could at least give us our stuff back(possibly in Paragon Points form if they didn't track in-game purchases thoroughly on the general NCsoft accounts), even if we can't get our characters.

As long as the NCsoft account system exists in it's current state and they don't 'misplace' or 'lose' the game's code and server code, CoH could be revived at any time by NCsoft or another publisher in the case of them selling it off.  Weeks from now or years from now, wouldn't matter, as long as that data is intact.

[JaguarX]

There is no such thing as too late unless it comes to trying to have kids, tryign to buy a certain car new, investing in Microsoft before it became a big multibilliona dollar corporate powerhouse, dethrowning WoW while it was still small beans, arriving at work, arriving at a wedding, getting married, starting a family, dying, eating weeks old meat, buying gas when prices are less than a dollar a gallon, saying sorry after the person buys the farm, buying underwear before being deployed, buying original coca-cola (The Real original formula) legaly, going to sleep, waking up and I think that is about all situations that time is of an essence and being late is probably not good. I'm probably missing about a few hundred but really, doubt anyone want to read me droning on and on and on. Out side that, I dont think it's too late for COH to get rescued in one way or another. But be forwarned that the end result may not be the ideal inside the head i.e NCSoft may very well down the line bring COH back and then it's the dilem. of playing COH again and supportign the same company that many sworn to never support or not play and thus never play COH again but keeping their word. 

[saipaman]

I would not be surprised if they brought the game back on a "limited time basis" during the summer or end of year holiday season.

[Lucretia MacEvil]

I would not be surprised if they brought the game back on a "limited time basis" during the summer or end of year holiday season.

I hope they will, but I doubt they want to kick our hornet-nest again.

Bzzzz.

[dwturducken]

I would not be surprised if they brought the game back on a "limited time basis" during the summer or end of year holiday season.

Not sure what chance I would give this, but there's a one hundred percent chance of it not ending well for them.

[Triplash]

I would not be surprised if they brought the game back on a "limited time basis" during the summer or end of year holiday season.

So, first they shut down a product that is beloved to its customer base, for a reason almost unanimously regarded as a boneheaded move. And because that product was a cornerstone of their international market, they garner bad international press for doing so. Then they temporarily re-offer a product whose entire value is based on keeping access to the virtual items that have been acquired. This would most likely be an attempt to undo the negative press they had received for the original shutdown; a shutdown which is about to repeat when the temporary availability period ends.

Damn. You'd have to be a special kind of crazy to pull a stunt like that.

[Lothic]

I would not be surprised if they brought the game back on a "limited time basis" during the summer or end of year holiday season.

Considering how semi-insane bringing back a controversially killed MMO on a "limited time basis" would be for NcSoft (for all sorts of reasons) I would actually be TOTALLY surprised to see that happen.  I'd sooner expect to see real-life unicorns and/or flying pigs before CoH returned in that mind-boggling format.