Being heard

[JanessaVR]

I'll disagree strenuously - Praetoria was my favorite part of CoH, and I always played Loyalist.  All Hail the Emperor!   

But yes, being able stay longer would have been good, but they were doing that with the addition of First Ward and Night Ward.  I was able to finagle things to stay in Praetoria proper until L21 (or even L22), then I went to First Ward and Night Ward until L30+ before finally going blueside or redside.

I was completely immersed in the goldside storyline and couldn't get enough of it, and it was so beautiful there.  Some evenings I would just fly around and take in the scenery and ambiance.

P.S.  Praetoria was where I ended CoH.  Along with a friend, my primary character stood atop Praetor Sinclair's building in Imperial City, on the edge of the building, facing the Emperor's Tower in Nova Praetoria, holding up a torch and waiting for the sun to rise behind it.

As far as I'm concerned, she's still there - waiting for the sun to rise on Praetoria again.

[Harermuir]

The Coh/CoV populations were very... lopsided. I don't know whether it was because of predilection to play good guys, zone design or better-but-less content, or a combination of all three.

For my part, CoV was a huge disapointment. It let basically you play only as a part of Arachnos. You have a very tiny window to be your own master and build your own scheme and playing as a minion was not what i was hoping when playing on the red side. You sure can imagine around what the game gave you, but it was harder than on the blue side when there was no such limit. The better of the red side was for me in the late CoX. "Who will die" and "Pandora's Box" was just exactly what I wanted to play from the start.

[Nebularian]

I think Tony V hit the nail on the head with his points.
No, I don't think Praetoria had anything to do with it nor did empty servers (and guys, yes, there WERE some fairly empty servers....the Champion server was badly under populated....one of the reasons I moved to virtue)  Yes, a few servers could have and probably should have been closed down or combined.

And Praetoria was fairly young.  I imagine that,  had COH stayed open, more content would have been added over time.

As for lack of people red side.....well, I only played a red side toon a few times...and then only to play with friends.  I really did not care for playing villains.  And, even on the best days on Virtue, I noticed that the redside was still under populated when compared to the Blue side.

I think the Red Side eventually simply became an option...as most people wanted to play Heroes.   And once Freedom came out and people were able to get toons that previously you could only get by creating a villain, the population probably went down even further.

[CrimsonCapacitor]

The other thing I think people forget is that, originally, Praetoria was the ONLY WAY you could start a toon that normally played on one side and take it to the other.  In other words, you could start a Brute in Praetoria, play through the content, and then emerge in Talos as a hero.  The alignment system then blurred that, but you still had to get to level 20 to change sides.  And even then, it was easier to get a toon to 20 via Praetoria and auto-select sides than to work a villain to 20, run through the alignment mishes, and finally change alignment.

What killed Praetoria, IMO, was F2P.  At that point, you could play a MM from level 1 as a hero.  With that, the need to start a toon/play through Praetoria dropped.  And that's when it pretty much became a ghost town.  When it launched, Praetoria was ALWAYS packed. 

That said, I thought Praetoria was stunning.  I loved the zone.  And first ward.  Second ward seemed a bit grindy to me, but still...  I ran a few toons through Praetoria at the end of days.  One of my favorite toons, my kin melee/regen scrapper was praetorian.  He bowed out of the game as a hero, standing watch from the top of Cole's tower, looking towards Synapse's, watching over the Praetors to keep them in check.

[Mistress Urd]

I think Tony V hit the nail on the head with his points.
No, I don't think Praetoria had anything to do with it nor did empty servers (and guys, yes, there WERE some fairly empty servers....the Champion server was badly under populated....one of the reasons I moved to virtue)  Yes, a few servers could have and probably should have been closed down or combined.

And Praetoria was fairly young.  I imagine that,  had COH stayed open, more content would have been added over time.

As for lack of people red side.....well, I only played a red side toon a few times...and then only to play with friends.  I really did not care for playing villains.  And, even on the best days on Virtue, I noticed that the redside was still under populated when compared to the Blue side.

I think the Red Side eventually simply became an option...as most people wanted to play Heroes.   And once Freedom came out and people were able to get toons that previously you could only get by creating a villain, the population probably went down even further.

Server merge was probably one subject that the CoH community wasn't very friendly about. With all of the cheap server transfers people were probably on the server they wanted to be on.

[Nebularian]

Server merge was probably one subject that the CoH community wasn't very friendly about. With all of the cheap server transfers people were probably on the server they wanted to be on.

Probably so.  But it is probably something that still should have been done.  I was one of the late comers to the game...and if I had not decided to check out a few of the other servers, I probably would not have stuck around very long. I would have probably assumed that all the other servers were just as barren as Champion.

There were very populated servers and some barren ones.  Those barren ones could easily given a potential new player the impression that COH was a game in deep decline.

Existing players may not have cared for merging some of the servers....but it might have helped to attract and keep new players. 

[JaguarX]

Probably so.  But it is probably something that still should have been done.  I was one of the late comers to the game...and if I had not decided to check out a few of the other servers, I probably would not have stuck around very long. I would have probably assumed that all the other servers were just as barren as Champion.

There were very populated servers and some barren ones.  Those barren ones could easily given a potential new player the impression that COH was a game in deep decline.

Existing players may not have cared for merging some of the servers....but it might have helped to attract and keep new players.

Yeah. In hindsight, which seems to always be 20/20, or rather less blurry with my vision , I think there would be less fuss than let on if server mergers, in theory, IN THEORY, was what it took to save the game and cust costs, along with other things.

Remember new players probably had no idea which servers were popping which were empty and judged population and state of game by what ever server they fell in and how many people they seen. Granted, many people may have been hidden and only played with close knit group of friends which didnt help perception to a new player when they log in and they dont see many people or see a group running around but dont interact with them. For some percection is reality. For example if I was a new guy and logged into say Victory server (it was pretty empty unless you knew of some of the regualr players there and being in with some of the regulars I knew more than a few that refused to do PuG and only grouped and did TFs with only people they knew.) and seen the relative emptiness I would have thought the game was on it's way out and probably head out soon. Even if I switched servers, unless Virtue or Freedom was chosen two out of what? Ten servers, the rest would be looking empty, even more so if I was a transfer from a game where there were millions of players overall with thousands of players each server on at any given time.

I think a server transfer would have created the illusion of more population. I kind of like CO one server thing. Yes, the population overall when thought about is probably smaller than COX overall on it's worse days but it seems more lively in chat and visual expecially in MC because it's only one server. Smaller space but larger population density, while COX had vast amount of space but on some servers it seemed the nearest neighbor was miles away.

[JanessaVR]

I kind of like CO one server thing. Yes, the population overall when thought about is probably smaller than COX overall on it's worse days but it seems more lively in chat and visual expecially in MC because it's only one server. Smaller space but larger population density, while COX had vast amount of space but on some servers it seemed the nearest neighbor was miles away.

One server?!  Dear gods, NO.  I would have had to play around the Freedom server...players.  No way in hell.  I was active on Protector and Virtue and happy for it, even if I had mostly migrated to Virtue by 2012.

[JaguarX]

One server?!  Dear gods, NO.  I would have had to play around the Freedom server...players.  No way in hell.  I was active on Protector and Virtue and happy for it, even if I had mostly migrated to Virtue by 2012.

no no I'm not sayign COX should have went to one server. God no, that would be too much cut back for that situtation. Just fewer.

Although I came across behavior attributed in stereotypical fashion to Freedom server on many servers especially Virtue. I guess you get enough people together the more likely some will start acting like a butt. I figure about out of every ten people 2 are people that will act like butts to get on people nerves for the hell of it. Thus you have 100 people you get 20 butts. Then that is not including converts. People who wasnt a butt but figured since peole can be butts and nothing happen to them they will be butts too.

[Codewalker]

That, and they really should have made Loyalist have the option to be more heroic than it turned out.

The Loyalist Responsibility arc finale -- stop Arachnos from blowing up the reactors (and killing most of the population of Neutropolis) in defiance of Cole's order to let them do it -- always seemed pretty damn heroic to me.

[srmalloy]

This just doesn't make sense.  Companies don't just cut products for the hell of it, they have to have a reason--and that reason doesn't always have to be financial, which I am 100% convinced is the case here.  Sometimes products are cut for political reasons.  Sometimes they're cut for internal organizational reason, which I think is the primary reason City of Heroes was cut and Paragon Studios was shuttered.  The thing is, though, if you do that, you should really make sure that it's a really good reason, and I don't think it was.  Still, it's their right to make dumb choices, and I don't particularly take issue with that choice.  However, keeping the IP locked up so that someone else can't acquire it is, in my humble opinion, compounding the stupidity of the situation.

I still think that CoH was killed as what NCSoft saw as a face-saving move because it was making a profit (read: 'refusing to die on its own') while being almost a complete antithesis to the playstyle of the games they brought to the Western market only to close them because of poor performance (as Aion is slumping here now), and they didn't want to admit that there could be anything in the playstyle of an upstart, third-rate game that flopped in Korea that could be better than their bread-and-butter group-centric PvP grindfests, because group-centric PvP grindfests are the One True MMO Playstyle. Without CoH, there's nothing overt to point at and laugh at over their inability or unwillingness to realize that the Western market is different from the Asian market, and NCSoft can believe that they just have to find the right IP, and Western gamers will flock to the game in droves.

All of the rest of the drama over NCSoft's 'announcements' plays out with a fair degree of 'rationality' from their point of view if you make the assumption that the "expecting to run the company as if it were in Korea" feedback from the glassdoor site was characteristic of the company as a whole -- we were expected to accept the pronouncement of the game's shutdown from NCSoft's position of authority, and they made repeated non-statements that were expected to give us a face-saving way to accept their decision and move on -- except that we don't react that way to being fed bullshit, and the fact that they expected it to work is just one more example of how little they do or care to understand the western market.

[ukaserex]

My thinking is that the people who say the servers were empty, didn't have any global chat channels, weren't in a SG and hung out in solo mission caves. That's all I can think of that would make the game seem empty. I played on Champion and was tuned into at least 3 channels just for forming TF/SF/Trial groups, and a channel for my SG. It was almost constantly buzzing! I never got the feeling that the world was empty.

For me, at least on Liberty - which seemed to have maybe 5-10% fewer people than Champion - on the weekend evenings, there were plenty of people about - provided the playerbase knew ahead of time that there was a reason to log on.

When @Cinderfrost would host Wednesday night iTrials on Liberty - sometimes we had to get two leagues going. But - the rub of it is - that's 48 players at most. Granted, not everyone wanted to play incarnate content. (or could, for that matter.)

On Friday and Sunday nights, @Noyjitat or @Noyjitat? or any of his other alt accounts, lol, would host MotherShip raids. However, sometimes there simply weren't enough folks to run them with more than a team or two. And, yes, I know an MSR can happen with less than 8 - but let's face it - they need to be a pretty solid, balanced 8 to get the job done.

After those MSR's, I'd host iTrials, and more often than not MoiTrials - Liberty loved their badges! Usually, I wouldn't have any trouble recruiting because I'd do the recruiting for the most part at the same time every weekend.

Sadly - when I would try to get task forces going over the weekend, or during the week during prime time - even the weekly taskforces - this was often a painful and tedious process. I had a fairly long list of global names to call upon, but once SWTOR went live, more than half of those names stopped logging in.
I can think of a dozen right now - I think I saw them once or twice pop back in before the end.
/begin digress
Granted, if I may give myself the benefit of the doubt, I was considered by most to be...passionate about the game. I took things way too seriously, in retrospect. (it wouldn't be unfair to suggest I was wound pretty tightly..okay, toilet-trained at gunpoint, maybe!)
That may have been a factor. I didn't suffer fools kindly - but a lot of that was trying to protect the game time of those few who could only play for a given hour or so each week and chose to join my leagues.
/end digress

In the end, I found myself playing on Infinity and Champion more as the end drew near. I'd had toons on Virtue and Freedom, as well - but I didn't team up that much on those servers. Most of the invites I got were for farms - which was okay - but I could always get xp faster solo than teamed.  (when I take into account the amount of time to recruit and head to mission door etc.)

So, from my limited perspective, yeah, CoH was fizzing out.

[johnrobey]

The Loyalist Responsibility arc finale -- stop Arachnos from blowing up the reactors (and killing most of the population of Neutropolis) in defiance of Cole's order to let them do it -- always seemed pretty damn heroic to me.

In hindsight I wish my Praetorian 50's battle cry had been Local $character_name "I'm from Powers Division.  I'm here to help."  As it was, he was my 2nd energy blaster (gosh those were fun!) and his F10 battle cry was instead "Greetings from Emperor Cole!"    (Just why anyone in their right mind would choose a blaster to be their liaison and ambassador to Primal Earth is beyond me, but I had a blast playing it to the hilt.  Needless to say, my Gold side toon, Mark Davis, did things the Powers Division way and 100% vigilante!     Thanks, Titans, for this walk down Memory Lane.

[johnrobey]

For me, at least on Liberty - which seemed to have maybe 5-10% fewer people than Champion - on the weekend evenings, there were plenty of people about - provided the playerbase knew ahead of time that there was a reason to log on.

When @Cinderfrost would host Wednesday night iTrials on Liberty - sometimes we had to get two leagues going. But - the rub of it is - that's 48 players at most. Granted, not everyone wanted to play incarnate content. (or could, for that matter.)

On Friday and Sunday nights, @Noyjitat or @Noyjitat? or any of his other alt accounts, lol, would host MotherShip raids. However, sometimes there simply weren't enough folks to run them with more than a team or two. And, yes, I know an MSR can happen with less than 8 - but let's face it - they need to be a pretty solid, balanced 8 to get the job done.

After those MSR's, I'd host iTrials, and more often than not MoiTrials - Liberty loved their badges! Usually, I wouldn't have any trouble recruiting because I'd do the recruiting for the most part at the same time every weekend.

Sadly - when I would try to get task forces going over the weekend, or during the week during prime time - even the weekly taskforces - this was often a painful and tedious process. I had a fairly long list of global names to call upon, but once SWTOR went live, more than half of those names stopped logging in.
I can think of a dozen right now - I think I saw them once or twice pop back in before the end.
/begin digress
Granted, if I may give myself the benefit of the doubt, I was considered by most to be...passionate about the game. I took things way too seriously, in retrospect. (it wouldn't be unfair to suggest I was wound pretty tightly..okay, toilet-trained at gunpoint, maybe!)
That may have been a factor. I didn't suffer fools kindly - but a lot of that was trying to protect the game time of those few who could only play for a given hour or so each week and chose to join my leagues.
/end digress

In the end, I found myself playing on Infinity and Champion more as the end drew near. I'd had toons on Virtue and Freedom, as well - but I didn't team up that much on those servers. Most of the invites I got were for farms - which was okay - but I could always get xp faster solo than teamed.  (when I take into account the amount of time to recruit and head to mission door etc.)

So, from my limited perspective, yeah, CoH was fizzing out.

I never played nearly as much on Liberty as I would have liked.  (It was the initial home server of my Praetorian who later got moved to Victory.)  Yeah, it sounds like some of the servers were way full; e.g. Freedom--so much so that I rarely did much there--and I'd started on Infinity and still played there with some frequency.  But rather than "fizzing out" my prob was so many toons, so many servers, so many kewl players....  which server, which character, etc. to log on to.  That's where I thought the SG's who had it together with guildportal.com pages etc. were really helpful; that and the global chat channels.  Thus I was rarely on Freedom or Virtue but mostly on Justice and Victory, but had over 100 toons across 9 servers and literally could not keep up, but I sure had a ball trying!!!  /em holdtorch

[LadyVamp]

I would like to add to TonyV's point #1.  Every time PS added more playable content like Preatoria, the servers would fill up like they were a few months after the game went live from beta in the very beginning.  I really don't believe it was the lack of players as some claim nor do I believe the game wasn't profitable.  And let's add profitable enough.

If anything might have hurt CoH, it was the appearance of lack of reinvestment.  The fact that PS was creating more playable content is proof they knew CoH needed it.  They were attempting to make it from what I saw. 

The only business reason I could see for NCsoft choosing to kill of the game is the potential investment it could take to give the game the facelift they likely felt it needed.  As for their argument that they felt no one would take as good care of us as they did (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt so don't shoot me), I think I speak for everyone here when I say,

"We'd rather never have new content again if we could just have a few playable servers left up for us.  A GM to help us when we got stuck like in a mission that won't end but no other tech support would be acceptable too.  As it stands, we cannot meet with our friends, pick fights with our player enemies, or anything else.  In short, we cannot do what we were born to do.  To be heroes."

Perhaps it is time for our negotiations team to talk to NCsoft directly instead of trying to get someone to buy the game.  Things have cooled down a little for them.  Perhaps they would be more interested in talking.  Again, it's just a thought.