Jack Emmert re: CoH - "Tell NCsoft to call me"

[Perfidus]

Omg yes, Ko. So much yes.

But wait until your birthday is over to start anything like that, of course!

[Ironwolf]

Do it and I will be glad to personally foot the bill with an ad at MMORPG. I posted a scale for their banner ads:

This rate card was last revised December 19, 2012. Rates are effective from Jan 1, 2013 through December 31, 2013. These prices are subject to change at any time.

IN-PAGE BANNER ADVERTISING
Location
Typical Impressions*
CPM** Rate

Home Rectangle (Home Target)
Size: (300x250 – 85KB max)
Up to 15,000 per day
$9.00

Article Rectangle (Article Target)
Up to 8,000 per day
$6.00
Size: (300x250 – 85KB max)

Skyscraper (Run of Site)
Up to 80,000 per day
$4.00
Size: (160x600 – 85KB max)

Forum Rectagle (Forums Target)
Up to 20,000 per day
$1.50
Size: (300x250 – 85KB max)

Leaderboard Banner
Up to 50,000 per day
$2.40
Size: (728x90 – 85KB max)

Forum Square
Up to 60,000 per day
$1.20
Size: (200x200 – 85KB max)

Mobile Site Leaderboard
Up to 5,000 per day
$2.00
Size: (320x50 – 40KB max)

* This is generally the largest amount of impressions we can run daily. These figures can be increased under certain circumstances and with enough advance booking subject to our availability.
**CPM

If you can make the video and the Banner, I will buy the ad at MMORPG for a week. That should be if I read this right a maximum of about $50 for a week?

[Heroette]

With as many demofiles as I have, plus the I-24 functionality changes for demorecording... hmm...

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

That would be an awesome video.  If you have time, I would love to see it.

[Sugoi]

Hmm any chance of another $1000 in 3 hours event occurring? My money would be on it...

[Metal Mountain]

Iif we need to put some money out for advertising efforts than I would like to put in for it

[SeaLily]

It'd be nice to go beyond just the Statesman tease with the video if possible.  Slip in some shots of things that didn't make it to the full game from the beta, or were big, cool things from recent updates that people might not have seen.  You could even reuse some old footage for this.  Just have just some quick blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash montage to give that whole "there's more to this game than you got to see, and you'll get to play it if you help push this effort" feeling to it.

[Ironwolf]

I agree and I will check more sites tomorrow to get the advertising rates.

Massive
MMORPG
Plus 10 damage

Any others? Maybe we can do a blitz!

[Rae]

Disclaimer: I'm not speaking for Team Wildcard here - the following is my own personal analysis, so if anyone wants to correct me, feel free to do so. With that in mind....

I don't think this falls under Wildcard purview. While we're trying to facilitate the purchase of CoH IP, we are essentially focusing on people who have the capability to buy it, but have also plausibly never heard of City of Heroes, and almost certainly never played it - companies with sufficient clout, but who are otherwise ignorant of the fiscal opportunity CoH would be. Cryptic, thus, is the exact opposite of the kind of, for lack of a better word, ignorance we're trying to dispel and pitching to them would make the phrase "preaching to the choir" the understatement of the century. So while I'm sure we, individually, would each jump on the #CallJack bandwagon with enthusiasm, there's not much need for what we're doing with Wildcard in this situation.

Between my full-time job, the Google pitch and the work I'm doing with TPP, I'm stretched pretty thin - it wouldn't be fair of me be PR-chick on a fourth project, because something would have to give, and I'm fully committed to TF:HM and TPP.

I'll join any calls to action, though.

I would say, however:

/Don't/ mailbomb the media. They're busy people and having to deal with hundreds of emails from hundreds of people all saying the same thing won't do anything apart from annoy them and stop them getting any work done. You'll have a better chance of getting noticed (and far less confusion) if you chose one person to be the point of contact and to send out the news tip to various websites. That person should be the sole point of contact with the media, and act as a go-between for them and the campaign.

I don't see anything wrong with Twitter/FB messages aimed at Cryptic/Emmett, but again, sending anyone emails that makes it hard for them to do any work will not help. They're more likely to notice postcard/masks/capes and letters and it's less likely to inconvenience people in their day to day work.

And if/when you've got your point of contact worked out, and a press release ready to go, if you want to PM it to me to take a look at, please feel free to do so. I can probably help you out with the contact details of a few journalists who were sympathetic to #SaveCOH, too.

Sorry that I can't help more than that, though.

Also, to whoever was casting doubts on the Google pitch, I would point out that this is a contact of Mercedes Lackey, who has asked to be sent the pitch, so we're not going in entirely randomly this time :)

[Lily Barclay]

The community manager over at Neverwinter started a thread on the panel in question, so I asked about Jack's call me statement. I'm a somewhat respected member of the community over there so we'll see if I get an answer. Probably not, but doesn't hurt to ask. The poor CO people were asking about their game, too. =(

[Ironwolf]

Rae we aren't going to mailbomb the Media - we are going to ADVERTISE!

We are planning to pay them to basically carry a banner and hopefully a link to a new video, even if Jack Emmert wasn't 100% serious we can act exactly as if we are taking him at his word.

[Samuraiko]

I'm currently going through my demofiles to see what I can manage.

Not being able to just log in, get on a global channel, round up a ton of players, and direct people... makes it a bit more difficult. AngelusAnimi I am not. (She is MUCH better than I am about being able to code from scratch. I sometimes wonder if she's Aralcox in disguise...)

But I will do my best.

(At least I have several instances of Atlas Park that are completely crowded... thanks to HitStreak bampfing me to all 33 instances during the Unity Rally, plus the 'departure' demorecords from "One Last Day".)

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

[Ironwolf]

Don't forget Segs!

You do have a game to log into!

[Maressa]

I can put you all in touch with my editor at OnRPG/MMOHut for rates. Just need an email address so we can get communication started.

[Empyrean]

The poor CO people were asking about their game, too. =(

I'll tell ya, it's rough over there.  I don't know if it's Jack or PW or what, but their lack of even acknowledging that the player-base even exists, much less dignifying their requests or concerns with one single communication actually addressing them, is...  staggering. 

Honestly, even if Jack isn't responsible, if he is so much as knowingly ALLOWING what is happening over there, I'd suggest we at least try to ascertain his firm intentions (which he's vacillated on more than once in the past), before getting too excited.

I know, I sound like a negative Nancy, but if you haven't been to CO, you may not understand the level of being totally ignored that is possible in a game.  I didn't truly understand how lucky we really were with Matt Miller and Paragon Studios untill I experienced the depth of the Cryptic/PW's neglect.  It's bottomless.

PS-  I just realized it probably sounds like I'm exaggerating to some of you.  Understandable.  If you go look at the Champions forums for about the past week or more, it will become clear.

[Codewalker]

Jack has always been all about the "new shiny". He basically abandoned COH to work on CO, then CO to work on STO, and more recently refocused most of their resources away from STO for Neverwinter. Ironically, he probably would have fit in well at NCSoft as it's strikingly similar to their MO, except that he just forgets about "old" games instead of actively shutting them down.

I strongly suspect his comment was just something he said in the moment, along the lines of, "Well, if they don't want it, they can always give it back to me." I wouldn't expect him to seriously pursue buying it unless NCSoft came to him and knocked on his door, offering it for a song.

Yes, COH was his first big project so there's likely some emotional attachment to keeping it alive. But beyond that? It might keep his interest for a few months but it wouldn't be long before it ended up in the same boat as Champions.

[Samuraiko]

Don't forget Segs!

You do have a game to log into!

Not knowing exactly what that is (and no offense, but Titan's search functionality sucks), kinda hard for me to use it.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

[JetFlash]

Yes, COH was his first big project so there's likely some emotional attachment to keeping it alive. But beyond that? It might keep his interest for a few months but it wouldn't be long before it ended up in the same boat as Champions.

Better ignored than dead, I'd say.

[DarkCurrent]

Ok, so if Cryptic were to buy CoX and release it with I24 some of you sound like you're saying that wouldn't be good enough because Cryptic ignores CO.

So what if Cryptic ignored CoX?  Wouldn't you still play CoX given all the goodness that was in the pipeline?  Go revisit the I24 list of updates and tell me that stuff wouldn't keep you playing forever.  Go look at the list of power pools and power sets that were near release.  And I25 was deep into alpha state on top of all that.

All Cryptic would have to do is commit a few months of dev time (they could likely land many of the team from Paragon in temp positions) to package up a final update to CoX and they'd instantly have 10,000s of players paying them $15 a month easily.  They could make a killing selling those new power sets and costumes that were just waiting for the server clock to strike midnight on the date of their release.

[Ironwolf]

Segs is a work by nemerle to return CoH at about Issue 4.

It does currently allow you to create characters and login to the server and to move around in Atlas Park.

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,8011.0.html

[saipaman]

I'd be willing to contribute funds towards advertising.

If nothing else, it's sure to annoy NCSoft.