In response to a post on a locked thread, mini history on The Secret Project

[Knight Light]

It seems really out of character for them to do such a thing and for NCsoft to be so generous. Also, Positron said they were told to stop development of CoH2 for that Lost/Minecraft game, right?

I don't know the precise facts but I don't believe that's how it went at all.

If I'm wrong, please correct me:

The development for CoH2 was never started beyond NCSoft taking care of some licensing items back in 2009. The devs could not be told to stop something that had not actually been started on.

Despite taking some steps towards initiating the development of City of Heroes 2, NCSoft eventually said:

"Y'know what, f CoH2; we're gonna make a sequel to our shitty Guild Wars franchise instead of CoH2. f you, Paragon Studios. what's that? you got lots of ideas for CoH2? Well, we don't really give a pancake and we refuse to listen to reason. what's that? you got an idea for another game? something like minecraft and Lost? well, alright, since we're gonna be total asshats about not supporting you on developing CoH2, we're gonna let you develop this other game instead, but only until the costs of making it allow us to state on a technicality that your studio is unprofitable so we can shut everything down. You know, cause we're evil and not even the cool kind of evil. Satan called us douchebags."

And here we are now.

[Captain Electric]

Sounds about right, except I know they did have conceptual art and plans drawn up for CoH2, I'd say which dev mentioned this but I do not want to get them in trouble if it was an NDA-breaking slip-up (No PMs please, this is not up for sharing). This was regarding the "darker, grittier" sequel, but that description was always a bit midleading. CoH2, like its predecessor, would have been many things thematically, but it was aiming for a kind of cinematic and dramatic realism that would have set it apart from every other super-powered title (a direction that was already showing in CoH's later arcs). This would have been more similar to modern Whedon and Nolan stuff in cinematic terms, rather than Adam West Batman. 2000s and 2010s comics, not silver age. If it ticks you off that NCSoft canned that for some fantasy title, then congratulations on having such good taste.

They were not in the nitty gritty coding stages, but that part was not elaborated on so I don't know if this meant NO coding had been done.

Also I think the point of the closed thread may have been to end that discussion. And dodging the swear filter is not very gentlemanly.

[Aggelakis]

The Cap'n is correct. Locked threads get locked for a reason. Circumventing a lock or the profanity filter doesn't make you cool or witty. ;P