CoH #1! ...as if we didn't already know...

[Knight Light]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_NwLnpko08

Well, it's fairly official. What every person on these boards if not the world already knew,

City of Heroes is far and above the greatest superhero MMORPG of all time.

...and NCSoft still cancelled it.

*claps as sarcastically as possible*

Great job, NCSoft.

Perhaps for your next trick you can start killing kittens.

[Quinch]

And CoH comments pretty much own the thumbs. Verra nice. Good article, too.

[Golden Ace]

And CoH comments pretty much own the thumbs. Verra nice. Good article, too.

agreed.

[Cobra Man]

That vid made me feel sad and proud at the same time.

I wish someone in a position of power at NCsoft would take the time to watch the video and realise exactly what it is they've done.

[Sajaana]

It might not be a bad idea to post that on NCsoft's Twitter feed or Facebook page...not necessarily with any commentary attached (like, "FU NCsoft, Save CoH!"), but just the link...with, perhaps, a simple line like "CoH voted #1 superhero MMO!"

[Quinch]

Huh. I do wonder how the "we need to bury this" and "hey, someone's praising us" conflict would play out.

[OzonePrime]

Posted on my FB page yesterday. Really lifts my spirits that we're still getting recognized (and exposed). City of Heroes is/was my favorite game. (I built my PC just so I could play it.)
Come on NCSoft, let go of the best MMO ever!
 

[LadyVamp]

Huh. I do wonder how the "we need to bury this" and "hey, someone's praising us" conflict would play out.

Since no one likes to admit they messed up, I suspect "we need to bury this" crowd will win no matter the cost their company.  Though I remain hopeful some adults at NCSoft will step up, just admit the mistake, and restart the game.  Or at least sell it for a reasonable price to someone who wants something to do with it.

[Sajaana]

Since no one likes to admit they messed up, I suspect "we need to bury this" crowd will win no matter the cost their company.  Though I remain hopeful some adults at NCSoft will step up, just admit the mistake, and restart the game.  Or at least sell it for a reasonable price to someone who wants something to do with it.

Honestly, when we are talking NCsoft, nobody has to admit they messed up.  Nobody has to admit a mistake.  They can still start it up, as if what happened last year never happened.  Nobody ever cared before when they changed their mind about things and, quite frankly, nobody here will really care what happened last year either, since we will be so happy to have CoH back.

The thing that always amazed me about NCsoft is how the past never influences their present.  It makes us exceedingly frustrated when, for example, they say "we are committed to Tabula Rasa for the long haul!," and then two months later say, "We regret to inform you we are sunsetting Tabula Rasa." We say things like, "but didn't you say you'd support the--" and they'll act as if they were saying, "--did we say that?  We didn't say that."

When it comes to NCsoft, what they say and do today never gets in the way of what will be said and done tomorrow.  So when they say in December that "the heroes of Paragon have taken to the skies for the last time" we can no more believe them than when they said "we are committed to the game long term" early last year.  At the time these things were said, it was true.  But just because it was true then doesn't make it true now.

From what I understand, they got what they wanted in this whole shutdown fiasco.  Why keep the #1 superhero game closed, when they already accomplished what they wanted to accomplish?

[Triplash]

Though I remain hopeful some adults at NCSoft will step up, just admit the mistake, and restart the game.

I don't think it's a question of maturity or responsibility. It's about losing credibility with their investors. Right now everyone that's disagreeing with their decision is outside the company, and those opinions can all be chalked up to "emotional outbursts" and "hating the big bad corporation". But the moment the company itself admits they made, not just a mistake, but a colossal and boneheaded mistake, it validates everything we've been saying. That would pretty much guarantee stockholders realizing that company is a poor investment, and result in the nearly instantaneous collapse of the company.

Basically, they probably wouldn't come back from admitting a call that bad. But there's a possibility that they could at least weather the storm of bad publicity if they stick to their guns without flinching.

[0nehanklap]

Unfortunately, this is also the reason they can't afford to sell/release the IP at any (reasonable) cost.  If it were to prove successful after their decision to close rather than advertise, executive heads would have to roll in order to protect the company from collapse.  Nobody in charge of that decision is going to risk it.

[Tubbius]

Got to say I agree with the rankings overall, though I'd likely put Marvel Heroes above DC Online, having played the former and watched the latter, but that's me. 

[Cobra Man]

Got to say I agree with the rankings overall, though I'd likely put Marvel Heroes above DC Online, having played the former and watched the latter, but that's me. 

Having tried out Marvel Heroes (MH) in Beta, I can only disagree.

I think I'd rather watch paint dry than play MH for a sustained period of time.

I'm not a fan of DCUO but it's miles better than MH.

[LadyVamp]

I don't think it's a question of maturity or responsibility. It's about losing credibility with their investors. Right now everyone that's disagreeing with their decision is outside the company, and those opinions can all be chalked up to "emotional outbursts" and "hating the big bad corporation". But the moment the company itself admits they made, not just a mistake, but a colossal and boneheaded mistake, it validates everything we've been saying. That would pretty much guarantee stockholders realizing that company is a poor investment, and result in the nearly instantaneous collapse of the company.

Basically, they probably wouldn't come back from admitting a call that bad. But there's a possibility that they could at least weather the storm of bad publicity if they stick to their guns without flinching.

I agree it is very unlikely they will put the game back up or sell the code.  Both actions would imply a screw up on their part.  They've committed themselves to a course of action and will stay the course no matter what.

[LadyVamp]

Honestly, when we are talking NCsoft, nobody has to admit they messed up.  Nobody has to admit a mistake.  They can still start it up, as if what happened last year never happened.  Nobody ever cared before when they changed their mind about things and, quite frankly, nobody here will really care what happened last year either, since we will be so happy to have CoH back.

Putting the game back in service or selling the code (or licensing it) alone implies admitting mistake.  They know that.  They're committed to a course of action and really can't change direction.  Their only way out is to take that April fool's joke of so many years ago they pulled on us and make it happen.  For those who don't know/remember, NCSoft took out a trademark on CoH2 and announced during April fool's day that they were making CoH2.  This was many years ago early in coh's issues.

[Sajaana]

Putting the game back in service or selling the code (or licensing it) alone implies admitting mistake.

Not really.  If you look at what they did, this wasn't about closing down City of Heroes at all.

They didn't want to close down the game.  They wanted to close down the studio.  There's no mistake they'd have to admit to if they decide to move on the game at this point, because their aim (severing their relationship to Paragon) has already been accomplished.

[Stormsurge]

Like it or not, the ball is still in NCSoft's court. And if they decided to reopen the game, I'm sure there would be tons of people flocking back to them and sure, I'd be back there on day one. But they would be hard pressed to gain back the trust they lost in us as a community when they decided to constantly tell lies instead of either a) not releasing any information or b) just tell the damn truth. It's very hard to think about giving them money when they have shown how badly they treat their customers.

As for that list:

A) Unreleased games should not be on a top 10 list.
B) DC Online is the suckitude of suckiness. And it's #2.
C) By comparison, It doesn't really matter which order those others go in, because if COH wasn't #1, that whole video would have been a travesty.

[dwturducken]

OK, looking at their site as a whole, I think the decision to do this was an editorial one. The "Top Ten List" (sorry, Dave) is a weekly video piece. Maybe someone decided that they needed to say something about the closure (a search of "city of heroes" within their site turns up only one article), or maybe it was just because they realized they hadn't been talking about the genre much. I can almost guarantee, the meeting where this topic was announced/decided on had some "oh, pancake" reactions.

One thing about City of Heroes, aside from all the stuff we've lamented and praised, was that it didn't suck. It wasn't a fighting game. It didn't force us to play a certain character (usually licensed). It wasn't some hastily assembled, steaming pile intended to cash in on some other market's fad (like a movie tie-in). And, most of all, it was stunning. No game in the super hero genre had done any of that, never mind that you also could now play with your friends, even make new ones. Why shouldn't it be on the top of the list? Why shouldn't it be the standard by which all games, spandex or not, are measured?

The problem is, to put it at the top of a list, you have to fill the rest of the list. I don't dispute the order of the list, once I get past my confusion that some of the games are even on the list. But, it, like most of the rest of the videos in the series, is a fluff piece. Ranking lists are always going to favor one bias or another, but, ultimately, they only serve as fodder for internet arguments. One thing that it does for us, though, is provide one more arrow in our quiver for our fight to keep buzz going for the game.

Also, the tenor of discussion around this list is very different on the CO forum. I haven't bothered with the DCUO forum, but I will be checking the MH forum, at least out of morbid curiosity.

[Triplash]

I agree it is very unlikely they will put the game back up or sell the code.  Both actions would imply a screw up on their part.  They've committed themselves to a course of action and will stay the course no matter what.

Honestly, I do think there's one way they could turn it around and look, if not good, at least not bad for it. It's not the most blueside thought I've ever had so I'm not going to wish for it, but I wouldn't lose any sleep if it happened.

Basically if there were one particular person who had made the call to shut City down, or spun the situation so that shutdown looked like the right call, that person could leave or be let go. Then the company could point to them and say "See? The person who made that terrible decision is gone now! What do you say we give it another shot, guys? Show of hands... who's in?"

Obviously I'd never want an innocent person to get canned that way. But anyone who really did make such a bad call would deserve to at least be demoted out of a decision-making position. I think that would cancel out the "no takebacks" policy well enough, without anyone losing respectability.

If that did happen, plus they agreed to provide some form of private or offline alternative in the event of another shutdown, I'd go back to the game even under NCsoft.

[Triplash]

Not really.  If you look at what they did, this wasn't about closing down City of Heroes at all.

They didn't want to close down the game.  They wanted to close down the studio.  There's no mistake they'd have to admit to if they decide to move on the game at this point, because their aim (severing their relationship to Paragon) has already been accomplished.

Yeah, sadly it does seem like that was their true goal. They did say their reasoning was that Paragon Studios was losing money. The thing is though, we now know that City of Heroes was bringing in plenty enough to pay for its own costs plus running the studio. The only drains on resources were the side projects that NCsoft approved (only after, by the way, denying every possible upgrade that would have actually improved the game's potential to earn). Yet they didn't cut those other projects, just like they didn't slow down the pace of development or reduce staff to a skeleton crew. Basically they didn't do a single thing to attempt to rectify what they said was the problem.

And then there's the fact that there were a number of ways they could have kept the game running without requiring the studio. They could have put it into maintenance mode. They could have established a new studio. They could have kept an income stream that had next to no costs associated with it. But they didn't do that either. They just went straight to ending it.

So if the studio was really the target and not the game, that would just seem to make it more of a case of deliberate intent, as opposed to reacting to an unforeseen problem. And that could make them look very much worse than a mistake would. Because showing pre-planned hostility like that toward the people making one of your games, makes you look very, very untrustworthy to the people making your other games. Not to mention the people playing those games.


We've said it before, and it's still true now. If we want the original game back we need to find a way to make them look good for passing it to somebody else. Better than the bad they look for canceling it in the first place.