Still listed on Cryptic's site.

[JaguarX]

looks through all the conversation. pauses, considers for a few moments.

Okay, As other's have said, it is within the realm of possibility that NCSoft is working on CoX2. unlikely, but possible.

What is more likely is this. Remember that negotiations between Paragon and NCSoft for paragon's independence broke down at the last minute. Why? Not because NCSoft wanted to out them for some contractual reason I think... More Likely I think it's down to the same sorts of emotions that go on in all corporations. Some middle-level executive was siezed by a sudden fit of GREED. in his or her brain, it was "these people want to take away MY toys, MY crayons, MY legos, andplay with them themselves. Well that isn't happening on my watch!"

And so even though it was in no one's best interest at the time, negotiations for paragon to go independant or be bought by another company died right there.

Now, today, a year after the fact, NCSoft still owns those very same rights to City of Heroes (plus the two phantom IPs that were also involved in that debacle). Clearly they have no interest in running CoX, even in a maintenance mode, because not only are the game servers gone, but the corporate infrastructure for them such as the accounts, the official forums, and any advertising partner tie in, are also gone.

At this point, the City of Heroes Franchise is dangerously close to falling into "abandonware" territory. That means that the legal owners forfiet almost any right to the IP, much the same way a copyright holder forfiets their rights to a trademark or patent they don't defend. I play several abandonware games myself.

So NCSoft is just playing the same greed game they did in negotiations. by maintaining the game's marks on their site they mark their territory from a legal standpoint, without the expense of dedicating URLs or Server rackspace to them.

but that's just one little raptor's opinion.

Yup but remember the copyright havent expired yet.

Now it might be worth the gamble and go for it. Might get luck yand NCSOft might not try to enforce it's copyright infringement stuff as many game companies have done. They just look shrug, and keep it moving. But it is still unlawful to distribute copies of old copyrighted software and games, with or without compensation.
But also rarely do these things make it to court. That can be good and bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Implications

[Taceus Jiwede]

now correct me if I'm wrong, but logic would dictate that if they /WERE NOT/ working on the project they would have no reason to hide it. so a response saying "we don't want to tell" means? = Yes.

To assume that when a person doesn't say no that it means Yes is a dangerous belief system to have.  The way they answered it is the safest and smartest legal way to answer that.  And yes NCSoft owned the IP and Paragon Studios worked on it.  That is because Paragon studios worked for NCSoft.  It is pretty common knowledge that NCSoft doesn't develop their games.  They are publishers, they publish the games and hire developers to develop the game.  But I don't see them letting a developing team owned by a competeing publishing company do CoH 2.  It still would make Perfect World look fantastic and not make NCSoft look better to us in anyway and I don't think they would want to do that.  They would of just made CoH 2 right off the bat and gotten all the money and glory instead of a chunk of the money and none of the glory.

[Joshex]

To assume that when a person doesn't say no that it means Yes is a dangerous belief system to have.  The way they answered it is the safest and smartest legal way to answer that.  And yes NCSoft owned the IP and Paragon Studios worked on it.  That is because Paragon studios worked for NCSoft.  It is pretty common knowledge that NCSoft doesn't develop their games.  They are publishers, they publish the games and hire developers to develop the game.  But I don't see them letting a developing team owned by a competeing publishing company do CoH 2.  It still would make Perfect World look fantastic and not make NCSoft look better to us in anyway and I don't think they would want to do that.  They would of just made CoH 2 right off the bat and gotten all the money and glory instead of a chunk of the money and none of the glory.

it wont have anything to do with PWE if they do it, Cryptic is still technically it's own company and can be hired by anyone to make games.

looks through all the conversation. pauses, considers for a few moments.

Okay, As other's have said, it is within the realm of possibility that NCSoft is working on CoX2. unlikely, but possible.

What is more likely is this. Remember that negotiations between Paragon and NCSoft for paragon's independence broke down at the last minute. Why? Not because NCSoft wanted to out them for some contractual reason I think... More Likely I think it's down to the same sorts of emotions that go on in all corporations. Some middle-level executive was siezed by a sudden fit of GREED. in his or her brain, it was "these people want to take away MY toys, MY crayons, MY legos, andplay with them themselves. Well that isn't happening on my watch!"

And so even though it was in no one's best interest at the time, negotiations for paragon to go independant or be bought by another company died right there.

Now, today, a year after the fact, NCSoft still owns those very same rights to City of Heroes (plus the two phantom IPs that were also involved in that debacle). Clearly they have no interest in running CoX, even in a maintenance mode, because not only are the game servers gone, but the corporate infrastructure for them such as the accounts, the official forums, and any advertising partner tie in, are also gone.

At this point, the City of Heroes Franchise is dangerously close to falling into "abandonware" territory. That means that the legal owners forfiet almost any right to the IP, much the same way a copyright holder forfiets their rights to a trademark or patent they don't defend. I play several abandonware games myself.

So NCSoft is just playing the same greed game they did in negotiations. by maintaining the game's marks on their site they mark their territory from a legal standpoint, without the expense of dedicating URLs or Server rackspace to them.

but that's just one little raptor's opinion.

typically last I checked Copy Rights expire after 7 years, but only in the case that the owning company did not develop for or utilize those rights during that portion of time, so technically if NCSoft really wanted to be stiff 84$74RD$ in 6.99 years from the shutdown they could release a one episode "CoH: the Remeberance" animation, description: remembering some of our fallen but not forgotten titles.

so.. waiting for the copyrights to expire is like waiting for 'the house' to run out of cards to play, even in the event they loose cards after each match they can always get a new deck.

for once I'm a skeptic.

I suppose any waiting on them to move is a bad move. we need to try and urge them to pass thier turn if they can't muster the guts to play.

[Aggelakis]

typically last I checked Copy Rights expire after 7 years,

No. http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html

As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first.

[Blondeshell]

typically last I checked Copy Rights expire after 7 years

I believe you're confusing copyrights with trademarks, which have a 10-year duration and must be maintained every 5-6 years after registration/renewal.

http://trademarkvscopyrightvspatent.com/trademark-duration-usa.html

[Eoraptor]

I believe you're confusing copyrights with trademarks, which have a 10-year duration and must be maintained every 5-6 years after registration/renewal.

http://trademarkvscopyrightvspatent.com/trademark-duration-usa.html

And also remember that this is not predecated SOLEY on US Copyright patent and trademark law (collectively the USPTO) but on many different statutes and international agreements. Particularly if someone sets up a private server in germany or britain, and clients log in from the US, on a game whose IP is held by a south korean company.

[thunderforce]

At this point, the City of Heroes Franchise is dangerously close to falling into "abandonware" territory. That means that the legal owners forfiet almost any right to the IP, much the same way a copyright holder forfiets their rights to a trademark or patent they don't defend. I play several abandonware games myself.

No, they don't. Essentially everything in those sentences, aside that trademark holders may under some circumstances lose them through non-defence (but not "all the time", as is popularly believed), is completely and utterly wrong.

[srmalloy]

What is more likely is this. Remember that negotiations between Paragon and NCSoft for paragon's independence broke down at the last minute. Why? Not because NCSoft wanted to out them for some contractual reason I think... More Likely I think it's down to the same sorts of emotions that go on in all corporations. Some middle-level executive was siezed by a sudden fit of GREED. in his or her brain, it was "these people want to take away MY toys, MY crayons, MY legos, andplay with them themselves. Well that isn't happening on my watch!"

Or "They're not displaying the proper deference that subordinates should have; they need to be punished for even thinking about becoming independent!"...

[r00tb0ySlim]

seems very fishy to me.

Ah yes...something smells in Smellsville!!!  CoH2 would make for a great X-mas present....cue the marketing this Fall let's say???  I like a good ole conspiracy theory.

[ag88t88]

the new project is for a nameless company, or at least one that does not want to be named yet. 
So what does the timing tell me? the project started somewhere /around/ the beginning of 2012. I.E. about 1 year before CoH was put on closing notice.

Realizations;

NCSoft knows City of heroes is not marketable to asia. so why would they take the time and resources to develop a sequel in a korean company? simple they wont.

if NCSoft wanted to make a sequel to CoH why would they fire paragon? because paragon was barely able to make additions to the original game, obviously creating a sequel would have been too much for them to handle, they were fired because it could be legally objected by paragon if NCSoft were to seek outside help to develop the sequel rather than resorting to the staff at paragon who were supposed to be in charge of that and had the IP leased to them.

in the business world an IP can only be legally leased to 1 company at a time. I found that out with nintendo, they had a game being developed by a lame duck developer who was doing nothing and squating on the IP, they had thier hands tied and couldn't lease the IP to anyone else till the current lease expired.

Also for many who didn't know this; after some really indepth talks with Aeria games I learned that NCSoft is merely a publisher they have no actual ability to edit/make the games they hire other companies to do that.

yes I'm saying what you think I'm saying; this 'secret project' is actually: CoH 2

I don't know who initiated the contact first, but I'm certain that NCSoft and Cryptic have been talking about creating a CoH 2 for months before we were put on notice, thats right NCSoft is turning to a seasoned developer of MMO's and the creator of CoH inorder to get the sequel made. First they had to discuss all the nitty gritty business formalities which took a few months though the project had been put up on cryptic's page. next they needed to make it official they needed the IP lease back from paragon.

when you take away a lease from a company that subsequently gives them no right to even run the product linked to that lease. in effect Paragon would have been left with nothing to do,

So this is an interesting theory (Sorry for truncating it in my quote)  and you clearly put some thought into it, but this is where it falls apart for me.  NCSoft is typically a publisher but they can and have owned development studios, including Paragon Studios.  Paragon wasn't an independent company they leased the IP to, Paragon Studios was a subsidiary wholly owned by NCSoft and had no "Lease" for the IP since it was NCSofts IP.

Further, NCSoft bought the IP from Cryptic outright so they could "re-invest" in the IP and spent the years after the buy out (November 2007 I believe) building up Paragon Studios into a sizeable development studio, which is why we got things like Going Rogue, power customization, Freedom etc, that was all done by Paragon doing their own development, and up until Paragon got closed down they were working on a whole other project, never named though they had said it wasn't CoH related at some point.

So if NCSoft wanted to make a CoH2, they would have been in a better position to simply give PS a bigger budget and allow them to expand some more and build A CoH2, since they already had a team there that had a ton of experience with the IP, a team that had experience developing the ongoing CoH and were developing an entirely new project and since they owned PS they would have kept entire control of the IP, instead of having to have another company involved and having to share the profits and money of the game with that studio.

Not to mention that if they wanted CoH2 to be made, they'd not want to piss off the entire player base by cancelling CoH, which was still making money and developing new content very actively, long before any kind of CoH 2 was even announced, much less ready to play.

Really Paragon Studios would have been the ideal place to develop CoH2,  a development team they fully own, complete control over the property, a development team with experience making the CoH game, a working studio already with many resources in place, and further continuing the development of CoH, keeping that audience interested and paying bills at NCSoft until they could get the audience to switch to the sequel.

I just don't think NCSoft would have gone back to Cryptic to develop a CoH2 when they spent so much money and energy buying the IP to re-invest in it in the first place.   

[Perfidus]

Yeah, it's fun to think about, but just isn't realistic at all. I say with 99% sureness that its not what's happening.

Also, Posi is now a full time employee at Cryptic, per Twitter.

Also also, the secret Paragon project was a MOBA. David Nakayama posted some of the art on his deviantart page, but obviously gave very little information on it. (pixelsaurus.deviantart.com)

EDIT: I just checked, and the MOBA character art was removed from Nakayama's DA. I assume someone reminded him he doesn't own that art and could face legal ramifications for posting it. But I'm sure it still exists somewhere out there.

[Golden Girl]

They're understandably proud of their one quality game.

[Nos482]

If NCSucks really has Cryptic making some kind of CoX2, then they can go and shove it up their corporate @$$.
I will never again touch one of their products... gonna put my money on TPP instead.

[Eoraptor]

If NCSucks really has Cryptic making some kind of CoX2, then they can go and shove it up their corporate @$$.
I will never again touch one of their products... gonna put my money on TPP instead.

Don't care for the tone at all, but I agree... NCSoft lost a lot of business from me through this money grab. I will likely never play any of their titles again. If they thought illing CoH would drive people to their other, in-house titles, they were largely wrong, the vast majority of people I talk to still haven't touched GW, or Lineage, or any of their other stuff since the sunset. And we're pushing on a year since the anouncement now.

[srmalloy]

If NCSucks really has Cryptic making some kind of CoX2, then they can go and shove it up their corporate @$$.

If NCSoft thinks that they can make money on a sequel to CoH after honking off the entire playerbase of the prequel, then they're stupider than their actions make themselves out to be. If you have any intention of releasing a sequel to a game, you don't close the game until after the sequel launches; the moment a game shuts down, even with the kind of player loyalty that CoH players showed, you start hemorrhaging potential returnees -- and that's if the game shutdown was amicable and explained in an open and straightforward manner (i.e., if NCSoft had come out and said that, even after shutting down the 'second project' at Paragon, the studio had been losing money for a year, and they had to shut down the game, but they had a sequel in development, and they'd be putting the money that had been going into CoH into development of the sequel to make it a better game [although we know from experience that the likelihood of NCSoft actually being that honest and forthcoming ranks somewhere below the Sun spontaneously going out before sunrise tomorrow]). Coupled with the high-handed and customer-insensitive manner in which they conducted the shutdown, I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the old playerbase came back for an NCSoft-managed sequel.

[JaguarX]

If NCSoft thinks that they can make money on a sequel to CoH after honking off the entire playerbase of the prequel, then they're stupider than their actions make themselves out to be. If you have any intention of releasing a sequel to a game, you don't close the game until after the sequel launches; the moment a game shuts down, even with the kind of player loyalty that CoH players showed, you start hemorrhaging potential returnees -- and that's if the game shutdown was amicable and explained in an open and straightforward manner (i.e., if NCSoft had come out and said that, even after shutting down the 'second project' at Paragon, the studio had been losing money for a year, and they had to shut down the game, but they had a sequel in development, and they'd be putting the money that had been going into CoH into development of the sequel to make it a better game [although we know from experience that the likelihood of NCSoft actually being that honest and forthcoming ranks somewhere below the Sun spontaneously going out before sunrise tomorrow]). Coupled with the high-handed and customer-insensitive manner in which they conducted the shutdown, I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the old playerbase came back for an NCSoft-managed sequel.

Yeah dont think they are planning doing a sequel.

Look with guildwars. Instead of closing the original down for the sequel they let it be for a while then even letting it go into maintance mode. I figure they knew if they shelved GW one either while making GW2 or just prior to release it probably owuld have hurt the sells of GW2 severely.

Now I also figure they figured that most COX players that wasnt already playing the other games probably wouldnt switch there in large numbers either way. Thus when they closed the game, they probably didnt care or think or even worried about if those angry players were going to go to another game. They probably figured some might, but probably wasnt counting on it asa sure thing if at all. No sequel, COX target audience probably wouldnt play any of the other offerings anyways, then there is nothing left to entice them with or worth investing in the enticing them to spend money and might as well just write them off.

I think even if they shut COX down as amiblically as a nun and a saint, many still would be raging mad and others would nit pick everything the original COX was that the sequel isnt. With less than 100 grand of players, that is not a large pool for a sequel especially if they wasnt planning on a huge ad campaign, with the people that wouldnt play or give NCSOFT another dime before of the shut down regardless of how nice they put it, and those that my not find the sequel their cup of tea. That leaves very little potential guaranteed players that would switch over compared to GW which I think hit well over the 1 million sub mark up to at least 5 million and I dont think GW2 broke the 5 million mark. 2 I think. And that without the game closing down. So even at that rate, COX2 would have been looking at about 32,000-50,000 players maybe or some sort assuming the same rate of gw players to gw2 players.

[Bella Blackwood]

In my little world of glitter and unicorns, I have no problem wishing that this theory is correct.  I cling to the hope that either COH returns or that the Plan Z projects are successful.  And as much as I dislike NCSoft right now, if they offered a new COH or rerelease, I would be first in line....I just want it back!  I have nothing to officially add to support or debunk this theory other than a hopeful feeling (or intense desire) that this had been the strategy of NCSoft from the beginning.   COH did have a massive fan base but most of which came and went while others of us continued to live religiously in the world we loved.  Why would NCSoft save a game in which 6 months after new content arrived certain fickle players would already have tired of it and moved on to other things until a new issue or content arrived.  Perhaps they felt that it would be better suited to invest money and create a new and improved world that would keep the attentions of more players longer.  And by shutting the game down in advance, they gave a jolt of reality to everyone that COH wouldnt always be there when you decided to find your way back. And effectively made us all want the game even more. I know its just mainly wishful thinking and blind hope but who knows???   I will keep clinging to whatever bastion of hope there might be and believing that our beloved world will come back in one form or another!! Yes, I may be a hopeless optimist but God I miss it!!!

[healix]

I will keep clinging to whatever bastion of hope there might be and believing that our beloved world will come back in one form or another!! Yes, I may be a hopeless optimist but God I miss it!!!

This a thousand times...