Oh look! We saved an MMO. Just not ours....=(

[OzonePrime]

Its not "victory" until I can play CoH again.

Yes!

[Axonius]

They had no choice but to keep GW1 alive. If they didn't, GW2 players would start looking over their shoulder.

I personally doubt COX was influential.

[Surelle]

I seem to remember hearing even years ago that ArenaNet had an escape clause built into their contracts with NCSoft.   People used to talk about it even back then, because NCSoft was always known as a bit of a game killer.

Much as I love CoH, I really don't think we or anyone connected to CoH had much to do with this, honestly.  I think the real answer is in ArenaNet's original contracts.  I mean, do you think NC would have given Paragon Studios severance packages if it hadn't been bound contractually to do so?  I don't.

And wasn't GW1 taking in even less money than CoH when CoH got the axe?  If NC could shutter GW1 for good, they'd be doing it.

[JanessaVR]

And wasn't GW1 taking in even less money than CoH when CoH got the axe?  If NC could shutter GW1 for good, they'd be doing it.

Depressingly, I suspect you may be correct.  Sigh...

[Aggelakis]

And wasn't GW1 taking in even less money than CoH when CoH got the axe?  If NC could shutter GW1 for good, they'd be doing it.

Depressingly, I suspect you may be correct.  Sigh...

GW1 took in more total than CoH total over the life of both games, and GW1 came out a year later. After stopping expansions on GW1, the dev crew was down to a skeleton anyway for the last couple years. The last time they had a full dev crew was 2007 to get out Eye of the North; they whittled it down slowly as Guild Wars 2 ramped up. Now it's just "leave the lights on" mode and if something catastrophic breaks, they'll pull someone (or someones) off another game until it's fixed, then put them back on the other game.

[JaguarX]

GW1 took in more total than CoH total over the life of both games, and GW1 came out a year later. After stopping expansions on GW1, the dev crew was down to a skeleton anyway for the last couple years. The last time they had a full dev crew was 2007 to get out Eye of the North; they whittled it down slowly as Guild Wars 2 ramped up. Now it's just "leave the lights on" mode and if something catastrophic breaks, they'll pull someone (or someones) off another game until it's fixed, then put them back on the other game.

dang.

How about flowing capes? Did coh have more flowing capes than GW1?

[Illusionss]

And wasn't GW1 taking in even less money than CoH when CoH got the axe?  If NC could shutter GW1 for good, they'd be doing it.

I feel this is an accurate assessment; if they only dared, GW1 would be history. But they don't want to anger ArenaNet.

FOR NOW. Eventually, as soon as they DO dare, GW1 will be history. And, sad to say, I still feel GW1 should have gotten the axe before CoX, since those players had somewhere to go. We didn't.

If I played Lineage or Aion I would be shaking in my boots.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I still feel GW1 should have gotten the axe before CoX, since those players had somewhere to go. We didn't.

No doubt.  GW 1 and GW 2 may have their difference, but they are still brothers and would make for a very good refugee.  All us CoHers have that is close is CO which is more like a distant cousin.....possibly even second cousin.

Also I am curious and some what impressed at the amount of pull Arenanet has with NCSoft.  I dunno what they did or who they kissed where but NCSoft seems to be careful about stomping all over their toes.  It's a shame Paragon didn't have the same kind of relationship.  They certainly deserved it.

[FatherXmas]

If I played Lineage or Aion I would be shaking in my boots.

Again why?  Lineage is their biggest money maker last quarter.  Yes Aion has faded in popularity in the last few years but it's still the and most popular MMORPG in PC Cafes in Korea, 2nd in sales in Korea after Lineage and 3rd overall.  You can never discount how well a game is doing in the home market when it comes to guessing if NCSOFT thinks the game should be closed or not. 

Lineage last quarter had 96% of it's total worldwide sales, in Korea.  Sure they closed the servers here in NA.  By the time they released it here Evercrack had already shown the NA market two years before that 3rd person PoV MMOs were the future.  Who wanted to play a sprite style, perceived UO "clone" when DAoC, AO and Runequest rolled out the same year in NA plus two EQ expansions?  But rolling out your most popular game from the homeland into your new NA market was a logical choice.  No doing so would be like McDonalds not putting the Big Mac on the menu in Korea.  Sure after 10 years in NA they finally threw in the towel because at some point business decisions need to be made with the head and not the heart.

[FatherXmas]

No doubt.  GW 1 and GW 2 may have their difference, but they are still brothers and would make for a very good refugee.  All us CoHers have that is close is CO which is more like a distant cousin.....possibly even second cousin.

Also I am curious and some what impressed at the amount of pull Arenanet has with NCSoft.  I dunno what they did or who they kissed where but NCSoft seems to be careful about stomping all over their toes.  It's a shame Paragon didn't have the same kind of relationship.  They certainly deserved it.

Well from what I can tell ArenaNet was NCSOFT's first western development studio they bought outright.  They may have financed other games in a joint partnership/distributor-developer relationship but they wanted to own ArenaNet.

Why?  Because it was founded by members of Blizzard and who were lead developers on both StarCraft and WarCraft series as well as Battle.net.  Since StarCraft is wildly popular in Korea, employing these individuals would be considered a major coup.  I think it was their reputation that helped them forge a rather unique arrangement with their new owners.

[Lucretia MacEvil]

Is there any chance at all that NCsoft could/would put CoX back up in "leave the lights on" mode?
I don't want to get my hopes up, but I do want our world back.

[Illusionss]

Again why?  Lineage is their biggest money maker last quarter.  Yes Aion has faded in popularity in the last few years but it's still the and most popular MMORPG in PC Cafes in Korea, 2nd in sales in Korea after Lineage and 3rd overall.

Because we are talking about the #1 MMO killer, and no one and nothing is safe. Especially older games.

NCSoft does not make rational decisions. They do what they want to do.... except to ArenaNet, and my hat is off to those intrepid souls who seem to have NCSOft by the cojones. NCSoft doesn't fear much, but they seem to fear ArenaNet. Good job.

[Illusionss]

Is there any chance at all that NCsoft could/would put CoX back up in "leave the lights on" mode?
I don't want to get my hopes up, but I do want our world back.

I would say the chances are between slim and none; had that been in the cards, they would have done that already.

[Taceus Jiwede]

Why?  Because it was founded by members of Blizzard and who were lead developers on both StarCraft and WarCraft series as well as Battle.net.  Since StarCraft is wildly popular in Korea, employing these individuals would be considered a major coup.  I think it was their reputation that helped them forge a rather unique arrangement with their new owners.

Now that is interesting.  I had no idea.  Your post would make sense of their treatment.  I just assumed they had a wicked lawyer.

[FatherXmas]

And Carbine Studios, the guys who are doing Wildstar, were some of the original people behind WoW.  It helps if you have a rep in the industry.

But it did bite NCSOFT in the butt with the Garriotts.  Win some, lose some.

[FatherXmas]

Because we are talking about the #1 MMO killer, and no one and nothing is safe. Especially older games.

But not the ones in the homeland, the ones they developed, ever.  Lineage II is their weakest MMO right now in Korea and it's 7th in Korea after ArcheAge, WoW and Maple Story.

[srmalloy]

I would say the chances are between slim and none; had that been in the cards, they would have done that already.

For them to do that now, they would have to establish a new server farm -- and you can bet that by 0800 the next working day after the shutdown the CoH servers were already being wiped and repurposed, whether by NCSoft or by their hosting company -- with all of the other support servers, along with the Net connections to feed them, and then load the last backups for each game server, the authentication server, the store (you think they'd even think about bringing it back if it was going to be just a money sink?), and then contact all the people who had CoH accounts, particularly the subscribers, and hope that enough of them came back to be able to at least break even on operating costs. And they got enough vitriol from the playerbase during the sunset period to make them believe that they would only get a small fraction of the playerbase back -- certainly not enough to pay for the upkeep, much less make a profit.

Any chance of the game going into maintenance mode died irrecoverably at midnight on November 30, 2012.

[General Idiot]

And Carbine Studios, the guys who are doing Wildstar, were some of the original people behind WoW.  It helps if you have a rep in the industry.

....and suddenly Wildstar's choice of art style makes sense.

[Memorandum]

It doesn't look like anyone else has seen this article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun yet.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/21/guild-wars-1-development-to-be-halted-automated/

To summarize, NCSoft has decided that instead of shutting down Guild Wars 1, they will instead automate all of the scheduled events, tournaments, and other functions that used to be handled by the (admittedly small) dev team, end all new development for the game, and leave the game running in perpetuity.

Or at least until no one is looking and they can shut it down without the bad publicity they'll get. 

On the one hand, I'm very happy that a community is not being destroyed as a result of these actions and that this game and that community will get to live on and have adventures past when the development of the game is considered profitable to the company.

On the other hand....NOW, NCSOFT?  NOW??  Now you get it??

And you thought our actions wouldn't produce anything positive.

I can't type any more.  I'm physically wounded by this news.

Sorry to set it straight. The decision has nothing to do with us.

It is very simple: Guildwars 1 and Guildwars 2 are connected. Guildwars 1 interacts with Guildwars 2. You cannot earn specific items (armors and more) in Guildwars 2, if you did not finish specific quests and rewards in Guildwars 1. So there is no way to shut down Guildwars 1 if you don't make a big changement in a lot of stuff (rewards) in Guildwars 2. So from the sales point of view... it is very logic and stratetical to keep guildwars 1 running, because NCSoft/Arenanet makes more money that way, if you want special items/bonus in Guildwars 2 nobody can get if you did not play Guildwars 1.

So here is now the link, explaining what I'm talking about:
http://hom.guildwars2.com/en/#page=welcome

This is how the hall of monuments looks in GW1 (there exist already a lot of NPCs there, you can also store pets found in GW1 in the hall of monuments, to get a higher legend ranking):



This is how the hall of monuments looks in GW2, as example these items you can only optain, if you made archivements in GW1. You cannot get these items in GW2 without playing GW1!



As you can see, I have a blue portal stone in my inventory for teleporting me to the hall of monuments. I don't know if GW2 players have it too (who did not buy GW1 and connected both accounts, because you need to connect both accounts to get the benefits as GW1 is managed by NCSoft and GW2 by Arenanet - who knows the reason for the decision behind that...).

[JaguarX]

Sorry to set it straight. The decision has nothing to do with us.

It is very simple: Guildwars 1 and Guildwars 2 are connected. Guildwars 1 interacts with Guildwars 2. You cannot earn specific items (armors and more) in Guildwars 2, if you did not finish specific quests and rewards in Guildwars 1. So there is no way to shut down Guildwars 1 if you don't make a big changement in a lot of stuff (rewards) in Guildwars 2. So from the sales point of view... it is very logic and stratetical to keep guildwars 1 running, because NCSoft/Arenanet makes more money that way, if you want special items/bonus in Guildwars 2 nobody can get if you did not play Guildwars 1.

(going to add screen and infos soon, just some minutes to get them)

ah. that makes perfect logical sense.