How does one keep from giving up?

[LadyVamp]

Going to bundle my replies here:

Which one to support should be the one with the best chance of producing product.  The others should collapse into the one supported.  I realize that this can be a very emotional situation but multiple projects fragment us which goes against the whole idea in the first place.

As for the corporate structure, I'd prefer a co-op or credit union like structure where the players are automatically the owners.  I would feel more comfortable contributing resources in that structure.  That said, I can understand the desire to shy away from corporations given NCSoft is a corporation and they did some terrible things.  Keep in mind it is the leaders of the corp that did those things.

With a corp in place we gain the following:

• No single owner as we the players can structure it so that we are the owners
• Legal protection should there be a lawsuit
• Better access to capital aka money.  Banks/venture capital/angel investors more likely to loan to a corp than a person
• if we hold the company private, no other company can just buy us out aka corporate raiding

It can be structured as a not-for-profit.

Right now, Golden Girl, you might be in a partnership which is an unincorporated business aka a company.  You have unlimited liability, your partners can sell you out, and you can't get access to better capitalization.  And, if it makes a profit, you get to pay the taxes as part of your personal income.  I'm no tax expert, but I could see some real headaches.

And last but not least, sorry for hijacking the thread.  This should really be in its own thread.

[Golden Girl]

As I mentioned earlier, because of the way we're set up, we don't actually need invesment to launch the game - additonal funding will simply bring the launch date forward.

[downix]

Going to bundle my replies here:

Which one to support should be the one with the best chance of producing product.  The others should collapse into the one supported.  I realize that this can be a very emotional situation but multiple projects fragment us which goes against the whole idea in the first place.

As for the corporate structure, I'd prefer a co-op or credit union like structure where the players are automatically the owners.  I would feel more comfortable contributing resources in that structure.  That said, I can understand the desire to shy away from corporations given NCSoft is a corporation and they did some terrible things.  Keep in mind it is the leaders of the corp that did those things.

With a corp in place we gain the following:

• No single owner as we the players can structure it so that we are the owners
• Legal protection should there be a lawsuit
• Better access to capital aka money.  Banks/venture capital/angel investors more likely to loan to a corp than a person
• if we hold the company private, no other company can just buy us out aka corporate raiding

It can be structured as a not-for-profit.

Right now, Golden Girl, you might be in a partnership which is an unincorporated business aka a company.  You have unlimited liability, your partners can sell you out, and you can't get access to better capitalization.  And, if it makes a profit, you get to pay the taxes as part of your personal income.  I'm no tax expert, but I could see some real headaches.

And last but not least, sorry for hijacking the thread.  This should really be in its own thread.

The concern of "players as owners" brings up support cost. You will invariably have the game supported by a handful, with the result being an eventual collapse. These games are not free to run, after all. That is why MWM went for developers-as-owners, those who put the work in get a piece of the pie. Of course it is not being set up for huge profits, but to support costs.

[FenrirEX]

I guess I should throw a few more things in here.  The reason I initially posted this is because I looked on Matt Miller's Twitter and it struck me that there didn't seem to be anything on CoH in weeks.  It seemed like he'd moved on.  Hell, I guess all the devs had moved on.  And that's what started this: the people we had been so appreciative of running a great game had moved on in less than six months.  That's a really quick recovery period, honestly.

All this talk of "Plan Z"?  I'm not really interested, partially because, well, I'm a furry.  And the first thought I'm sure you all have (after any inappropriate jokes, so let's just skip those) is "wait, why would that make you uninterested in the Plan Z options?"  And the answer's simple:  The costume options aren't gonna be there.  I was able to make a lot of anthro characters in CoH, and that was one of the REALLY big appeals for me.  Any of the Plan Z options won't really care about a small section like me, they'll focus on the big interests.  Or that's how I feel.

I got to play the idealized version of myself in City of Heroes.  I got to do it with my significant other, and we had a lot of stuff in it.  When CoH tanked, it hit our relationship.  We're still together, but it never stayed the same after it.  And it's been hard to figure things out sometimes when a big part of what we had together was taken away.  I'm not saying that was the whole thing, but...no other game is really the same, and I don't really know if the Plan Z options will be either.

I want to stop hurting from this game.  I want to move on with my (gaming) life.  But I feel emotionally stuck in the mud left behind from CoH being washed away.  I have no idea how to really cope with this, and the hope that the game would come back in some meaningful form (meaning Paragon City, not some replacement) was a hope I was holding on to from day one.  And now...I just don't know what I'm doing most days.  I have too much free time before college resumes in the fall, and I just don't know how to stop hurting from CoH being ripped away from me.  And the hope of it coming back seems faded and fake now, so I just don't know what to believe in, or what to hope for.

I want to say I want to be able to play a game where I can be my characters again, but those characters were built around Paragon City in many cases.  I don't know how to rebuild them, or if I even could if something else came along.  I want to stop seeing the game in my dreams only to wake up and it's gone.  I want this ache to stop.

[downix]

I guess I should throw a few more things in here.  The reason I initially posted this is because I looked on Matt Miller's Twitter and it struck me that there didn't seem to be anything on CoH in weeks.  It seemed like he'd moved on.  Hell, I guess all the devs had moved on.  And that's what started this: the people we had been so appreciative of running a great game had moved on in less than six months.  That's a really quick recovery period, honestly.

All this talk of "Plan Z"?  I'm not really interested, partially because, well, I'm a furry.  And the first thought I'm sure you all have (after any inappropriate jokes, so let's just skip those) is "wait, why would that make you uninterested in the Plan Z options?"  And the answer's simple:  The costume options aren't gonna be there.  I was able to make a lot of anthro characters in CoH, and that was one of the REALLY big appeals for me.  Any of the Plan Z options won't really care about a small section like me, they'll focus on the big interests.  Or that's how I feel.

I got to play the idealized version of myself in City of Heroes.  I got to do it with my significant other, and we had a lot of stuff in it.  When CoH tanked, it hit our relationship.  We're still together, but it never stayed the same after it.  And it's been hard to figure things out sometimes when a big part of what we had together was taken away.  I'm not saying that was the whole thing, but...no other game is really the same, and I don't really know if the Plan Z options will be either.

I want to stop hurting from this game.  I want to move on with my (gaming) life.  But I feel emotionally stuck in the mud left behind from CoH being washed away.  I have no idea how to really cope with this, and the hope that the game would come back in some meaningful form (meaning Paragon City, not some replacement) was a hope I was holding on to from day one.  And now...I just don't know what I'm doing most days.  I have too much free time before college resumes in the fall, and I just don't know how to stop hurting from CoH being ripped away from me.  And the hope of it coming back seems faded and fake now, so I just don't know what to believe in, or what to hope for.

I want to say I want to be able to play a game where I can be my characters again, but those characters were built around Paragon City in many cases.  I don't know how to rebuild them, or if I even could if something else came along.  I want to stop seeing the game in my dreams only to wake up and it's gone.  I want this ache to stop.

While your particular tastes I may not share, I see no reason *not* to offer the costume options.

As for the others, there is little solace within my power other than to keep doing what I am.

[FenrirEX]

As for the others, there is little solace within my power other than to keep doing what I am.

Suffice to say, I've had a lot on my mind regarding CoH for a while, and I threw myself into hoping for CoH to come back in order to keep the depression from getting to me early on.  Clearly, hope is no longer enough to keep my doubts at bay.

[downix]

Suffice to say, I've had a lot on my mind regarding CoH for a while, and I threw myself into hoping for CoH to come back in order to keep the depression from getting to me early on.  Clearly, hope is no longer enough to keep my doubts at bay.

And this is why I refuse to give up. I cannot give you Paragon, same as Humpty Dumpty could not be put back together again. But I'm doing my best to give you, and everyone else in the community, a new home as best I can.

[Golden Girl]

All this talk of "Plan Z"?  I'm not really interested, partially because, well, I'm a furry.  And the first thought I'm sure you all have (after any inappropriate jokes, so let's just skip those) is "wait, why would that make you uninterested in the Plan Z options?"  And the answer's simple:  The costume options aren't gonna be there.  I was able to make a lot of anthro characters in CoH, and that was one of the REALLY big appeals for me.  Any of the Plan Z options won't really care about a small section like me, they'll focus on the big interests.  Or that's how I feel.

Then your feelings are wrong

One of the fundamental goals for "Heroes and Villains" ever since we started work on it back in September is to create a game that allows the community to transition their character concepts to their new home with as little disruption as possible, while still keeping things legally acceptable.
And while there are only a couple fo small-ish animal parts included in the first wave of costume parts curently being created, further animal themed parts certainly aren't near the bottom of our costume part to-do list.

[Captain Electric]

Well I'm convinced at this point that we'll be able to play City of Heroes on a well-loved and maintained community server eventually. But that doesn't make any of these projects less important.

I think some people are drawing lines in the sand for the wrong reasons, way too early. If you've got to do it, please don't do it because of management or organizational concerns. If you're just a supportive fan, those concerns shouldn't be yours. If you're going to draw a line in the sand, do it over something that bears more relevance at this stage. Design or thematic direction. Vision. Fun factor. The furry guy actually has the right idea (never thought I'd type that). All he's thinking about is whether he's going to have his costume options back. The wrong combination of people getting new jobs, moving, getting married or having kids can and will set a volunteer effort on its ear in short order anyway, no matter if they liked to go on and on about LLCs or a less traditional model. No one at a gaming expo will be wowed by an extremely advanced grasp of project organization. Let's talk more about business structures when these projects get beyond primitive tech demos. Not that I have the right to tell people what to talk about; but I do reserve my right to scratch my head at people, this being the Internet and a forum and all. 

Of course, it would be nicer if people didn't make the lines in the sand any thicker or wider than they already have to be. I know people think there should be only one project, but there isn't a possible reality where we ever would have gotten just one project out of this bad thing happening. Frankly I'm surprised we only ended up with three, and I'll be more surprised if that number doesn't grow again. I could have told you this after my first day on the old official forums. We're a diverse, mixed bag. Why this is still a surprise all these months later, I have no idea, but these projects split apart over design goals that are fundamentally different. That part couldn't be helped. It really couldn't. And by asking Golden Girl and all of her developers to ditch their vision of a truly very similar game...for the Phoenix Project's vision of an evolved spiritual successor (which is in many aspects apples to oranges, you must realize)...and do it all because the Phoenix Project is bigger...you're not asking everyone to "just get along". You're asking a small dev team to allow their vision to be sublimated, gobbled up and washed out by a larger entity with greater resources. And why? Because they're bigger. And that kind of reasoning puts you about one step away from selling out to a board of fat cat shareholders. Behind every request like this is a veiled dismissal of someone's vision. You couldn't pay me to embrace that sort of behavior, considering where we all stand.

This community isn't the Phoenix Project, or Heroes and Villains, or Valiance Online, or the community server, or SEGs, or Save City of Heroes. It's all of the above. You couldn't have changed that outcome without also changing what makes these people and their projects so worthwhile. A team with passion for their vision is a team that boots up their computers every day and programs and creates art assets and pushes their plans forward. They're all doing the right thing.

[Surelle]

There are 234897 fantasy-based, pointy-eared MMOs out there (with multiples of them run by the same publishers no less!) and everyone is okay with that.

I hope ALL the superhero games come to fruition, release, and succeed.  The more the merrier as far as I'm concerned. 

CoH will always be near and dear to my heart, and I hope like heck we get to play it again (likely on a compatible server), but I don't have ill will toward any of the other Plan Zs.

[JaguarX]

I guess I should throw a few more things in here.  The reason I initially posted this is because I looked on Matt Miller's Twitter and it struck me that there didn't seem to be anything on CoH in weeks.  It seemed like he'd moved on.  Hell, I guess all the devs had moved on.  And that's what started this: the people we had been so appreciative of running a great game had moved on in less than six months.  That's a really quick recovery period, honestly.

Well many probably have moved on due to survival and that survival in that job field may require focus on their new job and or new project. Although six months, eh, there is no time limit for moving on from things. Hell within six months of even the closets family member death people are back into their normal routine. Some as little as a week and others as soon as tha tcasket in the ground they are good to go. While others, go hermit for decades.

You want to stop hurting? You can get there if you want. It may not be easy. But first thing first, is figuring out what can stop that hurt. There is no game like COX. COX was, well, COX. And that quality make it excellent when it was up and running. But the downside is when it's gone of course nothing to replace it is there.

Now COX didnt always exist sometimes what I found to ease the hurt is to try to remember what was it like prior to COX. What made you happy prior to up to 2004 (if ya was there since the beginning)? What brought you joy and happiness during those times?

[Thunder Glove]

At this point, I'm just checking back here now and then, hoping for news of something I can actually play.  I know all the Plan Z efforts are a long way from fruition (and I don't know whether I'll be able to run them on my old laptop to begin with), and while I'm rooting for Task Force Hail Mary to bear fruit, so far the companies they sent the pitch to haven't even acknowledged our existence.

I really just want to play City of Heroes again, not something new and uncertain.  (I don't begrudge the Plan Z efforts - quite the opposite, I'm keeping a close eye on them via their respective Facebook pages - but they're not anywhere near done yet, and by necessity they're going to start off very rough and bare-bones, rather than the eight years of development and fine-tuning that CoH had)

I miss my characters.  Even if I have to recreate them from the ground up, I want to play them again.  (I've been really missing my Thugs/Traps Mastermind lately, for some reason, and he wasn't even one of my mains)

Icon is a fun and distracting paint-by-numbers kit, but it's not a living world where I can actually play the characters I create, and that's the part I enjoy.  I like to see all those powers and how they work in practice, against large groups of enemies or against single hard targets, not just as numbers in a description.

So... I'm mostly just waiting and hoping for a community server announcement.

[dwturducken]

I guess I should throw a few more things in here.  The reason I initially posted this is because I looked on Matt Miller's Twitter and it struck me that there didn't seem to be anything on CoH in weeks.  It seemed like he'd moved on.  Hell, I guess all the devs had moved on.  And that's what started this: the people we had been so appreciative of running a great game had moved on in less than six months.  That's a really quick recovery period, honestly.

I don't think that looking at the devs' Twitter feeds is necessarily a bellwether for their emotional ties to the game. You really should check out Posi's column on MMORPG.com. He talks about various aspects of developing these games, and his frame of reference is generally CoH. His two-parter about the test that they would give prospective new hires is particularly enlightening.

I would agree with those who have pointed out that "moving on" was necessary for their survival. Was it a labor of love? Obviously! Would they come back, given the chance? I would bet that most of them would, under the right conditions.

[Rae]

Task Force Hail Mary? Losing momentum, VV gone since April (health issues?), and both campaigns were mostly ignored.  Again, not much we can do: efficacy of such campaigns exponentially drops as the time from the COH shutdown grows longer.  Rae is trying a third target, fingers crossed.  (I'm pessimistic on selling something you don't own yourself.  Comes from years of trying to offload government purchased and disposed E-Waste before letting "recyclers" have at it: unless someone has an explicit interest in it beforehand, it really is ice-skating uphill.)

Rae and Quinch - once he's finished The Epic Move of 2013 (tm). In all honesty, he does a lot more work than I do in TFHM

[downix]

Well I'm convinced at this point that we'll be able to play City of Heroes on a well-loved and maintained community server eventually. But that doesn't make any of these projects less important.

I think some people are drawing lines in the sand for the wrong reasons, way too early. If you've got to do it, please don't do it because of management or organizational concerns. If you're just a supportive fan, those concerns shouldn't be yours. If you're going to draw a line in the sand, do it over something that bears more relevance at this stage. Design or thematic direction. Vision. Fun factor. The furry guy actually has the right idea (never thought I'd type that). All he's thinking about is whether he's going to have his costume options back. The wrong combination of people getting new jobs, moving, getting married or having kids can and will set a volunteer effort on its ear in short order anyway, no matter if they liked to go on and on about LLCs or a less traditional model. No one at a gaming expo will be wowed by an extremely advanced grasp of project organization. Let's talk more about business structures when these projects get beyond primitive tech demos. Not that I have the right to tell people what to talk about; but I do reserve my right to scratch my head at people, this being the Internet and a forum and all. 

Of course, it would be nicer if people didn't make the lines in the sand any thicker or wider than they already have to be. I know people think there should be only one project, but there isn't a possible reality where we ever would have gotten just one project out of this bad thing happening. Frankly I'm surprised we only ended up with three, and I'll be more surprised if that number doesn't grow again. I could have told you this after my first day on the old official forums. We're a diverse, mixed bag. Why this is still a surprise all these months later, I have no idea, but these projects split apart over design goals that are fundamentally different. That part couldn't be helped. It really couldn't. And by asking Golden Girl and all of her developers to ditch their vision of a truly very similar game...for the Phoenix Project's vision of an evolved spiritual successor (which is in many aspects apples to oranges, you must realize)...and do it all because the Phoenix Project is bigger...you're not asking everyone to "just get along". You're asking a small dev team to allow their vision to be sublimated, gobbled up and washed out by a larger entity with greater resources. And why? Because they're bigger. And that kind of reasoning puts you about one step away from selling out to a board of fat cat shareholders. Behind every request like this is a veiled dismissal of someone's vision. You couldn't pay me to embrace that sort of behavior, considering where we all stand.

This community isn't the Phoenix Project, or Heroes and Villains, or Valiance Online, or the community server, or SEGs, or Save City of Heroes. It's all of the above. You couldn't have changed that outcome without also changing what makes these people and their projects so worthwhile. A team with passion for their vision is a team that boots up their computers every day and programs and creates art assets and pushes their plans forward. They're all doing the right thing.

Well said.

My only concern with H&V is the lack of legal protection. I've seen very good, solid projects get shut down due to a failure to protect themselves legally. Right now, if I were the king-of-all-jerks, I could file a few pieces of paper, and shut them down permanently due to this lack of protection, and there is nothing anybody could do to stop me. I'm not, however, the king-of-all-jerks, so instead I warn GG.

GG's approach is something this community needs. Our approach is also something this community needs, as is Valiance. If LadyVamp is serious about starting an open source project alternative, I would forward her our old Multiverse work immediately, to give her group a leg up.

If any of my comments came across as "line in the sand" you have my apologies. I truly am concerned over what is a basic foundational mis-step which could cost the community dearly. GG's vision may not be mine, but she, and her team, deserve the opportunity to let it grow and develop, to blossom into its own grandeur. It would be a shame for it to be lost. If it were, of course GG and her team would be welcome in TPP. I will be honest in saying, however, that I hope that never happens.

We have here a golden opportunity here. Three solid projects, each driven by a different set of goals and ideals. And the end of the day, we may prove how CoH was truly the gold standard for MMORPG's, and is the very thing which can propel the game market forward. And the best victory we can ever achieve is just that, to be able to tell those who wronged us that they don't matter anymore.

That will be a sweet victory indeed.

[Turjan]

All this talk of "Plan Z"?  I'm not really interested, partially because, well, I'm a furry.  And the first thought I'm sure you all have (after any inappropriate jokes, so let's just skip those) is "wait, why would that make you uninterested in the Plan Z options?"  And the answer's simple:  The costume options aren't gonna be there.

FenrirEX, you (and your significant other) are as much a part of the CoH community as anybody here - and that includes everyone working on the "CoH reborn" projects, whatever form they take. So don't think that your voice would be ignored just because you favoured fur over spandex!

The "Project Z" endeavours are still a fair ol' way from an end product, so I'd say that now is the time to get involved with those projects, if you want to see a specific feature appear in the finished result. Why not visit the sub-forums here and make your requests for furry themed costume pieces?

Everyone working on the Z projects loved CoH, otherwise they wouldn't be doing what they're doing right now. And arguably the biggest 'thing' that made CoH what it was wasn't the game itself - it was us, the player community. Everyone involved in the Z projects remembers this, and if a player tells them they'd like to be able to do something in a new game that they were able to do in CoH, then they will not scoff or mock or sneer - rather they will listen and try to accommodate that player's request.

Remember, the Z projects ARE us, because we ARE CoH - through us the memories will live on. And your memory is just as valid as anyone else's - don't ever forget that, or let anyone try to convince you otherwise

[JaguarX]

Well said.

My only concern with H&V is the lack of legal protection. I've seen very good, solid projects get shut down due to a failure to protect themselves legally. Right now, if I were the king-of-all-jerks, I could file a few pieces of paper, and shut them down permanently due to this lack of protection, and there is nothing anybody could do to stop me. I'm not, however, the king-of-all-jerks, so instead I warn GG.

Yeah that is the common misconception about law. It's not always about who is right or wrong but sometimes it boils down who have proper ammo and or most ammo. Meaning best lawyers and or a crap load of cash to spend. Think divorce/criminal/family lawyers are exspensive? Corporate lawyers on the bottom rung make some of the mid grade divorce lawyers look like the bargin $1 bin at Family Dollar.

 According to the 2003 Report of Economic Survey published by the American Intellectual Property Lawyers Association, the average cost of patent litigation is $2M, trademark litigation is $600K, and other types of IP litigation average between $500K and $800K. Keywords-average costs ten years ago.

For relative the average contested divorce is $21,000.

[MakoMako]

I guess I should throw a few more things in here.  The reason I initially posted this is because I looked on Matt Miller's Twitter and it struck me that there didn't seem to be anything on CoH in weeks.  It seemed like he'd moved on.  Hell, I guess all the devs had moved on.  And that's what started this: the people we had been so appreciative of running a great game had moved on in less than six months.  That's a really quick recovery period, honestly.

I like to think they moved on due to necessity and essentially being forced to do so, due to nondisclosure.

Think about it. We have every right and the time and money to continue doing what we do while fighting. They can't exactly cry hate for NCSoft or directly partake in such matters that could be considered a deliberate attempt at influencing a company they were fired from. They're more powerless than we are, especially since if they -don't- move on, they aren't exactly going to eat well.

Let's not forget they were encouraging us to keep shouting, back in the day, as the negative reaction was a lot stronger than NCSoft was prepared for. The key is to keep this reaction going.

Someone earlier in this topic mentioned VV had left the initiative. Someone that was actually a powerful drive for a lot of us. Does anyone know what happened? I knew her mother had died, but it's kind of hard to see how, after all the words of encouragement, she'd just disappear like that.

[JaguarX]

I like to think they moved on due to necessity and essentially being forced to do so, due to nondisclosure.

Think about it. We have every right and the time and money to continue doing what we do while fighting. They can't exactly cry hate for NCSoft or directly partake in such matters that could be considered a deliberate attempt at influencing a company they were fired from. They're more powerless than we are, especially since if they -don't- move on, they aren't exactly going to eat well.

Let's not forget they were encouraging us to keep shouting, back in the day, as the negative reaction was a lot stronger than NCSoft was prepared for. The key is to keep this reaction going.

Someone earlier in this topic mentioned VV had left the initiative. Someone that was actually a powerful drive for a lot of us. Does anyone know what happened? I knew her mother had died, but it's kind of hard to see how, after all the words of encouragement, she'd just disappear like that.

Well to tell you the truth I understand VV absence for now. See how much losing a game hurt and some people are still just as hurt after six months? Now this is death of mother for her. It takes time to get over that, not to mention depending on the situation, a while to get all the stuff in order and set and conforting other family memebers in this time of loss and or being comforted. I havent experienced it personally yet, but I could only imagine the feeling of loss losing a parent which I would imagine make losing a game seems like a pin prick compared to the loss of a mother which is probably like being ripped open in a slow manner.

While I hope she can return when she can, I rather her take her time after that type of loss and take as long as she needs without feeling pressured to hurry up and come back here.

Hell, I never even knew the woman hardly nor her mother but still it was sad to hear about that death.

[Aggelakis]

VV's mother died, then VV herself got really sick for a rather long time, and she does have a day job, you know, writing books, with deadlines and meetings and traveling and stuff. So she got really far behind with repeated shitstorms and to be honest, saving City is less important than having a life (and mourning the loss of someone else's).