New efforts!

[saipaman]

I'll pull a number out of the air too.  I'd say you'll see less than 10% of the maximum population return.  Look how many deserted the game at the initial closure announcement.

[LaughingAlex]

Ok guys no need for pessimism here.  I know someone here disliked post ED and another was giving an especially bad number.  Seriously you two you need to be more optimistic, you don't know how popular the game would be on relaunch.  It could end up more-so then before it could end up less but we don't know unless we try.  And besides if you read the earlier comments CoH 2 may even come into development with a better engine, yeah, sequal to CoX.  The team from what Ironwolf said is actually quite ambitious.

Edit; Though then again maybe some of that pessimism may help get the IP released to :).

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

I'll pull a number out of the air too.  I'd say you'll see less than 10% of the maximum population return.  Look how many deserted the game at the initial closure announcement.

You pulled it out of somewhere, i'll give you that.  :o
Right, moving on...

Anyway, i recently started fiddling with Icon and was actually surprised how good the game still looks compared to some of the MMOs out there that are only a couple years old. Now admittedly that's using more recent costume assets and maps for the most part, some of the old art assets have aged poorly is the nice way of putting it, but for me the game was as much or even more about the game mechanics and animations/flow of combat than how detailed the models were.

If the mysterious bidders looking to buy the original game in order to launch CoH2 using UE4 or a similar engine i'd be fine with that* if they could manage to keep the basic look and feel of the original's gameplay. Oh, and if the original was still available to play as well. Meridian59 has been around for over 20 years and still attracts enough players to keep the servers running, the i24 version of CoH should be able to attract that level of players as well even if it was put mostly into maintenance mode in favor of CoH2. i'd almost certainly play both anyway.



*Well, not so fine with the Hero Engine. Unless it's been radically rebuilt since SWTOR launched i'd hate to see it inflicted on any other game i'd play.

[Kelltick]

*Well, not so fine with the Hero Engine. Unless it's been radically rebuilt since SWTOR launched i'd hate to see it inflicted on any other game i'd play.

The Hero Engine as utilized in SWTOR is not anything close to a finished product as released and available for license by HE.  SWTOR bought and received essentially an Alpha version that they knew wasn't finished nor even optimized under the assumption that their in-house staff could mold it to be what they needed it to be, and optimize it accordingly.  They obviously failed, but to base an opinion of HE off SWTOR alone is not prudent.

http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/

[LaughingAlex]

You pulled it out of somewhere, i'll give you that.  :o
Right, moving on...

Anyway, i recently started fiddling with Icon and was actually surprised how good the game still looks compared to some of the MMOs out there that are only a couple years old. Now admittedly that's using more recent costume assets and maps for the most part, some of the old art assets have aged poorly is the nice way of putting it, but for me the game was as much or even more about the game mechanics and animations/flow of combat than how detailed the models were.

If the mysterious bidders looking to buy the original game in order to launch CoH2 using UE4 or a similar engine i'd be fine with that* if they could manage to keep the basic look and feel of the original's gameplay. Oh, and if the original was still available to play as well. Meridian59 has been around for over 20 years and still attracts enough players to keep the servers running, the i24 version of CoH should be able to attract that level of players as well even if it was put mostly into maintenance mode in favor of CoH2. i'd almost certainly play both anyway.



*Well, not so fine with the Hero Engine. Unless it's been radically rebuilt since SWTOR launched i'd hate to see it inflicted on any other game i'd play.

I think you'd be surprised, unreal engine is used in so many different ways.  funniest thing about DCUO was that, it's very cartoon like, which was very unusual for an UE3 engine game.  It really just boils down to the artists.

[Ironwolf]

AP33 says you are wrong at 10%.

A lot of people were so hurt by the announcement of the closure that they stopped playing. People deal with grief very differently. I just played as I always did and just had fun. Some were completely crushed by the closure and just drifted away.

I think honestly we would start with a bunch of people coming back for the first year and then taper down to say 50k in subs. You see the different is I personally intend on marketing the heck out of the game. It would be an awesome thing if we could pool a kickstarter type thing have a video made and run it at the start of Marvel Agents of Shield. I was having a random discussion last night at fighters practice and 2 of our local knights were in the beta and once I told them what was happening they were very happy.

[Solitaire]

AP33 says you are wrong at 10%.

A lot of people were so hurt by the announcement of the closure that they stopped playing. People deal with grief very differently. I just played as I always did and just had fun. Some were completely crushed by the closure and just drifted away.

I think honestly we would start with a bunch of people coming back for the first year and then taper down to say 50k in subs. You see the different is I personally intend on marketing the heck out of the game. It would be an awesome thing if we could pool a kickstarter type thing have a video made and run it at the start of Marvel Agents of Shield. I was having a random discussion last night at fighters practice and 2 of our local knights were in the beta and once I told them what was happening they were very happy.

Marketing is a big part of making the game succeed, in this day an age of Superhero movies taking the box office by storm, all the upcoming hero tv programs along with the succes of programs already out there, the influx og new players could be great, even if half did end up drifting away that's still a bunch of people staying. But one thing at a time, let's get the game back online first  :D

[BenshowSly]

AP33 says you are wrong at 10%.

A lot of people were so hurt by the announcement of the closure that they stopped playing. People deal with grief very differently. I just played as I always did and just had fun. Some were completely crushed by the closure and just drifted away.

I have to say he's right, at least, as far as I'm concerned (and I'm sure I'm not the only one). I left the game when the announcement was done. I was upset, I was pissed off, I couldn't just let the game shut in front of my eyes and I stopped playing it for the entire period between announcement and shut down.

However, I came back in the last month to make it up and I did see the shutdown but still, at first, I prefered to leave the game than to let the game leave me. I just realized after some griefing that in both cases, the results would be the same. I would be hurt by it. So I stopped being stupid and went back. So I give it to Ironwolf here. Different people, different ways to deal with things.

And besides if you read the earlier comments CoH 2 may even come into development with a better engine, yeah, sequal to CoX.  The team from what Ironwolf said is actually quite ambitious.

Still something I have fears about. Call me anti-evolution if you want but I'm with the mindset that if it is not broken, don't touch it. Like I already said, CoH is resting on a very unstable balance and anything new, if bad handled, could make a part of the community leave since they won't find their own vision of CoH in it. Don't forget there was more than one way to play CoH and there was many views of what could make it better, some different than others, some opposite to others. Call me selfish but I'm sure I'm not the only one who is afraid that things don't fall on my own side fo the balance...   :( 

However, I'll wait and see... I'm trying to give the chance first

[Tubbius]

If the game comes back. . . I'm pretty sure I could manage the following folks coming back openly and merrily:
Me
My girlfriend
My old SG cofounder
One friend of mine
Another friend of mine
His girlfriend
And maybe a husband and wife pair who were integral members of my old SG on startup.

How can I say this?  The first five of us all migrated to Marvel Heroes together, but we constantly talk about how awesome it would be to be back in Paragon.

I'm pretty sure I could make room for a potential ongoing game subscription and a "pay as you like, which for me means dang near everything" setup when said potential subscription would be for City of Heroes.  :)

[chuckv3]

I'm talking about in-game advertising. Actual advertisements, being shown on billboards, subways, tram lines, blimps, building sides, park benches, and so on! The old devs talked about it a lot, it's very easily doable, and City of Heroes has the buzz for it, especially now, so why not make that a major selling point?

The amount of loyal fans is quite small, but even assuming it is enough of a pool to advertise to, there are serious problems with any implementation. Would you let people click on the ads? If not, then the advertisers would have no concrete way of knowing whether or not the ads are generating traffic (or sales). If so, then would doing so interrupt the game and pop up a browser window? In the latter case, voluntarily interrupting yourself seems like a self-defeating mechanism.

[doc7924]

I hate to be Buzz Killington here, but most people have moved on.  90% is an absurd figure you're pulling out of literally nowhere.  (To be fair, I'm also pulling the phrase "most people" out of my ass, but I'd wager I'm closer to being correct than you are.)  I'm sure there are people who would return, I'd certainly be one of them, but ultimately we're talking about reviving a game that went live 10 years ago.  It's ancient and frankly, it shows.  That was no reason to shut it down, but even we do get new servers, the game won't be the same as it was 2 years ago, and it certainly won't ever be as big as it was pre-ED.  I think the best we can realistically hope for in the event of a return is servers of some sort running I24 Beta (and maybe also an I23 server for those who want a stable release) in maintenance mode.  Or maybe even just the ability to set up private servers without looking over our backs to make sure NCSoft isn't getting ready to spank us.
I thought the case was settled, with one of the settlement terms being that CoH mods had to police copyright-infringing costumes (at least for Marvel characters, probably expanded as a general copyrighted character policy by Cryptic in the name of fairness and CYA).

Settled, but Marvel did not get what they wanted - complete shut down of COH and all the game code and data turned over to them.
What hurt Marvel the most was having their employees subscribe to the game, make Marvel characters, take screenshots and then go to the Judge "See , see - people are making Marvel trademarked characters." The Judge found out and had all that evidence thrown out of court.

Of course not that regular users weren't doing that but Marvel went out of their way to manufacture evidence.

What upset people with Marvel back then was not they tried to sue over trademark - that happens all the time. What pissed people off was Marvel wanted nothing less then the game completely taken down, forever.

[Super Firebug]

A lot of people were so hurt by the announcement of the closure that they stopped playing. People deal with grief very differently. I just played as I always did and just had fun. Some were completely crushed by the closure and just drifted away.

My reaction was a depressed "What's the point of continuing?" It was as if a building that I owned had been irredeemably condemned; you don't continue fixing the plumbing and painting the walls at that point. I still very much loved the game, but I just didn't see the point in putting more effort into what was about to be demolished into digital rubble. If/when it does return, believe me, I'll be there.

[doc7924]

My reaction was a depressed "What's the point of continuing?" It was as if a building that I owned had been irredeemably condemned; you don't continue fixing the plumbing and painting the walls at that point. I still very much loved the game, but I just didn't see the point in putting more effort into what was about to be demolished into digital rubble. If/when it does return, believe me, I'll be there.

This is EXACTLY what happened with me.
I logged in a bit now and again to take shots of most of my toons, some city locations, billboards, etc.

I might have street hunted a bit just for fun but I had no desire to do any more TF's, or Incarnate Trials, or even bother to level up any more toons. What would be the point for me to spend time doing all that and it all goes away in a month.

I just enjoyed chatting with people bout what was going on and taking my screen shots and that was about it.

[SergeantKeroroK66]

I hate to be Buzz Killington here, but most people have moved on.  90% is an absurd figure you're pulling out of literally nowhere.  (To be fair, I'm also pulling the phrase "most people" out of my ass, but I'd wager I'm closer to being correct than you are.)

Yeah, I'm sorry. I had read 90% somewhere, either earlier in this thread, or in the Save City of Heroes page, on Facebook, and someone else had said something to that effect.

The amount of loyal fans is quite small, but even assuming it is enough of a pool to advertise to, there are serious problems with any implementation. Would you let people click on the ads? If not, then the advertisers would have no concrete way of knowing whether or not the ads are generating traffic (or sales). If so, then would doing so interrupt the game and pop up a browser window? In the latter case, voluntarily interrupting yourself seems like a self-defeating mechanism.

Well, I was thinking it could be a browser that opened up, on top of the game, so it didn't minimize the game, you could take a quick look, and then go back to the game, immediately, without much of an interruption. At least, that's what the old devs were thinking. This is, of course, just speculation, to be utilized, if utilized, after we got the game back. I just thought it could be a good negotiation point, and I thought it was a good idea, and with a little modifying, I think it could work, but if I'm the minority, here, I'll shut up.:/

My reaction was a depressed "What's the point of continuing?" It was as if a building that I owned had been irredeemably condemned; you don't continue fixing the plumbing and painting the walls at that point. I still very much loved the game, but I just didn't see the point in putting more effort into what was about to be demolished into digital rubble. If/when it does return, believe me, I'll be there.

That was exactly how I felt. I played, sadly, for about a month, after, and then stopped, occasionally going back, for a nostalgia/I'll never be able to go back after reasons.

[MWRuger]

Yeah, I know several who stopped because they were pissed or grieving. They are also being updated on this project (by me) and will absolutely come back. Some had let their subscription lapse and couldn't come back.

The fact is that,  many of the "facts" here are based on not much evidence, none of us have any hard data and all of these are "guesses".  90% or 50% or 10% are WAGs at this point.

One thing I can say for sure, marketing will be key to the successful revival of this game. But realistically, a 30 second spot on Marvel's Agent of Shield would probably eat up the entire marketing budget for a few years. I haven't even seen any spots for their MMO.

Also, unless some of the posters here are part of the group doing the deal, it will be up to others to decide how to spend the marketing budget.

But what we can do is word of mouth when the announcement is actually made. Until then, welcome to the waiting game.

[LaughingAlex]

My plan to advertise for the game is on youtube, myself, I hope to do a lets play of the game.  The intention is to show the sheer variety of playstyles of the game and how it's an easy to get into game that actually has a lot of depth to it, as well as show some videos of fighting the super powered villain groups(not council or freakshow groups, talking about groups like circle of thorns and mid-level range tsoo or malta operatives/arachnos/carnival of shadows later).

[DJDee]

I know I and a few others at Namesake will advertise the heck out of it if it comes back. We loved the game so much. It's what brought us together to for our little station and we're still growing bit by bit.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

The Hero Engine as utilized in SWTOR is not anything close to a finished product as released and available for license by HE.  SWTOR bought and received essentially an Alpha version that they knew wasn't finished nor even optimized under the assumption that their in-house staff could mold it to be what they needed it to be, and optimize it accordingly.  They obviously failed, but to base an opinion of HE off SWTOR alone is not prudent.

http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/

Interesting read. Now i'm even more disappointed in Bioware's release of SWTOR and willing to give HE the benefit of the doubt. And i still think that SWTOR to this day feels like a single player console RPG that had multiplayer and PC support awkwardly tacked on, which seems odd considering that HE was designed as an MMO game engine. And the SWTOR version is still a massive hog of bandwidth and CPU cycles for what it does. When i compare it to FF XIV's performance... it does not fare well in any category.

[Spiny Lobster]

This is EXACTLY what happened with me.
I logged in a bit now and again to take shots of most of my toons, some city locations, billboards, etc.

I might have street hunted a bit just for fun but I had no desire to do any more TF's, or Incarnate Trials, or even bother to level up any more toons. What would be the point for me to spend time doing all that and it all goes away in a month.

I just enjoyed chatting with people bout what was going on and taking my screen shots and that was about it.

Yep, second I heard the announcement I stopped playing entirely as did my entire crew.  I did a final run through of the game zones, took some screenshots of my characters and that was that.  Wasn't really grief or being hurt (though we were pissed), more like we're all adults with children and responsibilities and our gaming time together is extremely limited.  We could spend that time in a dead game and have all our efforts deleted in 3 months... or move onto the next thing.   And that's what we did.  We've been through I think 10+ MMO's together, and CoH is the one we still talk about and would go back to in a heartbeat if it came back.  CoH is also the only one we've played for more than several years, starting up in the beta and stopping at the closure.  Second place went to Asheron's Call, which we left when CoH came out.  We're in Marvel Heroes now, having tried pretty much every MMO there is and finding them lacking.  So ARPG it is!  If CoH returned, we'd all be lifers for sure even if we haven't participated much in the community left over :)

[darkgob]

I think honestly we would start with a bunch of people coming back for the first year and then taper down to say 50k in subs.

Wasn't 50k one of the (admittedly lower-end) estimates for game population near the end?