New efforts!

[Ultimate15]

*UPDATE*

I don't have a lot of news but they are threading through the Corporate hoops and at least have a person who knows NCSoft well to try and make it easier. I know I have said this before but with big companies it really is part of their process. It could take a while - sorry to say. I have an idea to try that might cut through some of the red tape and have the approval to try it. The business side of things is a vastly different world from what most people have experience with.

Folks here is the reality of what is happening: NCSoft and Cryptic will insist their logos remain on the game as they want recognition for their efforts in the past. Due to this they do not want their name on a product run by a group who will not do it justice. This did stop at least 2 different groups from acquiring it in the past, that had money but no true studio. These delays and hoops to jump through are part of the vetting process. It is going to take time to let them see the group making the offer is serious and does have the resources to pull it off.

Like them or loathe them NCSoft has actually done well in choosing the studios for games - the track record on the games isn't as good as the companies they pick. The folks are working on it and may need to make adjustments to reflect what NCSoft wants to see. You can be assured silence is not reflecting a lack of effort.

Thanks again for the update, IronWolf! I know people have been giving you more than enough thanks/accolades on here, but I'mma send even MORE your way because you're basically better than Frosted Flakes. And I'm a man who loves my Frosted Flakes. So, thanks. Love you. Mean it.

...NOW MOVING ON. I actually have some really annoying, super stupid questions regarding all of the talks and/or communication going down between NCSoft and this new group of people(?) trying to purchase and obtain the IP address (or engine too?) for City of Heroes. Please note that I apologize in advance if any of these questions have been answered in previous pages of the thread here (we're nearing on 70 pages now people - c'mon, cut me a break) or if these are questions I "shouldn't be asking" because we're trying to keep things hush-hush. I totally respect and understand all of that, so please feel free to tell me to shut up or go away if I'm treading on dangerous waters here.

Also, if we just straight up don't have the answers to any of these questions because this is all still behind the business veil, that's totally cool too! At this stage of the game, I'm not owed anything - I get it. These were just questions that were on the 'ol noggin, so I figured I'd ask them.

1.) As it was mentioned in IronWolf's comments here, NCSoft & Cryptic will both want to have their logos on this game if/when it is brought back; ergo, they want to make sure that the new development team will continue to run the game in the same vein they did...SO, that factor alone had apparently prevented two previous buyers from obtaining the 'rights' for the game. Is it fair to assume then that since NCSoft actually gave them an estimate for the game that they think these new buyers have the cajones to do the job well? Or is that not a fair assumption to make?

2.) What exactly are these new buyers trying to obtain? The IP address? The engine? Or both? Or, is it a 'you can have one but not the other' type of deal? And if I'm understanding correctly - and this is just because I'm silly - the IP address is the storyline, titles, essential 'idea' of the game and the engine is the graphics, right? Lmfao. I feel like I'm asking such elementary type stuff here...but I really don't know these things!

3.) Let's say everything goes totally smoothly and NCSoft gives these people the game - IP address, engine and all (praise be to God). If they were to bring the game back on live in the same state that it was shut down (Issue 24 was the last patch, right?) will they need a full on designer/development team just to make that happen? I imagine that if they wanted to continue updating the game with more patches/design stuff etc, they would need a fairly adequately sized studio...but would they need all that jazz just to get the game back live from the state that it was at when it was cancelled? I ask that in hopes of trying to gauge the timeframe here. I think it was mentioned that this process will take at LEAST 6 months, if not a year.

4.) IronWolf (and you may have already answered this) but do we have annnnny idea when this 'meeting' is supposed to go down? Or is that totally still unbeknownst to you? Also, is it just a single person who 'knows NCSoft well' that the negotiation will be happening with? Or this person an actual affiliate or representative for NCSoft?

5.) This last one isn't so much a question as it is speculation...but why NOW? I can't help but ponder why NCSoft is suddenly willing to negotiate this. It seemed like they were so hell bent on keeping COH in the ground (for whatever reason) but now they're willing to humor the idea. Do we think it's because this new team of people might actually have the means to make it happen in the way that they would like it to? Or are they suddenly re-thinking their communication and or general relationship with their western market? Thoughts?

H'okay. I'm gonna shut up now and retreat back into my save corner. Again, my apologies if this post seems ignorant or monotonous - and, hopefully, I'm asking questions that other peeps would like to hear answers to as well. And yes, patience. Pattttttience, young Padiwan.

THANKS. Virtue4ever. Long live COH.

[Scendera]

It sounds to me like it's not so much that they were hellbent to keep it down, as no previous offer was willing to meet all of their conditions and this one is. Now they may have set some ridiculous ones to poison the deal, I don't know either way there...but this one's willing so far so it's just gonna take time now to see what happens.

[Harpospoke]

I had the same experience. we failed because we didn't know what we were doing. PL'ing had nothing to do with it. Nobody had done it, they were doing as a favor to me and half the team was a PUG. Can you imagine a worse mix?

But i also ran it twice more with people who knew how. It was actually the easiest trial in the game. The trick is that you needed someone who had personal stealth and recall friend. With that it is easy.

1. Party starts trial and enters Tunnels of Trolls.

2. Stealther goes to entrance of main room, teleports everyone there.

3. Everyone enters the main room. You do NOTHING. Sit Tight.

4. Stealther goes to each obelisk, teleports each party member to an obelisk. You do NOTHING. Sit Tight.

5. Leader says when the timer reaches a set point click the obelisk. If you screw up, then repeat.

6. Giant monster summoned.

7. You Kill it!

8. Afterwards kill igneous bosses for the defeat badge if you are a badge whore (like me).

9. You're done! enjoy a frosty beverage!

Is that the official way to do it or is that a shortcut?

I say that as innocently as possible.   I think a part of me wanted it to be really really hard after my experience with it.  :)

[Harpospoke]

Yes!!!!!!  :)

Never Give Up! Never Surrender!

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=tiffanyzajas.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F02%2Fdbf92438e73f7fad95645f4a2c092bfa.jpg

[Harpospoke]

Been lurking for a long time, but this thread made me come out of the woodwork. NCsoft basically earned a closed wallet from me after their closure of CoH, I'd be all too pleased if they ended up letting it out of their grip. On the topic of market threads, I got a ton of help from some of the easy startup threads. My low level characters were always inf starved until I read about vendoring SO's and other cheap market things that were usually listed far under vendor price. Hitting the inf cap (almost twice), was one of the few goals I achieved in the year prior to CoHs shutdown. I didn't manage to completely Kit out everyone on my account, but my main had a few purple sets and was full of all the one off goodies like end/damage procs. CoH had my favourite economy since it was SO easy to dive into, and I'd really hope that if it makes a return we can get the ball rolling again on that.

This post made a thought come into my head:

If the player base is smaller when/if CoH returns....won't that effect the supply of items on the market?   Like...smaller player base = less items for sale?

[Phaerius]

This post made a thought come into my head:

If the player base is smaller when/if CoH returns....won't that effect the supply of items on the market?   Like...smaller player base = less items for sale?

It definitely would. But there would also be less inf due to a fresh start on the entire market. The start of an economy is always an interesting time in any game. The first ten players to find purples for example, or a popular end/heal proc. The market will be much smaller regardless of the size of the playerbase, just due to a lack of stored things.

[MaxDefense]

Thanks for the updates wolf.


Are we still on about the market? Really? Go start another thread and stop flooding this one.

I tend to agree can we keep this topic on track please

Start a new thread if you need to discuss other topics

And yes thank you Iron Wolf for helping us understand this process :)

[Goddangit]

And if I'm understanding correctly - and this is just because I'm silly - the IP address is the storyline, titles, essential 'idea' of the game and the engine is the graphics, right? Lmfao. I feel like I'm asking such elementary type stuff here...but I really don't know these things!

The IP address would be something like www.cityofheroes.com.  When they say IP they're talking about the Intellectual Property.  The name of the city, the characters, their images, the stories and all that good stuff.

As for what these buyers are asking for, to misquote that sage Zathras, "Cannot say.  Saying, I would know.  Do not know, so cannot say."

[The Fifth Horseman]

The IP address would be something like www.cityofheroes.com. 

Er, actually that would be a hostname. An IP address would be 172.16.254.1 or 2001:db8:0:1234:0:567:8:1 (IPv4 and IPv6, respectively)

[dwturducken]

Totally gonna be "that guy," here, but an IP address is numbers. What everyone commonly refers to as an address is called the URL, or uniform resource locator. "Address" sounds more familiar and works as a descriptor, but the Internet protocol address is a number string.

[Goddangit]

Er, actually that would be a hostname. An IP address would be 172.16.254.1 or 2001:db8:0:1234:0:567:8:1 (IPv4 and IPv6, respectively)

I stand corrected.

[Ironwolf]

Folks, thank you for your interest but please don't give me credit for the work other people are doing.

I know so far I am the face of the effort but I am not the one doing the work and it makes me uncomfortable to take the kudos when others deserve them. I helped but its not my money on the line for this. At some point soon maybe the folks involved will step forward. I am happy to take the blame for starting this if it goes wrong but not more than my share of the credit.

I am just like you a fanboy, who will squeee like crazy if the game comes back in any form!

[Solitaire]

Folks, thank you for your interest but please don't give me credit for the work other people are doing.

I know so far I am the face of the effort but I am not the one doing the work and it makes me uncomfortable to take the kudos when others deserve them. I helped but its not my money on the line for this. At some point soon maybe the folks involved will step forward. I am happy to take the blame for starting this if it goes wrong but not more than my share of the credit.

I am just like you a fanboy, who will squeee like crazy if the game comes back in any form!

You maybe just a fanboy like the rest of us Ironwolf, but your the one who if I'm correct started this new effort back in March, for this you have our thanks.

The folks who are involved also have our thanks so don't you worry about that, fingers crossed all goes well.

Thanks again to you and the folks behind the curtain  ;)

[MWRuger]

Is that the official way to do it or is that a shortcut?

I say that as innocently as possible.   I think a part of me wanted it to be really really hard after my experience with it.  :)

I don't think there was an official way to do ANYTHING in this game. It may not be the way the devs intended but it was within the scope of the powers available to players at the levels the trial restricted them to. It didn't use any exploits or bugs in the game to succeed.

You could fight your way through the tunnels of the trolls, keep clearing the room filled with igneous bosses and such as you try to get each member to an obelisk, but after that it's pretty much the same.

What makes this tough is you have to a full team to complete this one. If someone drops during the trial it is not completable. It is also timed, you are also restricted to 18th level. (pre-inherent health PP as well). That makes it pretty tough to do with out the right strategy. Heck, even using it that strategy it didn't get done very often. You had to have a team member who either played through the arcs in the Hollows or unlocked it via Oroboros.

I loved the zone story arcs (Hollows, Faultline, Striga, Rikti War Zone, Croatoa) and played them all if it fit the character concept so I had plenty of toons that had the TF unlocked.

[CreVo]

Folks, thank you for your interest but please don't give me credit for the work other people are doing.

I know so far I am the face of the effort but I am not the one doing the work and it makes me uncomfortable to take the kudos when others deserve them. I helped but its not my money on the line for this. At some point soon maybe the folks involved will step forward. I am happy to take the blame for starting this if it goes wrong but not more than my share of the credit.

I am just like you a fanboy, who will squeee like crazy if the game comes back in any form!

You've done more than most. It's refreshing to see someone care about City of Heroes and keeping the dream alive opposed to trying to crush it by forcing another "city of" game on people. Nothing will ever replace CoH, ever.

[Scendera]

I think that's a bit of a harsh assessment, Crevo...I don't think anyone's trying to crush anything. A lot of choices were made when it seemed that matters were set in stone and out of anyone's control...recent developments have changed the outlook considerably.

[Ohioknight]

Folks, thank you for your interest but please don't give me credit for the work other people are doing.

I know so far I am the face of the effort but I am not the one doing the work and it makes me uncomfortable to take the kudos when others deserve them. I helped but its not my money on the line for this. At some point soon maybe the folks involved will step forward. I am happy to take the blame for starting this if it goes wrong but not more than my share of the credit.

I am just like you a fanboy, who will squeee like crazy if the game comes back in any form!

So tell me if I've got the picture: It seems to me that you decided that we needed to restart the "Hail Mary" effort because things had petered out with no real activity and the key people being taken out by life issues etc. 

Doing this got you in contact with a bunch of folks that have worked on TFHM efforts and other interested parties where you learned a bunch more about the failed buy-out efforts and got new contacts to talk to in your efforts to get something going.

Then I GET THE IMPRESSION that you ran into an already-organized and underway professional effort to acquire the game and bring it back by a developed organization that includes people formerly involved with the business.  They think COX would be a good and profitable business property and that it's stupid to leave that property lying in a crate when it could be re-opened and more effectively exploited by a new corporate team.

They said to you: "hey thanks, here's a little you can do to help and you can publicly say this to the Titan folks: "stuff you've told us"  They are also talking to you with reasonable regularity and letting you know of new developments that you can discuss. 

So if I've got the picture, I understand your reluctance to be showered with praise as the savior of our hopes, but you still have my sincere thanks for your restart effort (even if it did/does turn out to be just revealing something that would have happened anyway) and a great big THANK YOU for the act of passing any and all info that you pass on to the group.

[Angel Phoenix77]

Having tried both CO & DCUO, I can say from my point of view they have nothing on CoH, you seem very limited with choices on the other two games were as CoH there was so many options from character design to gameplay.. Team play, solo play, explore, badge hunt, chat in Atlas, lowbie races to PI :) Spend hours in Icon! Etc...

I agree with this, when/if city of comes back I will dumping co and sto like a bad habit.
I am really hoping this effort succeeds. :)

[Azrael]

Folks, thank you for your interest but please don't give me credit for the work other people are doing.

I know so far I am the face of the effort but I am not the one doing the work and it makes me uncomfortable to take the kudos when others deserve them. I helped but its not my money on the line for this. At some point soon maybe the folks involved will step forward. I am happy to take the blame for starting this if it goes wrong but not more than my share of the credit.

I am just like you a fanboy, who will squeee like crazy if the game comes back in any form!

CoH.  THE Superhero MMO.  Bar none.

Your humility is heart warming.

CoH deserves to come back for the incredible community who served it so well.  Its place in the all time hall of great games is assured.

And for you, being the fulcrum shift to get a (perhaps) critical effort going to reclaim the game from the jaws of death...

...will have my thanks.  At least.

I wish the 'covert' (for now) team well to negotiate those 'corporate hoops.'

Azrael.

PS.  I've already designed a few alts in Icon in 'quiet' anticipation of a brighter future...

[Zombie Hustler]

I know you feel like you don't deserve the kudos, Ironwolf, and once the true movers and shakers are able to make their identities known, we can laud them for their efforts appropriately, but I will say this- if the game does get back up and running, I for one wouldn't be too disappointed to find an NPC named Ironwolf in game as a helper or go-between contact for our heroes. :D