if no news = 0 and what we have is 0. 0+0 0*0 0-0 all = 0 = it doesn't count. 0/0 however ends the universe.
"if no news = 0" interestingly evokes three separate nasty bugs in most languages (broken variable name, boolean precedence, and accidental assignment).
Also, I'd probably pay a moderate amount to play CoH again if offered, but that's relative to what I can afford which is a lot. Its worth always keeping in mind that "reasonable price" has two different perspectives. First, everyone's ability to pay is different, what is a "reasonable expense" is different for different people, and in some cases that could approach zero. But on the other hand, "reasonable cost" is what will properly compensate the game operators for acquiring and operating the game. We can't assume they are offering a charity, as acquisition costs could be non-trivial and they are probably even bound to their financial backers to have a reasonable business plan to provide a reasonable return on investment.
Because there are likely to be no development or support costs related to development in an acquired game, the costs to subscribe or play could be significantly lower, but that assumes the purchase price isn't too high. Just to calibrate people's scales, lets assume some almost certainly wrong numbers that just illustrate what costs might be. Suppose the acquisition price ends up being, say, two million dollars. And lets say that however that financing is structured, you need to return something analogous to about 5% interest on that money, and pay it back on something like a 7 year term. You could use a mortgage calculator to estimate that the game operator has to make a minimum of about $30k a month to service that debt. Lets say you assume 5000 people will pay to play the game, at least initially, being conservative. That means you'll have to charge them $6/month to play. That's on top of actual hosting costs - maybe a buck or two. So that's eight bucks per subscriber, in a subscriber model, just to break even.
These numbers change radically when you change your assumptions. I'm not suggesting that's what it would cost at all. But I'm suggesting that what they may be
compelled to charge depends on what it costs them to get and run the game, and those numbers are unlikely to be trivially small enough to ignore. Pick your own assumptions and run the numbers. Unless they have angel investors that literally don't care if they get their money back (unlikely but possible: it sometimes happens with cinema backers). If they don't have to recoup acquisition costs (or they are improbably tiny) then costs per player could be arbitrarily small - a buck or two per player - that they could risk trying to get it all through F2P transactions. But that's a big risk for a game that can't actually add anything to sell incrementally over time if costs per player are anything above tiny.
Paragon Studios had a lot of data and a lot of active players to extrapolate what F2P would cost and generate in revenue. And they could add things to sell and adjust their model over time with new content. Someone trying to restart the game today would be flying almost blind with both hands tied behind their backs. I know we all want a game accessible to the most people possible, and I know many City fans cannot afford significant subscriber costs, but I'm not sure at this point how realistic it is to assume they will be able to pull off an F2P launch right from the start. I have no specific facts to determine either way what anyone's plans are, but I personally am assuming that at least initially I'm likely to have to pay something to play the game.
