New efforts!

[Arcana]

Also, I could imagine that the NDA might include a relatively short cooling off period (e.g. 6 mos. to a year) prior to a party disclosing that negotiations have broken down.  That would allow one or both of the parties to come back to the table before any announcement that the negotiations have ended.

There's another possibility: the NDA has a provision that allows either party to terminate after a set period of time, say a year.  However, NCSoft hasn't executed that provision because they have simply stopped talking, and the other party hasn't executed that option because they still want to keep the option to resume negotiations open.  Because neither party has executed the option to terminate the NDA, the NDA remains in force.

That could explain how an NDA that appears to be of unlimited duration isn't really.  That's assuming there is an NDA in force at the moment, which I continue to point out is speculative.  It is one possible answer to the question "why hasn't anyone said anything recently" but it is not the only possible explanation.  Absence of information is not information, and I've seen people fill in that absence in regard to City of Heroes for over a decade in ways that are wrong almost every time I can verify.  People are just fundamentally not very good at predicting the behavior or intent of other people when there's large gaps of knowledge of context.

[Harpospoke]

Don't most nda's have an expiration date? If talks have stagnated, it'd be nice to definitively know, instead of just making the assumption based on the very overwhelming, empirical evidence that NCSoft manipulated them into hushing all of us up.

Look on the bright side.    If we never hear anything we can all be hopeful that CoH will return soon © well into our senior years.   Our grandkids will roll their eyes as we talk about the "ongoing negotiations".   It may even be mentioned in our eulogies.    "Yeah...granddad was quite a character...we all remember him bringing up that game he used to play way back in the day and how they were going to bring it back.   Something about a Smoke Controller or Frozen Controller...I don't remember..."

[kaaduu1280]

Look on the bright side.    If we never hear anything we can all be hopeful that CoH will return soon © well into our senior years.   Our grandkids will roll their eyes as we talk about the "ongoing negotiations".   It may even be mentioned in our eulogies.    "Yeah...granddad was quite a character...we all remember him bringing up that game he used to play way back in the day and how they were going to bring it back.   Something about a Smoke Controller or Frozen Controller...I don't remember..."

Unfortunately that only lasts for so long before that hope begins to inevitably fade.

[Harpospoke]

Unfortunately that only lasts for so long before that hope begins to inevitably fade.

But if there never is a "no".... there will always be this:

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s2.quickmeme.com%2Fimg%2Fa0%2Fa056a6297b3ee2cb8687931a94ae82c2127c66c18ac13c283df9a80482396cdf.jpg

[Brigadine]

But if there never is a "no".... there will always be this:

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=s2.quickmeme.com%2Fimg%2Fa0%2Fa056a6297b3ee2cb8687931a94ae82c2127c66c18ac13c283df9a80482396cdf.jpg

If we get the game back this meme/quote needs to be the login screen. It sums up our struggle so well.

[Vee]

I'm all about playing the smoke controller now.

[CG]

I'm all about playing the smoke controller now.

That's just vapour ware...

I'll see myself out.  ;D

[Arcana]

That's just vapour ware...

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UfOqXFcycB8/hqdefault.jpg

I'll see myself out.  ;D

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.pennlago.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fmcfly.gif

[Paragon Avenger]

So like, while waiting for our beloved game's return, I posted over 5000 times.  Yeah I went for quantity not quality.  Anyway, I was like wondering if I get another triangle or half a million dollars or something?
Ciao.

[Twisted Toon]

So like, while waiting for our beloved game's return, I posted over 5000 times.  Yeah I went for quantity not quality.  Anyway, I was like wondering if I get another triangle or half a million dollars or something?
Ciao.

You're reward for posting over 5000 times is the satisfaction of posting over 5000 times.

Now if it was over 9000 times, Id say it might have been a title of "it's over 9000!" or something similar.

[Paragon Avenger]

You're reward for posting over 5000 times is the satisfaction of posting over 5000 times.
Now if it was over 9000 times, Id say it might have been a title of "it's over 9000!" or something similar.

So 5 grand means nothing?  It's just a beginners' achievement.  Of course it's like a thousand more than our closest competitor.
Yeah, 5 grand is nothing, but when I do 5005 then we're talking.

[Tahquitz]

You're reward for posting over 5000 times is the satisfaction of posting over 5000 times.

Now if it was over 9000 times, Id say it might have been a title of "it's over 9000!" or something similar.

He's already got a unique title and rank graphic.  I can't compete with those.

[Twisted Toon]

He's already got a unique title and rank graphic.  I can't compete with those.

I don't know of many people that could, actually.

[CrimsonCapacitor]

So 5 grand means nothing?  It's just a beginners' achievement.  Of course it's like a thousand more than our closest competitor.
Yeah, 5 grand is nothing, but when I do 5005 then we're talking.

Think of like the healing badge.  You're just getting started.

[Hagoroth]

Just recently lost another of my favorite (and first) MMO's. It's been a shitty 5 years. Seems like all the MMO's I played that allow you to truly customize your characters are getting shutdown. 17 years is a long time for a game, but WB is definitely right there on my shit list with NCsoft for the way they handled the shutdown, and discarded the player base.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o77BL-hCHxA

[Brigadine]

Just recently lost another of my favorite (and first) MMO's. It's been a shitty 5 years. Seems like all the MMO's I played that allow you to truly customize your characters are getting shutdown. 17 years is a long time for a game, but WB is definitely right there on my shit list with NCsoft for the way they handled the shutdown, and discarded the player base.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o77BL-hCHxA

Never even heard of that game

[rookery.]

Asherons Call I assume. Cant look at the video at work.

Yes it was another unique mmo like COX. It did quite few things differently. It will be missed as well.

[Hagoroth]

Never even heard of that game

If you don't count MUD's, It was one of the first MMO's ever, along with Ultima/Everquest.

Asherons Call was a great game.

It was basically a huge sandbox, the exp you got was actually used to level stats and skills.

The landscape was littered with 100,000 portals that took you to different dungeons. Initially there were no traditional quests quests so it was all just exploring the world, finding journals that hinted towards new dungeons, and exploring their depths for rare loot(there were no minimaps, or maps as we know it today, so you had to remember how you got down, so you could find your way back out.)

It was my first MMO, and probably one of two MMO's that I truly enjoyed just playing goalless(COX being the other one. I swear sometimes I just logged in and made characters for hours and was perfectly content).

Any way, i thought it was pertinent as they already have up and running a bare-bones emulator, no npcs or mobs, but just enough up to run around and see the world(they promised us they would give us the technology to create our own private servers this year, and instead they shut the game down and ghosted the community).  Hopefully the COX sale goes through this year, I am running out of things to play  :-[

[Arcana]

Through it all, I'm still very uncomfortable with the idea of there being any *legal* responsibility for MMO operators to have exit plans that preserve the communities in them, but increasingly I'm of the belief that there's a moral or ethical one.  As operating costs to keep an MMO functioning (when done right) continue to fall towards zero, the excuse that the financial burdens of running a massively multiplayer game environment are relevant are increasingly hollow.  I could literally run City of Heroes in my basement today.

MMOs are just games in the same sense your home is just carpentry.  How a community of people interacts is less important than that the community functions as a community.  What rights communities should have separate from the individuals that comprise that community is a question without simple answers.

[Hagoroth]

Through it all, I'm still very uncomfortable with the idea of there being any *legal* responsibility for MMO operators to have exit plans that preserve the communities in them, but increasingly I'm of the belief that there's a moral or ethical one.  As operating costs to keep an MMO functioning (when done right) continue to fall towards zero, the excuse that the financial burdens of running a massively multiplayer game environment are relevant are increasingly hollow.  I could literally run City of Heroes in my basement today.

MMOs are just games in the same sense your home is just carpentry.  How a community of people interacts is less important than that the community functions as a community.  What rights communities should have separate from the individuals that comprise that community is a question without simple answers.

I don't hold them to any obligation moral or otherwise. It is a business after all, and they are going to do what is the best for them monetarily. However, in the case of Asheron's Call, they had a community still willing to pay 12$ a month for a 17 year old game(probably had at max 5000 subs, most were alt accounts, actual unique accounts was probably 2k). Then out of nowhere they turned off the subscription, charged a flat 15$ for the game, and free use. Then they said they couldn't add cash shops to the game cause the client was too old, so instead they were just going to get a emulation server set up package  for the fans, charge a license fee, and let people make their own private servers because they couldn't afford the game anymore.

They gave two or three updates on it over the year. For the last 4 months they ghosted the community, then they announced a split between WB/ Turbine(now Standing Stone games). After that they announced the game was closing on a Wednesday, at 11am est. No one answered any question, no one communicated with the community. They deleted posts off the forums that asked questions, or criticized, and then they shut down the website.

On those ground I hold them as ethically and morally bankrupt.It was just a dirtbag way to treat loyal customers. Even if they were unable to do what they promised, a simple "I'm sorry, it's too complicated, or too expensive" would have been decent.

I don't know, I'm sure there is some kind of NDA involved in this too. But in this case, I could probably run this 17 year old game on an Atari, how much could it possibly have cost them?