NCsoft Shuts Down City of Heroes

[Stark1]

Really sad to see this game go. Been playing for almost the entire 8+ years its been running. Great game and started to look even better with the increased releases of content/powers/etc. Logically, I know I can't be disappointed with so many years and know it can't last forever. It is a business after all. What I won't miss is the Forum Cartel on CoH's official forums. Worst group to try and have a conversation with EVER. Though I'm sad the game is closing, I'm glad it's a kick in the balls to them. Good riddance. That is the only good thing to come out of this situation and it brings at least a tiny smile to my sadness.

The character creation system was the best in any game. I spending well over an hour making each single character, going over the multitude of options, auras, colors, etc. There used to be costume contests held by the rich end game players who wanted to help out and sponsor a player started event.

Thank you for all the adventures!!! It will be difficult to devote this much time to any other game again.

 

[edgecult]

I dont understand this, I dont play it but if it's still profitable why shut it down?

As long as its adding to the bottom line then surely its a positive as well as its supporting staff, jobs etc

Actually, yeah, this.
If a game is making enough money to support itself, there is virtually no justifiable reason to shut it down.

Yeah that's sorta bugging me too. If the game is paying for itself and then some.. what's the bother with letting it go on? Chopping it at the neck isn't going to make you any money after all sense it's not draining resources... Are they just that hard up for server space to keep GW 2 going or something that they had to start yanking COH's to make room? I don't know man.. seems like a pointless execution of a decent game for the sake of getting to pull the lever first. (less someone has a better idea why this is what it is)

 

[Sixcess]

Yeah that's sorta bugging me too. If the game is paying for itself and then some.. what's the bother with letting it go on? Chopping it at the neck isn't going to make you any money after all sense it's not draining resources... Are they just that hard up for server space to keep GW 2 going or something that they had to start yanking COH's to make room? I don't know man.. seems like a pointless execution of a decent game for the sake of getting to pull the lever first. (less someone has a better idea why this is what it is)

There's a very unpleasant rumour floating around (and I stress it's a rumour, bordering on a conspiracy theory) that goes something like this...

When NCsoft took over CoH from Cryptic they only had the engine leased for 5 years. Cryptic is now owned by Perfect World Entertainment, a competitor of NCSoft. During negotiations PWE pushed the price of renewing the engine licence up intentionally high to kill CoH, thus removing the game that dominated superhero MMOs and giving Champions Online a possible boost.

Whether or not this is true, god only knows. I have my doubts, but it'll all come out eventually I guess.

A less dramatic interpretation is simply that CoH was relatively big in the western markets but non-existent in the east where NCsoft's interests are focused - literally non-existent since CoH tried and failed to launch in Korea years ago, never going live there at all. From that viewpoint it's no big deal for NCsoft who, it must be stressed, have an awful track record of killing off MMOs - Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners and others...

But if there's any justice the way in which they've done this will do their image in the western markets no good whatsoever. They've basically shut down the development studio in one day. No server mergers to cut costs, no staff reductions to cut costs, no maintenance mode, just Paragon Studios shut down, effective immediately.

The only comparison I can draw is with Star Wars Galaxies, but I think everyone was surprised that SWG lasted as long as it did, whereas CoH seemed strong, with a fanatically loyal player base who had in many cases been there for years. It was the WoW of the superhero MMO genre - the undisputed biggest fish of an admittedly smaller pond.

It's almost inexplicable to me that NCsoft have done this. SWG was killed when LucasArts decided not to renew the licence, but this - unless the PWE theory turns out to be true - this is just incomprehensible to me.

 

[O maestre]

like many others it was my first and best experience with an mmo, i have yet to find so many friendly people gathered in one place, the community there was over half the experience that kept me playing for almost two years since launch, and as much as i wanted to i could never really get back in with the game... i just lost interest in mmos. it will be missed, i can only hope that someday it might be revamped.

as sad as i am about this, the moth balling of the game is not a surprise, i tried playing it for one month and it felt dated, and once again when it became free to play, but still it all felt very old.

 

[Scorched_Cascade]

Aww, now I'm sad, my 7 years long on and off again relationship with City of Heroes has been finally terminated.

Rest in Peace Union, you were a good friend.

 

[Nemu]

Aww, that's sad! I left WoW for that game once upon a time (I'd played CoH first, then was guilted into trying WoW when it was released, I went back to CoH after a couple of months).

I had a lot of fun in the game, I just didn't see too many folks on when I played, so I eventually quit a few months after CoV was released.

It STILL boggles my mind that WoW has yet to adopt the CoH/CoV depth of character creation. I still marvel (no pun intended) at it's vastness.

I shall miss thee, CoH/CoV.

 

[Illesdan]

Well, guess this saves me a bunch of money. I played CoH since it went live for six years straight, took a year off to focus on work and have been off/on since then. I have 7 lvl 50s (was pretty close to an 8th one) and the only reason I wasn't paying to play was that my system decided this year that it could no longer handle the game (very old laptop).

I'll be blunt folks, CoH was the only MMO out there I ever went back to. I've played every MMO under the sun at one time or another these past 12 years, and CoH was the only one I really enjoyed. Was it flawed? Oh. Hell. Yes! The game was very far from perfect (Fuck you, Atlas Park! I will NOT miss you) and don't get me started about them destroying the second starting zone, Galaxy City. But, at the end of the day, all gripes and complaints aside, I met some awesome people there, had countless hours of fun, and have some pretty awesome stories that my friends and I still talk about to this day.

I have alot of characters to say goodbye to, 42, to be exact, all on Liberty server. My favorite/well-established characters all have backgrounds and personalities, and after having been around so long, I actually am sad to see them go. If it were at the hands of some uber-villian, I could live with that; but to be put down by a flick of the switch? I see nothing heroic in that.

The MMO world is officially dead to me. Boycott NCSoft.

 

[Ken Sapp]

Well I suppose it was a good thing I did try it once abliet it was months ago and not when it first came out. The game felt so plain that I uninstall it a day later.

I would of thought they made the ingame stuff sold in the shop free than to shut it down competely.

The problem with making the shop items free is that they would lose what revenue they are making off the game while still having to pay to keep servers online and pay staff to maintain the code and hardware. Not a very realistic expectation for a profit-driven company.

They did it for Tabula Rasa. Made it completely free for the last month or so. Even had a big ending event.

Ok, so you are talking about making everything free for the last few months before they close the doors entirely? It seems I misunderstood your original post. I thought you were suggesting that they make everything free instead of shutting down the service. My mistake.

 

[Ken Sapp]

I know it sucks that a game you've loved for years is ending, but especially with MMOs, this sort of thing happens. You shouldn't let it ruin your chances of playing another good game.

The MMOs that keep going are surprising to me. Gamers tend to be a fickle lot, moving on to the next big thing fairly regularly, although games manage to buck that trend. It is surprising to me that Ultima Online (the first MMO as we know them today) and Everquest are still going as subscription based MMOs last I checked.

 

[Lunar Templar]

Yeah that's sorta bugging me too. If the game is paying for itself and then some.. what's the bother with letting it go on? Chopping it at the neck isn't going to make you any money after all sense it's not draining resources... Are they just that hard up for server space to keep GW 2 going or something that they had to start yanking COH's to make room? I don't know man.. seems like a pointless execution of a decent game for the sake of getting to pull the lever first. (less someone has a better idea why this is what it is)

There's a very unpleasant rumour floating around (and I stress it's a rumour, bordering on a conspiracy theory) that goes something like this...

When NCsoft took over CoH from Cryptic they only had the engine leased for 5 years. Cryptic is now owned by Perfect World Entertainment, a competitor of NCSoft. During negotiations PWE pushed the price of renewing the engine licence up intentionally high to kill CoH, thus removing the game that dominated superhero MMOs and giving Champions Online a possible boost.

assuming that's true .... PWE really is over estimating the general opinion of CO, i played it, its not that good ... and i saw a lot of 'I'm not going to DC' comments yesterday to

A less dramatic interpretation is simply that CoH was relatively big in the western markets but non-existent in the east where NCsoft's interests are focused - literally non-existent since CoH tried and failed to launch in Korea years ago, never going live there at all. From that viewpoint it's no big deal for NCsoft who, it must be stressed, have an awful track record of killing off MMOs - Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners and others...

But if there's any justice the way in which they've done this will do their image in the western markets no good whatsoever. They've basically shut down the development studio in one day. No server mergers to cut costs, no staff reductions to cut costs, no maintenance mode, just Paragon Studios shut down, effective immediately.

yeah, there definitely shooting them selves in the foot here, not just in terms of revenue but customary loyalty, and i for one won't be going near anything else they have, not after this BS. so yeah, i expect to hear about a massive drop in they're profits soon.

The only comparison I can draw is with Star Wars Galaxies, but I think everyone was surprised that SWG lasted as long as it did, whereas CoH seemed strong, with a fanatically loyal player base who had in many cases been there for years. It was the WoW of the superhero MMO genre - the undisputed biggest fish of an admittedly smaller pond.

It's almost inexplicable to me that NCsoft have done this. SWG was killed when LucasArts decided not to renew the licence, but this - unless the PWE theory turns out to be true - this is just incomprehensible to me.

CoH was strong still, the sever i play on had more traffic then I'd ever seen when it was sub only, and i was looking forward to the Bio Armor set, what was up with The Battalion, finishing off the Preatorian Hamidon .... and so on D:

 

[Aeshi]

There's a very unpleasant rumour floating around (and I stress it's a rumour, bordering on a conspiracy theory) that goes something like this...

When NCsoft took over CoH from Cryptic they only had the engine leased for 5 years. Cryptic is now owned by Perfect World Entertainment, a competitor of NCSoft. During negotiations PWE pushed the price of renewing the engine licence up intentionally high to kill CoH, thus removing the game that dominated superhero MMOs and giving Champions Online a possible boost.

Really? I'd heard NCsoft chose to shut down CoH so they'd have more resources to use on Guild Wars 2 (and if that's true my approval of Guild Wars just went from "Seems interesting" to "Please die. Painfully")

 

[Sixcess]

There's a very unpleasant rumour floating around (and I stress it's a rumour, bordering on a conspiracy theory) that goes something like this...

When NCsoft took over CoH from Cryptic they only had the engine leased for 5 years. Cryptic is now owned by Perfect World Entertainment, a competitor of NCSoft. During negotiations PWE pushed the price of renewing the engine licence up intentionally high to kill CoH, thus removing the game that dominated superhero MMOs and giving Champions Online a possible boost.

Really? I'd heard NCsoft chose to shut down CoH so they'd have more resources to use on Guild Wars 2 (and if that's true my approval of Guild Wars just went from "Seems interesting" to "Please die. Painfully")

I've seen that speculation, but personally I doubt it. PS and Anet were entirely separate entities. This seems more like (according to more forum speculation) a quick way to cut a few costs, and somehow that's kind of worse, since it implies total indifference to CoH by the publisher.

assuming that's true .... PWE really is over estimating the general opinion of CO, i played it, its not that good ... and i saw a lot of 'I'm not going to DC' comments yesterday to

I certainly won't be touching DCUO - dreadful game. CO I'm undecided on, but it's not really the genre that I'll miss, it's City.

yeah, there definitely shooting them selves in the foot here, not just in terms of revenue but customary loyalty, and i for one won't be going near anything else they have, not after this BS. so yeah, i expect to hear about a massive drop in they're profits soon.

Same here. After this NCsoft cannot be trusted, it's as simple as that.

Worse though, in many players' eyes, will be the way they've treated the devs. It's clear that they found out about it a matter of hours before the announcement, and regardless of NCsoft's reasons, that's an atrocious way to treat Paragon Studios. No doubt NCsoft will do their usual and try to entice the CoH playerbase to their other games, but I think they'll find that an impossible sell to a lot of players.

CoH was strong still, the sever i play on had more traffic then I'd ever seen when it was sub only, and i was looking forward to the Bio Armor set, what was up with The Battalion, finishing off the Preatorian Hamidon .... and so on D:

I'd taken a break, but with every intention of going back. I'll never be able to do all that I planned in that game now, but I'm rolling at least one more hero, one more villain, for my farewell tour.

 

[Jobbie]

I played CoH for 6 months and it was great, the combat system and level up mechanics were far better than WoWs and made combat more fluid. The story was interesting and the party system worked well with the instance system.

PVP was garbage though and there was 0 end game, nothing at all but farming the same types of missions you played leveling up in order to get better upgrades and a couple small raid type missions with pretty much the same loot as the other missions and no one wanted to do them.

The character creation system was the best in any game EVER. I remember spending over an hour making a single character, perfecting every nuance of her costume to something i could say was an awesome retrostyled super villain. There used to be costume contests held by the rich end game players who wanted to help out and sponsor a player started event, Lady Gear won every contest she ever entered and after the 6th win was invited to a super group and asked to stop entering the contest because it wasn't fair to everyone else. ^_^

There was so much about the game that I loved but I became frustrated by the lack of people that wanted to group at end game due to everyone making a small group and then charging to run other people through the top level missions which i felt cheapened the game. I finally quit after they came out with the feature for players to make their own levels which then immediately became a tool for people to make the highest and easiest missions to farm exp in so they could speed level with little effort. It was the cockroach in my pudding, it instantly repelled me from the game and i never went back though i always though about trying it again when it went free, but i decided i preferred the CoH in my memory to anything that might of changed since it went F2P.

This makes me sad because its one more games that will disappear from the world, it makes me glad that people keep the PSO blue burst servers alive, atleast thats one great mmo that will continue on for atleast alittle while longer. Farewell CoH, despite your limitations and age, you beat the crap out of all super hero mmos that tried to replace you and will stand as a symbol of people caring about their game enough to keep working on it past the time the public went after the next shiny.

I agree with the "Make your own mission" content comment. There should have been some restrictions placed on them. It was a great idea but nobody attempted to actually create something fun. Just used the mission creator to simply farm xp and power level people.

Soon after everyone power leveled their characters, nobody seemed to want to explore the different areas anymore, and soon after the place became a ghost town.

Maybe a consolidation of players onto 1 or 2 servers. The reason I left was because my server's player base had all but died.

It certainly is a sad day for COH. This solidify's my choice of never purchasing anything from NCsoft again.

 

[Lunar Templar]

There's a very unpleasant rumour floating around (and I stress it's a rumour, bordering on a conspiracy theory) that goes something like this...

When NCsoft took over CoH from Cryptic they only had the engine leased for 5 years. Cryptic is now owned by Perfect World Entertainment, a competitor of NCSoft. During negotiations PWE pushed the price of renewing the engine licence up intentionally high to kill CoH, thus removing the game that dominated superhero MMOs and giving Champions Online a possible boost.

Really? I'd heard NCsoft chose to shut down CoH so they'd have more resources to use on Guild Wars 2 (and if that's true my approval of Guild Wars just went from "Seems interesting" to "Please die. Painfully")

I've seen that speculation, but personally I doubt it. PS and Anet were entirely separate entities. This seems more like (according to more forum speculation) a quick way to cut a few costs, and somehow that's kind of worse, since it implies total indifference to CoH by the publisher.

i heard that rumor to, it's just as disgusting as the 'its not big in Korea so screw it'

I certainly won't be touching DCUO - dreadful game. CO I'm undecided on, but it's not really the genre that I'll miss, it's City.

agreed, there's a charm to the islands and the city no where else has

Same here. After this NCsoft cannot be trusted, it's as simple as that.

Worse though, in many players' eyes, will be the way they've treated the devs. It's clear that they found out about it a matter of hours before the announcement, and regardless of NCsoft's reasons, that's an atrocious way to treat Paragon Studios. No doubt NCsoft will do their usual and try to entice the CoH playerbase to their other games, but I think they'll find that an impossible sell to a lot of players.

yeah, what they're doing to PS is total bull shit

they're gonna find out the hard way just how much over lap City of Heroes had, when i said a a 'massive drop in profits' i meant all they're games, after all, if the 'old man that was doing just fine' will suddenly get pulled, why stay on Aion? and how many will bail on GW2 out of protest after this?

i don't think they relies the damage they're doing to them selves, but I'll be grinning like Lord Recluse when they find out how many bridges they've burnt

I'd taken a break, but with every intention of going back. I'll never be able to do all that I planned in that game now, but I'm rolling at least one more hero, one more villain, for my farewell tour.

i was a on break due to Darksiders 2, had a few projects in the works to, nothing big just characters i was leveling cause i wanted to try something IO wise, like resurrecting the neigh unkillability of Regen, as a brute, of course

 

[natster43]

Oh City of Heroes. You were my first and favorite MMO. I had many good times in it. It is sad that it will be gone. Good Bye City of Heroes, you will be missed.

 

[Parnage]

All in all, most mmo's don't actually die. UO,EQ,DAOC, all still going even if you may not enjoy what they've done to keep those games alive.

As far as shut down mmo's, you have Galaxies, Tabula Rasa and City of hero's are the big three worthy of note. Yeah things like Auto Assault shut down but you'll excuse me if I don't see a big outcry over it.

Galaxies had a good life, ended because of Lucas Arts license ending rather then anything else and to be honest SOE did as much damage to the name as EA and Bioware is doing to it now.

Tabula Rasa was just ahead of it's time and buggy released and marred in legal goop due to NCSoft v Lord British.

CoH long running game ending for possible engine licensing fee increases to just not a worthwhile profit margin.

Overall the majority of virtual worlds people care about don't tend to die. Even if they do, private servers tend to exist if the fanbase for a game is around.

 

[Feylynn]

City of Heroes was nothing more than a character customization screen to me, a pretty good customization screen at that. But then Champions and DCU beat it at that game and DCU even managed to implement gameplay to the formula.

Regardless, it's always a bit sad when any servers go down.
We need some sort of "Museum of Virtual History" that preserves these worlds on eternal servers.

 

[Carrots_macduff]

so as to this petition, who was it that thought ten thousand signatures would save an mmo?especially since they've said it IS shutting down, and they fired the whole staff? newsflash, your signatures mean very little because they know exactly how many people are playing at any given time.