NCsoft Shuts Down City of Heroes

[UnderCoverGuest]

"Don't dwell on how or why the game has to go..." otherwise you'll realize that because NC Soft spent so much money on Guild Wars 2, they had to play eenie meenie miney moe to decide which of their subscription games had to go. And instead of getting rid of one of the generic fantasy anime heaven/hell games (of which millions exist), they decided on the superhero one that actually had a unique premise, despite it's old age.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I'm sad about this, as an on/off player for many years. More so because I'm currently in the on-phase of the relationship

I'm really hoping that either the studio, or some enterprising fans get the source code out into the public so it can live on on private servers.

 

[synobal]

Damn its end of an era. Farewell sweet COH farewell.

 

[Hatchetman]

The thing is the game was making money. NCSoft just pulled the plug to free up some cash for the next quarter to make things look better on a spreadsheet and pray to god GW2 does well enough to cover the loss of revenue from the profitable product they just axed in the long run.

This isn't about practical business decisions for a company, it's about people in a position of power who made decisions that brought about the financial situation the company is now in shifting the negative consequences of their decisions to others. These people who made the decisions that caused the loss should take responsability for those decisions and get fired. Instead people who did good work turning in a moderate but steady profit for their company are the ones who get fired.

Proper business sense says that the company should keep up the profitable parts of their business, ride out the storm of the next quarter and return even stronger in the next fiscal year when their new product finally starts showing return for their investment. Human nature says "holy shit fellow executives, if these numbers are the same next quarter we'll all get shit-canned. We need to find a way to massage these numbers."

But then again, take a look at the Legal Action section of the Tabula Rasa MMORPG entry in Wikipedia if you really want to know how NCSoft likes to operate. What a bunch of shysters.

 

[Hatchetman]

If there are any companies out there looking for devs, the people at paragon studios are hands down the best in the business. Last night, even though they had already been fired and sent home, these guys went on to the servers where everyone was moping around, completly devistated. They made an awesome speech to everyone about how great of a fanbase we were, then proceeded to unleash an impromptu event like nothing in the history of MMO's. There were giant robots and monsters and alien ships everywhere, some of them had never even been seen before. They gave us the going away party that NCSoft sure as hell won't.

If I find out these guys were picked up somewhere, I'll buy whatever the next game these guys produce. I know the product will be given 110% by these talented people.

 

[Sprinal]

I played this game off and on for most of the time it has been running. I have the DVD collectors edition of CoV as well.

But I do have to admit for the last couple of years I had moved on. And now when my dad still plays it he says that it's just full of power leveling.

It's sad but that might just be nostalgia. Anyway I'll miss it.

 

[Fasckira]

Loved CoH but it just got so repetitive after awhile. I remember spending most of it running away from high powered mobs though - I kept wanting to explore but would inevitably get caught out by deadly enemies and have to leg it for miles just to escape

 

[Maldeus]

Does anyone have a source on the Cryptic game engine shenanigans thing? I've been hearing it a lot, but so far, near as I can tell, it's just a rumor.

Anyways, for anyone who wants to jump on board a desperate and, statistically speaking, doomed battle to save Paragon City, this is a thing: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/board,134.0.html

Also this: http://www.change.org/petitions/ncsoft-keep-ncsoft-from-shutting-down-city-of-heroes

Although I'm not sure how change.org feels about that last one. Personally, it sounds like fun to me even though it's doomed to failure. I don't even know why. Still, it'd be cool if people could help out. I'd appreciate it. You guys would do anything for me, the dude who makes totally unexceptional posts once every three or four months, right?

 

[Zeetchmen]

CoH was my first MMO, sad to see it go

 

[LordLundar]

Not surprising. While the Free to play model was well received initially, they very quickly made decisions that affected the sustainability (aka selling power and putting everything, even articles that can be earned in game in the store and removing in game methods of acquiring them) of the game. They also completely ignored development of non subscriber content, which led to a very short lifespan for people not wanting to pay extra every week.

That, combined with getting rid of key development staff prior to the launch (notables include Christopher Bruce aka Back Alley Brawler) and a not terribly well received removal of key in game NPCs at launch caused a lot of old guard players to leave. So while the remaining and the minor influx of new players were paying more, it was only barely able to offset the loss of the number of players. So while the store was bringing a lot more money, the overall income barely was steady.

And yes, I did play. I started with City of Villains when it was separate and have a few characters including an epic. I left the game when I was seeing items that affect the game's balance up on the store and every time I considered going back I read that they did something else that did not sit well for me. I'm disappointed, but not surprised. Prior to the previously noted layoffs, the development team was well liked and were concerned with putting out the best game they could. After the layoffs, they focused on money at all costs, and now we know the costs of it.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

That's a damn shame. I'll miss CoH and CoV, seeing as that last one had a Summoner class. For someone who fell in love with Diablo II's Necromancer class, that was a match made in Heaven. It made me love my time spent with that game.

This was also the first MMO (and probably the last), where I actually cared about the story and took the time to read flavor texts that popped up as mission briefings. I tried my hand at a trial WoW account a little while back, and I found out I just couldn't care.

 

[karloss01]

Take my Super hero life away will you? FINE! *Puts on cape and whooshes out into the street*

 

[Hawk eye1466]

The game officially ends on Nov. 30th according to sources. For my wife and I, who were with the game from 2004 up until 2011 or so, it will be the end of an era. We met a lot of good people in Paragon City. We still keep up with quite a few of them out of game.

The news today was sudden and staggering, and I'm at a loss for words, except "Thanks for everything, City of Heroes."

~ Obsidius

Edit: Also, some of us current/former/soon-to-be-former CoH players have made a fleet on Star Trek Online for anyone looking for a new 2nd home: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=373611

I saw coh and for some reason thought company of hero's yes i'm an idiot

This was a great game though I picked it up while on vacation and played it whenever I was bored during the summer and school year for a while dammit I was hoping to come back.

 

[lastjustice]

I heard the news and this scene was one of the first things that came to mind. NCsoft just dropped in and slain something wonderful for their selfish needs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR2Lxe-AUsM

This like the Crisis on infinite servers...only the universe isn't going reboot when it ends.

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

I'm going to miss City of Heroes. I've been playing MMORPGs since the days of EverQuest, and it was the first one I ever found where I felt like I was doing something more meaningful than camping one spawn of orcs or gnolls, or killing eight rats and skinning them so someone could make a belt. I was fighting crime, damn it. One of my earliest COH memories is taking my first character (a martial arts/regen scrapper) across the rooftops of Kings Row and seeing a group of Circle of Thorns mages performing a human sacrifice on the next building over. I backed up, took a running start, leapt over to the next rooftop...

...and proceeded to lay the RIGHTEOUS FIST OF JUSTICE down on the entire group of about six evil bastards. (That was another thing--you could actually be powerful enough to fight off groups.) When the dust cleared, the NPC they'd been trying to sacrifice ran up to me and thanked me. It was one of the most rewarding MMORPG experiences ever.

COH was also the first game I'd run across where you didn't have to have the Holy Trinity of tank, DPS, and healer. You could get a group of just about any mix of archetypes together and have a blast going through missions. I remember doing the respec trial with that same scrapper grouped with (I think) four or five tankers, and we did great without a single healer among us.

Man, I'm going to miss it.

 

[ASan83]

Haven't played the game in years, but I'm sad to hear about its fate. It was the first MMO I ever played, and is still the home of my favorite character I've ever created and many, many good memories. Farewell, Violent Hippie. This world does not deserve you.

 

[quinch]

Hey everyone. I don't post on the forums here a lot - barely ever, in fact - but I'd like to join the chorus of those of us that loved, and still do love this game. I have to run to work soon, so for lack of time, I'll just copypaste a post I made earlier on another site.
-------------
On Friday, Paragon Studios, the developers behind City of Heroes and owned by NCsoft have been fired in entirety. It came out of nowhere for everybody, both the players and the devs, especially as there was a lot of content coming down the pipe - heck, I24 was in open beta. The game servers will be closing by November 30th, and possibly sooner, and since the news hit, the playerbase has been... convulsing.

The rumors of why the shutdown came, not to mention so suddenly, are rampant and pretty much impossible to substantiate. Some say that Cryptic refused to continue licensing the game engine, but that theory has been supposedly shot down by Ghost Widow, one of the former Paragon developers. Others say it's because Aion and Guild Wars 2 have been hemorrhaging money and rather than axe one of the bigger failures, NCsoft decided to sacrifice one of the smaller franchises to improve the books as they have done so before, but some players claim that Aion and GW2 have been operating in the black. If the rate of content City of Heroes has been putting out is anything to judge by, it has been operating at a profit, though a smaller one, so it was probably not a matter of cutting losses. And so on.

I'm not really sure what to do about it. None of us, really. It feels like the rug has been pulled out from under our feet and now we're just waiting to hit the ground. There's a few initiatives - an email campaign at Gabe Newell to see if Valve would be willing or able to buy the franchise from NCsoft, a group of players from the Titan Network trying to arrange buying the IP to City of Heroes, an online petition, and so on, but I don't have much hope of any of it having any kind of success. NCsoft itself hasn't made any sort of announcement, indicating that they'd prefer to let this... elimination pass as quietly as possible, which makes sense, as killing a successful game without notice or warning would probably turn into a PR nightmare when it comes their other ones.

So, I don't know. It might be just a matter of spite, but could I ask you to spread the word? If nothing else, then because City of Heroes deserves better than a moonlight burial in the backyard. It was - and still is, until the servers go down - the first and arguably the best superhero MMO to have existed, and it should go out with a bang, or a roar.

Quinch

PS: I guess I should add some links...
http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/news_archive/thank_you.php - the official announcement by Paragon Studios

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/forumdisplay.php?f=600 - the general discussion forum

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=295867 - Titan Network's attempt to buy the CoH IP

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4370805 - the thread trying to coordinate the Valve letter-writing campaign

http://www.change.org/petitions/ncsoft-keep-ncsoft-from-shutting-down-city-of-heroes# - the online petition to NCsoft to keep City of Heroes going