NCsoft Shuts Down City of Heroes

[Armadox]

God damn, how many of NCSoft's MMOs have been shut down so far? I think it's like 5 now: Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Exsteel, Dungeon Runners... and according to Wikipedia there are 2 others. Don't they realize how much of a turnoff that is when dealing with huge investments of time like MMOs?

I was in both City of Heroes and Auto Assault betas, and the problem is they make great games but don't like to back them. Auto Assault was one of my favorite games, as me and friends all played it and liked near everything about it (save one hilarious glitch where you could accidentally make a shield of homing missiles around your car by spinning the mouse in a circle that allowed you to ram someone for infinite damage).

So long Mr. Visible, may you flash power into that dark night..

 

[scw55]

Problem was that the best part about the game was the character creations.
And the character creation was amazing. Utterly beating any other Superhero MMOs.

Will be missed. DC Universe doesn't even touch it for character customisation.

 

[keroko]

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)

There is one resource it's draining: Manpower. People spending time on CoH aren't spending time on other, more profitble projects.

That's the only reason I can think of.

 

[Kahani]

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

Well that's the question, isn't it. Is it actually profitable? As the article says, sales of the game have been relatively constant over the last year. However, if you look at actual revenue, shown on page 7 of the report, overall income has dropped fairly constantly over the years, and it wasn't exactly a big money maker to start with. So it's quite possible that it actually isn't profitable at all. And if you look at page 12, you can see that overall profits have plummeted over the last year, to the point that the last quarter was a big loss and 2012 as a whole barely broke even.

So really, it's not all that surprising. A company that's been making much less money recently and has a couple of big releases coming up decides to get rid of an old property that is certainly trending towards making a loss soon, even if it's not got there quite yet.

 

[Sixcess]

So really, it's not all that surprising. A company that's been making much less money recently and has a couple of big releases coming up decides to get rid of an old property that is certainly trending towards making a loss soon, even if it's not got there quite yet.

What you say is sound, in theory, but there are several reasons why this has taken people by surprise.

Mainly how sudden it was. A new powerset was released last week, beta testing on the next major update was in process, and then on Friday, with no warning at all, the studio is shut down and the game's closing announced. Noone, not even the dev team, saw this coming.

Secondly, the game wasn't making a loss. Not yet. Seasoned MMO watchers are used to seeing warning signs - studios cut staff, servers are merged, the pace of updates slows or even stops. None of that happened. The game went from active ongoing development to dead in a day.

Finally, relatively few MMOs actually shut down, and those that do tend to do so within a year or two at most. Even games percieved as mega-flops like Warhammer Online are still trundling along, not to mention relics like Everquest, Ultima Online, Anarchy Online...

The closest comparison is SWG, and that was killed by LucasArts deciding not to renew the licence. There is simply no precedent for a game as long lasting and established as CoH to be killed off. Not like this.

To put it a different way, if, 7 days ago, you'd asked the MMO community to run a 'dead pool' on which superhero MMO was the most likely to be axed within the next 12 months, I reckon Champions Online and DCUO would both have been regarded as more likely candidates for shutdown than CoH.

 

[oppp7]

God damn, how many of NCSoft's MMOs have been shut down so far? I think it's like 5 now: Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Exsteel, Dungeon Runners... and according to Wikipedia there are 2 others. Don't they realize how much of a turnoff that is when dealing with huge investments of time like MMOs?

I was in both City of Heroes and Auto Assault betas, and the problem is they make great games but don't like to back them. Auto Assault was one of my favorite games, as me and friends all played it and liked near everything about it (save one hilarious glitch where you could accidentally make a shield of homing missiles around your car by spinning the mouse in a circle that allowed you to ram someone for infinite damage).

So long Mr. Visible, may you flash power into that dark night..

Ya, if Auto Assault was still around I probably would have gotten into it. It sounds like one of the more imaginative MMOs (gameplay-wise, at least).

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

So what about City of Villains? Can you at least keep that open for two more years since it came out two years after? Yes! Evil time! (j/k)

A shame. I played it early in its run for about a year, loved the various powers of the different gangs (and of course most of those were available to you too) as well as the Sidekick/Exemplar system which only now in Guild Wars 2 has any other game done well.

My best memory of CoH is probably the task force we put together to take down all the Praetorian heroes. The giant squid Lucsa and hulking zombie Adamastor got killed on an hourly basis on my server, but those guys were considerably tougher. Never got a chance to try the so-called ultimate boss, Reichsman. Main being a Scrapper with Martial Arts and Super Reflexes, 'twas great fun kicking and punching hoods around Paragon City and travelling around with super speed. I always thought the level up jingle sounded a bit like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

RIP Formula Zero. Your sprinting, kicking and punching skills will never be forgotten by me.

 

[evilneko]

Not surprising that such a boring mmo would have flat sales and be irredeemable even by a f2p model.

 

[TheAweDude]

Damn, this was on my "must try list," but now it just seems kind of futile to give it a go now.

 

[xDarc]

Can't wait until I see a headline like this for WoW. I stopped playing MMOs when EverQuest carebear garbage took over before it got started.

Ultima Online was the shit. Feel sorry for anyone too young to have experienced a gaming genre as a new and unknown frontier.

 

[ultrabiome]

5+ year CoH vet (from 2004 to 2010 or so). first and favorite MMO.

even though i've been mainly offline for the past few years due to other gaming interests and getting married, i'm very sad to see CoH die so suddenly. if i get a chance i'll get online before it dies to fight with my main, Soul Stormer (Illusion/Kinetics), one last time.

whatever the reason, it seems too soon. i was playing it before WoW started and was glad with my choice. better modern world with infinite character creation possibilities (and became stronger) with awesome powerset combinations (wish color customization had come sooner, but oh well) and a strong UI that rarely got in the way. they could do whatever in terms of story since it wasn't an established franchise. so many good ideas...

farewell Paragon City - too bad the Rikti invaders and Preatorian super-villians won .

 

[Firehound]

No more tears, only dreams now City of Heroes...


The second True MMO I played. I have fond memories.

 

[BoogieManFL]

I played CoH a good bit when it was new. Never got passed level 38 or so though.

It was pretty nifty at the time, but I felt it was one of those games that is designed like they just hate the player and make it overly harsh. Knowing where to go was often a challenge, it took forever to level, experience debt for dying was BS, and in general it took a long time to recover from a death that it pushed me and my friends away. I know a lot of people enjoyed it, so sorry for them but I suppose eventually it'll happen to every MMO we play.

 

[LordLundar]

I played CoH a good bit when it was new. Never got passed level 38 or so though.

It was pretty nifty at the time, but I felt it was one of those games that is designed like they just hate the player and make it overly harsh. Knowing where to go was often a challenge, it took forever to level, experience debt for dying was BS, and in general it took a long time to recover from a death that it pushed me and my friends away. I know a lot of people enjoyed it, so sorry for them but I suppose eventually it'll happen to every MMO we play.

You can blame Jack Emmert for those problems. They were apparently his "artistic vision" and a fair bit of it carried over into Champions Online. When Matt Miller took the reigns most of that was scrapped and the rest was gone shortly after.

 

[Vencedor Uberstar]

Well NC Soft isn't the major reason for shutting it down, apparently someone high up in the Nexon Corp. business chain, after buying most of NC Soft back in the beginning of June this year. I assume someone from Nexon told NC Soft that if they wanted to continue making games in the Eastern market, then they needed to cut some of their Western market (USA) game studios and game support facilities. So that they could concentrate more in the EU/UK & Asian markets. But that's my speculation, based on the fact that Nexon Corp. makes 10 times what NC Soft does annually. So I assume if a big company makes 100-200 Million annually in the same market, compared to another company @ 10-20 million annually, if they bought out the company that only makes 10-20 million annually then they don't see much from a game like CoH, or it's studio so they cut it off.

 

[Beautiful End]

Oh...well, I WAS going to play it as soon as I got a cool computer that runs it. Guess I'll never do that now.

 

[Jacob Rinker]

Yea, I played CoH a few years back and maintained my account on and off, keeping my account active for about 5 years of play. From what I had heard a considerable amount of players had serious Hacks since the release of GW2 and even during the beta, seems to me they might be trying to strength a another new game, but until ArenaNet (The team on GW2) fixes all of the issues concerning security, CoH won't be the last of the NCSoft games that suffer from GW2 refunds.

Because we all know know New MMOs are the greatest Financial investment, Ask Blizzard.....oh wait..