If any of you are fans of this game, please see here.
I know that phrase "nothing lasts forever" is probably the way of looking at this, but as a fan and player, I am sorry to see this happen and so unexpectedly as well. Not only was it a fairly unique Superhero MMO, but this was one of the longest running, best-managed MMO's period! It certainly stuck with me way more than WOW ever did.
I understand that in the world of online games, the economic model that COH and NCSoft used was quickly going away. They seemed to have adapted, and if anything, membership looked like it was going up with the free-mode/payer bonus system. So why they have decided to terminate the game in the midst of planning a new release doesn't but make you wonder what's going on here. Is it corporate greed? Some economic model the company has that isn't working? Any explanation feels like it would help at least soften the blow.
As a gamer and consumer, there have been few companies that have manageed to keep my brand loyalty. Paizo is one of them; Paragon Studios/Cryptic/NC Soft has been one of the few others. Depsite their gaming failures (Tabula Rasa/Auto Assault/Dungeon Runners), City of Heroes and the folks at Paragon Studios always kept a pretty good customer service and product quality in the game. Hell - it sometimes seems like the only thing keeping them afloat was COH and Guild Wars.
To the folks at Goblinworks - as you work on that new MMORPG, I think you should talk to those guys before they all get booted. I think they can give you some great insight on building a great online game; plus I'm sure they could use some employment options.
Feel like I'm rambling here, so I'm just to add to those who play now or used to play: Hope to see you all around Atlas Park before they shut the doors.
The press release pretty much admitted that this was on the corporate management in Korea. Everyone at Paragon Studios expected a normal Friday this morning, but they walked in and got fired. They were giving out freebie codes for a new aura all of last night and as recently as a few weeks ago were talking about plans for at least six months from now. CoH was not doing badly, but it seems NCSoft wanted to focus on losing money on newer properties.
Doing this with no warning was pretty nasty. Anybody who recently bought a multiple-month subscription or invested a fair bit in the Paragon Market must be really pissed off.
WTF? WTF? WTF?!?
I had planned on renewing my subscription sometime next year once my finances got in better shape!!! BUT... But... But why?!? WHAT HAPPENED?!? That was my favorite MMO!!! I played it for SIX years as a paying customer before my financial troubles (and the need for a better computer) forced me to stop.
DAMN!!! DAMN!!! DAMN!!!
That
I feel like I am loosing a very good friend. I had so many good memories. ~curses and rants~ DAMN IT!!!
THIS might be the reason they are axing CoH. BASTARDS!!! ~curses~
Yeah, I saw this early this morning. Such a ridiculous tragedy. As bad as I feel for myself for all the stories and fun that I might miss out on in the coming months and years (they had plans at least up until issue 32, and all the stuff on Beta for I24- which won't be coming out now- looked pretty awesome as well), I feel much worse for the whole of Paragon Studios. To just be blindsided like that, on the eve of Labor Day weekend, no less. Just awful.
I'm still reeling from this, and I can only imagine how they are doing.
[fantasy dreamer mode on]If they are dropping city of heroes completely and won't recieive any new profits from it they could at least make the server code open source for the fans to create and maintain private servers.[/fantasy dreamer mode off]
I am so depressed. I played CoH a lot and now.... I have no where to go...
The character creation and play was unique! NOTHING and I mean NOTHING came close.
It was a huge congregation for a lot of my friends both IRL and the Digital ones I made.
The worst thing is that both my SG and my creations are going to be lost to me.
My IRL friends that were part of my SG has decided to go their separate ways and not move to a new MMO.
The digital friends, my creations, as it stands it looks like I will lose ALL access to them, couldn't even look at them in any 3D format. I don't care about the probably hundreds of dollars I spent on the game, I just wish I could continue to see them again.
Like I said,
I am very depressed.
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"A more elegant game for a more civilized time."
City of Heroes was from a time where MMOs still strived to break new ground and do their 'own thing'. From before "the MMO mold" became an established concept. It had (and still has) some quite brilliant ideas that it still baffles me that other games haven't been inspired by.
It will be missed.
I will miss all the people I've teamed with. I will miss my characters; every single one of the 40+ characters I still played regularily. I will miss the forums that I used not only to discuss the game, but also to brush up on the latest geekdom news.
But most of all I'll miss the game I've called home for over 8 years.
But most of all I'll miss the game I've called home for over 8 years.
Well said; well said.
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Played on and off for eight years. My current subsciption runs out in a few days. I've already deleted my characters, and removed the game from my hard drive. I was seriously thinking about re-upping and trying to the new nature powerset, but NCSoft has saved me that expense.
My understanding was the game was profitable, but apparently not profitable enough for NCSoft to want to keep it open.
So, is Champions Online worth downloading? DCUO? In other good MMO's out there? I tried WoW but couldn't get into it.
Maybe I'll just hang up my cape for a few years, and wait to see if PFO scratches an itch.
My understanding was the game was profitable, but apparently not profitable enough for NCSoft to want to keep it open.
From what I know, and what little I've read, it was more a matter of NCSoft deciding to allocate their profits to other pursuits, rather than continue to pay the Paragon Studios team, who were actually doing well post-Freedom. If you ask me, I'd be willing to be they cut the staff in order to maximize on the profits from the recently released GW2, but that's just my own speculation.
So, is Champions Online worth downloading? DCUO? In other good MMO's out there? I tried WoW but couldn't get into it.
I played the CO beta, and wasn't impressed, but admittedly my computer at the time had problems with the graphics. I haven't heard very good things about it, though. Same with DCUO, which has awesome graphics, but doesn't sound very interesting.
I might try them both, since they're both F2P, but I kind of doubt that I'll be playing any MMOs regularly once COH goes entirely offline. I definitely won't be playing any subscription based MMOs anymore. COH was the only one that had enough to keep me interested to pay for it monthly.
So, is Champions Online worth downloading? DCUO? In other good MMO's out there? I tried WoW but couldn't get into it.
I have played Champions - mostly out of respect for Cryptic Studios. They were the ones who created COH, so I went in curious as to what they'd do differently.
I know some people will tell you it's crap by comparison. I am not here to sing its praises, but considering this may be as close I'll get to playing COH for a longer time, I'll try to assess reasonably:
Pros:
-Being created by the same original COH designers, the basic gameplay concepts are the same: Powers/Health/Endurance/Combo effects. You don't have to master a new learning curve in my opinion. In fact, if you watch the timeline of how each game has developed - you'd note that the folks at Paragon may have emulated some features in Champions (and vice versa of course)
-Although there are archetype sets (like in COH), you can also go freeform with any powerset combo. This can be a little odd, but let's make some interesting combos of powersets.
-The graphics aren't as static as they are in COH; even after the graphics upgrade. The look is more cartoony in many ways, but it is also more fluid in motions and backgrounds. This is more the nature of starting with new engine, I'd guess.
-Champions is also free to play, with a shop link similar to COH. There's no real VIP system in place, so mostly you have pay for features you want to add.
Cons:
-The biggest hurdle it has is that's only 3 years old compared with COH's 8 years. That means, despite the content growth, it looks relatively light on content beyond the main areas - City; Desert; Snow Wilderness. They have been trying to expand it - there's a New Orleans-esque city zone they added and a parallel universe zone of adventures.
If you are hoping to do lots of different places, that's still limited.
-Along these lines, the story content hasn't really hooked me. Yes - there are some interesting concepts in there(the Westworld zone homage in particular is kinda neat), but overall the designers are just trying to pull interesting stuff from the Champions Role-Playing game and not starting from scratch like COH did. This gives it a lack of creativity and originalty that COH has developed. But that may be just me.
-Although there is a good set of powersets, it doesn't match what COH has done. Also - the controller/mastermind role is non-existent. In Champions, you have the tank, support - which is either buffing or healing, scrapper, and blaster.
-Another issue (and I think that this comes from trends in MMO's in general) to me is that game pushes "action" over role-play and character development. This tends to lead to system that is more solo-player centric for everything except the big events/end-game material.
So it can be more "grindy" than you would expect as well.
-Those graphics again. The same thing that makes it more fluid and visually dynamic than COH also has led them to be more ridiculous. The emphasis on the cel-shaded look; brighter palettes; and more cartoonish look to every NPC and player's heroes gives it a more "comic-booky" feel.
-Finally: No Villain players. You are only a hero. So - no mayhem or evil plots to get involved in.
So, I would tell you that if you want to get something like an experience of play you would get in COH, then Champions may work for you. But, for now, I would set your expectations low to not get disappointed.
As for DCUO - I've never played. I've heard its great to look at and play, but the content and abilities are not so great.
I always figured two superhero MMO's were enough. Shame the wrong one got canned.
From what I know, and what little I've read, it was more a matter of NCSoft deciding to allocate their profits to other pursuits, rather than continue to pay the Paragon Studios team, who were actually doing well post-Freedom. If you ask me, I'd be willing to be they cut the staff in order to maximize on the profits from the recently released GW2, but that's just my own speculation.
As I understand it, this was an internal restructuring that resulted in Paragon Studios being shut down without notice. City of Heroes itself, seems to have been collateral damage from that decision.
Which, in some weird way, is weirdly comforting. I'm not sure why.
THIS might be the reason they are axing CoH. BASTARDS!!! ~curses~
I have no insider news, but just what has been speculated and forum dicussed on various websites tied to COH. Various elements discussed/mentioned:
-NC Soft's profitability. Apparently, the company has taken hits financially and the mounting losses on MMO's from different studios - Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, AION going F2P because it wasn't making its numbers. They even tried to market and put City of Heroes into the Korean market, but apparently that didn't go so well financially. Apparently only Lineage and Lineage 2 - and that's primarily in Korea - is their true money machine.
-By comparison, COH was going down from even their stable numbers. COH Freedom - the F2P hybrid move was an attempt to stem that. Given that Champions went to F2P just a few months before, I think they felt the pressure and had to make ths move maybe sooner than expected. The move looks like an attempt by Paragon to prove to NC Soft that it could do something to make COH more cash-worthy. In hindsight, that chance was apparently a year - given how closely to the time Freedom started that axe has been dropped.
-Someone has looked at NC Soft's profit reports and brings up the point that while COH did see a small bump in sales over the past year, it wasn't an overwhelming jump - again stable and rising. Given more time, it might have continued to grow - but maybe NC Soft didn't see being as successful as Guild Wars.
-Another item mentioned is that NC Soft is restucturing - trying to reduce their range to better work in the highly competative game market in Korea and Asia. IE - if they can't manage it from Korea, they want to get out of it. Lineage and Lineage 2 and AION all have greater control and influence from the company in Korea. Anywhere else - especially N. America - it is more a matter of passing on the program transaltion of these games; not design or development. Given the failure of many of their MMO attempts outside the country, plus the cost of supporting an international gaming studio, this could be part of it.
-The contradiction to that is they continue to develop a Space MMO called Wildstar - which I believe is being done by another California company - Carbine Studios. It has been mentioned that closing Paragon and the aging COH may have been a matter of cost management via resource allocation for the new game. IE - your computers; server services; etc now get funnelled into this shiny new game without costing us too much money.
-Guild Wars seems to be the one exception to this, but that may be because Arena net is based on Washington state - not far from NC Soft's headquarters in the US.
-Lastly - and this one I think has been proven untrue - is the idea that this is about licensing the COH programming engine. Basically, NC Soft bought the COH IP and all that includes from Cryptic Studios when they decided to quit working on COH and start working for Marvel on the MMO. (Aside - that was eventually cancelled by Marvel, but supposedly Cryptic took what they had built and modified it to create Champions - but that's another story). There is some discussion that while the IP was NC Soft's to keep, the actual gaming engine/software was not bought - but essentially rented for 5 years from Cryptic. And that license is now up.
-The real trick on this - if true - that Cryptic doesn't own the engine anymore either. Cryptic was bought by Atari and then bought by Perfect World - a Chinese based MMO/software maker. So, Perfect World owns the engine and COH's direct competitor in the Superhero MMO genre: Cryptic's Champions-Online. So, final upshot of this line of thinking is that the gaming engine license has to be renewed for COH to continue legally, but Perfect - in order to hamper their competition - has set the price or conditions so hard that NC Soft basically decided to pull the plug rather than lose too much money.
Whew! Since no one at NC Soft or the Devs themselves are talking about these details (I think the whole Paragon staff may not even get an explanation based on how this went down), all of this is conjecture by fans. I would love to know the truth, and I suspect that some part of this material this is true (especially the profitability and management). We may never get that final explanation; frankly without some explanation, the whole process makes NC Soft look very unprofessional to me and that makes my interest in Guild Wars fall off.
I get bummed thinking that all that software code - details, characters; and basically eight years of digital work will either be purged from existence or stored in box somewhere like the Ark in the warehouse at the end of Raiders.
There has been hopes that maybe NC Soft will change their minds if they see a show of force by the players - I know there's a great online-petition going on to make that point, but not sure how effective it will be without tens of thousands getting involved. If anyone wants it, I'll post the link as soon as I can find it.
The ideal situation would be for some company to buy the game's license and all that software/resources/etc. to keep the game online. Problem with this theory is that:
a) I don't see any company in the market to buy a slightly-used MMO, especially with the economy fluctuating so much.
b) NC Soft has been somewhat infamous about keep ahold of their IPs - so I find it hard to believe they would part with it unless they got "outrageous money." Rumor has it that Richard Garriott wanted to buy Tabula Rasa's IP back - the game he helped create and NC Soft refused. I know they had to pay him in court for cancelling his contract, but not the actual progarm.
Anyhow - in case anyone was curious about what could have caused this, hope this helps. Apologies for the long rambling post - still feeling the loss on this one.
Just as a side note, there is a rumor going around that Sony Online Entertainment, and possibly one other unnamed company, already made bids on COH an hour or so after the Paragon announcement.
So... who knows?
The yanking the license for the client story doesn't wash with the Devs who elected to comment. I read one by the former Back Alley Brawler (who now works at Cryptic again, having started with them back when they still ran CoH) where he said he had no knowledge of anything like that despite working for both companies in the past. The CoH PR guy said pretty much the same thing.
Just as a side note, there is a rumor going around that Sony Online Entertainment, and possibly one other unnamed company, already made bids on COH an hour or so after the Paragon announcement.
Rumor noted. Ahh - if it could come to pass, I think a lot of people would be much relieved. Sony would certainly go up a notch in my book.
The yanking the license for the client story doesn't wash with the Devs who elected to comment. I read one by the former Back Alley Brawler...CoH PR guy said pretty much the same thing.
Noted. Yea - I suspected it wasn't accurate either. But for the sake of laying out all the speculation that's been most predominant, I included it. Kind of a check list, I suppose.
IIRC CoH had also upgraded all the servers recently. I wonder if they wanted to use the hardware somewhere else that promised more profit.
Possibly. I've seen someone speculate that those resources might be reallocated to the in-development Wildstar Online.
Looks like the SOE thing was just a rumor; someone heard from John Smedley himself.
There may or may not be other studios looking into bidding, but there is also buzz that NCSoft might not be interested in selling it (which would suck biggeth time.)
But there are still things in the works; hopefully something can be worked out, and the game can still be kept viable, even if no further development continues on it.
Really sucks, they had so much planned, and a lot of things in the works that hadn't even made it to Beta yet (and I kept putting off finishing some of the Beta stuff because I figured I had time... :()
WTF? WTF? WTF?!?
...
That was my favorite MMO!!!
...DAMN!!! DAMN!!! DAMN!!!
That
Exactly.
Sad to see it go. I've been playing on and off since beta, and IMO CoH had the best dev team and community in the industry.
For that very reason, despite having lifetime subs to both Champions and DCUO, I choose to play CoH instead.
Until the doors close, see you on Virtue.
@Alienist
Well there was a massive rally last Saturday and they had ovedr 3000 folks on the Virtue server and something like 2300 to 2600 on Freedom with others getting the overflow.
It was a grand time and there were folks who said NCSoft had noticed the protests. Whether it will mean anything is unknown.
Well there was a massive rally last Saturday and they had ovedr 3000 folks on the Virtue server and something like 2300 to 2600 on Freedom with others getting the overflow.
It was a grand time and there were folks who said NCSoft had noticed the protests. Whether it will mean anything is unknown.
It probably won't. But I was there last saturday. 33 instances of Atlas Park on Virtue alone was pretty epic. At least we're not going down without a fight.
I also think it's incredible that NCSoft announce shutting down the game without any kind of plan for what to do next. Tabula Rasa at least got an "end of the world" style event. NCSoft haven't even decided what to do about current subscriptions paid past December 1st. Contacting support yield "uhh, we don't know. Hang on." (paraphrased) responses.
It seems like they just pulled the plug one day, with no plan and not even a public statement about the decision.
I am more and more convinced this was some office politic shenanigans somehow brought on by Nexon buying a majority share of NCSoft.
As it stands though if I could return GW2 I would, I'm not planning to buy anything from Arenanet, my apologies to them, and it will be a long time if ever that I purchase another NCSoft or Nexon product, the Nexon thing is easy as the only thing of theirs I've ever tried was Vindictus and it was too grindy for me.
I find myself more and more pointed towards the small/indie developer and away from the corporate behemoths who care nothing for their customers.
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I do not care HOW good GW2 is. I will never play it after how CoH was screwed over.
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COH
Sad to see it go, even though I only visited off and on since launch. The amount of work and depth put into the game over the years was impressive, even though I wasn't a huge fan of the gameplay or the randomness of names/costumes I ran into (hard to feel superheoric and not offended when teamed up with a naked man in bunny ears named "Queerlad"). I'd REALLY love to see a solid MMO company pull this license somehow and make a COH2. Champions was a big letdown for me so I had held hope for a COH sequel.
GW2
Great gameplay innovations, terrible avatars. That about sums it up for me. I cant do western fantasy through an asian lense. However, I can watch Lodoss until the cows come home, so I suppose its just a hypocritical quirk.
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Damn, that's really sad. I haven't touched CoH in a while (mostly because I prefer playing with RL friends and they all buggered off back to WOW), but it was the first MMO I really fell for. It's got a ton of style and really memorable bad guys, and I especially enjoyed playing a Mastermind in CoV. Might have to see if I can clear out some hard-drive space and take it for one last spin.
CoH's failure is pretty much the fault of the players who stopped supporting it while continuing to play. FreeToPlay does not work if the players don't provide some form of income to keep the game a viable concern.
It's worth noting that CoH has never cost NCSoft money. The game was generating profits. This was, most likely, NCSoft deciding that the resources they spend on CoH could be spend generating more income elsewhere. Probably as advertisement for GW2 or Aion. :)
I feel almost embarrassed to do this, but if anyone feels sympathetic to the cause they can sign a petition to show support for the game here: http://www.change.org/petitions/ncsoft-keep-ncsoft-from-shutting-down-city- of-heroes.
We're not expecting miracles, but I think NCSoft should at least know the impact their business decision has on people, like me, who's been a loyal customer of theirs for more than eight years.
The City of Heroes Community Coffee Talk 9-5-2012 Maybe the last one.
I do not care HOW good GW2 is. I will never play it after how CoH was screwed over.I understand the desire to protest but understand that ArenaNet didn't do anything to you.
I understand that, but ArenaNet is under NCSoft. NCSoft controls them. NCSoft can't be trusted anymore. So unfortunately, ArenaNet suffers because NCSoft does not care and can't be trusted.
I feel almost embarrassed to do this, but if anyone feels sympathetic to the cause they can sign a petition to show support for the game here. We're not expecting miracles, but I think NCSoft should at least know the impact their business decision has on people, like me, who's been a loyal customer of theirs for more than eight years.
Already signed and supported! I keep hoping for that miracle - hoping that somebody can convince NC Soft to keep it going or maybe someone to just buy the dang game from them.
Like you, aside from protesting/petition/letter writing, I wish there was something more I could do to show them they have a lot of loyal customers in COH.
What really sucks is that people like me will not want to try future NCSoft games, no matter how good. I feel sorry for all the smaller studios that are under NCSoft.
The City of Heroes shutdown stinks. I've been playing the game on and off for about two years. I pumped a lot of money into that game to support the company even after they went free-to-play, and now it turns out that it was all for nothing.
Unfortunately for me, I had already bought GW2 before the announcement involving the City of Heroes shutdown went out. They timed things pretty well, bah.
Now I'm stuck with a new game that I like, but can't help but wonder when/if it will be randomly shut down by corporate politics.
Still hurts, like I got sucker punched in the ribs and then kicked in the 6. I just hope with the recent Sci-Fi writers backing the attempt to bring the game back we might seem some motion.
I just keep telling myself that this might be some big elaborate hoax from the upper management in prep to announcing CoH2, but after seeing all the damage it is causing I know it isn't true.
Hey,
I played loads of CoH/CoV, and I can't reccomend Champions Online strongly enough. It even has functionality for switching your hero from the MMO to a tabletop if you're interested in the pnp version.
I tried Champions and I don't like it very much at all.
Just don't feel like a hero.