Heh. I had a hero called “The Vice Principal”. Older guy with glasses, a suit, and a big stick. He’d beat the thugs and yell at them for not being in school 
The general consensus is that they really had no interest in selling, so they asked a price that was way higher than what the game was worth, knowing that nobody would pay it, shrugged their shoulders and said, “Hey, we tried!”
You’re going to have to forgive me if this doesn’t sound like rational behavior.
“We have this thing that we don’t want because it doesn’t make us (enough?) money. We are going to throw it away. But wait! You are offering us money to take it? Oh, but that’s not enough money, so we’ll just throw it away.”
In what universe is “get nothing for something by trashing it” better than “get something for something by selling it”? It just doesn’t add up to me. I think something else must have been going on.
Wasn’t it also a very short time between the announcement and the shutdown? Genuine, bona fide deals like that take a few months.
The evidence is good that while CoH was still viable, it was no great cash cow, so a high brasser at NCsoft used that as an excuse to close Paragon Studios and fire the entire staff - for unspecified personal/grudge reasons.
There were MANY attempts to save the game by purchase and I believe some of them reached well into seven figures, for a game whose tech is no longer leading edge and whose market would be steady to declining over time. NCsoft rebuffed all of them and threw out an ask of something like $30M, an insane figure.
We don’t know the whole story. We may never know. But there was dirty dealing and stupid decision making behind it all, and one day Hulk is going to smash that puny god.
There’s also the fact that, historically, NCSoft has shut down numerous games and hasn’t been willing to sell any of them. They were apparently very surprised by the outcry when they shut down CoH, and in response to the bad publicity they made a token show of “trying” to sell it — at an outrageous price that nobody would pay.
Yeah, the CoH community was small, but we were extremely tight-knit and we raised one hell of a stink.
Not that I really care at this point, but this is still super irrational corporate behavior, bordering on conspiracy theory stuff.
Also, isn’t the whole “We had time to make a big stink and they had time to make a dog and pony show of trying to sell it” directly contrary to the earlier assertion that it was a very short time between announcement and shutdown? I myself as a casual consumer of gaming news feel like the was known multiple months in advance. I also read an interview with someone on the inside on the Paragon Studios front who indicated that the sale deal basically fell through at the 11th hour. And that indeed, they really expected to be able to stick around.
Eh. We’ll probably never have the actual truth of it. But I’m not entirely sure that City of Heroes stands as a shining beacon of proof that people really want to make up their own superheroes. Or at least, not enough people to make a profitable game around the subject.
We should probably all see what happens with DC Online or whatever it’s called.
I want to be Spider-Hulk.
From what I heard, Tabula Rasa had overspent enormously on development and there was just no way for it to make back its investment. One of the classic errors in game development I understand; somebody budgets like they are producing the next Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft, and gets dragged under by debt when they do merely “good” or “OK” instead of “incredible”.
This. The timing of NCSoft’s dumping of CoH and Paragon Studios lined up with the fact that their balance sheet was in the red due to spending a crapton of money promoting GuildWars 2.
I followed the fate of COH rather closely and it was never “for sale.” It was deliberately closed while making a profit, the “sale” thing was a farce later (asking $80 millions for it? heh).
COH was one of the most successful MMOs at the moment of its closure – remember, WOW is an outlier. Compared to “everything but WOW,” COH was doing well and had always done well. Calling it a failure is like calling a Super-Bowl-winning football team a failure because it’s only won one and the Steelers have won a bunch.
COH’s closure appears irrational to us, but we don’t know what was going on in the minds of the Korean executives who made the decision to focus on Asian properties.
None of which explains why CoH couldn’t be transferred to another managing studio, even if new content was scaled way, way back. I hadn’t caught up with any of the last five or so major upgrades and I’m sure an absolutely static game would have continued to be profitable for years - there was just So Damned Much in that world that only the faction that has to have new toys every day would have moved on. It makes no sense. No sense at all, and if we end up nuking Korea in the next few years we’ll all know the real reason why.
Fuckin’ worldkillers.
CoH had one of the most vibrant and extensive communities I know of. You don’t seem to be very familar with it except from an outside viewpoint.
If you think the only games that are “worthy” are the ones like WoW that are off the charts in user numbers, then you must drive a Ford Taurus, right?
There is every bit of evidence that CoH was profitable with the user base it had, no matter where it fell on the overall size scale. If making, customizing, developing and playing your own incredibly nuanced super in an almost indescribably complex world doesn’t appeal to you, rest assured it appealed like hell to a vast number of us. Go play Hulk or Spidey or Tony Stark in a closed universe.
I don’t hold it against Korea. If South Korea gets invaded/shelled by the North, I will be among the first to tell them, “I am so sorry about what happened to your country, except the part known as NCSoft.”
I’ve heard lots of stories, but I hear lots of stories from all but the most dead of MMOs, so no, I suppose I’m not particularly familiar with it, except as the game that a bunch of my friends played like mad when it first came out but which didn’t last them even an entire year. /shrug.
I’m not judging ‘worthy’ here; not sure where you got that idea from. Good job demolishing that strawman.
Sorry, but you don’t get to use “vast” to describe CoH. you just don’t. Like it or not, it’s in the MMO space, and when you use “vast” to describe the number of subscribers to an MMO, CoH isn’t the one you’re describing.
Also, good job with the attempted insult, but I have no interest in playing a superhero game fullstop, so you missed again.
Seriously. I am interested in this on an academic level only; Your emotional vitriol about the demise of your favorite game does not concern me.
Ok, the game is out now so please take the NC Soft stuff to another thread if you want to continue.
Anyway I just downloaded the game and have played it a little. Seems pretty cool, especially seeing as it’s free in every way, unless you want to buy characters I think. Haven’t explored the buying aspects at all but it seems fair to me. The actual game seems pretty robust and plays just like Diablo fo the most part. You start off with a choice between Thing, Scarlet Witch, Daredevil and a couple other B listers.
Is anyone else playing this thing? I’ll have a chat if there are people here following as I play it.
I found an instanced grocery, rescued a victim of a robbery and looted a chest therein.
I was going to play, except that it’s PC only.
Wow, they want some serious money to buy some of the characters. Like$20 for some. I also heard that people are going through the entire game multiple times and not getting a single new character to drop. That’s crappy .
It’s not surprising really, that cash shop items drop at all is the surprise. Obviously they are going to be rare, if you want a specific character the cash shop is your only real source. 20 bucks doesn’t seem terribly excessive either, for most people it would be the only money they ever spend on the game and most of them are cheaper than that.