I always suspected personal spite. Some executive who hated CoH or Paragon Studios or just catering to “Western gamers” got promoted and used his new position to rip it all down. Shut off the game, destroy Paragon Studios, refuse to sell to anyone. The refusal to make a profit just didn’t look like a normal corporate decision to me.
Yeah, gotta pander anime pablum to the insane Korean players. All else is dust beneath the wheels.
Is there any substitute for CoH out there? Intelligent, open, complex, good community - and NOT elfy-welfy-magic-swordery?
The other two superhero MMO’s are DC Heroes and Champions Online. Both are free to play so you can try them.
A number of CoH players went to Secret World, a modern era paranormal MMORPG. It’s interesting plotwise and has some nifty concepts but I wasn’t feeling it when I tried it out.
I saw an unconfirmed rumor that NCSoft was asking $80 million for the CoH IP which is ridiculous and basically an unvitation to sell.
As far as alternatives, I tried both Champions and DCOnline. I just couldn’t get into Champions. What is available to you for free was too limited and the game play didn’t make me want to pay.
DCOnline was much more fun. I wish CoH had their graphics engine but had CoH’s game play. I wasn’t a fan of the gear system but I know CoH was the exception in that regard and my experiences with SWTOR helped me pick it up pretty quickly.
I really loved how CoH’s combat was very simple but every deep. Other MMOs seem much more “twitchy” in their combat.
I had signed in a few times since they announced the closing, actually did a story arc, but just didn’t have my heart in it anymore, since I knew it was all going away.
Signed in the last night and went to the CECIL supergroup base. Culex, Balanced, Max Carnage, Candid Gamera. Just hung out there until it was time. Missed JB and others, but it was a fitting end. Signed out before the whole thing fell apart.
Weird, cause I always felt like it would be there.
That says it all. A good part of my online time in the last year or two has been to just log an alt in and wander - familiar places, new corners, hang out on beaches, whack a few bad guys… I thought it would always be there to escape to. Even after seven and a half years, there was always something worth going to see.
Right now I have an overpowering urge to go cruise Peregrine, or Steel, or… haven’t been to Boomtown in a long time.
Shit.
So did I, or at least for a very long time. That after all is the usual pattern for older MMOs, or so I’ve always understood; first they stop new development, then they start shutting down servers, and then the last server runs pretty much indefinitely to cater to the last little hard core of fans. There’s no point in just shutting it all down when the original development costs have been paid off and there’s still people there willing to pay; that’s the sort of thing that happens to new games that look like they won’t even make back what they cost to make.
What I expected is that eventually CoH would stop development, lose servers and eventually just be reduced to a last server or two left running, with the only new content being MA missions. A process that I expected to be years away, there were no signs of anything like that happening. I was totally blindsided by them just deciding to shut it all down, refusing to sell, and destroying Paragon Studios to boot.
I know the feeling; I keep having the urge to visit some place I haven’t been in a while; the Shadow Shard, hang out and listen to the Seed of Hamidon in First Ward (whoever designed the sound effects for that thing did a great job), etc. There’s all sorts of things I never got around to doing, characters I meant to play more. All gone now. 
I was seriously bummed when it went down. I’ve got screenshots and exports of all my characters, but … eh.
I kinda wish I’d spent more time these last two years on the game - but that might’ve made the sudden closure even harder to deal with.
Another YouTube video of relevance :
Next game: I played WoW a bit, but it just pisses me off. It’s so slow; after being able to fly at level 6, waiting until 60 in WoW is just too much.
I’ve been playing SWTOR, and am liking it so far. I don’t think it’s big enough to keep me for long, but for now, it’s something.
There may never be another City of Heroes for me.
GMG has Secret World on sale today for $5.25 with coupon code GMG30-DEC01-ARFC9 in case anyone wanted to give it a try.
Note that the game requires a monthly sub with the standard 30 days free. So you can try it for a month for the $5.25 and see if it’s a fit for you.
I finally took some time this weekend to DL and try out Champions Online. I’m not thrilled with it, but as methadone for CoH withdrawal it’s working pretty well. It was created by the same team and shows much the same DNA, but seems… simplified. You can’t move the screen elements around, for example, without stopping and going into GUI edit mode. The overall character building is more fixed and narrow.
But I’m enjoying it at much the same level as I did CoH in random run-around mode. Give it a whirl if you’re still in Paragon City withdrawal.
I’ve been doing the exact opposite; I’ve been avoiding anything too CoH-like or superheroish ever since they announced the shutdown. I practically lived in Skyrim for the first month or so; neither the style, look or lore is CoH-like, and it’s an engrossing game so it helped me not think about the destruction of CoH.
Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself it never happened, didn’t matter that much, and maybe one day you’ll believe it… ya lucky bassard…
If you happen to drop that icon.exe in your City of Heroes folder and run it… something magical happens. And if you have saved costumes, you can load them again.
Oh. And if you have programming or 3D art skills, there’s a group of people who believe in the game enough to make a spiritual successor.
There is a contributor named Blackjack. There is no contributor named Hookers. But there’s going to be a new CoH. (Ignore Heroes and Villains.)
Yes, I keep hearing about the Titans version. Will believe when I actually see it, and when it’s still operating when NCsoft fires a lawyer barrage at them.
…but it’s fun and encouraging to be able to play around in the character builder again…
Well, dammit, I shouldn’t have uninstalled.
A-ha! Someone kindly made a shared folder available with all the downloaded beta files. I am back in (the costume) business!
I’m debating whether I should volunteer at this stage. I’m a programmer, but I’m much better at debugging than at writing things from scratch. I might be more useful to them later in the project. I’m also a compulsive worldbuilder, though, so there might be something I could contribute along those lines.
I could be a writer/proofreader. Mostly a proofreader. Typos, misspellings, wrong word usage, etc. tend to just jump out at me when I’m playing these games.