The game never clicked for me, personally, but I've known many, many people who've spent many, many hours in the game, and it's also rather abrupt. Apparently, just yesterday they were announcing new stuff coming down the pipeline.

"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding

>The game never clicked for me, personally, but I've known many, many
>people who've spent many, many hours in the game, and it's also rather
>abrupt. Apparently, just yesterday they were announcing new stuff
>coming down the pipeline.

Oh man... I just uninstalled this morning to save space! Now I feel guilty!

-------------------------------------
Chris can't handle chemicals

My copy's still installed, but I never played it much. Tempted to go in and grab some last screenshots and maybe try and push a character into content I've never seen.

Looks like they're aiming for a shutdown date of November 30th.

I uninstalled my copies,oh, June? I hadn't played since January. I will miss it, as I started playing just before the Cimeora expansion and played pretty heavily from then till late last year when I finally burned out.

To date CoX is my only MMO, and I started playing mostly because of the general good reviews it received from you lot. :)

Cheers, Heroes, and goodnight.

Brian

I'm not surprised by this. Actually, I'm surprised that it lasted this long. See, with the subscription model it is in the studio's interest to push the "best" content to the end-game. The studio wants to keep the paying subscribers paying for as long as it can, and pushing the best for last is the carrot. This can work even with niche games like CoX because the loyal subscriber base keeps paying.

This doesn't work for a free to play game. Free to play games depend heavily on a continuous influx of new players willing to fork over a few bucks here and there for the pay-for extras. City of Heroes hasn't been getting that influx. Yes, I am aware of the reports that the game has been "going strong", but "going strong" is not the same as "growing".

Second draft, hopefully de-flamed.

Usually, when an MMO is considered to be 'doing poorly', you have some fairly unsubtle indications of the fact. Shrinking server lists, shrinking dev teams, lack of new content, shrinking subscription lists, and so on.

City of Heroes had new content. It had a steady server list, a steady dev team. There were no warning signs, there were none of the usual indications of trouble.

So, yes, I think that there is plenty of grounds for everyone to be shocked by this.

Hell, what gets me is that no one in house knew it was coming. To the point that new powersets were released this week, and they were talking about upcoming releases only a few days ago.

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

>Usually, when an MMO is considered to be 'doing poorly', you have some
>fairly unsubtle indications of the fact. Shrinking server lists,
>shrinking dev teams, lack of new content, shrinking subscription
>lists, and so on.
>
>City of Heroes had new content. It had a steady server list, a steady
>dev team. There were no warning signs, there were none of the usual
>indications of trouble.
>
>So, yes, I think that there is plenty of grounds for
>everyone to be shocked by this.

All good points, and all other things being equal, you would very definitely have a point here. On the other hand... NCsoft. The Korean Masters have never been what you would call entirely trustworthy in these matters. The announcement being so abrupt that it actually more or less stepped on hype about new future content, for instance, is so classic it almost has a distinct flavor.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>City of Heroes had new content. It had a steady server list, a steady
>>dev team. There were no warning signs, there were none of the usual
>>indications of trouble.
>
>All good points, and all other things being equal, you would very
>definitely have a point here. On the other hand... NCsoft. The
>Korean Masters have never been what you would call entirely
>trustworthy in these matters. The announcement being so abrupt that
>it actually more or less stepped on hype about new future content, for
>instance, is so classic it almost has a distinct flavor.

Food for thought: NCsoft bought out CoH from Cryptic in November 2007, which will soon be five years ago. Cryptic is now owned by Perfect World Entertainment. Assuming the game's engine was licensed for a 5-year period, and PWE refused to renew the license (why would they agree? NCSoft are their direct competition in the Asian MMO market), NCsoft would have no choice but to shut the game down.

>Food for thought: NCsoft bought out CoH from Cryptic in November 2007,
>which will soon be five years ago. Cryptic is now owned by Perfect
>World Entertainment. Assuming the game's engine was licensed for a
>5-year period, and PWE refused to renew the license (why would they
>agree? NCSoft are their direct competition in the Asian MMO market),
>NCsoft would have no choice but to shut the game down.

That actually makes more sense than the rumors that were flying around in chat on friday; that it was solely financial because they'd lost money in the second quarter due to overuns in producing Guild Wars 2 and Aion

>That actually makes more sense than the rumors that were flying around
>in chat on friday; that it was solely financial because they'd lost
>money in the second quarter due to overuns in producing Guild Wars 2
>and Aion

Aion could be plausible, but I think they're past the losses on that, as far as affecting CoX goes. GW2, if anything, seems to have vastly exceeded their expectations, going by the strain it's put on their systems. If there's cost overruns on producing it (possible), I'd venture to say that a little bit of accounting juggling could get that squared away.

But the licensing hypothesis? Given that the end date is end of November, that makes a great deal of sense. If that's true, then it's likely there was some attempt to work out an extension or what-have-you, and it fell through at the last minute.

"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding

NCsoft bought the City of Heroes rights entirely. A key purpose of the sale was to free Cryptic to work on Champions Online without conflict of interest issues. Perfect World shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Doing well is not the same thing as growing. Free to play games require new players for revenue. City of Heroes hasn't been getting the new players. That's a HUGE warning sign.

Please excuse me while I pour out a few for my digital homeboys. :(

I've been in shock all day, and crying for half of it.

Finally going to bed now. Probably overdue.