City of Heroes/Villains

[Moonchild]

OK, Not sure if any of you are "in the loop" on this, but you may have heard something about it and may hear something about it very soon.
City of Heroes was the first Superhero MMORPG out there, originally created by Cryptic studios, who sold it to NCSoft (the people who also market Guild Wars, anything on Arenanet, Aion, Lineage, and a few other games).
On the 31st of August, without warning, NCSoft decided to, with immediate effect, close Paragon Studios, the subdivision in charge of City of Heroes/Villains, fire its employees, and give the command to start shutting down the game.

I'm involved in this because I subscribe to the game, the only MMO I actually play at this time, to wind down and have my entertainment when I'm not busy with other things or if i need to blow off steam when things are giving me a headache.

Some facts:

• The game has over 50k subscribers, plus "free" players who use the points market to buy additional in-game content. The game was making good profit, actually increasing.
• The game was actively developed, in the middle of a few in-game story arcs, recently released new power sets, and in the final stages of publishing a free expansion (that would actually be changing some fundamental game mechanics to make the game even better)
• The developers didn't want the game closed, the players didn't want the game closed
• There was nothing prior to that dreaded day to indicate anything that spelled out "we're going to close" - no build up to the closure, no press releases or conferences, nothing. The developers were taken just as much by surprise as anyone else.
• There is a very vibrant and active player community around the game, who stepped up, with creating an official on-line petition, getting celebrity support, organizing player events in-game to protest, etc.

Then today, on the official boards of City of Heroes, I found a post that basically says it all, which I wanted to share here.

You know what? I am three things that are relevant here:

A gamer since the Atari 800.

A former associate editor with Game Informer Magazine.

And now a web/UI/going-on-generalist programmer interviewing this weekend at his first game developer wondering if maybe it's a mistake to get back into the gaming industry.

So, 50-60K subscribers paying 15$ a month + whatever they make off micro-transactions of which I know I've dropped more than a few bucks on very recently and they want to shutter the servers because why?

What is wrong with this industry? Success is not WoW. That's mad, insane, ridiculous success. Success is profit.

And don't talk to me about "freeing up resources." Because I'll come right back atcha with the ease of continuing to pull in revenue from simply adding a few new features and tweaks to a game with a pre-existing, ready-built, evergreen, awesome community vs taking a gamble on some new project that will no doubt be way too much like WoW, thereby alienating the few COH players left who haven't sworn NCSoft purchases off for good already.

So, to whomever is responsible, let's just be clear about what you are doing:

* You are killing a goose that lays silver eggs, no doubt because you're betting on some WoW-like chicken that craps diamonds and you'd like to free up some talent and resources to take that gamble, whose savings should it fail, will pale in comparison to the profits you threw away. And let's understand the nature of these regular profits. They're easy. The game's built. The community's established. The servers and support structures are in place. All you have to do is add smatterings of new outfits and new powers and we'll keep paying for it. Quite frankly, your risk management skills are overdue for an evaluation.

* Furthermore, in doing so, you are alienating a community of MMOers who have been playing COH, many of us on and off for 8 years, so no, not your 50-60K subscribers but a whole lot more people than that.

* You have established even to non-fans of COH that you don't care about your customers, the time they've invested in your games, or whether the games are in fact profitable/successful. Given that, why would any gamer invest time/money/social energy in another one of your MMOs? After all, how can we predict whether you're just going to randomly shutter your servers when you have paying customers willing to use them? It doesn't matter how great that MMO is. That shadow will always fall on your games for the fans of this one that got needlessly scrapped right before one of its most anticipated content expansions in recent history.

And it's not even out of spite or anger or a sense of feeling burned that I'll be loathe to invest time/money in any other MMO published by NCSoft. It's the uncertainty. The point of MMOs is that you don't just "finish." Things keep going. Communities get established. When you shut them down unexpectedly like this it's like being in the middle of your first play-through of a single-player game and having the publisher flip a kill switch on it while it's still selling copies.

I have games I still play that I paid 60 bucks for 20 years ago. MMOs and other online multiplayer games you ultimately pay hundreds for that close their doors on perfectly profitable numbers of paying customers are starting to strike me as a raw deal. The publisher not to mention the industry as a whole poisons its own damn well when it behaves like this.

COH is a uniquely evergreen and a rare gem for being one of few truly successful sandbox MMOs out there. Build off of that enduring success. Don't scuttle it because the extended community that gets scuttled with it isn't likely to come back to you for anything, no matter how good it is for a few years at least.

Sincerely in game and in R/L,
Erik Reppen

[megaman]

I am always stalking and getting e-mailed about things to sign, so count me in on this one as well.

[lyceus]

One of the good reasons that I'm happy for not have a credit card, people cannot steal my money remotely like this case.

[megaman]

One of the good reasons that I'm happy for not have a credit card, people cannot steal my money remotely like this case.

One of the good reasons that I recommend Free-2-Play, where money is only used if desired not required.

[Moonchild]

It's got nothing to do with stealing money, lobocursor. Nobody got ripped off with their credit card.
They just pulled the plug without warning on the entire game; it will still run at least until 30 November, but recurring subscriptions have stopped, and the points market has also been shut down (you can't buy more points with money, but you can still spend the ones you have)

Also, City of Heroes is a hybrid free-to-play and subscription game; you don't have to subscribe if you want to play for free and just purchase things you want when you want them.

[lyceus]

It's got nothing to do with stealing money, lobocursor. Nobody got ripped off with their credit card.

I disagree, because you need to buy subscriptions and items online, that means a credit card transaction. They just expect that people end subscriptions to shut-down the serves and do not made refunds, the article didn't say something about refunds or else. Also for all in-game items brought with real money, they will be gone when the game is offline. Just imagine the people that renew their subscription or brought items one day before this news. Maybe is not a direct robbery but still is one, they can't just plug the cord and left people angry.

[Blacklab]

This forum is nothing if not educational.... since I had absolutely no idea what you were on about I used Mr Berners-Lee's wonderful invention to find out.... thus I now understand you are about to lose a much loved MMO computer game.

I think I remember playing a few games of the original "green on black" Space Invaders in a pub up the Meon valley on a console the size of a Jukebox circa 1978.... but my interest in computer games obviously crashed and burned before reaching V1.... and by the sound of it the content/complexity/connectivity has moved on just a tad since then?

Anyhow, curious as to why this apparently successful and adored game was being peremptorily dumped, I found this article which puts up a thesis and some numbers: https://unsubject.wordpress.com/2012/09 ... rld-event/ to try and explain why this is happening. The numbers don't look good.... and the prospects even worse.

[Moonchild]

I disagree, because you need to buy subscriptions and items online, that means a credit card transaction. They just expect that people end subscriptions to shut-down the serves and do not made refunds, the article didn't say something about refunds or else. Also for all in-game items brought with real money, they will be gone when the game is offline. Just imagine the people that renew their subscription or brought items one day before this news. Maybe is not a direct robbery but still is one, they can't just plug the cord and left people angry.

Why do you think people are so angry and that many people have already sworn never to give NCSoft a single dime ever again for any of their games?
You have to realize though that the game is a hybrid free-to-play game. If you don't want to buy in-game items and you don't want to pay for subscription, you don't have to. You can play the game and never pay anything for it. You will have less content and more limited character customization, but that is "bonus" material you get for subscribing and/or actually purchasing the additional items. And unlike some other games in the genre, like Cryptic's "second try" Champions Online, CoH/CoV does give you a full gaming experience with most content and powers available and equal to subscribers.

There are indeed no refunds - but you also have to realize that when playing an MMO like that, you don't own the game; you pay for the privilege of playing and for the entertainment the game gives. The in-game items you may possibly buy are, once again, to increase your entertainment value. And yes, the people who just bought something only get to play with their in-game items for the time the game will remain up (90 days from the announcement). It's not fair, certainly, to just "pull the plug" on all these players. And it's a grey area as far as robbery goes because there was no indication that the bought items would be for such a limited time.

Currently though, people who had subscribed retain their subscription status in the game, even if they don't have to pay, for the remainder of this 90 day period. People who have bought in-game content get to continue using it for the remainder of this period. So even if it is extremely bad form, and NCSoft has shown a really ugly side to itself, the in-game experience that is supplied is at least compensated a little bit by keeping the subscription status for subscribers for free, and keeping the servers up for another 3 months. It's not robbery in that respect.

But financial matters aren't the most important thing here. NCSoft has ordered the shutdown of this game while it was making profit, very actively played, and without any sort of lead-up that would allow other investors to take it over smoothly, and negotiate with them to take over both Paragon Studios and the game itself. Never before have I seen such a blunt, crude enforced decision about a game, and I hope I will never see it again.
It has left a lot of players with a very bad taste in their mouth, so to say. And it may actually reflect on the entire industry as a whole, now.

I do hope that the momentum created by the player base and investors will pay off - last I heard in-game was that there has been word that Paragon Studios management and investors were talking with NCSoft management, so we may see the city saved one way or another. No official news as of yet though, so all we can do is wait and play the game while we still can, keeping public pressure on NCSoft, and hope.

[Moonchild]

Anyhow, curious as to why this apparently successful and adored game was being peremptorily dumped, I found this article which puts up a thesis and some numbers: https://unsubject.wordpress.com/2012/09 ... rld-event/ to try and explain why this is happening. The numbers don't look good.... and the prospects even worse.

What that article sketches is rather skewed. My personal experience is that in the past months people have returned to the game, and I've seen figures indicating that there has been an increase in revenue from CoX as a result. Possibly not as much after going F2P as NCSoft would have hoped but put it in perspective:

The game was making profit.

Making profit and having a positive balance overall for the game is not a situation where you pull the plug on it. Especially not if the game is what is called a "milking cow" where very little investment is needed in time and effort to keep players happily playing the game and paying their monthly subscription (and micro-transactions for in-game additional content). It also was sprung on everyone without warning, and it can't be ignored that this was done a few days after the launch of their latest MMO game Guild Wars 2 - a propos a game that has no monthly subscription, and gets its profit purely from in-game sales and the initial purchase expense.
Where NCSoft's overall "in the red" comes from, I don't know, but it is certainly not from CoH/CoV. If they make a profit of approx. US$2.5m every quarter, the game is a success.

And there's the crux: it makes this much more a CEO "on a whim" decision rather than a properly deliberated action. And the figures only show that NCSoft is making a mistake, even just financially speaking. Looking at the graph there has been a slow decline, but looking at it overall it has been fairly stable since Q1 2010, still making $10m+ revenue per year. Mind you: revenue, meaning net profit when all expenses are paid.

Considering the development put into the expansion about to be released, the fact that direct competitors for the genre (superhero MMORPG) are steadily failing to produce a game that keeps people's interest, and people returning to the game that started it all, this $2.5m profit per quarter can (or rather, could) see an increase again. Keep in mind as well that 8.5 years of operation is already long for an MMO, and you can't put the current user base in contrast to what it had in the peak days after it was just released... The graphs don't show a steady (recent) decline in CoH/CoV, nor numbers in the red for the game (far from it), and that is the only thing that should matter here.

[Indalecio]

This is a big deal. Lots of online games have been created and have fallen by the wayside, day in and day out, throughout the continuing popularity of MMORPGs. However, unlike many other games' ends the community supporting this one is very tightly knit and the added functions of various social networking has immediately brought to light the unexplained abrupt decisions made by NCSoft and the questionable nature of them faster than they would have ever believed. So, in case you didn't catch it the first time:

This is a big deal.

As presented in vetted CNN iReport coverage the community behind City of Heroes has pulled together on many occasions, pooling resources and knowledge from various professions and influences, to make great changes both socially and humanitarian. http://www.realworldhero.com is an example. It should be no surprise that an abrupt unexplained decision to halt the game and fire the development team would create a stir, yet suddenly the Korean-based publishing company finds itself facing a MAJOR negative PR disaster. True, it may be their game and they may own Intellectual Property rights, but they are quickly discovering that you don't have to have stock shareholder privileges (much like NCSoft's newest shareholding company Nexon) to influence what is or isn't 'best' for a company when such social networking is involved. And trust me when I say that what is happening behind the fate of this game will forever change the way all companies look at and deal with MMORPGs in the future. After all, this is a big deal.

Most MMORPGs that I've been a player of that have eventually died have all had superior PR handling. While nobody expects grand levels of detail, a good company always tries to leave the customers happy so that they remain interested in future products, e.g. Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst for the PC had a lovely 5 year run before informing the playerbase that the servers will be shut down in a few months. Naturally, this makes people distraught, however it should be noted that the development team, Sonic Team, was very vocal and communicative with their customers about this transition and even allowed bonuses at the last few weeks for a big hurrah. They felt it important to keep the players interested in future business, such as with Phantasy Star Universe and now the upcoming Western-release of Phantasy Star Online 2. They even allowed players to run the game on private servers, which is still very much active today, even though it could be considered a violation of Intellectual Property rights surrounding the product. Most companies have done things in this way.

But this? This is a big deal. NCSoft has done the exact opposite so far. They have accepted cash up until that lockout point for subscription time up to a year in length, not to mention other bought virtual goods, and the only thing they have offered in return is, if you can imagine the thrill of the now-burned customer, transferred game time to that of any other NCSoft online product.

Take a moment to think about that.

Something to clarify here, though, is that at the time of the announcement to shut down CoH NCSoft had yet to have Guild Wars 2 go live. It was still pending. However, two days prior ArenaNet, the development team behind Guild Wars 2, halted all sales of their game in order to preemptively reduce stress on NCSoft's servers which host other games, such as CoH. And then NCSoft decides to fire Paragon Studios (the remnants of the previous dev team Cryptic Studios that didn't sabotage the game and then run off to buy the then-DOA Marvel Online engine to create Champions Online, and were eventually bought out by Eastern company Perfect World) who were in the midst of creating a revolutionizing expansion that would have guaranteed much further life. It sounds dirty to me. Especially considering the influence Nexon has undoubtedly been flexing over NCSoft, possibly vying for a superhero game of their own (leaving Marvel Entertainment to continue kicking itself for ever backing down in the first place).

Why is this such a big deal, you ask? Simple. This is an MMORPG -- Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (even if you want to chop off the RPG half because you're scared of being associated with old-school D&D nerds) -- and that means that the game publisher hosts all aspects of the game itself. Without them there is no game. The money you spent on the boxed set and expansions online are worthless. You can load up the game to listen to the login music for nostalgia, but for all intents and purposes you're stuck with a 12GB (give or take) music player that only plays one song. That's the crux of the issue.

There's no LAN play or direct connection. There are no ways for people to host the game itself (without running into those legally binding IP laws wherein large companies love to sue because they can). Up until this point it has never seemed to be a huge issue. But...this is a big deal. NCSoft has gone the way of Blizzard in many ways: Blizzard's attitude on PR is that if you, the customer, feel that you are unsatisfied to the point that you want to leave and never sponsor the company again you are free to do so because there's a sucker born every minute and most of them have access to daddy's credit card. You are expendable. Or, in other words:

Loyalty means nothing.

It's clear that NCSoft could not, at the point in which they decided to kill off CoH, care any less about customers for that game in regards to their services for other games. They were about to launch (which is now live) Guild Wars 2. Now perhaps you understand. "Walk out, if you dare, and vow to never buy another NCSoft product if you wish. We'll just pull in two more people for each of you that leave and we'll be laughing all the way to the bank." But it's not playing out that smoothly. Not at all. Various forms of media have already amplified the outcry against this lack of customer gratitude concerning the disregard for the built up community that they created. And now they have some serious thinking to do.

But what about you, here, on the Pale Moon forum?

Ultimately, I present this mountain of text in a means to present the general feeling, atmosphere, and context for which such players feel betrayed by mute corporations. It's not a question of money or profit in this perspective, you see. It's a question of camaraderie spanning generations of family members, eight and a half years of time (very roughly a fourth of my life), across many platforms of social interaction that includes, even, reality.

So, you there! If you feel like supporting these people, even if on sheer principle alone, please feel free to sign the online petition and even look over efforts being made over on Titan Network. We're not just fighting for City of Heroes, we're fighting for a more positive future for online gaming in light of secret motives, abrupt decisions, and lack of customer regard that seem to be becoming more commonplace. Being a hero doesn't always mean you wear a cape and mask. Every heroic act, however, starts with initiative and the words 'I can do this'.

-Indy

[Moonchild]

Thanks, Indy. I stand corrected as to the Guild Wars 2 launch date.
One thing to note though in that respect, is that NCSoft was smart enough to announce and create this selling stop, if you look at how they pushed not only pre-ordering, but pre-sales of GW2, even more so through the stop for people who would otherwise have considered buying it on the launch day, but now bought it sooner. Money already given to NCSoft, the fish reeled in, this PR nightmare doesn't impact their checkbooks as much as it otherwise would if people would have caused an outcry and halted sales on matter of principle.
(I also wonder how NCSoft can show figures in the red with this massive pre-sale income... was it not included?)

EDIT: And I have to add that I fully agree with everything you said, of course.

[megaman]

Money already given to NCSoft, the fish reeled in, this PR nightmare doesn't impact their checkbooks as much as it otherwise would if people would have caused an outcry and halted sales on matter of principle.

I am a bit curious if the subscribers outweigh the F2P users. If this was already mentioned, the "tl;dr" kicked in.

[Moonchild]

For Guild Wars, it doesn't matter, since it's a "no subscription" game. They use a different model of operation: you pay for the game when you buy it, and you pay for expansions, and in-game-store content.

[megaman]

For Guild Wars, it doesn't matter, since it's a "no subscription" game. They use a different model of operation: you pay for the game when you buy it, and you pay for expansions, and in-game-store content.

Question aimed at City of Heroes. Understood about buying the game with Guild Wars.

Calling out Vindictus to whomever want to try it.

[Moonchild]

I don't think it's a matter of individual games, at this point, or their revenue structure. I'm sure the financial professionals have that all figured out. The way this all has gone hints at something much larger and much more principal, as Indalecio said (and I think his post is certainly worth reading completely... set pref("tl;dr", false); )

[Rohugh]

I am a gamer although MMOs are not something I play being a single player RPG person. The company I moderate for (Bethsoft) will be releasing a new MMO next year (The Elder Scrolls Online) and although it will not involve me or the forums that I am presently on as it will be moved to a new home at some stage, this decision by NCSoft is something that I am concerned about.

From what I can see the way in which this has been handled, the way in which it is just being shut down without even the possibility of another studio or group taking over, the apparent dumping all the fan base and a lack of information for the close other than "a realignment of company focus and publishing support" is something that doesn't sit well. I added my name to the petition.

[lyceus]

The only "online" that I had tried for good time was Neopets since I could manage to have a real werelupe (not the dog that have huge fangs that is now). But they started to unbalance the game to paid gamers. Yes is free to use, but you cannot enter in some places, get tons of things, play some games, own a home v2.0, enter in contests, stop to see ads and a long etc unless you cough money. So I was just "feeding" a png image and no more since I was an common user, so I saved my png images and left the game for good. Of course this doesn't meant a MMORPG like the ones you pay, but I feel that those games made the same discrimination of paid-no paid users that happens in Neopets.

When I said "robbery" is because not matters how much hype they made until November 30, 2012. Some people will be offline for some reason (like be in the Army, long travel trip, be sick, etc.) and then they will come home, enter to their favorite game and they will see the game closed and no way for get a refund or else. They will be billed anyway and just a trollface page will be the only excuse they will have. They know that they rent a game for sure, but is like the joke of hotel where the guest is billed for all the services of the hotel for one night (pool, night club, internet, cable, conference room, gym) and if he didn't use all them it wasn't the guilt of the hotel.

I tried online games on Facebook but they take ages for load and you can play only a couple of times before the game ask for a credit card. For this I am a dire fan of emulators and stay away from online games.

What I don't understand, what happens if this online game closes? How this affects to PaleMoon?

[megaman]

How this affects to PaleMoon?

Look at the category, General Discussion. The topic is indirect to Palemoon, more like off-topic banter.

[Moonchild]

What I don't understand, what happens if this online game closes? How this affects to PaleMoon?

This game is my entertainment So it indirectly affects Pale Moon because it affects its developer.
Otherwise, like megaman said, it's the General Discussion board - feel free to discuss non-browser topics as well here.

[Indalecio]

The company I moderate for (Bethsoft) will be releasing a new MMO next year (The Elder Scrolls Online) and although it will not involve me or the forums that I am presently on as it will be moved to a new home at some stage, this decision by NCSoft is something that I am concerned about.

Perfectly understandable. That was part of my focus in my post, but was best put in Erik Reppen's letter to NCSoft. This isn't just a concern for the developers who sweat, cry, and bleed to create the software we enjoy, but also for their associates -- all of whom can lose money or employment over these decisions. This is precisely why the outcome of this situation concerning City of Heroes will no doubt directly affect how publishers and customers alike handle the usage of services rendered for future MMORPG titles. That makes this increasingly important for anyone willing to help make a positive change in the video game industry to get active now.

The only "online" that I had tried for good time was Neopets since I could manage to have a real werelupe (not the dog that have huge fangs that is now). But they started to unbalance the game to paid gamers. Yes is free to use, but you cannot enter in some places, get tons of things, play some games, own a home v2.0, enter in contests, stop to see ads and a long etc unless you cough money. So I was just "feeding" a png image and no more since I was an common user, so I saved my png images and left the game for good. Of course this doesn't meant a MMORPG like the ones you pay, but I feel that those games made the same discrimination of paid-no paid users that happens in Neopets.

I was a Neopets user since around the time they started, based out of the United Kingdom, where all services were completely free and the marketing demographic targeted were college student-age people. However, they were such a success that a company in California bought it out and decided to aim the restructured services to a much younger group with much more harsh censorship. The result was the immediate freeze of all virtual assets for an extremely large portion of the already existing community (including my original account and pets with a LOT of time invested there) since their communities and content were far too adult for their new look. They began introducing paid services then, but the real issue wasn't until they started accepting sponsorship deals from the commercial industry where Nickelodeon got their foot in the door and never left. To make matters worse they restructured their entire site and services to version 2.0 where the people who had the stones to stick around that long finally left for good. Besides, you have to pay for almost everything on the site now anyway.

That trend has followed many community-based forum sites, just like Gaia Online (of whom I had been a sponsor since their early days, being a bit of an anime geek), who have either made bad investments that left them so far in the hole that they had to accept commercial sponsorship or real-cash-purchase options or were simply far too greedy to not take advantage of preexisting social communities. It's very common to see when such services change hands to a new owner where they lack the appreciation of how such a thing even began.

The very same principle applies to online games. It doesn't affect multiplayer games where people can directly connect with IP addresses or enjoy things over the LAN, but MMORPGs where multitudes of people gather and eventually form social communities inside and outside of the game's boundaries are easily taken advantage of when game ownership changes hands (or stock minority shareholder rights and privileges shift) or the style of marketing is changed (such as the latest trend to change Western subscription-based marketing models into something with Eastern free-to-play marketing model influence, effectively creating an abomination that nobody likes and is grossly inefficient, yet the board room personnel responsible for such changes are unable to completely drop one or the other since the new hybrid marketing models have a potential, on paper, to create more revenue while they sell subscriptions and on-demand goods and services.)

Video games are serious business. And I say that with a straight face. Because it's true. Video games are The entertainment option of choice, even over films/television, and instead of creating titles that have people playing alone the growing popularity of MMORPGs and the resulting communities created by their existences are forcing customers to rethink what kind of investments they want to make for long-term enjoyment (why not sink 300 USD into a set of tabletop RPG books that can be played with for generations instead of a "lifetime subscription" for a game that may or may not last long enough to return the worth of that investment) and, now, are forcing developers and publishers to rethink how they feel they can handle their business without shooting themselves in the foot while burning bridges and essentially killing their company through badly handled Public Relations.

Edit:

"...why not sink 300 USD into a set of tabletop RPG books that can be played with for generations instead of a "lifetime subscription" for a game that may or may not last long enough to return the worth of that investment..."

My issue of Game Informer magazine just came in today. Yes ,the same magazine of which former associate editor Erik Reppen worked whose letter is featured in the first post. Page 30: Top of the Table; Fantasy Flight and the Surprising Rise of Hobby Gaming. Matt Miller presents an article explaining how tabletop gaming is really on a return. Now, naturally, the range of games covered are from action/one sitting games to RPG/Strategy/multiple sitting games all owned by Fantasy Flight Games, but can be taken as an example of the broader spectrum. Steve Horvath, senior vice president of communications and digital business for Fantasy Flight, says, "Even as the economy has been tough in the past several years, I think that's brought out the value proposition that the hobby games market has to offer." With the constant looming 'threat' of cheaper alternatives to gaming that last longer than their virtual cousins I wonder if that will play any part in the long run in how corporations will view and work with online gaming communities created by their endeavors.